THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY
By Charles James Lever
With Illustrations By W. Cubitt Cooke, And E. J. Wheeler.
Boston:
Little, Brown, And Company.
1904.
TO ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE, Esq. M.P., ETC., ETC.
My Dear Kinglake,—If you should ever turn over these pages, I have no greater wish than that they might afford you a tithe of the pleasure I have derived from your own writings. But I will not ask you to read me, but to believe that I am, in all sincerity your devoted admirer, for both your genius and your courage, and your attached friend,
CHARLES LEVER. Trieste, August 31, 1868.
CONTENTS
[ THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY. ]
[ CHAPTER I. ] THE BISHOP'S FOLLY
[ CHAPTER II. ] LADY AUGUSTA'S LETTER
[ CHAPTER III. ] "THE EVENING AFTER A HARD RUN.”
[ CHAPTER IV. ] ON THE CROQUET LAWN
[ CHAPTER V. ] CONFIDENTIAL TALK
[ CHAPTER VI. ] UP IN THE MOUNTAINS
[ CHAPTER VII. ] AT LUNCHEON
[ CHAPTER VIII. ] THE ARRIVAL OF A GREAT MAN
[ CHAPTER IX. ] OVER THE FIRE
[ CHAPTER X. ] THE DROPPINGS OF A GREAT DIPLOMATIST
[ CHAPTER XI. ] A WINTER DAY'S WALK
[ CHAPTER XII. ] AN EVENING BELOW AND ABOVE STAIRS
[ CHAPTER XIII. ] AT THE COTTAGE
[ CHAPTER XIV. ] OFFICIAL CONFIDENCES
[ CHAPTER XV. ] WITH HIS LAWYER
[ CHAPTER XVI.. ] SOME MISUNDERSTANDINGS
[ CHAPTER XVII. ] AT CASTELLO
[ CHAPTER XVIII. ] A DULL DINNER
[ CHAPTER XIX. ] A DEPARTURE
[ CHAPTER XX. ] A MORNING OF PERPLEXITIES
[ CHAPTER XXI. ] GEORGE AND JULIA
[ CHAPTER XXII. ] IN THE LIBRARY AT CASTELLO
[ CHAPTER XXIII. ] THE CURATE CROSS-EXAMINED
[ CHAPTER XXIV. ] DOUBTS AND FEARS
[ CHAPTER XXV. ] MARION'S AMBITIONS
[ CHAPTER XXVI. ] MR. CUTBILL ARRIVES AT CASTELLO
[ CHAPTER XXVII. ] THE VILLA ALTIERI
[ CHAPTER XXVIII. ] CASTELLO
[ CHAPTER XXIX. ] THE HÔTEL BRISTOL
[ CHAPTER XXX. ] ON THE ROAD
[ CHAPTER XXXI. ] ON THE ROAD TO ITALY
[ CHAPTER XXXII. ] THE CHURCH PATRONS AT ALBANO
[ CHAPTER XXXIII. ] A SMALL LODGING AT LOUVAIN
[ CHAPTER XXXIV. ] AT LOUVAIN
[ CHAPTER XXXV. ] MR. CUTBILL'S VISIT
[ CHAPTER XXXVI. ] AN EVENING WITH CUTBILL
[ CHAPTER XXXVII. ] THE APPOINTMENT
[ CHAPTER XXXVIII. ] WITH LORD CULDUFF
[ CHAPTER XXXIX. ] AT ALBANO
[ CHAPTER XL. ] "A RECEPTION” AT ROME
[ CHAPTER XLI. ] SOME “SALON DIPLOMACIES”
[ CHAPTER XLII. ] A LONG TÊTE-À-TÊTE
[ CHAPTER XLIII. ] A SPECIAL MISSION
[ CHAPTER XLIV. ] THE CHURCH PATRONS
[ CHAPTER XLV. ] A PLEASANT DINNER
[ CHAPTER XLVI. ] A STROLL AND A GOSSIP
[ CHAPTER XLVII. ] A PROPOSAL IN FORM
[ CHAPTER XLVII. ] "A TELEGRAM”
[ CHAPTER XLIX. ] A LONG TÊTE-À-TÊTE
[ CHAPTER L. ] CATTARO
[ CHAPTER LI. ] SOME NEWS FROM WITHOUT
[ CHAPTER LII. ] ISCHIA
[ CHAPTER LIII. ] A RAINY NIGHT AT SEA
[ CHAPTER LIV. ] THE LETTER BAG
[ CHAPTER LV. ] THE PRISONER AT CATTARO
[ CHAPTER LVI. ] AT LADY AUGUSTA'S
[ CHAPTER LVII. ] AT THE INN AT CATTARO
[ CHAPTER LVIII. ] THE VILLA LIFE
[ CHAPTER LIX. ] A VERY BRIEF DREAM
[ CHAPTER LX. ] A RETURN HOME
[ CHAPTER LXI. ] LADY CULDUFF'S LETTER
[ CHAPTER LXII. ] DEALING WITH CUTBILL
[ CHAPTER LXIII. ] THE CLIENT AND HIS LAWYER
[ CHAPTER LXIV. ] A FIRST GLEAM OF LIGHT
[ CHAPTER LXV. ] THE LIGHT STRONGER
[ CHAPTER LXVI. ] SEDLEY'S NOTES
[ CHAPTER LXVII. ] A WAYFARER
[ CHAPTER LXVIII. ] A MEETING AND A PARTING
[ CHAPTER LXIX. ] THE LAST OF ALL
THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY.
CHAPTER I. THE BISHOP'S FOLLY
Towards the close of the last century there was a very remarkable man, Bishop of Down, in Ireland: a Liberal in politics, in an age when Liberalism lay close on the confines of disloyalty; splendidly hospitable, at a period when hospitality verged on utter recklessness; he carried all his opinions to extremes. He had great taste, which had been cultivated by foreign travel, and having an ample fortune, was able to indulge in many whims and caprices, by which some were led to doubt of his sanity; but others, who judged him better, ascribed them to the self-indulgence of a man out of harmony with his time, and comtemptuously indifferent to what the world might say of him.
He had passed many years in Italy, and had formed a great attachment to that country. He liked the people and their mode of life; he liked the old cities, so rich in art treasures and so teeming with associations of a picturesque past; and he especially liked their villa architecture, which seemed so essentially suited to a grand and costly style of living. The great reception-rooms, spacious and lofty; the ample antechambers, made for crowds of attendants; and the stairs wide enough for even equipages to ascend them. No more striking illustration of his capricious turn of mind need be given than the fact that it was his pleasure to build one of these magnificent edifices in an Irish county!—a costly whim, obliging him to bring over from Italy a whole troop of stucco-men and painters, men skilled in fresco-work and carving,—an extravagance on which he spent thousands. Nor did he live to witness the completion of his splendid mansion.
After his death the building gradually fell into decay. His heirs, not improbably, little caring for a project which had ingulfed so large a share of their fortune, made no efforts to arrest the destroying influences of time and climate, and “Bishop's Folly”—for such was the name given to it by the country people—soon became a ruin. In some places the roof had fallen in, the doors and windows had all been carried away by the peasants, and in many a cabin or humble shealing in the county around slabs of colored marble or fragments of costly carving might be met with, over which the skill of a cunning workman had been bestowed for days long. The mansion stood on the side of a mountain which sloped gradually to the sea. The demesne, well wooded, but with young timber, was beautifully varied in surface, one deep glen running, as it were, from the very base of the house to the beach, and showing glimpses, through the trees, of a bright and rapid river tumbling onward to the sea. Seen in its dilapidation and decay, the aspect of the place was dreary and depressing, and led many to wonder how the bishop could ever have selected such a spot; for it was not only placed in the midst of a wild mountain region, but many miles away from anything that could be called a neighborhood. But the same haughty defiance he gave the world in other things urged him here to show that he cared little for the judgments which might be passed upon him, or even for the circumstances which would have influenced other men. “When it is my pleasure to receive company, I shall have my house full no matter where I live,” was his haughty speech, and certainly the whole character of his life went to confirm his words.
Some question of disputed title, after the bishop's death, threw the estate into Chancery, and so it remained till, by the operation of the new law touching incumbered property, it became marketable, and was purchased by a rich London banker, who had declared his intention of coming to live upon it.
That any one rich enough to buy such a property, able to restore such a costly house, and maintain a style of living proportionate to its pretensions, should come to reside in the solitude and obscurity of an Irish county, seemed all but impossible; and when the matter became assured by the visit of a well-known architect, and afterwards by the arrival of a troop of workmen, the puzzle then became to guess how it chanced that the great head of a rich banking firm, the chairman of this, the director of that, the promoter of Heaven knows what scores of industrial schemes for fortune, should withdraw from the great bustle of life to accept an existence of complete oblivion.
In the little village of Portshandon—which straggled along the beach, and where, with a few exceptions, none but fishermen and their families lived—this question was hotly debated; an old half-pay lieutenant, who by courtesy was called Captain, being at the head of those who first denied the possibility of the Bramleighs coming at all, and when that matter was removed beyond a doubt, next taking his stand on the fact that nothing short of some disaster in fortune, or some aspersion on character, could ever have driven a man out of the great world to finish his days in the exile of Ireland.
“I suppose you'll give in at last, Captain Craufurd,” said Mrs. Bayley, the postmistress of Portshandon, as she pointed to a pile of letters and newspapers all addressed to “Castello,” and which more than quadrupled the other correspondence of the locality.
“I did n't pretend they were not coming, Mrs. Bayley,” said he, in the cracked and cantankerous tone he invariably spoke in. “I simply observed that I 'd be thankful for any one telling me why they were coming. That's the puzzle,—why they 're coming?”
“I suppose because they like it, and they can afford it,” said she, with a toss of her head.
“Like it!” cried he, in derision. “Like it! Look out of the window there beside you, Mrs. Bayley, and say, is n't it a lovely prospect, that beggarly village, and the old rotten boats, keel uppermost, with the dead fish and the oyster-shells, and the torn nets, and the dirty children? Is n't it an elegant sight after Hyde Park and the Queen's palace?”
“I never saw the Queen's palace nor the other place you talk of, but I think there's worse towns to live in than Portshandon.”
“And do they think they'll make it better by calling it Castello?” said he, as with a contemptuous gesture he threw from him one of the newspapers with this address. “If they want to think they 're in Italy they ought to come down here in November with the Channel fogs sweeping up through the mountains, and the wind beating the rain against the windows. I hope they'll think they're in Naples. Why can't they call the place by the name we all know it by? It was Bishop's Folly when I was a boy, and it will be Bishop's Folly after I 'm dead.”
“I suppose people can call their house whatever they like? Nobody objects to your calling your place Craufurd's Lea.”
“I'd like to see them object to it,” cried he, fiercely. “It's Craufurd's Lea in Digge's 'Survey of Down,' 1714. It's Craufurd's Lea in the 'Anthologia Hibernica,' and it's down, too, in Joyce's 'Irish Fisheries;' and we were Craufurds of Craufurd's Lea before one stone of that big barrack up there was laid, and maybe we 'll be so after it's a ruin again.”
“I hope it's not going to be a ruin any more, Captain Craufurd, all the same,” said the postmistress, tartly, for she was not disposed to undervalue the increased importance the neighborhood was about to derive from the rich family coming to live in it.
“Well, there's one thing I can tell you, Mrs. Bayley,” said he, with his usual grin. “The devil a bit of Ireland they 'd ever come to, if they could live in England. Mind my words, and see if they 'll not come true. It's either the bank is in a bad way, or this or that company is going to smash, or it's his wife has run away, or one of the daughters married the footman;—something or other has happened, you 'll see, or we would never have the honor of their distinguished company down here.”
“It's a bad wind blows nobody good,” said Mrs. Bayley. “It's luck for us, anyhow.”
“I don't perceive the luck of it either, ma'am,” said the Captain, with increased peevishness. “Chickens will be eighteenpence a couple, eggs a halfpenny apiece. I 'd like to know what you'll pay for a codfish, such as I bought yesterday for fourpence?”
“It's better for them that has to sell them.”
“Ay, but I'm talking of them that has to buy them, ma'am, and I'm thinking how a born gentleman with a fixed income is to compete with one of these fellows that gets his gold from California at market price, and makes more out of one morning's robbery on the Stock Exchange, than a Lieutenant-General receives after thirty years' service.”
A sharp tap at the window-pane interrupted the discussion at this critical moment, and Mrs. Bayley perceived it was Mr. Dorose, Colonel Bramleigh's valet, who had come for the letters for the great house.
“Only these, Mrs. Bayley?” said he, half contemptuously.
“Well, indeed, sir; it's a good-sized bundle after all. There's eleven letters, and about fifteen papers and two books.”
“Send them all on to Brighton, Mrs. Bayley. We shall not come down here till the end of the month. Just give me the 'Times,' however;” and tearing open the cover, he turned to the City article. “I hope you've nothing in Ecuadors, Mrs. Bayley; they look shaky. I'm 'hit,' too, in my Turks. I see no dividend this half.” Here he leaned forward, so as to whisper in her ear, and said, “Whenever you want a snug thing, Mrs. B., you're always safe with Brazilians;” and with this he moved off, leaving the postmistress in a flurry of shame and confusion as to what precise character of transaction his counsel applied.
“Upon my conscience, we 're come to a pretty pass!” exclaimed the Captain, as, buttoning his coat, he issued forth into the street; nor was his temper much improved by finding the way blocked up by a string of carts and drays, slowly proceeding towards the great house, all loaded with furniture and kitchen utensils, and the other details of a large household. A bystander remarked that four saddle-horses had passed through at daybreak, and one of the grooms had said, “It was nothing to what was coming in a few days.”
Two days after this, and quite unexpectedly by all, the village awoke to see a large flag waving from the flagstaff over the chief tower of Castello; and the tidings were speedily circulated that the great people had arrived. A few sceptics, determining to decide the point for themselves, set out to go up to the house; but the lodge-gate was closed and the gatekeeper answered them from behind it, saying that no visitors were to be admitted; a small incident, in its way, but, after all, it is by small incidents that men speculate on the tastes and tempers of a new dynasty.
CHAPTER II. LADY AUGUSTA'S LETTER
It will save some time, both to writer and reader, while it will also serve to explain certain particulars about those we are interested in, if I give in this place a letter which was written by Lady Augusta Bramleigh, the Colonel's young wife, to a married sister at Rome. It ran thus:
Hanover Square, Nov. 10, 18—.
Dearest Dorothy,—
Here we are back in town, at a season, too, when we find ourselves the only people left; and if I wanted to make a long story of how it happens, there is the material; but it is precisely what I desire to avoid, and at the risk of being barely intelligible, I will be brief. We have left Earlshope, and, indeed, Herefordshire, for good. Our campaign there was a social failure, but just such a failure as I predicted it would and must be; and although, possibly, I might have liked to have been spared some of the mortifications we met with, I am too much pleased with the results to quarrel over the means.
You are already in possession of what we intended by the purchase of Earlshope—how we meant to become county magnates, marry our sons and daughters to neighboring magnates, and live as though we had been rooted to the soil for centuries. I say “we,” my dear, because I am too good a wife to separate myself from Col. B. in all these projects; but I am fain to own that as I only saw defeat in the plan, I opposed it from the first. Here, in town, money will do anything; at least, anything that one has any right to do. There may be a set or a clique to which it will not give admission; but who wants them, who needs them?
There's always a wonderful Van Eyck or a Memling in a Dutch town, to obtain the sight of which you have to petition the authorities, or implore the Stadtholder; but I never knew any one admit that success repaid the trouble; and the chances are that you come away from the sight fully convinced that you have seen scores of old pictures exactly like it, and that all that could be said was, it was as brown, and as dusky, and as generally disappointing, as its fellows. So it is with these small exclusive societies. It may be a great triumph of ingenuity to pick the lock; but there 's nothing in the coffer to reward it. I repeat, then, with money—and we had money—London was open to us. All the more, too, that for some years back society has taken a speculative turn; and it is nothing derogatory to find people “to go in,” as it is called, for a good thing, in “Turks” or “Brazilians,” in patent fuel, or a new loan to the children of Egypt. To these, and such like, your City man and banker is esteemed a safe pilot; and you would be amused at the amount of attention Col. B. was accustomed to meet with from men who regarded themselves as immeasurably above him, and who, all question of profit apart, would have hesitated at admitting him to their acquaintance.
I tell you all these very commonplace truths, my dear Dorothy, because they may not, indeed cannot, be such truisms to you—you, who live in a grand old city, with noble traditions, and the refinements that come transmitted from centuries of high habits; and I feel, as I write, how puzzled you will often be to follow me. London was, as I have twice said, our home; but for that very reason we could not be content with it. Earlshope, by ill luck, was for sale, and we bought it. I am afraid to tell you the height of our castle-building; but, as we were all engaged, the work went on briskly, every day adding at least a story to the edifice. We were to start as high sheriff, then represent the county. I am not quite clear, I think we never settled the point as to the lord-lieutenancy; but I know the exact way, and the very time, in which we demanded our peerage. How we threatened to sulk, and did sulk; how we actually sat a whole night on the back benches; and how we made our eldest son dance twice with a daughter of the “Opposition,”—menaces that no intelligent Cabinet or conscientious “Whip” could for a moment misunderstand. And oh! my dear Dora, as I write these things, how forcibly I feel the prudence of that step which once we all were so ready to condemn you for having taken. You were indeed right to marry a foreigner. That an English girl should address herself to the married life of England, the first condition is she should never have left England, not even for that holiday-trip to Paris and Switzerland, which people now do, as once they were wont to “do Margate.” The whole game of existence is such a scramble with us: we scramble for social rank, for place, for influence, for Court favor, for patronage; and all these call for so much intrigue and plotting, that I vow to you I 'd as soon be a Carbonara or a Sanfedista as the wife of an aspiring middle-class Englishman.
But to return. The county would not have us—we were rich, and we were City folk, and they deemed it an unpardonable pretension in us to come down amongst them. They refused our invitations, and sent us none of their own. We split with them, contested the election against them, and got beaten. We spent unheard-of moneys, and bribed everybody that had not a vote for ten miles round. With universal suffrage, which I believe we promised them, we should have been at the head of the poll; but the freeholders were to a man opposed to us.
I am told that our opponents behaved ungenerously and unjustly—perhaps they did; at all events, the end of the contest left us without a single acquaintance, and we stood alone in our glory of beaten candidateship, after three months of unheard-of fatigue, and more meanness than I care to mention. The end of all was, to shake the dust off our feet at Herefordshire, and advertise Earlshope for sale. Meanwhile we returned to town; just as shipwrecked men clamber up the first rock in sight, not feeling in their danger what desolation is before them. I take it that the generals of a beaten army talk very little over their late defeat. At all events we observed a most scrupulous reserve, and I don't think that a word was dropped amongst us for a month that could have led a stranger to believe that we had just been beaten in an election, and hunted out of the county.
I was just beginning to feel that our lesson, a severe one, it is true, might redound to our future benefit, when our eldest-born—I call them all mine, Dora, though not one of them will say mamma to me—discovered that there was an Irish estate to be sold, with a fine house and fine grounds, and that if we could n't be great folk in the grander kingdom, there was no saying what we might not be in the smaller one. This was too much for me. I accepted the Herefordshire expedition because it smacked of active service. I knew well we should be defeated, and I knew there would be a battle, but I could not consent to banishment. What had I done, I asked myself over and over, that I should be sent to live in Ireland?
I tried to get up a party against the project, and failed. Augustus Bramleigh—our heir—was in its favor, indeed its chief promoter. Temple, the second son, who is a secretary of embassy, and the most insufferable of puppies, thought it a “nice place for us,” and certain to save us money; and John,—Jack they call him,—who is in the navy, thinks land to be land, besides that, he was once stationed at Cork, and thought it a paradise. If I could do little with the young men, I did less with the girls. Marion, the eldest, who deems her papa a sort of divine-right head of a family, would not discuss the scheme; and Eleanor, who goes in for nature and spontaneous feeling, replied that she was overjoyed at the thought of Ireland, and even half gave me to understand that she was only sorry it was not Africa. I was thus driven to a last resource. I sent for our old friend, Doctor Bartlet, and told him frankly that he must order me abroad to a dry warm climate, where there were few changes of temperature, and nothing depressing in the air. He did the thing to perfection; he called in Forbes to consult with him. The case was very serious, he said. The lung was not yet attacked, but the bronchial tubes were affected. Oh, how grateful I felt to my dear bronchial tubes, for they have sent me to Italy! Yes, Dolly dearest, I am off on Wednesday, and hope within a week after this reaches you to be at your side, pouring out all my sorrows, and asking for that consolation you never yet refused me. And now, to be eminently practical, can you obtain for me that beautiful little villa that overlooked the Borghese Gardens?—it was called the Villino Altieri. The old Prince Giuseppe Altieri, who used to be an adorer of mine, if he be alive may like to resume his ancient passion, and accept me for a tenant; all the more that I can afford to be liberal. Col. B. behaves well always where money enters. I shall want servants, as I only mean to take from this, Rose and my groom. You know the sort of creatures I like; but, for my sake, be particular about the cook,—I can't eat “Romanesque,”—and if there be a stray Frenchman wandering about, secure him. Do you remember dear old Paoletti, Dolly, who used to serve up those delicious little macaroni suppers long ago in our own room?—cheating us into gourmandism by the trick of deceit! Oh, what would I give to be as young again! To be soaring up to heaven, as I listened with closed eyes to the chant in the Sistine Chapel, or ascending to another elysium of delight, as I gazed at the “noble guard” of the Pope, who, while his black charger was caracoling, and he was holding on by the mane, yet managed to dart towards me such a look of love and devotion I and you remember, Dolly, we lived “secondo piano,” at the time, and it was plucky of the man, considering how badly he rode. I yearn to go back there. I yearn for those sunsets from the Pincian, and those long rambling rides over the Campagna, leading to nothing but an everlasting dreaminess, and an intense desire that one could go on day after day in the same delicious life of unreality; for it is so, Dolly. Your Roman existence is as much a trance as anything ever was—not a sight nor sound to shock it. The swell of the organ and the odor of the incense follow you even to your pleasures, and, just as the light streams in through the painted windows with its radiance of gold and amber and rose, so does the Church tinge with its mellow lustre all that goes on within its shadow. And how sweet and soothing it all is! I don't know, I cannot know, if it lead to heaven, but it certainly goes in that direction, so far as peace of mind is concerned. What has become of Carlo Lambruschini? Is he married? How good-looking he was, and how he sung! I never heard Mario without thinking of him. How is it that our people never have that velvety softness in their tenor voices; there is no richness, no latent depth of tone, and consequently no power of expression? Will his Eminence of the Palazzo Antinori know me again? I was only a child when he saw me last, and used to give me his “benedizione.” Be sure you bespeak for me the same condescending favor again, heretic though I be. Don't be shocked, dearest Dora, but I mean to be half converted, that is to have a sort of serious flirtation with the Church; something that is to touch my affections, and yet not wound my principles; something that will surround me with all the fervor of the faith, and yet not ask me to sign the ordinances. I hope I can do this. I eagerly hope it, for it will supply a void in my heart which certainly neither the money article, nor the share list, nor even the details of a county contest, have sufficed to fill. Where is poor little Santa Rosa and his guitar? I want them, Dolly—I want them both. His little tinkling barcarolles were as pleasant as the drip of a fountain on a sultry night; and am I not a highly imaginative creature, who can write of a sultry night in this land of fog, east wind, gust, and gaslight? How my heart bounds to think how soon I shall leave it! How I could travesty the refrain, and cry, “Rendez-moi mon passeport, ou laissez-moi mourir.” And now, Dolly darling, I have done. Secure me the villa, engage my people. Tanti saluti to the dear cardinal,—as many loves to all who are kind enough to remember me. Send me a lascia-passare for my luggage—it is voluminous—to the care of the consul at Civita Vecchia, and tell him to look out for me by the arrival of the French boat, somewhere about the 20th or 21st; he can be useful with the custom-house creatures, and obtain me a carriage all to myself in the train.
It is always more “carino” to talk of a husband at the last line of a letter, and so I say, give dear Tino all my loves, quite apart and distinct from my other legacies of the like nature. Tell him, I am more tolerant than I used to be,—he will know my meaning,—that I make paper cigarettes just as well, and occasionally, when in high good-humor, even condescend to smoke one too. Say also, that I have a little chestnut cob, quiet enough for his riding, which shall be always at his orders; that he may dine with me every Sunday, and have one dish—I know well what it will be, I smell the garlic of it even now—of his own dictating; and if these be not enough, add that he may make love to me during the whole of Lent; and with this, believe me
Your own doting sister,
Augusta Bramleigh.
After much thought and many misgivings I deemed it advisable to offer to take one of the girls with me, leaving it open, to mark my indifference, as to which it should be. They both however refused, and, to my intense relief, declared that they did not care to come abroad; Augustus also protesting that it was a plan he could not approve of. The diplomatist alone opined that the project had anything to recommend it; but as his authority, like my own, in the family, carries little weight, we were happily outvoted. I have, therefore, the supreme satisfaction—and is it not such?—of knowing that I have done the right thing, and it has cost me nothing; like those excellent people who throw very devout looks towards heaven, without the remotest desire to be there.
CHAPTER III. “THE EVENING AFTER A HARD RUN.”
It was between eight and nine o'clock of a wintry evening near Christmas; a cold drizzle of rain was falling, which on the mountains might have been snow, as Mr. Drayton, the butler at the great house, as Castello was called in the village, stood austerely with his back to the fire in the dining-room, and, as he surveyed the table, wondered within himself what could possibly have detained the young gentlemen so late. The hounds had met that day about eight miles off, and Colonel Bramleigh had actually put off dinner half an hour for them, but to no avail; and now Mr. Drayton, whose whole personal arrangements for the evening had been so thoughtlessly interfered with, stood there musing over the wayward nature of youth, and inwardly longing for the time when, retiring from active service, he should enjoy the ease and indulgence his long life of fatigue and hardship had earned.
“They're coming now, Mr. Drayton,” said a livery-servant, entering hastily. “George saw the light of their cigars as they came up the avenue.”
“Bring in the soup, then, at once, and send George here with another log for the fire. There'll be no dressing for dinner to-day, I 'll be bound;” and imparting a sort of sarcastic bitterness to his speech, he filled himself a glass of sherry at the sideboard and tossed it off,—only just in time, for the door opened, and a very noisy, merry party of four entered the room, and made for the fire.
“As soon as you like, Drayton,” said Augustus, the eldest Bramleigh, a tall, good-looking, but somewhat stern-featured man of about eight-and-twenty. The second, Temple Bramleigh, was middle-sized, with a handsome but somewhat over-delicate-looking face, to which a simpering affectation of imperturbable self-conceit gave a sort of puppyism; while the youngest, Jack, was a bronzed, bright-eyed, fine-looking fellow, manly, energetic, and determined, but with a sweetness when he smiled and showed his good teeth that implied a soft and very impressionable nature. They were all in scarlet coats, and presented a group strikingly good-looking and manly. The fourth of the party was, however, so eminently handsome, and so superior in expression as well as lineament, that the others seemed almost vulgar beside him. He was in black coat and cords, a checked cravat seeming to indicate that he was verging, so far as he might, on the limits of hunting costume; for George L'Estrange was in orders, and the curate of the parish in which Castello stood. It is not necessary to detain the reader by any lengthened narrative of the handsome young parson. Enough to say, that it was not all from choice he had entered the Church,—narrow fortune, and the hope of a small family living, deciding him to adopt a career which, to one who had a passion for field-sports, seemed the very last to gratify his tastes. As a horseman he was confessedly the first in the country round; although his one horse—he was unable to keep a second—condemned him to rare appearance at the meets. The sight of the parson and his black mare, Nora Creina, in the field, were treated with a cheer, for he was a universal favorite, and if a general suffrage could have conferred the episcopate, George would have had his mitre many a day ago.
So sure a seat and so perfect a hand needed never to have wanted a mount. There was not a man with a stable who would not have been well pleased to see his horse ridden by such a rider; but L'Estrange declined all such offers,—a sensitive fear of being called a hunting parson deterred him; indeed, it was easy to see by the rarity with which he permitted himself the loved indulgence, what a struggle he maintained between will and temptation, and how keenly he felt the sacrifice he imposed upon himself.
Such, in brief, was the party who were now seated at table, well pleased to find themselves in presence of an admirable dinner, in a room replete with every comfort.
The day's run, of course, formed the one topic of their talk, and a great deal of merriment went on about the sailor-like performances of Jack, who had been thrown twice, but on the whole acquitted himself creditably, and had taken one high bank so splendidly as to win a cheer from all who saw him.
“I wish you had not asked that poor Frenchman to follow you, Jack,” said Augustus; “he was really riding very nicely till he came to that unlucky fence.”
“I only cried out, 'Venez donc, monsieur,' and when I turned my head, after clearing the bank, I saw his horse with his legs in the air and monsieur underneath.”
“When I picked him up,” broke in L'Estrange, “he said, 'Merci mille fois, monsieur,' and then fainted off, the poor fellow's face actually wearing the smile of courtesy he had got up to thank me.”
“Why will Frenchmen try things that are quite out of their beat?” said Jack.
“That's a most absurd prejudice of yours, Master Jack,” cried the diplomatist. “Frenchmen ride admirably, now-a-days. I've seen a steeple-chase in Normandy, over as stiff a course, and as well ridden, as ever Leicestershire witnessed.”
“Yes, yes; I've heard all that,” said the sailor, “just as I 've heard that their iron fleet is as good, if not better, than our own.”
“I think our own newspapers rather hint that,” said L'Estrange.
“They do more,” said Temple; “they prove it. They show a numerical superiority in ships, and they give an account of guns and weight of metal dead against us.”
“I 'll not say anything of the French; but this much I will say,” cried the sailor; “the question will have to be settled one of these days, and I 'm right glad to think that it cannot be done by writers in newspapers.”
“May I come in?” cried a soft voice; and a very pretty head, with long fair ringlets, appeared at the door.
“Yes. Come by all means,” said Jack; “perhaps we shall be able, by your help, to talk of something besides fighting Frenchmen.”
While he spoke, L'Estrange had risen, and approached to shake hands with her.
“Sit down with us, Nelly,” said Augustus, “or George will get no dinner.”
“Give me a chair, Drayton,” said she; and, turning to her brother, added, “I only came in to ask some tidings about an unlucky foreigner; the servants have it he was cruelly hurt, some think hopelessly.”
“There's the culprit who did the mischief,” said Temple, pointing to Jack; “let him recount his feat.”
“I 'm not to blame in the least, Nelly. I took a smashing high bank, and the little Frenchman tried to follow me and came to grief.”
“Ay, but you challenged him to come on,” said Temple. “Now, Master Jack, people don't do that sort of thing in the hunting-field.”
“I said, 'Come along, monsieur,' to give him pluck. I never thought for a moment he was to suffer for it.”
“But is he seriously hurt?” asked she.
“I think not,” said L'Estrange; “he seemed to me more stunned than actually injured. Fortunately for him they had not far to take him, for the disaster occurred quite close to Duckett's Wood, where he is stopping.”
“Is he at Longworth's?” asked Augustus.
“Yes. Longworth met him up the Nile, and they travelled together for some months, and, when they parted, it was agreed they were to meet here at Christmas; and though Longworth had written to apprise his people they were coming, he has not appeared himself, and the Frenchman is waiting patiently for his host's arrival.”
“And laming his best horse in the mean while. That dark bay will never do another day with hounds,” said Temple.
“She was shaky before, but she is certainly not the better of this day's work. I 'd blister her, and turn her out for a full year,” said Augustus.
“I suppose that's another of those things in which the French are our superiors,” muttered Jack; “but I suspect I 'd think twice about it before I 'd install myself in a man's house, and ride his horses in his absence.”
“It was the host's duty to be there to receive him,” said Temple, who was always on the watch to make the sailor feel how little he knew of society and its ways.
“I hope when you've finished your wine,” said Ellen, “you'll not steal off to bed, as you did the other night, without ever appearing in the drawing-room.”
“L'Estrange shall go, at all events,” cried Augustus. “The Church shall represent the laity.”
“I 'm not in trim to enter a drawing-room, Miss Bramleigh,” said the curate, blushing. “I would n't dare to present myself in such a costume.”
“I declare,” said Jack, “I think it becomes you better than your Sunday rig; don't you, Nelly?”
“Papa will be greatly disappointed, Mr. L'Estrange, if he should not see you,” said she, rising to leave the room; “he wants to hear all about your day's sport, and especially about that poor Frenchman. Do you know his name?”
“Yes, here's his card;—Anatole de Pracontal.”
“A good name,” said Temple, “but the fellow himself looks a snob.”
“I call that very hard,” said Jack, “to say what any fellow looks like when he is covered with slush and dirt, his hat smashed, and his mouth full of mud.”
“Don't forget that we expect to see you,” said Ellen, with a nod and a smile to the curate, and left the room.
“And who or what is Mr. Longworth?” said Temple.
“I never met him. All I know is, that he owns that very ugly red-brick house, with the three gables in front, on the hill-side as you go towards Newry,” said Augustus.
“I think I can tell you something about him,” said the parson; “his father was my grandfather's agent. I believe he began as his steward, when we had property in this county; he must have been a shrewd sort of man, for he raised himself from a very humble origin to become a small estated proprietor and justice of the peace; and when he died, about four years ago, he left Philip Longworth something like a thousand a year in landed property, and some ready money besides.”
“And this Longworth, as you call him,—what is he like?”
“A good sort of fellow, who would be better if he was not possessed by a craving ambition to know fine people, and move in their society. Not being able to attain the place he aspires to in his own county, he has gone abroad, and affects to have a horror of English life and ways, the real grievance being his own personal inability to meet acceptance in a certain set. This is what I hear of him; my own knowledge is very slight. I have ever found him well-mannered and polite, and, except a slight sign of condescension, I should say pleasant.”
“I take it,” said the sailor, “he must be an arrant snob.”
“Not necessarily, Jack,” said Temple. “There is nothing ignoble in a man's desire to live with the best people, if he do nothing mean to reach that goal.”
“Whom do you call the best people, Temple?” asked the other.
“By the best people, I mean the first in rank and station. I am not speaking of their moral excellence, but of their social superiority, and of that pre-eminence which comes of an indisputable position, high name, fortune, and the world's regards. These I call the best people to live with.”
“And I do not,” said Jack, rising, and throwing his napkin on the table, “not at least for men like myself. I want to associate with my equals. I want to mix with men who cannot overbear me by any accident of their wealth or title.”
“Jack should never have gone into the navy, that 's clear,” said Augustus, laughing; “but let us draw round the fire and have a cigar.”
“You'll have to pay your visit to the drawing-room, L'Estrange,” said Jack, “before we begin to smoke, for the governor hates tobacco, and detects it in an instant.”
“I declare,” said the parson, as he looked at his splashed cords and dirty boots, “I have no courage to present myself in such a trim as this.”
“Report yourself and come back at once,” cried Jack.
“I 'd say, don't go in at all,” said Temple.
“That's what I should do, certainly,” said Augustus.
“Sit down here. What are you drinking? This is Pomare, and better than claret of a cold evening.”
And the curate yielded to the soft persuasion, and, seated around the fire, the young men talked horses, dogs, and field sports, till the butler came to say that tea was served in the drawing-room, when, rising, they declared themselves too tired to stay up longer, and wishing each other good night they sauntered up to their rooms to bed.
CHAPTER IV. ON THE CROQUET LAWN.
The day after a hard run, like the day after a battle, is often spent in endeavors to repair the disasters of the struggle. So was it here. The young men passed the morning in the stables, or going back and forward with bandages and liniments. There was a tendon to be cared for, a sore back to be attended to. Benbo, too, would n't feed; the groom said he had got a surfeit; which malady, in stable parlance, applies to excess of work, as well as excess of diet.
Augustus Bramleigh was, as becomes an eldest son, grandly imperious and dictatorial, and looked at his poor discomfited beast, as he stood with hanging head and heaving flanks, as though to say it was a disgraceful thing for an animal that had the honor to carry him to look so craven and disheartened. Temple, with the instincts of his craft and calling, cared little for the past, and took but small interest in the horse that was not likely to be soon of use to him; while Jack, with all a sailor's energy, worked away manfully, and assisted the grooms in every way he could. It was at the end of a very active morning, that Jack was returning to the house, when he saw L'Estrange's pony-chaise at the door, with black Nora in the shafts, as fresh and hearty to all seeming as though she had not carried her heavy owner through one of the stiffest runs of the season only the day before.
“Is your master here, Bill?” asked Jack of the small urchin, who barely reached the bar of the bit.
“No, sir; it's Miss Julia has druv over. Master 's fishing this morning.”
Now Julia L'Estrange was a very pretty girl, and with a captivation of manner which to the young sailor was irresistible. She had been brought up in France, and imbibed that peculiar quiet coquetry which, in its quaint demureness, suggests just enough doubt of its sincerity to be provocative. She was dark enough to be a Spaniard from the south of Spain, and her long black eyelashes were darker even than her eyes. In her walk and her gesture there was that also which reminded one of Spain: the same blended litheness and dignity; and there was a firmness in her tread which took nothing from its elasticity.
When Jack heard that she was in the house, instead of hurrying in to meet her he sat moodily down on the steps of the door and lighted his cigar. “What's the use?” muttered he, and the same depressing sentence recurred to him again and again. They are very dark moments in life in which we have to confess to ourselves that, fight how we may, fate must beat us; that the very utmost we can do is to maintain a fierce struggle with destiny, but that in the end we must succumb. The more frequently poor Jack saw her, the more hopelessly he felt his lot. What was he—what could he ever be—to aspire to such a girl as Julia? Was not the very presumption a thing to laugh at? He thought of how his elder brother would entertain such a notion; the cold solemnity with which he would ridicule his pretensions; and then Temple would treat him to some profound reflections on the misery of poor marriages; while Marion would chime in with some cutting reproaches on the selfishness with which, to gratify a caprice,—she would call it a caprice,—he ignored the just pretensions of his family, and the imperative necessity that pressed them to secure their position in the world by great alliances. This was Marion's code: it took three generations to make a family; the first must be wealthy; the second, by the united force of money and ability, secure a certain station of power and social influence; the third must fortify these by marriages,—marriages of distinction, after which mere time would do the rest.
She had hoped much from her father's second marriage, and was grievously disappointed on finding how her step-mother's family affected displeasure at the match as a reason for a coldness towards them; while Lady Augusta herself as openly showed that she had stooped to the union merely to secure herself against the accidents of life and raise her above the misery of living on a very small income.
Jack was thinking moodily over all these things as he sat there, and with such depression of spirit that he half resolved, instead of staying out his full leave, to return to his ship at Portsmouth, and so forget shore life and all its fascinations. He heard the sound of a piano, and shortly after the rich, delicious tones of Julia's voice. It was that mellow quality of sound that musicians call mezzo soprano, whose gift it is to steal softly over the senses and steep them in a sweet rapture of peaceful delight. As the strains floated out, he felt as though the measure of incantation was running over for him, and he arose with a bound, and hurried off into the wood. “I 'll start to-morrow. I 'll not let this folly master me,” muttered he. “A fellow who can't stand up against his own fancies is not worth his salt. I 'll go on board again and think of my duty,” and he tried to assure himself that of all living men a sailor had least excuse for such weaknesses as these.
He had not much sympathy with the family ambitions. He thought that as they had wealth enough to live well and handsomely, a good station in the world, and not any one detracting element from their good luck, either as regarded character or health, it was downright ingratitude to go in search of disappointments and defeats. It was, to his thinking, like a ship with plenty of sea-room rushing madly on to her ruin amongst the breakers. “I think Nelly is of my own mind,” said he, “but who can say how long she will continue to be so? these stupid notions of being great folk will get hold of her at last. The high-minded Marion and that great genius Temple are certain to prevail in the end, and I shall always be a splendid example to point at and show the melancholy consequences of degenerate tastes and ignoble ambitions.”
The sharp trot of a horse on the gravel road beside him startled him in his musings, and the pony-carriage whisked rapidly by; Augustus driving and Julia at his side. She was laughing. Her merry laugh rang out above the brisk jingle of horse and harness, and to the poor sailor it sounded like the knell of all his hopes. “What a confounded fool I was not to remember I had an elder brother,” said he, bitterly. That he added something inaudible about the perfidious nature of girls is possibly true, but not being in evidence, it is not necessary to record it.
Let us turn from the disconsolate youth to what is certes a prettier picture—the croquet lawn behind the house, where the two sisters, with the accomplished Temple, were engaged at a game.
“I hope, girls,” said he, in one of his very finest drawls, “the future head of house and hopes is not going to make a precious fool of himself.”
“You mean with the curate's sister,” said Marion, with a saucy toss of her head. “I scarcely think he could be so absurd.”
“I can't see the absurdity,” broke in Ellen. “I think a duke might make her a duchess, and no great condescension in the act.”
“Quite true, Nelly,” said Temple; “that's exactly what a duke might do; but Mr. Bramleigh cannot. When you are at the top of the ladder, there's nothing left for you but to come down again; but the man at the bottom has to try to go up.”
“But why must there be a ladder at all, Temple?” asked she, eagerly.
“Is n't that speech Nelly all over?” cried Marion, haughtily.
“I hope it is,” said Ellen, “if it serves to convey what I faithfully believe,—that we are great fools in not enjoying a very pleasant lot in life instead of addressing ourselves to ambitions far and away beyond us.”
“And which be they?” asked Temple, crossing his arms over his mallet, and standing like a soldier on guard.
“To be high and titled, or if not titled, to be accepted among that class, and treated as their equals in rank and condition.”
“And why not, Nelly? What is this wonderful ten thousand that we all worship? Whence is it recruited, and how? These double wall-flowers are not of Nature's making; they all come of culture, of fine mould, careful watering, and good gardening. They were single-petaled once on a time, like ourselves. Mind, it is no radical says this, girls,—moi qui vous parle am no revolutionist, no leveller! I like these grand conditions, because they give existence its best stimulus, its noblest aspirations. The higher one goes in life,—as on a mountain,—the more pure the air and the wider the view.”
“And do you mean to tell me that Augustus would consult his happiness better in marrying some fine lady, like our grand step-mamma for instance, than a charming girl like Julia?” said Ellen.
“If Augustus' notions of happiness were to be measured by mine, I should say yes, unquestionably yes. Love is a very fleeting sentiment. The cost of the article, too, suggests most uncomfortable reflections. All the more as the memory comes when the acquisition itself is beginning to lose value. My former chief at Munich—the cleverest man of the world I ever met—used to say, as an investment, a pretty wife was a mistake. 'If,' said he, 'you laid out your money on a picture, your venture might turn out a bargain; if you bought a colt, your two-year-old might win a Derby; but your beauty of to-day will be barely good-looking in five years, and will be a positive fright in fifteen.'”
“Your accomplished friend was an odious beast!” said Nelly. “What was his name, Temple?”
“Lord Culduff, one of the first diplomatists in Europe.”
“Culduff? How strange! Papa's agent, Mr. Harding, mentioned the name at breakfast. He said there was a nobleman come over from Germany to see his estates in the north of Down, where they had some hopes of having discovered coal.”
“Is it possible Lord Culduff could be in our neighborhood? The governor must ask him here at once,” said Temple, with an animation of manner most unusual with him. “There must be no time lost about this. Finish your game without me, girls, for this matter is imminent;” and so saying, he resigned his mallet and hastened away to the house.
“I never saw Temple so eager about anything before,” said Nelly. “It's quite charming to see how the mere mention of a grand name can call forth all his energy.”
“Temple knows the world very well; and he knows how the whole game of life is conducted by a very few players, and that every one who desires to push his way must secure the intimacy, if he can, or at least the acquaintance, of these.” And Marion delivered this speech with a most oracular and pretentious tone.
“Yes,” said Nelly, with a droll sparkle in her eye; “he declared that profound statement last evening in the very same words. Who shall say it is not an immense advantage to have a brother so full of sage maxims, while his sisters are seen to catch up his words of wisdom, and actually believe them to be their own?”
“Temple may not be a Talleyrand; but he is certainly as brilliant as the charming curate,” said Marion, tartly.
“Oh, poor George!” cried Nelly; and her cheek flushed, while she tried to seem indifferent. “Nobody ever called him a genius. When one says he is very good-looking and very good-humored, tout est dit!”
“He is very much out of place as a parson.”
“Granted. I suspect he thinks so himself.”
“Men usually feel that they cannot take orders without some stronger impulse than a mere desire to gain a livelihood.”
“I have never talked to him on the matter; but perhaps he had no great choice of a career.”
“He might have gone into the army, I suppose? He'd have found scores of creatures there with about his own measure of intelligence.”
“I fancied you liked George, Marion,” said the other. And there was something half tender, half reproachful, in her tone.
“I liked him so far, that it was a boon to find anything so like a gentleman in this wild savagery; but if you mean that I would have endured him in town, or would have noticed him in society, you are strangely mistaken.”
“Poor George!” and there was something comic in her glance as she sighed these words out.
“There; you have won,” said Marion, throwing down her mallet. “I must go and hear what Temple is going to do. It would be a great blessing to see a man of the world and a man of mark in this dreary spot, and I hope papa will not lose the present opportunity to secure him.”
“Are you alone, Nelly?” said her eldest brother, some time after, as he came up, and found her sitting, lost in thought, under a tree.
“Yes. Marion got tired and went in, and Temple went to ask papa about inviting some high and mighty personage who chances to be in our neighborhood.”
“Who is he?”
“Lord Culduff, he called him.”
“Oh! a tremendous swell; an ambassador somewhere. What brings him down here?”
“I forget. Yes! it was something about a mine; he has found tin, or copper, or coal, I don't remember which, on some property of his here. By the way, Augustus, do you really think George L'Estrange a fool?”
“Think him a fool?”
“I mean,” said she, blushing deeply, “Marion holds his intelligence so cheaply that she is quite shocked at his presuming to be in orders.”
“Well, I don't think him exactly what Temple calls an esprit fort, but he is a very nice fellow, very companionable, and a thorough gentleman in all respects.”
“How well you have said it, dear Augustus,” said she, with a face beaming with delight. “Where are you off to? Where are you going?”
“I am going to see the yearlings, in the paddock below the river.”
“May I go with you, Gussy?” said she, drawing her arm within his. “I do like a brisk walk with you; and you always go like one with a purpose.”
CHAPTER V. CONFIDENTIAL TALK.
Temple found his father in his study, deeply engaged with a mass of papers and letters, and by the worn and fatigued expression of his face showing that he had passed a day of hard work.
“I hope I do not disturb you,” said Temple, as he leaned on the table at which the other was seated.
“Throw that cigar away, and I'll tell you,” said the old man, with a faint smile. “I never can conquer my aversion to tobacco. What do you want to say? Is it anything we cannot talk over at dinner, or after dinner?—for this post leaves at such an inconvenient hour, it gives me scant time to write.”
“I beg a thousand pardons, sir; but I have just heard that a very distinguished member of our corps—I mean the diplomatic corps—is down in this neighborhood, and I want your permission to ask him over here.”
“Who is he?”
“Lord Culduff.”
“What! that old scamp who ran away with Lady Clifford? I thought he could n't come to England?”
“Why, sir, he is one of the first men we have. It was he that negotiated the Erzeroum treaty, and I heard Sir Stamford Bolter say he was the only man in England who understood the Sound dues.”
“He ran off with another man's wife, and I don't like that.”
“Well, sir, as he didn't marry her afterwards, it was clear it was only a passing indiscretion.”
“Oh, indeed! that view of it never occurred to me. I suppose, then, it is in this light the corps regards it?”
“I trust so, sir. Where there is no complication there is no loss of character; and as Lord Culduff is received everywhere, and courted in the very best circles, I think it would be somewhat strange if we were to set up to teach the world how it ought to treat him.”
“I have no such pretension. I simply claim the right to choose the people I invite to my house.”
“He may be my chief to-morrow or next day,” said Temple.
“So much the worse for you.”
“Certainly not, sir, if we seize the opportunity to show him some attentions. He is a most high-bred gentleman, and from his abilities, his rank, and his connections, sure to be at the head of the line; and I confess I 'd be very much ashamed if he were to hear, as he is sure to hear, that I was in his vicinity without my ever having gone to wait on him.”
“Go by all means, then. Wait upon him at once, Temple; but I tell you frankly, I don't fancy presenting such a man to your sisters.”
“Why, sir, there is not a more unobjectionable man in all England; his manners are the very type of respectful deference towards ladies. He belongs to that old school which professes to be shocked with modern levity, while his whole conversation is a sort of quiet homage.”
“Well, well; how long would he stay,—a week?”
“A couple of days, perhaps, if he came at all. Indeed, I greatly doubt that he would come. They say he is here about some coal-mine they have discovered on his property.”
“What! has he found coal?” cried the old man, eagerly.
“So it is said, sir; or, at least, he hopes so.”
“It's only lignite. I 'm certain it's only lignite. I have been deceived myself twice or thrice, and I don't believe coal—real coal—exists in this part of Ireland.”
“Of that I can tell you nothing; he, however, will only be too glad to talk the matter over with you.”
“Yes; it is an interesting topic,—very interesting. Snell says that the great carboniferous strata are all in Ireland, but that they lie deep, and demand vast capital to work them. He predicts a great manufacturing prosperity to the country when Manchester and Birmingham will have sunk into ruins. He opines that this lignite is a mere indication of the immense vein of true carbon beneath. But what should this old debauchee know of a great industrial theme! His whole anxiety will be to turn it to some immediate profit. He 'll be looking for a loan, you 'll see. Mark my words, Temple, he 'll want an advance on his colliery.” And he gave one of those rich chuckling laughs which are as peculiar to the moneyed classes as ever a simpering smile was to enamelled beauty.
“I don't say,” added he, after a moment, “that the scheme may not be a good one,—an excellent one. Sampson says that all manufactures will be transferred to Ireland yet,—that this will be in some future time the great seat of national industry and national wealth. Let your grand friend come then, by all means; there is at least one topic we can talk over together.”
Too happy to risk the success he had obtained by any further discussion, Temple hurried away to give orders for the great man's reception. There was a small suite of rooms which had been furnished with unusual care and elegance when it was believed that Lady Augusta would have honored Castello with her presence. Indeed, she had so far favored the belief as to design some of the decorations herself, and had photographs taken of the rooms and the furniture, as well as of the views which presented themselves from the windows.
Though these rooms were on the second floor, they were accessible from without by a carriage-drive, which wound gradually up among the terraced gardens to a sort of plateau where a marble fountain stood, with a group of Naiads in the midst, over whom a perpetual spray fell like a veil; the whole surrounded with flowery shrubs and rare plants, sheltered from east and north by a strong belt of trees, and actually imparting to the favored spot the character of a southern climate and country.
As the gardener was careful to replace the exhausted or faded flowers by others in full bloom, and as on every available day he displayed here the richest treasures of his conservatory, there was something singularly beautiful in the contrast of this foreground, glowing in tropical luxuriance, with the massive forest-trees down below, and farther in the distance the stern and rugged lines of the Mourne Mountains, as they frowned on the sea.
Within doors, everything that wealth could contribute to comfort was present, and though there was magnificence in the costly silk of the hangings and the velvety richness of the carpets, the prevailing impression was that it was enjoyment, not splendor, was sought for. There were few pictures,—a Ruysdael over the fireplace in the drawing-room, and two or three Cuyps,—placid scenes of low-lying landscapes, bathed in soft sunsets. The doors were all hidden by heavy curtains, and a sense of voluptuous snugness seemed the spirit of the place.
The keys of this precious suite were in Marion's keeping, and as she walked through the rooms with Temple, and expatiated on the reckless expenditure bestowed on them, she owned that for any less distinguished guest than the great diplomatist she would never have consented to their being opened. Temple, however, was loud in his praises, went over his high connections and titled relatives, his great services, and the immense reputation they had given him, and, last of all, he spoke of his personal qualities, the charm of his manner, and the captivation of his address, so that finally she became as eager as himself to see this great and gifted man beneath their roof.
During the evening they talked much together of what they should do to entertain their illustrious guest. There was, so to say, no neighborhood, nor any possibility of having people to meet him, and they must, consequently, look to their home resources to amuse him.
“I hope Augustus will be properly attentive,” said Temple.
“I 'm certain he will. I 'm more afraid of Nellie, if there be anything strange or peculiar in Lord Culduff's manner. She never puts any curb on her enjoyment of an oddity, and you'll certainly have to caution her that her humoristic talents must be kept in abeyance just now.”
“I can trust Lord Culduff's manner to repress any tendency of this kind. Rely upon it, his courtly urbanity and high tone will protect him from all indiscretions; and Nelly,—I 'm sorry to say it, Marion, but Nelly is vulgar.”
“She is certainly too familiar on fresh acquaintance. I have told her more than once that you do not always please people by showing you are on good terms with yourself. It is a great misfortune to her that she never was 'out' before she came here. One season in town would have done more for her than all our precepts.”
“Particularly as she heeds them so little,” said Temple, snappishly.
“Cannot we manage to have some people to meet Lord Culduff at dinner? Who are the Gages who left their cards?”
“They sent them—not left them. Montifort Gage is the master of the hounds, and, I believe, a person of some consideration here. He does not, however, appear to invite much intimacy. His note acknowledging our subscription—it was a hundred pounds too—was of the coldest, and we exchanged a very few formal words at the meet yesterday.”
“Are we going to repeat the Herefordshire experiment here, then?” And she asked the question with a sparkling eye and a flushed cheek, as though the feeling it excited was not easily to be repressed.
“There 's a Sir Roger Kennedy, too, has called.”
“Yes, and Harding says he is married; but his wife's name is not on the card.”
“I take it they know very little of the habits of the world. Let us remember, Marion, where we are. Iceland is next door but one. I thought Harding would have looked to all this; he ought to have taken care that the county was properly attentive. An agent never wishes to see his chief reside on the property. It is like in my own career,—one is only chargé d'affaires when the head of the legation is on leave.”
“And this was the county we were told was ready to receive us with a sort of frantic enthusiasm. I wonder, Temple, do people ever tell the truth!”
“Yes, when they want you not to believe them. You see, Marion, we blundered here pretty much as we blundered in England. You'll not get the governor to believe it, nor perhaps even Augustus, but there is a diplomacy of everyday life, and people who fancy they can dispense with it invariably come to grief. Now I always told them—indeed I grew tired telling them—every mile that separates you from a capital diminishes the power of your money. In the city you reign supreme, but to be a county magnate you need scores of things besides a long credit at your banker's.”
A very impatient toss of the head showed that Marion herself was not fully a convert to these sage opinions, and it was with a half-rude abruptness that she broke in by asking how he intended to convey his invitation to Lord Culduff.
“There 's the difficulty,” said he, gravely. “He is going about from one place to another. Harding says he was at Rathbeggan on Sunday last, and was going on to Dinasker next day. I have been looking over the map, but I see no roads to these places. I think our best plan is to despatch Lacy with a letter. Lacy is the smartest fellow we have, and I think will be sure to find him. But the letter, too, is a puzzle.”
“Why should it be? It will be, I suppose, a mere formal invitation?”
“No, no. It would never do to say, 'Colonel Bramleigh presents his compliments, and requests'—and so on. The thing must have another tone. It ought to have a certain turn of expression.”
“I am not aware of what amount of acquaintanceship exists between you and Lord Culduff,” said she, stiffly.
“The very least in life. I suspect if we met in a club we should pass without speaking. I arrived at his Legation on the morning he was starting on leave. I remember he asked me to breakfast, but I declined, as I had been three days and nights on the road, and wanted to get to bed. I never met him since. What makes you look so serious, Marion?”
“I'm thinking what we shall do with him if he comes. Does he shoot, or hunt, or fish?—can you give him any out-o'-door occupation?”
“I'm quite abroad as to all his tastes and habits. I only know so much of him as pertains to his character in the 'line,' but I 'll go and write my note. I 'll come back and show you what I have said,” added he, as he gained the door.
When Marion was left alone to reflect over her brother's words, she was not altogether pleased. She was no convert to his opinions as to the necessity of any peculiar stratagem in the campaign of life. She had seen the house in town crowded with very great and distinguished company; she had observed how wealth asserted itself in society, and she could not perceive that in their acceptance by the world there was any the slightest deficiency of deference and respect. If they had failed in their county experiment in England, it was, she thought, because her father rashly took up an extreme position in politics, a mistake which Augustus indeed saw and protested against, but which some rash advisers were able to over-persuade the Colonel into adopting.
Lady Augusta, too, was an evidence that the better classes did not decline this alliance, and on the whole she felt that Temple's reasonings were the offshoots of his peculiar set; that small priesthood of society who hold themselves so essentially above the great body of mankind.
“Not that we must make any more mistakes, however,” thought she. “Not that we can afford another defeat;” and as she arrived at this sage judgment, Temple entered, with some sheets of note-paper in his hand.
“I 'm not quite satisfied with any of these, Marion; I suspect I must just content myself with a mere formal 'requests the company.'”
“Let me hear what you have said.”
“Here 's the first,” said he, reading. “'My dear Lord,—The lucky accident of your Lordship's presence in this neighborhood—which I have only accidentally learned.'”
“Oh, dear, no! that's a chapter of 'accidents.'”
“Well; listen to this one: 'If I can trust to a rumor that has just reached us here, but which, it is possible our hopes may have given a credence to, that stern fact will subsequently deny, or reject, or contradict.' I 'm not fully sure which verb to take.”
“Much worse than the other,” said Marion.
“It's all the confounded language; I could turn it in French to perfection.”
“But I fancied your whole life was passed in this sort of phrase-fashioning, Temple,” said she, half smiling.
“Nothing of the kind. We keep the vernacular only for post-paper, and it always begins: 'My Lord,—Since by my despatch No. 7,028, in which I reported to your Lordship the details of an interview accorded me by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of this Government;' and so on. Now all this, to the polite intercourse of society, is pretty much what singlestick is to the rapier. I wish you 'd do this for me, Marion. After so many balks, one always ends by a tumble.”
“I declare, I see no occasion for smartness or epigram. I 'd simply say, 'I have only just heard that you are in our neighborhood, and I beg to convey my father's hope and request that you will not leave it without giving us the honor of your company here.' You can throw in as many of your personal sentiments as may serve, like wool in a packing-case, to keep the whole tight and compact; but I think something like that would suffice.”
“Perhaps so,” said he, musingly, as he once more returned to his room. When he reappeared, after some minutes, it was with the air and look of a man who had just thrown off some weighty burden. “Thank Heaven, it's done and despatched!” said he. “I have been looking over the F. O. Guide, to see whether I addressed him aright. I fancied he was a Privy Councillor, and I find he is not; he is a K.C.B., however, and a Guelph, with leave to wear the star.”
“Very gratifying to us,—I mean if he should come here,” said she, with a mocking smile.
“Don't pretend you do not value all these things fully as much as myself, Marion. You know well what the world thinks of them. These distinctions were no more made by us than the money of the realm; but we use one of them like the other, well aware that it represents a certain value, and is never disputed.”
“How old is your friend?”
“Well, he is certainly not young. Here's what F. O. contributes to his biography. 'Entered the army as cornet in the 2nd Life Guards, 1816.' A precious long time ago that. 'First groom of the bedchamber—promoted—placed on half-pay—entered diplomatic service—in —19; special mission to Hanover—made K.C.B.—contested Essex, and returned on a petition—went back to diplomacy, and named special envoy to Teheran.' Ah! now we are coming to his real career.”
“Oh, dear! I 'd rather hear about him somewhat earlier,” said she, taking the book out of his hand, and throwing it on the table. “It is a great penalty to pay for greatness to be gibbeted in this fashion. Don't you think so, Temple?”
“I wish I could see myself gibbeted, as you call it.”
“If the will makes the way, we ought to be very great people,” said she, with a smile, half derisive, half real. “Jack, perhaps not; nor Ellen. They have booked themselves in second-class carriages.”
“I'll go and look up Harding; he is a secret sort of a fellow. I believe all agents assume that manner to every one but the head of the house and the heir. But perhaps I could manage to find out why these people have not called upon us; there must be something in it.”
“I protest I think we ought to feel grateful to them; an exchange of hospitalities with them would be awful.”
“Very likely; but I think we ought to have had the choice, and this they have not given us.”
“And even for that I am grateful,” said she, as with a haughty look she rose and left the room.
CHAPTER VI. UP IN THE MOUNTAINS.
About eighteen miles from Bishop's Folly, and in the very midst of the Mourne Mountains, a low spur of land projects into the sea by a thin, narrow promontory, so narrow, indeed, that in days of heavy sea and strong wind, the waves have been seen to meet across it. Some benevolent individual had once conceived the idea of planting a small lighthouse here, as a boon to the fishermen who frequent the coast. The lighthouse was built, but never occupied, and after standing some years in a state of half ruin, was turned into a sort of humble inn or shebeen, most probably a mere pretext to cover its real employment as a depot for smuggled goods; for in the days of high duties French silks and brandies found many channels into Ireland besides the road that lay through her Majesty's customs. Mr., or, as he was more generally called, Tim Mackessy, the proprietor, was a well-known man in those parts. He followed what in Ireland for some years back has been as much a profession as law or physic, and occasionally a more lucrative line than either,—Patriotism. He was one of those ready, voluble, self-asserting fellows, who abound in Ireland, but whose favor is not the less with their countrymen from the fact of their frequency. He had, he said, a father, who suffered for his country in ninety-eight; and he had himself maintained the family traditions by being twice imprisoned in Carrickfergus jail, and narrowly escaping transportation for life. On the credit of this martyrdom, and the fact that Mr. O'Connell once called him “honest Tim Mackessy,” he had lived in honor and repute amongst such of his countrymen as “feel the yoke and abhor the rule of the Saxon.”
For the present, we are, however, less occupied by Tim and his political opinions than by two guests, who had arrived a couple of days before, and were now seated at breakfast in that modest apartment called the best parlor. Two men less like in appearance might not readily be found. One, thin, fresh-looking, with handsome but haughty features, slightly stooped, but to all seeming as much from habit as from any debility, was Lord Culduff; his age might be computed by some reference to the list of his services, but would have been a puzzling calculation from a mere inspection of himself. In figure and build, he might be anything from five-and-thirty to two or three and forty; in face, at a close inspection, he might have been high up in the sixties.
His companion was a middle-sized, middle-aged man, with a mass of bushy curly black hair, a round bullet head, wide-set eyes, and a short nose, of the leonine pattern; his mouth, large and thick-lipped, had all that mobility that denotes talker and eater: for Mr. Cutbill, civil engineer and architect, was both garrulous and gourmand, and lived in the happy enjoyment of being thought excellent company, and a first-rate judge of a dinner. He was musical too; he played the violoncello with some skill, and was an associate of various philharmonics, who performed fantasias and fugues to dreary old ladies and snuffy old bachelors, who found the amusement an economy that exacted nothing more costly than a little patience. Among these Tom Cutbill was a man of wit and man of the world. His career brought him from time to time into contact with persons of high station and rank, and these he ventilated amongst his set in the most easy manner, familiarly talking of Beaufort, and Argyle, and Cleveland, as though they were household words.
It was reported that he had some cleverness as an actor; and he might have had, for the man treated life as a drama, and was eternally representing something,—some imaginary character,—till any little fragment of reality in him had been entirely rubbed out by the process, and he remained the mere personation of whatever the society he chanced to be in wanted or demanded of him.
He had been recommended to Lord Culduff's notice by his Lordship's London agent, who had said, “He knows the scientific part of his business as well as the great swells of his profession, and he knows the world a precious sight better than they do. They could tell you if you have coal, but he will do that and more; he will tell you what to do with it.” It was on the advice thus given Lord Culduff had secured his services, and taken him over to Ireland. It was a bitter pill to swallow, for this old broken-down man of fashion, self-indulgent, fastidious, and refined, to travel in such company; but his affairs were in a sad state, from years of extravagance and high living, and it was only by the supposed discovery of these mines on this unprofitable part of his estate that his creditors consented to defer that settlement which might sweep away almost all that remained to him. Cutbill was told, too,—“His Lordship is rather hard up just now, and cannot be liberal as he could wish; but he is a charming person to know, and will treat you like a brother.” The one chink in this shrewd fellow's armor was his snobbery. It was told of him once, in a very dangerous illness, when all means of inducing perspiration had failed, that some one said, “Try him with a lord; it never failed with Tom yet.” If an untitled squire had proposed to take Mr. Cutbill over special to Ireland for a hundred pound note and his expenses, he would have indignantly refused the offer, and assisted the proposer besides to some unpalatable reflections on his knowledge of life; the thought, however, of journeying as Lord Culduff's intimate friend, being treated as his brother, thrown, from the very nature of the country they travelled in, into close relations, and left free to improve the acquaintance by all those social wiles and accomplishments on which he felt he could pride himself, was a bribe not to be resisted. And thus was it that these two men, so unlike in every respect, found themselves fellow-travellers and companions.
A number of papers, plans, and drawings littered the breakfast table at which they were seated, and one of these, representing the little promontory of arid rock, tastefully colored and converted into a handsome pier, with flights of steps descending to the water, and massive cranes swinging bulky masses of merchandise into tall-masted ships, was just then beneath his Lordship's double eyeglass.
“Where may all this be, Cutbill? is it Irish?” asked he.
“It is to be out yonder, my Lord,” said he, pointing through the little window to the rugged line of rocks, over which the sea was breaking in measured rhythm.
“You don't mean there?” said Lord Culduff, half horrified.
“Yes, my Lord, there! Your Lordship is doubtless not aware that of all her Majesty's faithful lieges the speculative are the least gifted with the imaginative faculty, and to supply this unhappy want in their natures, we whose function it is to suggest great industrial schemes or large undertakings—we 'promoters,' as we are called, are obliged to supply, not merely by description, but actually pictorially, the results which success will in due time arrive at. We have, as the poet says, to annihilate 'both time and space,' and arrive at a goal which no effort of these worthy people's minds could possibly attain to. What your Lordship is now looking at is a case in point, and however little promising the present aspect of that coast-line may seem, time and money—yes, my Lord, time and money—the two springs of all success—will make even greater change than you see depicted here.”
Mr. Cutbill delivered these words with a somewhat pompous tone, and in a voice such as he might have used in addressing an acting committee or a special board of works; for one of his fancies was to believe himself an orator of no mean power.
“I trust—I fervently trust, Mr. Cutbill,” said his Lordship, nervously, “that the coal-fields are somewhat nigher the stage of being remunerative than that broken line of rock is to this fanciful picture before me.”
“Wealth, my Lord, like heat, has its latent conditions.”
“Condescend to a more commonplace tone, sir, in consideration of my ignorance, and tell me frankly, is the mine as far from reality as that reef there?”
Fortunately for Mr. Cutbill, perhaps, the door was opened at this critical juncture, and the landlord presented himself with a note, stating that the groom who brought it would wait for the answer.
Somewhat agitated by the turn of his conversation with the engineer, Lord Culduff tore open the letter, and ran his eyes towards the end to see the signature.
“Who is Bramleigh—Temple Bramleigh? Oh, I remember,—an attaché. What's all this about Castello? Where 's Castello?”
“That's the name they give the Bishop's Folly, my Lord,” said the landlord, with a half grin.
“What business have these people to know I am here at all? Why must they persecute me? You told me, Cutbill, that I was not to be discovered.”
“So I did, my Lord, and I made the 'Down Express' call you Mr. Morris, of Charing Cross.”
His Lordship winced a little at the thought of such a liberty, even for a disguise, but he was now engaged with the note, and read on without speaking.
“Nothing could be more courteous, certainly,” said he, folding it up, and laying it beside him on the table. “They invite me over to—what's the name?—Castello, and promise me perfect liberty as regards my time. 'To make the place my headquarters,' as he says. Who are these Bramleighs? You know every one, Cutbill; who are they?”
“Bramleigh and Underwood are bankers, very old established firm. Old Bramleigh was a brewer, at Slough; George the Third never would drink any other stout than Bramleigh's. There was a large silver flagon, called the 'King's Quaigh,' always brought out when his Majesty rode by, and very vain old Bramleigh used to be of it, though I don't think it figures now on the son's sideboard,—they have leased the brewery.”
“Oh, they have leased the brewery, have they?”
“That they have; the present man got himself made Colonel of militia, and meant to be a county member, and he might, too, if he had n't been in too great a hurry about it; but county people won't stand being carried by assault. Then they made other mistakes; tried it on with the Liberals, in a shire where everything that called itself gentleman was Tory; in fact, they plunged from one hole into another, till they regularly swamped themselves; and as their house held a large mortgage on these estates in Ireland, they paid off the other incumbrances and have come to live here. I know the whole story, for it was an old friend of mine who made the plans for restoring the mansion.”
“I suspect that the men in your profession, Cutbill, know as much of the private history of English families as any in the land?”
“More, my Lord; far more even than the solicitors, for people suspect the solicitors, and they never suspect us. We are detectives in plain clothes.”
The pleasant chuckle with which Mr. Cutbill finished his speech was not responded to by his Lordship, who felt that the other should have accepted his compliment, without any attempt on his own part to “cap” it.
“How long do you imagine I may be detained here, Cutbill?” asked he, after a pause.
“Let us say a week, my Lord, or ten days at furthest. We ought certainly to see that new pit opened, before you leave.”
“In that case I may as well accept this invitation. I can bear a little boredom if they have only a good cook. Do you suppose they have a good cook?”
“The agent, Jos Harding, told me they had a Frenchman, and that the house is splendidly got up.”
“What's to be done with you, Cutbill, eh?”
“I am at your Lordship's orders,” said he, with a very quiet composure.
“You have nothing to do over at that place just now?—I mean at the mine.”
“No, my Lord. Till Pollard makes his report, I have nothing to call me over there.”
“And here, I take it, we have seen everything,” and he gave a very hopeless look through the little window as he spoke.
“There it is, my Lord,” said Cutbill, taking up the colored picture of the pier, with its busy crowds, and its bustling porters. “There it is!”
“I should say, Cutbill, there it is not!” observed the other, bitterly. “Anything more unlike the reality is hard to conceive.”
“Few things are as unlike a cornet in the Life Guards as a child in a perambulator—”
“Very well, all that,” interrupted Lord Culduff, impatiently. “I know that sort of argument perfectly. I have been pestered with the acorn, or, rather, with the unborn forests in the heart of the acorn, for many a day. Let us get a stride in advance of these platitudes. Is the whole thing like this?” and he threw the drawing across the table contemptuously as he spoke. “Is it all of this pattern, eh?”
“In one sense it is very like,” said the other, with a greater amount of decision in his tone than usual.
“In which case, then, the sooner we abandon it the better,” said Lord Culduff, rising, and standing with his back to the fire, his head high, and his look intensely haughty.
“It is not for me to dictate to your Lordship,—I could never presume to do so,—but certainly it is not every one in Great Britain who could reconcile himself to relinquish one of the largest sources of wealth in the kingdom. Taking the lowest estimate of Carrick Nuish mine alone,—and when I say the lowest, I mean throwing the whole thing into a company of shareholders and neither working nor risking a shilling yourself,—you may put from twenty to five-and-twenty thousand pounds into your pocket within a twelvemonth.”
“Who will guarantee that, Cutbill?” said Lord Culduff, with a faint smile.
“I am ready myself to do so, provided my counsels be strictly followed. I will do so, with my whole professional reputation.”
“I am charmed to hear you say so. It is a very gratifying piece of news for me. You feel, therefore, certain that we have struck coal?”
“My Lord, when a young man enters life from one of the universities, with a high reputation for ability, he can go a long way,—if he only be prudent,—living on his capital. It is the same thing in a great industrial enterprise; you must start at speed, and with a high pressure,—get way on you, as the sailors say,—and you will skim along for half a mile after the steam is off.”
“I come back to my former question. Have we found coal?”
“I hope so. I trust we have. Indeed, there is every reason to say we have found coal. What we need most at this moment is a man like that gentleman whose note is on the table,—a large capitalist, a great City name. Let him associate himself in the project, and success is as certain as that we stand here.”
“But you have just told me he has given up his business life,—retired from affairs altogether.”
“My Lord, these men never give up. They buy estates, they can live at Rome or Paris, and take a chateau at Cannes, and try to forget Mincing Lane and the rest of it; but if you watch them, you 'll see it's the money article in the 'Times' they read before the leader. They have but one barometer for everything that happens in Europe,—how are the exchanges? and they are just as greedy of a good thing as on any morning they hurried down to the City in a hansom to buy in or sell out. See if I 'm not right. Just throw out a hint, no more, that you 'd like a word of advice from Colonel Bramleigh about your project; say it's a large thing,—too large for an individual to cope with,—that you are yourself the least possible of a business man, being always engaged in very different occupations,—and ask what course he would counsel you to take.”
“I might show him these drawings,—these colored plans.”
“Well, indeed, my Lord,” said Cutbill, brushing his mouth with his hand, to hide a smile of malicious drollery, “I'd say I'd not show him the plans. The pictorial rarely appeals to men of his stamp. It's the multiplication-table they like, and if all the world were like them one would never throw poetry into a project.”
“You 'll have to come with me, Cutbill; I see that,” said his Lordship, reflectingly.
“My Lord, I am completely at your orders.”
“Yes; this is a sort of negotiation you will conduct better than myself. I am not conversant with this sort of thing, nor the men who deal in them. A great treaty, a question of boundary, a royal marriage,—any of these would find me ready and prepared, but with the diplomacy of dividends, I own myself little acquainted. You must come with me.” Cutbill bowed in acquiescence, and was silent.
CHAPTER VII. AT LUNCHEON
As the family at the great house were gathered together at luncheon on the day after the events we have just recorded, Lord Culduff's answer to Temple Bramleigh's note was fully and freely discussed.
“Of course,” said Jack, “I speak under correction; but how comes it that your high and mighty friend brings another man with him? Is Cutbill an attaché? Is he one of what you call 'the line'?”
“I am happy to contribute the correction you ask for,” said Temple, haughtily. “Mr. Cutbill is not a member of the diplomatic body, and though such a name might not impossibly be found in the Navy list, you 'll scarcely chance upon it at F. O.”
“My chief question is, however, still to be answered. On what pretext does he bring him here?” said Jack, with unbroken good humor.
“As to that,” broke in Augustus, “Lord Culduff's note is perfectly explanatory; he says his friend is travelling with him; they came here on a matter of business, and, in fact, there would be an awkwardness on his part in separating from him, and on ours, if we did not prevent such a contingency.”
“Quite so,” chimed in Temple. “Nothing could be more guarded or courteous than Lord Culduff's reply. It was n't in the least like an Admiralty minute, Jack, or an order to Commander Spiggins, of the 'Snarler,' to take in five hundred firkins of pork.”
“I might say, now, that you 'll not find that name in the Navy list, Temple,” said the sailor, laughing.
“Do they arrive to-day?” asked Marion, not a little uncomfortable at this exchange of tart things.
“To dinner,” said Temple.
“I suppose we have seen the last leg of mutton we are to meet with till he goes,” cried Jack: “that precious French fellow will now give his genius full play, and we 'll have to dine off 'salmis' and 'suprêmes,' or make our dinner off bread-and-cheese.”
“Perhaps you would initiate Bertond into the mystery of a sea-pie, Jack,” said Temple, with a smile.
“And a precious mess the fellow would make of it! He'd fill it with cocks' combs and mushrooms, and stick two skewers in it with a half-boiled truffle on each—lucky if there would n't be a British flag in spun sugar between them; and he 'd call the abomination 'pâté à la gun-room,' or some such confounded name.”
A low, quiet laugh was now heard from the end of the table, and the company remembered, apparently for the first time, that Mr. Harding, the agent, was there, and very busily engaged with a broiled chicken.
“Ain't I right, Mr. Harding?” cried Jack, as he heard the low chuckle of the small, meek, submissive-looking little man, at the other end of the table.
“Ain't I right?”
“I have met with very good French versions of English cookery abroad, Captain Bramleigh.”
“Don't call me 'captain' or I 'll suspect your accuracy about the cookery,” interrupted Jack. “I fear I 'm about as far off that rank as Bertond is from the sea-pie.”
“Do you know Cutbill, Harding?” said Augustus, addressing the agent in the tone of an heir expectant.
“Yes. We were both examined in the same case before a committee of the House, and I made his acquaintance then.”
“What sort of person is he?” asked Temple.
“Is he jolly, Mr. Harding?—that's the question,” cried Jack. “I suspect we shall be overborne by greatness, and a jolly fellow would be a boon from heaven.”
“I believe he is what might be called jolly,” said Harding, cautiously.
“Jolly sounds like a familiar word for vulgar,” said Marion. “I hope Mr. Harding does not mean that.”
“Mr. Harding means nothing of that kind, I 'll be sworn,” broke in Jack. “He means an easy-tempered fellow, amusing and amusable. Well, Nelly, if it's not English, I can't help it—it ought to be; but when one wants ammunition, one takes the first heavy thing at hand. Egad! I'd ram down a minister plenipotentiary, rather than fire blank-cartridge.”
“Is Lord Culduff also jolly, Mr. Harding?” asked Eleanor, now looking up with a sparkle in her eye.
“I scarcely know—I have the least possible acquaintance with his Lordship; I doubt, indeed, if he will recollect me,” said Harding, with diffidence.
“What are we to do with this heavy swell when he comes, is the puzzle to me,” said Augustus, gravely. “How is he to be entertained,—how amused? Here's a county with nothing to see—nothing to interest—without a neighborhood. What are we to do with him?”
“The more one is a man of the world, in the best sense of that phrase, the more easily he finds how to shape his life to any and every circumstance,” said Temple, with a sententious tone and manner.
“Which means, I suppose, that he'll make the best of a bad case, and bear our tiresomeness with bland urbanity?” said Jack. “Let us only hope, for all our sakes, that his trial may not be a long one.”
“Just to think of such a country!” exclaimed Marion; “there is absolutely no one we could have to meet him.”
“What's the name of that half-pay captain who called here t'other morning?—the fellow who sat from luncheon till nigh dusk?” asked Jack.
“Captain Craufurd,” replied Marion. “I hope nobody thinks of inviting him; he is insufferably vulgar, and presuming besides.”
“Was n't that the man, Marion, who told you that as my father and Lady Augusta didn't live together the county gentry could n't be expected to call on us?” asked Augustus, laughing.
“He did more: he entered into an explanation of the peculiar tenets of the neighborhood, and told me if we had had the good luck to have settled in the south or west of Ireland, they'd not have minded it, 'but here,' he added, 'we are great sticklers for morality.'”
“And what reply did you make him, Marion?” asked Jack.
“I was so choked with passion that I could n't speak, or if I did say anything I have forgotten it. At all events, he set me off laughing immediately after, as he said,—'As for myself, I don't care a rush. I'm a bachelor, and a bachelor can go anywhere.'”
She gave these words with such a close mimicry of his voice and manner, that a general burst of laughter followed them.
“There's the very fellow we want,” cried Jack. “That's the man to meet our distinguished guest; he 'll not let him escape without a wholesome hint or two.”
“I 'd as soon see a gentleman exposed to the assault of a mastiff as to the insulting coarseness of such a fellow as that,” said Temple, passionately.
“The mischief's done already; I heard the governor say, as he took leave,—'Captain Craufurd, are you too strait-laced to dine out on a Sunday? if not, will you honor us with your company at eight o'clock?' And though he repeated the words 'eight o'clock' with a groan like a protest, he muttered something about being happy, a phrase that evidently cost him dearly, for he went shuffling down the avenue afterwards with his hat over his eyes, and gesticulating with his hands as if some new immorality had suddenly broke in upon his mind.”
“You mean to say that he is coming to dinner here next Sunday?” asked Temple, horrified.
“A little tact and good management are always sufficient to keep these sort of men down,” said Augustus.
“I hope we don't ask a man to dinner with the intention to 'keep him down,'” said Jack, sturdily.
“At all events,” cried Temple, “he need not be presented to Lord Culduff.”
“I suspect you will see very little of him after dinner,” observed Harding, in his meek fashion, “That wonderful '32 port will prove a detainer impossible to get away from.”
“I 'll keep him company, then. I rather like to meet one of those cross-grained dogs occasionally.”
“Not impossibly you'll learn something more of that same 'public opinion' of our neighbors regarding us,” said Marion, haughtily.
“With all my heart,” cried the sailor, gayly; “they 'll not ruffle my temper, even if they won't flatter my vanity.”
“Have you asked the L'Estranges, Marion?” said Augustus.
“We always ask them after church; they are sure to be disengaged,” said she. “I wish, Nelly, that you, who are such a dear friend of Julia's, would try and persuade her to wear something else than that eternal black silk. She is so intently bent on being an Andalusian. Some one unluckily said she looked so Spanish, that she has got up the dress, and the little fan coquetry, and the rest of it, in the most absurd fashion.”
“Her grandmother was a Spaniard,” broke in Nelly, warmly.
“So they say,” said the other, with a shrug of the shoulders.
“There's a good deal of style about her,” said Temple, with the tone of one who was criticising what he understood. “She sings prettily.”
“Prettily?” groaned Jack. “Why, where, except amongst professionals, did you ever hear her equal?”
“She sings divinely,” said Ellen; “and it is, after all, one of her least attractions.”
“No heroics, for Heaven's sake; leave that to your brothers, Nelly, who are fully equal to it. I really meant my remark about her gown for good nature.”
“She's a nice girl,” said Augustus, “though she is certainly a bit of a coquette.”
“True; but it's very good coquetry,” drawled out Temple. “It's not that jerking, uncertain, unpurpose-like style of affectation your English coquette displays. It is not the eternal demand for attention or admiration. It is simply a desire to please thrown into a thousand little graceful ways, each too slight, and too faint, to be singled out for notice, but making up a whole of wonderful captivation.”
“Well done, diplomacy! egad! I did n't know there was that much blood in the Foreign Office,” cried Jack, laughing, “and now I 'm off to look after my night-lines. I quite forgot all about them till this minute.”
“Take me with you, Jack,” said Nelly, and hastened after him, hat in hand.
CHAPTER VIII. THE ARRIVAL OF A GREAT MAN
It was within a quarter of eight o'clock—forty-five minutes after the usual dinner-hour—when Lord Culduff's carriage drove up to the door.
“The roads are atrocious down here,” said Temple, apologizing in advance for an offence which his father rarely, if ever, forgave. “Don't you think you ought to go out to meet him, sir?” asked he, half timidly.
“It would only create more delay; he 'll appear, I take it, when he is dressed,” was the curt rejoinder, but it was scarcely uttered when the door was thrown wide open, and Lord Culduff and Mr. Cutbill were announced.
Seen in the subdued light of a drawing-room before dinner, Lord Culduff did not appear more than half his real age, and the jaunty stride and the bland smile he wore—as he made his round of acquaintance—might have passed muster for five-and-thirty; nor was the round vulgar figure of the engineer, awkward and familiar alternately, a bad foil for the very graceful attractions of his Lordship's manner.
“We should have been here two hours ago,” said he, “but my friend here insisted on our coming coastwise to see a wonderful bay,—a natural harbor one might call it. What's the name, Cutbill?”
“Portness, my Lord.”
“Ah, to be sure, Portness. On your property, I believe?”
“I am proud to say it is. I have seen nothing finer in the kingdom,” said Bramleigh; “and if Ireland were anything but Ireland, that harbor would be crowded with shipping, and this coast one of the most prosperous and busy shores of the island.”
“Who knows if we may not live to see it such? Cutbill's projects are very grand, and I declare that though I deemed them Arabian Night stories a few weeks back, I am a convert now. Another advantage we gained,” said he, turning to Marion; “we came up through a new shrubbery, which we were told had been all planned by you.”
“My sister designed it,” said she, as she smiled and made a gesture towards Ellen.
“May I offer you my most respectful compliments on your success? I am an enthusiast about landscape-gardening, and though our English climate gives us many a sore rebuff in our attempts, the soil and the varied nature of the surface lend themselves happily to the pursuit. I think you were at the Hague with me, Bramleigh?” asked he of Temple.
“Does he know how late it is?” whispered Augustus to his father. “Does he know we are waiting dinner?”
“I'll tell him,” and Colonel Bramleigh walked forward from his place before the fire. “I'm afraid, my Lord, the cold air of our hills has not given you an appetite?”
“Quite the contrary, I assure you. I am very hungry.”
“By Jove, and so are we!” blurted out Jack; “and it's striking eight this instant.”
“What is your dinner-hour?”
“It ought to be seven,” answered Jack.
“Why, Cutbill, you told me nine.”
Cutbill muttered something below his breath, and turned away; and Lord Culduff laughingly said, “I declare I don't perceive the connection. My friend, Colonel Bramleigh, opines that a French cook always means nine-o'clock dinner. I 'm horrified at this delay: let us make a hasty toilette, and repair our fault at once.”
“Let me show you where you are lodged,” said Temple, not sorry to escape from the drawing-room at a moment when his friend's character and claims were likely to be sharply criticised.
“Cutty's a vulgar dog,” said Jack, as they left the room. “But I 'll be shot if he's not the best of the two.”
A haughty toss of Marion's head showed that she was no concurring party to the sentiment.
“I 'm amazed to see so young a man,” said Colonel Bramleigh. “In look at least, he is n't forty.”
“It's all make-up,” cried Jack.
“He can't be a great deal under seventy, taking the list of his services. He was at Vienna as private secretary to Lord Borchester—” As Augustus pronounced the words Lord Culduff entered the room in a fragrance of perfume and a brilliancy of color that was quite effective; for he wore his red ribbon, and his blue coat was lined with white silk, and his cheeks glowed with a bloom that youth itself could not rival.
“Who talks of old Borchester?” said he, gayly. “My father used to tell me such stories of him. They sent him over to Hanover once, to report on the available Princesses to marry the Prince: and, egad! he played his part so well that one of them—Princess Helena I think it was—fell in love with him; and if it was 't that he had been married already,—May I offer my arm?” And the rest of the story was probably told as he led Miss Bramleigh in to dinner.
Mr. Cutbill only arrived as they took their places, and slunk into a seat beside Jack, whom, of all the company, he judged would be the person he could feel most at ease with.
“What a fop!” whispered Jack, with a glance at the peer.
“Is n't he an old humbug?” muttered Cutbill. “Do you know how he managed to appear in so short a time? We stopped two hours at a little inn on the road while he made his toilette; and the whole get-up—paint and padding and all—was done then. The great fur pelisse, in which he made his entrance into the drawing-room, removed, he was in full dinner-dress underneath. He's the best actor living.”
“Have you known him long?”
“Oh, yes! I know all of them,” said he, with a little gesture of his hand: “that is, they take devilish good care to know me.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Jack, in the tone which seemed to ask for some explanation.
“You see, here's how it is,” said Cutbill, as he bent over his plate and talked in a tone cautiously subdued: “All those swells—especially that generation yonder—are pretty nigh aground. They have been living for forty or fifty years at something like five times their income; and if it had n't been for this sudden rush of prosperity in England, caused by railroads, mines, quarries, or the like, these fellows would have been swept clean away. He 's watching me now. I 'll go on by-and-by. Have you any good hunting down here, Colonel Bramleigh?” asked he of the host, who sat half hid by a massive centrepiece.
“You 'll have to ask my sons what it's like; and I take it they 'll give you a mount too.”
“With pleasure, Mr. Cutbill,” cried Augustus. “If we have no frost, we'll show you some sport on Monday next.”
“Delighted,—I like hunting of all things.”
“And you, my Lord, is it a favorite sport of yours?” asked Temple.
“A long life out of England—which has unfortunately been my case—makes a man sadly out of gear in all these things; but I ride, of course,” and he said the last words as though he meant to imply “because I do everything.”
“I'll send over to L'Estrange,” said Augustus; “he's sure to know where the meet is for Monday.”
“Who is L'Estrange?” asked his Lordship.
“Our curate here,” replied Colonel Bramleigh, smiling. “An excellent fellow, and a very agreeable neighbor.”
“Our only one, by Jove!” cried Jack.
“How gallant to forget Julia!” said Nelly, tartly.
“And the fair Julia,—who is she?” asked Lord Culduff.
“L'Estrange's sister,” replied Augustus.
“And now, my Lord,” chimed in Jack, “you know the whole neighborhood, if we don't throw in a cross-grained old fellow, a half-pay lieutenant of the Buffs.”
“Small but select,” said Lord Culduff, quietly. “May I venture to ask you, Colonel Bramleigh, what determined you in your choice of a residence here?”
“I suppose I must confess it was mainly a money consideration. The bank held some rather heavy mortgages over this property, which they were somewhat disposed to consider as capable of great improvement, and as I was growing a little wearied of City life, I fancied I 'd come over here and—”
“Regenerate Ireland, eh?”
“Or, at least, live very economically,” added he, laughing.
“I may be permitted to doubt that part of the experiment,” said Lord Culduff, as his eyes ranged over the table, set forth in all the splendor that plate and glass could bestow.
“I suspect papa means a relative economy,” said Marion, “something very different from our late life in England.”
“Yes, my last three years have been very costly ones,” said Colonel Bramleigh, sighing. “I lost heavily by the sale of Earlshope, and my unfortunate election, too, was an expensive business. It will take some retrenchment to make up for all this. I tell the boys they'll have to sell their hunters, or be satisfied, like the parson, to hunt one day a week.” The self-complacent, mock humility of this speech was all too apparent.
“I take it,” said Culduff, authoritatively, “that every gentleman”—and he laid a marked emphasis on the “gentleman”—“must at some period or the other of his life have spent more money than he ought—more than was subsequently found to be convenient.”
“I have repeatedly done so,” broke in Cutbill, “and invariably been sorry for it afterwards, inasmuch as each time one does it the difficulty increases.”
“Harder to get credit, you mean?” cried Jack, laughing.
“Just so; and one's friends get tired of helping one. Just as they told me, there was a fellow at Blackwall used to live by drowning himself. He was regularly fished up once a week, and stomach-pumped and 'cordialled' and hot-blanketed, and brought round by the Humane Society's people, till at last they came to discover the dodge, and refused to restore him any more; and now he's reduced to earn his bread as a water-bailiff—cruel hard on a fellow of such an ingenious turn of mind.”
While the younger men laughed at Cutbill's story, Lord Culduff gave him a reproving glance from the other end of the table, palpably intended to recall him to a more sedate and restricted conviviality.
“Are we not to accompany you?” said Lord Culduff to Marion, as she and her sister arose to retire. “Is this barbarism of sitting after dinner maintained here?”
“Only till we finish this decanter of claret, my Lord,” said Colonel Bramleigh, who caught what was not intended for his ears.
“Ask the governor to give you a cigar,” whispered Jack to Cutbill; “he has some rare Cubans.”
“Now, this is what I call regular jolly,” said Cutbill, as he drew a small spider table to his side, and furnished himself with a glass and a decanter of Madeira, “and,” added he in a whisper to Jack, “let us not be in a hurry to leave it. We only want one thing to be perfect, Colonel Bramleigh.”
“If I can only supply it, pray command me, Mr. Cutbill.”
“I want this, then,” said Cutbill, pursing up his mouth at one side, while he opened the other as if to emit the smoke of a cigar.
“Do you mean smoking?” asked Colonel Bramleigh, in a half-irritable tone.
“You have it.”
“Are you a smoker, my Lord?” asked the host, turning to Lord Culduff.
“A very moderate one. A cigarette after breakfast, and another at bed time, are about my excesses in that direction.”
“Then I'm afraid I must defraud you of the full measure of your enjoyment, Mr. Cutbill; we never smoke in the dining-room. Indeed, I myself have a strong aversion to tobacco, and though I have consented to build a smoking-room, it is as far off from me as I have been able to contrive it.”
“And what about his choice Cubans, eh?” whispered Cutbill to Jack.
“All hypocrisy. You'll find a box of them in your dressing-room,” said Jack, in an undertone, “when you go upstairs.”
Temple now led his distinguished friend into those charming pasturages where the flocks of diplomacy love to dwell, and where none other save themselves could find herbage. Nor was it amongst great political events, of peace or war, alliances or treaties, they wandered—for perhaps in these the outer world, taught as they are by newspapers, might have taken some interest and some share. No; their talk was all of personalities, of Russian princes and grandees of Spain, archduchesses and “marchesas,” whose crafts and subtleties, and pomps and vanities, make up a world like no other world, and play a drama of life—happily it may be for humanity—like no other drama that other men and women ever figured in. Now it is a strange fact—and I appeal to my readers if their experience will not corroborate mine—that when two men thoroughly versed in these themes will talk together upon them, exchanging their stories and mingling their comments, the rest of the company will be struck with a perfect silence, unable to join in the subject discussed, and half ashamed to introduce any ordinary matter into such high and distinguished society. And thus Lord Culduff and Temple went on for full an hour or more, pelting each other with little court scandals and small state intrigues, till Colonel Bramleigh fell asleep, and Cutbill, having finished his Madeira, would probably have followed his host's example, when a servant announced tea, adding, in a whisper, that Mr. L'Estrange and his sister were in the drawing-room.
CHAPTER IX. OVER THE FIRE.
In a large room, comfortably furnished, but in which there was a certain blending of the articles of the drawing-room with those of the dining-room, showing unmistakably the bachelor character of the owner, sat two young men at opposite sides of an ample fireplace. One sat, or rather reclined, on a small leather sofa, his bandaged leg resting on a pillow, and his pale and somewhat shrunken face evidencing the results of pain and confinement to the house. His close-cropt head and square-cut beard, and a certain mingled drollery and fierceness in the eyes, proclaimed him French, and so M. Anatole Pracontal was; though it would have been difficult to declare as much from his English, which he spoke with singular purity and the very faintest peculiarity of accent.
Opposite him sat a tall well-built man of about thirty-four or five, with regular and almost handsome features, marred, indeed, in expression by the extreme closeness of the eyes, and a somewhat long upper lip, which latter defect an incipient moustache was already concealing. The color of his hair was, however, that shade of auburn which verges on red, and is so commonly accompanied by a much freckled skin. This same hair, and hands and feet almost enormous in size, were the afflictions which imparted bitterness to a lot which many regarded as very enviable in life; for Mr. Philip Longworth was his own master, free to go where he pleased, and the owner of a very sufficient fortune. He had been brought up at Oscot, and imbibed, with a very fair share of knowledge, a large stock of that general mistrust and suspicion which is the fortune of those entrusted to priestly teaching, and which, though he had travelled largely and mixed freely with the world, still continued to cling to his manner, which might be characterized by the one word—furtive.
Longworth had only arrived that day for dinner, and the two friends were now exchanging their experience since they had parted some eight months before at the second cataract of the Nile.
“And so, Pracontal, you never got one of my letters?”
“Not one,—on my honor. Indeed, if it were not that I learned by a chance meeting with a party of English tourists at Cannes that they had met you at Cairo, I 'd have begun to suspect you had taken a plunge into the Nile, or into Mohammedom, for which latter you were showing some disposition, you remember, when we parted.”
“True enough; and if one was sure never to turn westward again, there are many things in favor of the turban. It is the most sublime conception of egotism possible to imagine.”
“Egotism is a mistake, mon cher,” said the other; “a man's own heart, make it as comfortable as he may, is too small an apartment to live in. I do not say this in any grand benevolent spirit. There 's no humbug of philanthropy in the opinion.”
“Of that I 'm fully assured,” said Longworth, with a gravity which made the other laugh.
“No,” continued he, still laughing. “I want a larger field, a wider hunting-ground for my diversion than my own nature.”
“A disciple, in fact, of your great model, Louis Napoleon. You incline to annexations. By the way, how fares it with your new projects? Have you seen the lawyer I gave you the letter to?”
“Yes. I stayed eight days in town to confer with him. I heard from him this very day.”
“Well, what says he?”
“His letter is a very savage one. He is angry with me for having come here at all; and particularly angry because I have broken my leg, and can't come away.”
“What does he think of your case, however?”
“He thinks it manageable. He says—as of course I knew he would say—that it demands most cautious treatment and great acuteness. There are blanks, historical blanks, to be filled up; links to connect, and such like, which will demand some time and some money. I have told him I have an inexhaustible supply of the one, but for the other I am occasionally slightly pinched.”
“It promises well, however?”
“Most hopefully. And when once I have proved myself—not always so easy as it seems—the son of my father, I am to go over and see him again in consultation.”
“Kelson is a man of station and character, and if he undertakes your cause it is in itself a strong guarantee of its goodness.”
“Why, these men take all that is offered them. They no more refuse a bad suit than a doctor rejects a hopeless patient.”
“And so will a doctor, if he happen to be an honest man,” said Longworth, half peevishly. “Just as he would also refuse to treat one who would persist in following his own caprices in defiance of all advice.”
“Which touches me. Is not it so?” said the other, laughing. “Well, I think I ought to have stayed quietly here, and not shown myself in public. All the more, since it has cost me this,” and he pointed to his leg as he spoke. “But I can't help confessing it, Philip, the sight of those fellows in their gay scarlet, caracoling over the sward, and popping over the walls and hedges, provoked me. It was exactly like a challenge; so I felt it, at least. It was as though they said, 'What if you come here to pit your claims against ours, and you are still not gentleman enough to meet us in a fair field and face the same perils that we do.' And this, be it remembered, to one who had served in a cavalry regiment, and made campaigns with the Chasseurs d'Afrique. I could n't stand it, and after the second day I mounted, and—” a motion of his hand finished the sentence.
“All that sort of reasoning is so totally different from an Englishman's that I am unable even to discuss it. I do not pretend to understand the refined sensibility that resents provocations which were never offered.”
“I know you don't, and I know your countrymen do not either. You are such a practical people that your very policemen never interfere with a criminal till he has fully committed himself.”
“In plain words, we do not content ourselves with inferences. But tell me, did any of these people call to see you, or ask after you?”
“Yes, they sent the day after my disaster, and they also told the doctor to say how happy they should be if they could be of service to me. And a young naval commander,—his card is yonder,—came, I think, three times, and would have come up if I had wished to receive him; but Kelson's letter, so angry about my great indiscretion, as he called it, made me decline the visit, and confine my acknowledgment to thanks.”
“I wonder what my old gatekeeper thought when he saw them, or their liveries in this avenue?” said Longworth, with a peculiar bitterness in his tone.
“Why, what should he think,—was there any feud between the families?”
“How could there be? These people have not been many months in Ireland. What I meant was with reference to the feud that is six centuries old, the old open ulcer, that makes all rule in this country a struggle, and all resistance to it a patriotism. Don't you know,” asked he, almost sternly, “that I am a Papist?” “Yes, you told me so.”
“And don't you know that my religion is not a mere barrier to my advancement in many careers of life, but is a social disqualification—that it is, like the trace of black blood in a créole, a ban excluding him from intercourse with his better-born neighbors—that I belong to a class just as much shut out from all the relations of society as were the Jews in the fifteenth century?”
“I remember that you told me so once, but I own I never fully comprehended it, nor understood how the question of a man's faith was to decide his standing in this world, and that, being the equal of those about you in birth and condition, your religion should stamp you with inferiority.”
“But I did not tell you I was their equal,” said Longworth, with a slow and painful distinctness. “We are novi homines here; a couple of generations back we were peasants—as poor as anything you could see out of that window. By hard work and some good luck—of course there was luck in it—we emerged, and got enough together to live upon, and I was sent to a costly school, and then to college, that I might start in life the equal of my fellows. But what avails it all? To hold a station in life, to mix with the world, to associate with men educated and brought up like myself, I must quit my own country and live abroad. I know, I see, you can make nothing of this. It is out and out incomprehensible. You made a clean sweep of these things with your great Revolution of '93. Ours is yet to come.”
“Per Dio! I 'd not stand it,” cried the other, passionately.
“You could n't help it. You must stand it; at least, till such time as a good many others, equally aggrieved as yourself, resolve to risk something to change it; and this is remote enough, for there is nothing that men—I mean educated and cultivated men—are more averse to, than any open confession of feeling a social disqualification. I may tell it to you here, as we sit over the fire, but I 'll not go out and proclaim it, I promise you. These are confessions one keeps for the fireside.”
“And will not these people visit you?”
“Nothing less likely.”
“Nor you call upon them?”
“Certainly not.”
“And will you continue to live within an hour's drive of each other without acquaintance or recognition?”
“Probably—at least we may salute when we meet.”
“Then I say the guillotine has done more for civilization than the schoolmaster,” cried the other. “And all this because you are a Papist?”
“Just so. I belong to a faith so deeply associated with a bygone inferiority that I am not to be permitted to emerge from it—there's the secret of it all.”
“I 'd rebel. I 'd descend into the streets!”
“And you'd get hanged for your pains.”
A shrug of the shoulders was all the reply, and Longworth went on:—
“Some one once said, 'It was better economy in a state to teach people not to steal than to build jails for the thieves;' and so I would say to our rulers it would be cheaper to give us some of the things we ask for than to enact all the expensive measures that are taken to repress us.”
“What chance have I, then, of justice in such a country?” cried the foreigner, passionately.
“Better than in any land of Europe. Indeed I will go further, and say it is the one land in Europe where corruption is impossible on the seat of judgment. If you make out your claim, as fully as you detailed it to me, if evidence will sustain your allegations, your flag will as certainly wave over that high tower yonder as that decanter stands there.”
“Here's to la bonne chance,” said the other, filling a bumper and drinking it off.
“You will need to be very prudent, very circumspect: two things which I suspect will cost you some trouble,” said Longworth. “The very name you will have to go by will be a difficulty. To call yourself Bramleigh will be an open declaration of war; to write yourself Pracontal is an admission that you have no claim to the other appellation.”
“It was my mother's name. She was of a Provençal family, and the Pracontals were people of good blood.”
“But your father was always called Bramleigh?”
“My father, mon cher, had fifty aliases; he was Louis Lagrange under the Empire, Victor Cassagnac at the Restoration, Carlo Salvi when sentenced to the galleys at Naples, Niccolo Baldassare when he shot the Austrian colonel at Capua, and I believe when he was last heard of, the captain of a slaver, he was called, for shortness' sake, 'Brutto,' for he was not personally attractive.”
“Then when and where was he known as Bramieigh?”
“Whenever he wrote to England. Whenever he asked for money, which, on the whole, was pretty often, he was Montagu Bramieigh.”
“To whom were these letters addressed?”
“To his father, Montagu Bramieigh, Portland Place, London. I have it all in my note-book.”
“And these appeals were responded to?”
“Not so satisfactorily as one might wish. The replies were flat refusals to give money, and rather unpleasant menaces as to police measures if the insistence were continued.
“You have some of these letters?”
“The lawyer has, I think, four of them. The last contained a bank order for five hundred francs, payable to Giacomo Lami, or order.”
“Who was Lami?”
“Lami was the name of my grandmother; her father was Giacomo. He was the old fresco-painter who came over from Rome to paint the walls of that great house yonder, and it was his daughter that Bramleigh married.”
“Which Bramleigh was the father of the present possessor of Castello?”
“Precisely. Montagu Bramleigh married my grandmother here in Ireland, and when the troubles broke out, either to save her father from the laws or to get rid of him, managed to smuggle him out of the country over to Holland—the last supposition, and the more likely, is that he sent his wife off with her father.”
“What evidence is there of this marriage?”
“It was registered in some parish authority; at least so old Giacomo's journal records, for we have the journal, and without it we might never have known of our claim; but besides that, there are two letters of Montagu Bramleigh's to my grandmother, written when he had occasion to leave her about ten days after their marriage, and they begin, 'My dearest wife.' and are signed, 'Your affectionate husband, M. Bramleigh.' The lawyer has all these.”
“How did it come about that a rich London banker, as Bramleigh was, should ally himself with the daughter of a working Italian tradesman?”
“Here's the story as conveyed by old Giacomo's notes. Bramleigh came over here to look after the progress of the works for a great man, a bishop and a lord marquis too, who was the owner of the place; he made the acquaintance of Lami and his daughters: there were two; the younger only a child, however. The eldest, Enrichetta, was very beautiful, so beautiful indeed, that Giacomo was eternally introducing her head into all his frescos; she was a blonde Italian, and made a most lovely Madonna. Old Giacomo's journal mentions no less than eight altar-pieces where she figures, not to say that she takes her place pretty frequently in heathen society also, and if I be rightly informed, she is the centre figure of a 'fresco' in this very house of Castello, in a small octagon tower, the whole of which Lami painted with his own hand. Bramleigh fell in love with this girl and married her.”
“But she was a Catholic.”
“No. Lami was originally a Waldensian, and held some sort of faith, I don't exactly know what, that claimed affinity with the English Church; at all events, the vicar here, a certain Robert Mathews—his name is in the precious journal—married them, and man and wife they were.”
“When and how did all these facts come to your knowledge?”
“As to the when and the how, the same answer will suffice. I was serving as sous-lieutenant of cavalry in Africa when news reached me that the 'Astradella,' the ship in which my father sailed, was lost off the Cape Verde islands, with all on board. I hastened off to Naples, where a Mr. Bolton lived, who was chief owner of the vessel, to hear what tidings had reached him of the disaster, and to learn something of my father's affairs, for he had been, if I might employ so fine a word for so small a function, his banker for years. Indeed, but for Bolton's friendship and protection—how earned I never knew—my father would have come to grief years before, for he was a thorough Italian, and always up to the neck in conspiracies; he had been in that Bonapartist affair at Home; was a Carbonaro and a Camorrist, and Heaven knows what besides. And though Bolton was a man very unlikely to sympathize with these opinions, I take it my respected parent must have been a bon diable that men who knew him would not willingly see wrecked and ruined. Bolton was most kind to myself personally. He received me with many signs of friendship, and without troubling me with any more details of law than were positively unavoidable, put me in possession of the little my father had left behind him, which consisted of a few hundred francs of savings and an old chest, with some older clothes and a mass of papers and letters—dangerous enough, as I discovered, to have compromised scores of people—and a strange old manuscript book, clasped and locked, called the 'Diary of Giacomo Lami,' with matter in it for half a dozen romances; for Giacomo, too, had the conspirator's taste, had known Danton intimately, and was deep in the confidence of all the Irish republicans who were affiliated with the French revolutionary party. But besides this the book contained a quantity of original letters; and when mention was made in the text of this or that event, the letter which related to it, or replied to some communication about it, was appended in the original. I made this curious volume my study for weeks, till, in fact, I came to know far more about old Giacomo and his times than I ever knew about my father and his epoch. There was not a country in Europe in which he had not lived, nor, I believe, one in which he had not involved himself in some trouble. He loved his art, but he loved political plotting and conspiracy even more, and was ever ready to resign his most profitable engagement for a scheme that promised to overturn a government or unthrone a sovereign. My first thought on reading his curious reminiscences was to make them the basis of a memoir for publication. Of course they were fearfully indiscreet, and involved reputations that no one had ever thought of assailing; but they were chiefly of persons dead and gone, and it was only their memory that could suffer. I spoke to Bolton about this. He approved of the notion, principally as a means of helping me to a little money, which I stood much in need of, and gave me a letter to a friend in Paris, the well-known publisher, Lecoq, of the Rue St. Honoré.
“As I was dealing with a man of honor and high character, I had no scruple in leaving the volume of old Giacomo's memoirs in Lecoq's hands; and after about a week I returned to learn what he thought of it. He was frank enough to say that no such diary had ever come before him—that it cleared up a vast number of points hitherto doubtful and obscure, and showed an amount of knowledge of the private life of the period absolutely marvellous; 'but,' said he, 'it would never do to make it public. Most of these men are now forgotten, it is true, but their descendants remain, and live in honor amongst us. What a terrible scandal it would be to proclaim to the world that of these people many were illegitimate, many in the enjoyment of large fortunes to which they had not a shadow of a title; in fact,' said he, 'it would be to hurl a live shell in the very midst of society, leaving the havoc and destruction it might cause to blind chance. But,' added he, 'it strikes me there is a more profitable use the volume might be put to. Have you read the narrative of your grandmother's marriage in Ireland with that rich Englishman?' I owned I had read it carelessly, and without bestowing much interest on the theme. 'Go back and reread it,' said he, 'and come and talk it over with me to-morrow evening.' As I entered his room the next night he arose ceremoniously from his chair, and said, in a tone of well-assumed obsequiousness, 'Si je ne me trompe pas, j'ai l'honneur de voir Monsieur Bramleigh, n'est-ce pas?' I laughed, and replied, 'Je ne m'y oppose pas, monsieur;' and we at once launched out into the details of the story, of which each of us had formed precisely the same opinion.
“Ill luck would have it, that as I went back to my lodgings on that night I should meet Bertani, and Varese, and Manini, and be persuaded to go and sup with them. They were all suspected by the police, from their connection with Fieschi; and on the morning after I received an order from the Minister of War to join my regiment at Oran, and an intimation that my character being fully known it behooved me to take care. I gave no grounds for more stringent measures towards me. I understood the 'caution,' and, not wishing to compromise Monsieur Lecoq, who had been so friendly in all his relations with me, I left France, without even an opportunity of getting back my precious volume, which I never saw again till I revisited Paris eight years after, having given in my démission from the service. Lecoq obtained for me that small appointment I held under Monsieur Lesseps in Egypt, and which I had given up a few weeks before I met you on the Nile. I ought to tell you that Lecoq, for what reason I can't tell, was not so fully pursuaded that my claim was as direct as he had at first thought it; and indeed his advice to me was rather to address myself seriously to some means of livelihood, or to try and make some compromise with the Bramleighs, with whom he deemed a mere penniless pretender would not have the smallest chance of success. I hesitated a good deal over his counsel. There was much in it that weighed with me, perhaps convinced me: but I was always more or less of a gambler, and more than once have I risked a stake, which, if I lost, would have left me penniless; and at last I resolved to say, Va Banque, here goes; all or nothing. There's my story, mon cher, without any digressions, even one of which, if I had permitted myself to be led into it, would have proved twice as long.”
“The strength of a chain is the strength of its weakest link, the engineers tell us,” said Longworth, “and it is the same with evidence. I 'd like to hear what Kelson says of the case.”
“That I can scarcely give you. His last letter to me is full of questions which I cannot answer; but you shall read it for yourself. Will you send upstairs for my writing-desk?”
“We 'll con that over to-morrow after breakfast, when our heads will be clearer and brighter. Have you old Lami's journal with you?”
“No. All my papers are with Kelson. The only thing I have here is a sketch in colored chalk of my grandmother, in her eighteenth year, as a Flora, and, from the date, it must have been done in Ireland, when Giacomo was working at the frescos.”
“That my father,” said Pracontal, after a pause, “counted with certainty on this succession, all his own papers show, as well as the care he bestowed on my early education, and the importance he attached to my knowing and speaking English perfectly. But my father cared far more for a conspiracy than a fortune. He was one of those men who only seem to live when they are confronted by a great danger, and I believe there has not been a great plot in Europe these last five-and-thirty years without his name being in it. He was twice handed over to the French authorities by the English Government, and there is some reason to believe that the Bramleighs were the secret instigators of the extradition. There was no easier way of getting rid of his claims.”
“These are disabilities which do not attach to you.”
“No, thank Heaven. I have gone no farther with these men than mere acquaintance. I know them all, and they know me well enough to know that I deem it the greatest disaster of my life that my father was one of them. It is not too much to say that a small part of the energy he bestowed on schemes of peril and ruin would have sufficed to have vindicated his claim to wealth and fortune.”
“You told me, I think, that Kelson hinted at the possibility of some compromise,—something which, sparing them the penalty of publicity, would still secure to you an ample fortune.”
“Yes. What he said was, 'Juries are, with all their honesty of intention, capricious things to trust to;' and that, not being rich enough to suffer repeated defeats, an adverse verdict might be fatal to me. I did n't like the reasoning altogether, but I was so completely in his hands that I forbore to make any objection, and so the matter remained.”
“I suspect he was right,” said Longworth, thoughtfully. “At the same time, the case must be strong enough to promise victory, to sustain the proposal of a compromise.”
“And if I can show the game in my hand why should I not claim the stakes?”
“Because the other party may delay the settlement. They may challenge the cards, accuse you of 'a rook,' put out the lights—anything, in short, that shall break up the game.”
“I see,” said Pracontal, gravely; “the lawyer's notion may be better than I thought it.”
A long silence ensued between them; then Longworth, looking at his watch, exclaimed, “Who'd believe it? It wants only a few minutes to two o'clock. Good-night.”
CHAPTER X. THE DROPPINGS OF A GREAT DIPLOMATIST.
When a man's manner and address are very successful with the world,—when he possesses that power of captivation which extends to people of totally different tastes and habits, and is equally at home, equally at his ease, with young and old, with men of grave pursuits and men of pleasure,—it is somewhat hard to believe that there must not be some strong sterling quality in his nature; for we know that the base metals never bear gilding, and that it is only a waste of gold to cover them with it.
It would be, therefore, very pleasant to think that if people should not be altogether as admirable as they were agreeable, yet that the qualities which made the companionship so delightful should be indications of deeper and more solid gifts beneath. Yet I am afraid the theory will not hold. I suspect that there are a considerable number of people in this world who go through life trading on credit, and who renew their bills with humanity so gracefully and so cleverly, they are never found out to be bankrupts till they die.
A very accomplished specimen of this order was Lord Culduff. He was a man of very ordinary abilities, commonplace in every way, and who had yet contrived to impress the world with the notion of his capacity. He did a little of almost everything. He sang a little, played a little on two or three instruments, talked a little of several languages, and had smatterings of all games and field-sports, so that, to every seeming, nothing came amiss to him. Nature had been gracious to him personally, and he had a voice very soft and low and insinuating.
He was not an impostor, for the simple reason that he believed in himself. He actually had negotiated his false coinage so long, that he got to regard it as bullion, and imagined himself to be one of the first men of his age.
The bad bank-note, which has been circulating freely from hand to hand, no sooner comes under the scrutiny of a sharp-eyed functionary of the bank than it is denounced and branded; and so Culdufif would speedily have been treated by any one of those keen men who, as Ministers, grow to acquire a knowledge of human nature as thorough as of the actual events of the time.
The world at large, however, had not this estimate of him. They read of him as a special envoy here, an extraordinary minister there, now negotiating a secret treaty, now investing a Pasha of Egypt with the Bath; and they deemed him not only a trusty servant of the Crown, but a skilled negotiator, a deep and accomplished diplomatist.
He was a little short-sighted, and it enabled him to pass objectionable people without causing offence. He was slightly deaf, and it gave him an air of deference in conversation which many were charmed with; for whenever he failed to catch what was said, his smile was perfectly captivating. It was assent, but dashed with a sort of sly flattery, as though it was to the speaker's ingenuity he yielded, as much as to the force of the conviction.
He was a great favorite with women. Old ladies regarded him as a model of good ton; younger ones discovered other qualities in him that amused them as much. His life had been anything but blameless, but he had contrived to make the world believe he was more sinned against than sinning, and that every mischance that befell him came of that unsuspecting nature and easy disposition of which even all his experience of life could not rob him.
Cutbill read him thoroughly; but though Lord Culdufif saw this, it did not prevent him trying all his little pretty devices of pleasing on the man of culverts and cuttings. In fact, he seemed to feel that though he could not bring down the bird, it was better not to spoil his gun by a change of cartridge, and so he fired away his usual little pleasantries, well aware that none of them were successful.
He had now been three days with the Bramleighs, and certainly had won the suffrages, though in different degrees, of them all. He had put himself so frankly and unreservedly in Colonel Bramleigh's hands about the coal-mine, candidly confessing the whole thing was new to him, he was a child in money matters, that the banker was positively delighted with him.
With Augustus he had talked politics confidentially,—not questions of policy nor statecraft, not matters of legislation or government, but the more subtle and ingenious points as to what party a young man entering life ought to join, what set he should attach himself to, and what line he should take to insure future distinction and office. He was well up in the gossip of the House, and knew who was disgusted with such an one, and why So-and-so “would n't stand it” any longer.
To Temple Bramleigh he was charming. Of the “line,” as they love to call it, he knew positively everything. Nor was it merely how this or that legation was conducted, how this man got on with his chief, or why that other had asked to be transferred; but he knew all the mysterious goings-on of that wonderful old repository they call “the Office.” “That's what you must look to, Bramleigh,” he would say, clapping him on the shoulder. “The men who make plenipos and envoys are not in the Cabinet, nor do they dine at Osborne; they are fellows in seedy black, with brown umbrellas, who cross the Green Park every morning about eleven o'clock, and come back over the self-same track by six of an evening. Staid old dogs, with crape on their hats, and hard lines round their mouths, fond of fresh caviare from Russia, and much given to cursing the messengers.”
He was, in a word, the incarnation of a very well-bred selfishness, that had learned how much it redounds to a man's personal comfort that he is popular, and that even a weak swimmer who goes with the tide makes a better figure than the strongest and bravest who attempts to stem the current. He was, in his way, a keen observer; and a certain haughty tone, a kind of self-assertion, in Marion's manner, so distinguished her from her sister, that he set Cutbill to ascertain if it had any other foundation than mere temperament; and the wily agent was not long in learning that a legacy of twenty thousand pounds in her own absolute right from her mother's side accounted for these pretensions.
“I tell you, Cutty, it 's only an old diplomatist like myself would have detected the share that bank debentures had in that girl's demeanor. Confess, sir, it was a clever hit.”
“It was certainly neat, my Lord.”
“It was more, Cutty; it was deep,—downright deep. I saw where the idiosyncrasy stopped, and where the dividends came in.”
Cutbill smiled an approving smile, and his Lordship turned to the glass over the chimney-piece and looked admiringly at himself.
“Was it twenty thousand you said?” asked he, indolently.
“Yes, my Lord, twenty. Her father will probably give her as much more. Harding told me yesterday that all the younger children are to have share and share alike,—no distinction made between sons and daughters.”
“So that she 'll have what a Frenchman would call 'un million de dot.'”
“Just about what we want, my Lord, to start our enterprise.”
“Ah, yes. I suppose that would do; but we shall do this by a company, Cutty. Have you said anything to Bramleigh yet on the subject?”
“Nothing further than what I told you yesterday. I gave him the papers with the surveys and the specifications, and he said he 'd look over them this morning, and that I might drop in upon him to-night in the library after ten. It is the time he likes best for a little quiet chat.”
“He seems a very cautious, I 'd almost say a timid man.”
“The city men are all like that, my Lord. They 're always cold enough in entering on a project, though they'll go rashly on after they've put their money in it.”
“What's the eldest son?”
“A fool,—just a fool. He urged his father to contest a county, to lay a claim for a peerage. They lost the election and lost their money; but Augustus Bramleigh persists in thinking that the party are still their debtors.”
“Very hard to make Ministers believe that,” said Culduff, with a grin. “A vote in the House is like a bird in the hand. The second fellow, Temple, is a poor creature.”
“Ain't he? Not that he thinks so.”
“No; they never do,” said Culduff, caressing his whiskers, and looking pleasantly at himself in the glass. “They see one or two men of mark in their career, and they fancy—Heaven knows why—that they must be like them; that identity of pursuit implies equality of intellect; and so these creatures spread out their little sails, and imagine they are going to make a grand voyage.”
“But Miss Bramleigh told me yesterday you had a high opinion of her brother Temple.”
“I believe I said so,” said he, with a soft smile. “One says these sort of things every day, irresponsibly, Cutty, irresponsibly, just as one gives his autograph, but would think twice before signing his name on a stamped paper.”
Mr. Cutbill laughed at this sally, and seemed by the motion of his lips as though he were repeating it to himself for future retail; but in what spirit, it would not be safe perhaps to inquire.
Though Lord Culduff did not present himself at the family break fast-table, and but rarely appeared at luncheon, pretexting that his mornings were always given up to business and letter-writing, he usually came down in the afternoon in some toilet admirably suited to the occasion, whatever it might be, of riding, driving, or walking. In fact, a mere glance at his Lordship's costume would have unmistakably shown whether a canter, the croquet lawn, or a brisk walk through the shrubberies were in the order of the day.
“Do you remember, Cutty,” said he, suddenly, “what was my engagement for this morning? I promised somebody to go somewhere and do something; and I 'll be shot if I can recollect.”
“I am totally unable to assist your Lordship,” said the other, with a smile. “The young men, I know, are out shooting, and Miss Eleanor Bramleigh is profiting by the snow to have a day's sledging. She proposed to me to join her, but I did n't see it.”
“Ah! I have it now, Cutty. I was to walk over to Portabandon, to return the curate's call. Miss Bramleigh was to come with me.”
“It was scarcely gallant, my Lord, to forget so charming a project,” said the other, slyly.
“Gallantry went out, Cutty, with slashed doublets. The height and the boast of our modern civilization is to make women our perfect equals, and to play the game of life with them on an absolutely equal footing.”
“Is that quite fair?”
“I protest I think it is. Except in a few rare instances, where the men unite to the hardier qualities of the masculine intelligence the nicer, finer, most susceptible instincts of the other sex,—the organization that more than any other touches on excellence,—except, I say, in these cases, the women have the best of it. Now what chance, I ask you, would you have, pitted against such a girl as the elder Bramleigh?”
“I 'm afraid a very poor one,” said Cutbill, with a look of deep humility.
“Just so, Cutty, a very poor one. I give you my word of honor I have learned more diplomacy beside the drawing-room fire than I ever acquired in the pages of the blue-books. You see it's a quite different school of fence they practise; the thrusts are different, and the guards are different. A day for furs essentially, a day for furs,” broke he in, as he drew on a coat lined with sable, and profusely braided and ornamented. “What was I saying? where were we?”
“You were talking of women, my Lord.”
“The faintest tint of scarlet in the under vest—it was a device of the Regent's in his really great day—is always effective in cold, bright, frosty weather. The tint is carried on to the cheek, and adds brilliancy to the eye. In duller weather a coral pin in the cravat will suffice; but, as David Wilkie used to say, 'Nature must have her bit of red.'”
“I wish you would finish what you were saying about women, my Lord. Your remarks were full of originality.”
“Finish! finish, Cutty! It would take as many volumes as the 'Abridgement of the Statutes' to contain one-half of what I could say about them; and, after all, it would be Sanscrit to you.” His Lordship now placed his hat on his head, slightly on one side. It was the “tigerism” of a past period, and which he could no more abandon than he could give up the jaunty swagger of his walk, or the bland smile which he kept ready for recognition.
“I have not, I rejoice to say, arrived at that time of life when I can affect to praise bygones; but I own, Cutty, they did everything much better five-and-twenty years ago than now. They dined better, they dressed better, they drove better, they turned out better in the field and in the park, and they talked better.”
“How do you account for this, my Lord?”
“Simply in this way, Cutty. We have lowered our standard in taste just as we have lowered our standard for the army. We take fellows five feet seven into grenadier companies now; that is, we admit into society men of mere wealth,—the banker, the brewer, the railway director, and the rest of them; and with these people we admit their ways, their tastes, their very expressions. I know it is said that we gain in breadth; yet, as I told Lord Cocklethorpe (the mot had its success),—what we gain in breadth, said I, we lose in height. Neat, Cutty, was n't it? As neat as a mot well can be in our clumsy language.”
And with this, and a familiar “Bye-bye,” he strolled away, leaving Cutbill to practise before the glass such an imitation of him as might serve, at some future time, to convulse with laughter a select and admiring audience.
CHAPTER XI. A WINTER DAY'S WALK
Lord Culduff and Marion set out for their walk. It was a sharp frosty morning, with a blue sky above and crisp snow beneath. We have already seen that his Lordship had not been inattentive to the charms of costume. Marion was no less so; her dark silk dress, looped over a scarlet petticoat, and a tasteful hat of black astracan, well suited the character of looks where the striking and brilliant were as conspicuous as dark eyes, long lashes, and a bright complexion could make them.
“I 'll take you by the shrubberies, my Lord, which is somewhat longer, but pleasanter walking; and, if you like it, we 'll come back by the hill path, which is much shorter.”
“The longer the road the more of your company, Miss Bramleigh. Therein lies my chief interest,” said he, bowing.
They talked away pleasantly, as they went along, of the country and the scenery, of which new glimpses continually presented themselves, and of the country people and their ways, so new to each of them. They agreed wonderfully on almost everything, but especially as to the character of the Irish,—so simple, so confiding, so trustful, so grateful for benefits, and so eager to be well governed! They knew it all, the whole complex web of Irish difficulty and English misrule was clear and plain before them; and then, as they talked, they gained a height from which the blue broad sea was visible, and thence descried a solitary sail afar off, that set them speculating on what the island might become when commerce and trade should visit her, and rich cargoes should cumber her quays, and crowd her harbors. Marion was strong in her knowledge of industrial resources; but as an accomplished aide-de-camp always rides a little behind his chief, so did she restrain her acquaintance with these topics, and keep them slightly to the rear of all his Lordship advanced. And then he grew confidential, and talked of coal, which ultimately led him to himself,—the theme of all he liked the best. And how differently did he talk now! What vigor and animation, what spirit did he not throw into his sketch! It was the story of a great man, unjustly, hardly dealt with, persecuted by an ungenerous rivalry, the victim of envy. For half, ay, for the tithe of what he had done, others had got their advancement in the peerage,—their blue ribbons and the rest of it; but Canning had been jealous of him, and the Duke was jealous of him, and Palmerston never liked him. “Of course,” he said, “these are things a man buries in his own breast. Of all the sorrows one encounters in life, the slights are those he last confesses; how I came to speak of them now I can't imagine—can you?” and he turned fully towards her, and saw that she blushed and cast down her eyes at the question.
“But, my Lord,” said she, evading the reply, “you give me the idea of one who would not readily succumb to an injustice. Am I right in my reading of you?”
“I trust and hope you are,” said he, haughtily; “and it is my pride to think I have inspired that impression on so brief an acquaintance.”
“It is my own temper, too,” she added. “You may convince, you cannot coerce me.”
“I wish I might try the former,” said he, in a tone of much meaning.
“We agree in so many things, my Lord,” said she, laughingly, “that there is little occasion for your persuasive power. There, do you see that smoke-wreath yonder? That's from the cottage where we're going.”
“I wish I knew where we were going,” said he, with a sigh of wonderful tenderness.
“To Roseneath, my Lord. I told you the L'Estranges lived there.”
“Yes; but it was not that I meant,” added he, feelingly.
“And a pretty spot it is,” continued she, purposely misunderstanding him; “so sheltered and secluded. By the way, what do you think of the curate's sister? She is very beautiful, isn't she?”
“Am I to say the truth?”
“Of course you are.”
“I mean, may I speak as though we knew each other very well, and could talk in confidence together?”
“That is what I mean.”
“And wish?” added he.
“Well, and wish, if you will supply the word.”
“If I am to be frank, then, I don't admire her.”
“Not think her beautiful?”
“Yes; there is some beauty,—a good deal of beauty, if you like; but somehow it is not allied with that brightness that seems to accentuate beauty. She is tame and cold.”
“I think men generally accuse her of coquetry.”
“And there is coquetry, too; but of that character the French call minauderie, the weapon of a very small enchantress, I assure you.”
“You are, then, for the captivations that give no quarter?” said she, smiling.
“It is a glory to be so vanquished,” said he, heroically.
“My sister declared the other night, after Julia had sung that barcarolle, that you were fatally smitten.”
“And did you concur in the judgment?” asked he, tenderly.
“At first, perhaps I did; but when I came to know you a little better—”
“After our talk on the terrace?”
“And even before that. When Julia was singing for you,—clearly for you, there was no disguise in the matter,—and I whispered you, 'What courage you have!' you said, 'I have been so often under fire'—from that instant I knew you.”
“Knew me—how far?”
“Enough to know that it was not to such captivations you would yield,—that you had seen a great deal of that sort of thing.”
“Oh, have I not!”
“Perhaps not always unscathed,” said she, with a sly glance.
“I will scarcely go that far,” replied he, with the air of a man on the best possible terms with himself. “They say he is the best rider who has had the most falls. At least, it may be said that he who has met no disasters has encountered few perils.”
“Now, my Lord, you can see the cottage completely. Is it not very pretty, and very picturesque, and is there not something very interesting—touching almost, in the thought of beauty and captivation—dwelling in this un-travelled wilderness?”
He almost gave a little shudder, as his eye followed the line of the rugged mountain, till it blended with the bleak and shingly shore on which the waves were now washing in measured plash,—the one sound in the universal silence around.
“Nothing but being desperately in love could make this solitude endurable,” said he at last.
“Why not try that resource, my Lord? I could almost promise you that the young lady who lives yonder is quite ready to be adored and worshipped, and all that sort of thing; and it would be such a boon on the frosty days, when the ground is too hard for hunting, to have this little bit of romance awaiting you.”
“Coquetry and French cookery pall upon a man who has lived all his life abroad, and he actually longs for a little plain diet, in manners as well as meals.”
“And then you have seen all the pretty acts of our very pretty neighbor so much better done?”
“Done by real artists,” added he.
“Just so. Amateurship is always a poor thing. This is the way, my Lord. If you will follow me, I will be your guide here; the path here is very slippery, and you must take care how you go.”
“When I fall, it shall be at your feet,” said he, with his hand on his heart.
As they gained the bottom of the little ravine down which the footpath lay, they found Julia, hoe in hand, at work in the garden before the door. Her dark woollen dress and her straw hat were only relieved in color by a blue ribbon round her throat, but she was slightly flushed by exercise, and a little flurried, perhaps, by the surprise of seeing them, and her beauty, this time, certainly lacked nothing of that brilliancy which Lord Culduff had pronounced it deficient in.
“My brother will be so sorry to have missed you, my Lord,” said she, leading the way into the little drawing-room, where, amidst many signs of narrow fortune, there were two or three of those indications which vouch for cultivated tastes and pleasures.
“I had told Lord Culduff so much about your cottage, Julia,” said Marion, “that he insisted on coming to see it, without even apprising you of his intention.”
“It is just as well,” said she artlessly. “A little more or less sun gives the only change in its appearance. Lord Culduff sees it now as it looks nearly every day.”
“And very charming that is,” said he, walking to the window and looking out. And then he asked the name of a headland, and how a small rocky island was called, and on which side lay the village of Portshandon, and at what distance was the church, the replies to which seemed to afford him unmixed satisfaction; for, as he resumed his seat, he muttered several times to himself, “Very delightful indeed; very pleasing in every way!”
“Lord Culduff was asking me as he came-along,” said Marion, “whether I thought the solitude—I think he called it the savagery of this spot—was likely to be better borne by one native to such wildness, or by one so graced and gifted as yourself, and I protest he puzzled me.”
“I used to think it very lonely when I came here first, but I believe I should be sorry to leave it now,” said Julia, calmly.
“There, my Lord,” said Marion, “you are to pick your answer out of that.”
“As to those resources which you are so flattering as to call my gifts and graces,” said Julia, laughing, “such of them at least as lighten the solitude were all learned here, I never took to gardening before; I never fed poultry.”
“Oh, Julia! have mercy on our illusions!”
“You must tell me what they are, before I can spare them. The curate's sister has no claim to be thought an enchanted princess.”
“It is all enchantment!” said Lord Culduff, who had only very imperfectly caught what she said.
“Then, I suppose, my Lord,” said Marion, haughtily, “I ought to rescue you before the spell is complete, as I came here in quality of guide.” And she rose as she spoke. “The piano has not been opened to-day, Julia. I take it you seldom sing of a morning?”
“Very seldom, indeed.”
“So I told Lord Culduff; but I promised him his recompense in the evening. You are coming to us to-morrow, ain't you?”
“I fear not. I think George made our excuses. We are to have Mr. Longworth and a French friend of his here with us.”
“You see, my Lord, what a gay neighborhood we have; here is a rival dinner-party,” said Marion.
“There's no question of a dinner; they come to tea, I assure you,” said Julia, laughing.
“No, my Lord, it's useless; quite hopeless. I assure you she 'll not sing for you of a morning.” This speech was addressed to Lord Culduff, as he was turning over some music-books on the piano.
“Have I your permission to look at these?” said he to Julia, as he opened a book of drawings in water-colors.
“Of course, my Lord. They are mere sketches taken in the neighorhood here, and, as you will see, very hurriedly done.”
“And have you such coast scenery as this?” asked he, in some astonishment, while he held up a rocky headland of several hundred feet, out of the caves at whose base a tumultuous sea was tumbling.
“I could show you finer and bolder bits than even that.”
“Do you hear, my Lord?” said Marion, in a low tone, only audible to himself. “The fair Julia is offering to be your guide. I 'm afraid it is growing late. One does forget time at this cottage. It was only the last day I came here I got scolded for being late at dinner.”
And now ensued one of those little bustling scenes of shawling and embracing with which young ladies separate. They talked together, and laughed, and kissed, and answered half-uttered sentences, and even seemed after parting to have something more to say; they were by turns sad, and playful, and saucy—all of these moods being duly accompanied by graceful action, and a chance display of a hand or foot, as it might be, and then they parted.
“Well, my Lord,” said Marion, as they ascended the steep path that led homewards, “what do you say now? Is Julia as cold and impassive as you pronounced her, or are you ungrateful enough to ignore fascinations all displayed and developed for your own especial captivation?”
“It was very pretty coquetry, all of it,” said he, smiling. “Her eyelashes are even longer than I thought them.”
“I saw that you remarked them, and she was gracious enough to remain looking at the drawing sufficiently long to allow you full time for the enjoyment.”
The steep and rugged paths were quite as much as Lord Culduff could manage without talking, and he toiled along after her in silence, till they gained the beach.
“At last a bit of even ground,” exclaimed he, with a sigh.
“You'll think nothing of the hill, my Lord, when you've come it three or four times,” said she, with a malicious twinkle of the eye.
“Which is precisely what I have no intention of doing.”
“What! not cultivate the acquaintance so auspiciously opened?”
“Not at this price,” said he, looking at his splashed boots.
“And that excursion, that ramble, or whatever be the name for it, you were to take together?”
“It is a bliss, I am afraid, I must deny myself.”
“You are wrong, my Lord,—very wrong. My brothers at least assure me that Julia is charming en tête-à-tête. Indeed, Augustus says one does not know her at all till you have passed an hour or two in such confidential intimacy. He says 'she comes out'—whatever that may be—wonderfully.”
“Oh, she comes out, does she?” said he, caressing his whiskers.
“That was his phrase for it. I take it to mean that she ventures to talk with a freedom more common on the Continent than in these islands. Is that coming out, my Lord?”
“Well, I half suspect it is,” said he, smiling faintly.
“And I suppose men like that?”
“I 'm afraid, my dear Miss Bramleigh,” said he, with a mock air of deploring—“I 'm afraid that in these degenerate days men are very prone to like whatever gives them least trouble in everything, and if a woman will condescend to talk to us on our own topics, and treat them pretty much in our own way, we like it, simply because it diminishes the distance between us, and saves us that uphill clamber we are obliged to take when you insist upon our scrambling up to the high level you live in.”
“It is somewhat of an ignoble confession you have made there,” said she, haughtily.
“I know it—I feel it—I deplore it,” said he, affectedly.
“If men will, out of mere indolence—no matter,” said she, biting her lip. “I 'll not say what I was going to say.”
“Pray do. I beseech you finish what you have so well begun.”
“Were I to do so, my Lord,” said she, gravely, “it might finish more than that. It might at least go some way towards finishing our acquaintanceship. I 'm sorely afraid you 'd not have forgiven me had you heard me out.”
“I 'd never have forgiven myself, if I were the cause of it.”
For some time they walked along in silence, and now the great house came into view—its windows all glowing and glittering in the blaze of a setting sun, while a faint breeze lazily moved the heavy folds of the enormous flag that floated over the high tower.
“I call that a very princely place,” said he, stopping to admire it.
“What a caprice to have built it in such a spot,” said she. “The country people were not far wrong when they called it Bishop's Folly.”
“They gave it that name, did they?”
“Yes, my Lord. It is one of the ways in which humble folk reconcile themselves to lowly fortune; they ridicule their betters.” And now she gave a little low laugh to herself, as if some unuttered notion had just amused her.
“What made you smile?” asked he.
“A very absurd fancy struck me.”
“Let me hear it. Why not let me share in its oddity?”
“It might not amuse you as much as it amused me.”
“I am the only one who can decide that point.”
“Then I 'm not so certain it might not annoy you.”
“I can assure you on that head,” said he, gallantly.
“Well, then, you shall hear it. The caprice of a great divine has, so to say, registered itself yonder, and will live, so long as stone and mortar endure, as Bishop's Folly; and I was thinking how strange it would be if another caprice just as unaccountable were to give a name to a less pretentious edifice, and a certain charming cottage be known to posterity as the Viscount's Folly. You're not angry with me, are you?”
“I'd be very angry indeed with you, with myself, and with the whole world, if I thought such a casualty a possibility.”
“I assure you, when I said it I did n't believe it, my Lord,” said she, looking at him with much graciousness; “and, indeed, I would never have uttered the impertinence if you had not forced me. There, there goes the first bell; we shall have short time to dress.” And, with a very meaning smile and a familiar gesture of her hand, she tripped up the steps and disappeared.
“I think I 'm all right in that quarter,” was his lordship's reflection as he mounted the stairs to his room.
CHAPTER XII. AN EVENING BELOW AND ABOVE STAIRS.
It was not very willingly that Mr. Cutbill left the drawing-room, where he had been performing a violoncello accompaniment to one of the young ladies in the execution of something very Mendelssohnian and profoundly puzzling to the uninitiated in harmonics. After the peerage he loved counterpoint; and it was really hard to tear himself away from passages of almost piercing shrillness, or those still more suggestive moanings of a double bass, to talk stock and share-list with Colonel Bramleigh in the library. Resisting all the assurances that “papa wouldn't mind it, that any other time would do quite as well,” and such like, he went up to his room for his books and papers, and then repaired to his rendezvous.
“I 'm sorry to take you away from the drawing-room, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, as he entered; “but I am half expecting a summons to town, and could not exactly be sure of an opportunity to talk over this matter on which Lord Culduff is very urgent to have my opinion.”
“It is not easy, I confess, to tear oneself away from such society. Your daughters are charming musicians, Colonel. Miss Bramleigh's style is as brilliant as Meyer's; and Miss Eleanor has a delicacy of touch I have never heard surpassed.”
“This is very flattering, coming from so consummate a judge as yourself.”
“All the teaching in the world will not impart that sensitive organization which sends some tones into the heart like the drip, drip of water on a heated brow. Oh, dear! music is too much for me; it totally subverts all my sentiments. I 'm not fit for business after it, Colonel Bramleigh, that's the fact.”
“Take a glass of that 'Bra Mouton.' You will find it good. It has been eight-and-thirty years in my cellar, and I never think of bringing it out except for a connoisseur in wine.”
“Nectar,—positively nectar,” said he, smacking his lips. “You are quite right not to give this to the public. They would drink it like a mere full-bodied Bordeaux. That velvety softness—that subdued strength, faintly recalling Burgundy, and that delicious bouquet, would all be clean thrown away on most people. I declare, I believe a refined palate is just as rare as a correct ear; don't you think so?”
“I'm glad you like the wine. Don't spare it. The cellar is not far off. Now then, let us see. These papers contain Mr. Stebbing's report. I have only glanced my eye over it, but it seems like every other report. They have, I think, a stereotyped formula for these things. They all set out with their bit of geological learning; but you know, Mr. Cutbill, far better than I can tell you, you know sandstone doesn't always mean coal?”
“If it does n't, it ought to,” said Cutbill, with a laugh, for the wine had made him jolly, and familiar besides.
“There are many things in this world which ought to be, but which, unhappily, are not,” said Bramleigh, in a tone evidently meant to be half-reproachful. “And as I have already observed to you, mere geological formation is not sufficient. We want the mineral, sir; we want the fact.”
“There you have it; there it is for you,” said Cutbill, pointing to a somewhat bulky parcel in brown paper in the centre of the table.
“This is not real coal, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, as he tore open the covering, and exposed a black misshapen lump. “You would not call this real coal?”
“I 'd not call it Swansea nor Cardiff, Colonel, any more than I 'd say the claret we had after dinner to-day was 'Mouton;' but still I'd call each of them very good in their way.”
“I return you my thanks, sir, in the name of my wine-merchant. But to come to the coal question—what could you do with this?”
“What could I do with it? Scores of things—if I had only enough of it. Burn it in grates—cook with it—smelt metals with it—burn lime with it—drive engines, not locomotives, but stationaries, with it. I tell you what, Colonel Bramleigh,” said he, with the air of a man who was asserting what he would not suffer to be gainsaid. “It's coal quite enough to start a company on; coal within the meaning of the act, as the lawyers would say.”
“You appear to have rather loose notions of joint-stock enterprises, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, haughtily.
“I must say, Colonel, they do not invariably inspire me with sentiments of absolute veneration.”
“I hope, however, you feel, sir, that in any enterprise—in any undertaking—where my name is to stand forth, either as promoter or abetter, that the world is to see in such guarantee the assurance of solvency and stability.”
“That is precisely what made me think of you; precisely what led me to say to Culduff, 'Bramleigh is the man to carry the scheme out.'”
Now the familiarity that spoke of Culduff thus unceremoniously in great part reconciled Bramleigh to hear his own name treated in like fashion, all the more that it was in a quotation; but still he winced under the cool impertinence of the man, and grieved to think how far his own priceless wine had contributed towards it. The Colonel therefore merely bowed his acknowledgment and was silent.
“I'll be frank with you,” said Cutbill, emptying the last of the decanter into his glass as he spoke. “I 'll be frank with you. We 've got coal; whether it be much or little, there it is. As to quality, as I said before, it is n't Cardiff. It won't set the Thames on fire, any more than the noble lord that owns it; but coal it is, and it will burn as coal—and yield gas as coal—and make coke as coal, and who wants more? As to working it himself, Culduff might just as soon pretend he 'd pay the National Debt. He is over head and ears already; he has been in bondage with the children of Israel this many a day, and if he was n't a peer he could not show; but that's neither here nor there. To set the concern a-going we must either have a loan or a company. I 'm for a company.”
“You are for a company,” reiterated Bramleigh, slowly, as he fixed his eyes calmly but steadily on him.
“Yes, I 'm for a company. With a company, Bramleigh,” said he, as he tossed off the last glass of wine, “there 's always more of P. E.”
“Of what?”
“Of P. E.—Preliminary expenses! There 's a commission to inquire into this, and a deputation to investigate that. No men on earth dine like deputations. I never knew what dining was till I was named on a deputation. It was on sewerage. And didn't the champagne flow! There was a viaduct to be constructed to lead into the Thames, and I never think of that viaduct without the taste of turtle in my mouth, and a genial feeling of milk-punch all over me. The assurance offices say that there was scarcely such a thing known as a gout premium in the City till the joint-stock companies came in; now they have them every day.”
“Revenons à nos moutons, as the French say, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, gravely.
“If it's a pun you mean, and that we 're to have another bottle of the same, I second the motion.”
Bramleigh gave a sickly smile as he rang the bell, but neither the jest nor the jester much pleased him.
“Bring another bottle of 'Mouton,' Drayton, and fresh glasses,” said he, as the butler appeared.
“I 'll keep mine; it is warm and mellow,” said Cutbill. “The only fault with that last bottle was the slight chill on it.”
“You have been frank with me, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, as soon as the servant withdrew, “and I will be no less so with you. I have retired from the world of business—I have quitted the active sphere where I have passed some thirty odd years, and have surrendered ambition, either of money-making, or place, or rank, and come over here with one single desire, one single wish—I want to see what's to be done for Ireland.”
Cutbill lifted his glass to his lips, but scarcely in time to hide the smile of incredulous drollery which curled them, and which the other's quick glance detected.
“There is nothing to sneer at, sir, in what I said, and I will repeat my words. I want to see what's to be done for Ireland.”
“It 's very laudable in you, there can be no doubt,” said Cutbill, gravely.
“I am well aware of the peril incurred by addressing to men like yourself, Mr. Cutbill, any opinions—any sentiments—which savor of disinterestedness, or—or—”
“Poetry,” suggested Cutbill.
“No, sir; patriotism was the word I sought for. And it is not by any means necessary that a man should be an Irishman to care for Ireland. I think, sir, there is nothing in that sentiment at least which will move your ridicule.”
“Quite the reverse. I have drunk 'Prosperity to Ireland' at public dinners for twenty years; and in very good liquor too, occasionally.”
“I am happy to address a gentleman so graciously disposed to listen to me,” said Bramleigh, whose face was now crimson with anger. “There is only one thing more to be wished for—that he would join some amount of trustfulness to his politeness; with that he would be perfect.”
“Here goes, then, for perfection,” cried Cutbill, gayly. “I 'm ready from this time to believe anything you tell me.”
“Sir, I will not draw largely on the fund you so generously place at my disposal. I will simply ask you to believe me a man of honor.”
“Only that? No more than that?”
“No more, I pledge you my word.”
“My dear Bramleigh, your return for the income-tax is enough to prove that. Nothing short of high integrity ever possessed as good a fortune as yours.”
“You are speaking of my fortune, Mr. Cutbill, not of my character.”
“Ain't they the same? Ain't they one and the same? Show me your dividends, and I will show you your disposition—that's as true as the Bible.”
“I will not follow you into this nice inquiry. I will simply return to where I started from, and repeat, I want to do something for Ireland.”
“Do it, in God's name; and I hope you 'll like it when it 's done. I have known some half-dozen men in my time who had the same sort of ambition. One of them tried a cotton-mill on the Liffey, and they burned him down. Another went in for patent fuel, and they shot his steward. A third tried Galway marble, and they shot himself. But after all there 's more honor where there 's more danger, What, may I ask, is your little game for Ireland?”
“I begin to suspect that a better time for business, Mr. Cutbill, might be an hour after breakfast. Shall we adjourn till to-morrow morning?”
“I am completely at your orders. For my own part, I never felt clearer in my life than I do this minute. I 'm ready to go into coal with you: from the time of sinking the shaft to riddling the slack, my little calculations are all made. I could address a board of managing directors here as I sit; and say, what for dividend, what for repairs, what for a reserved fund, and what for the small robberies.”
The unparalleled coolness of the man had now pushed Bramleigh's patience to its last limit; but a latent fear of what such a fellow might be in his enmity, restrained him and compelled him to be cautious.
“What sum do you think the project will require, Mr. Cutbill?”
“I think about eighty thousand; but I'd say one hundred and fifty—it's always more respectable. Small investments are seldom liked; and then the margin—the margin is broader.”
“Yes, certainly; the margin is much broader.”
“Fifty-pound shares, with a call of five every three months, will start us. The chief thing is to begin with a large hand.” Here he made a wide sweep of his arm.
“For coal like that yonder,” said Bramleigh, pointing to the specimen, “you 'd not get ten shillings the ton.”
“Fifteen—fifteen. I'd make it the test of a man's patriotism to use it. I 'd get the Viceroy to burn it, and the Chief Secretary, and the Archbishop, and Father Cullen. I 'd heat St. Patrick's with it, and the national schools. There could be no disguise about it; like the native whiskey, it would be known by the smell of the smoke.”
“You have drawn up some sort of prospectus?”
“Some sort of prospectus! I think I have. There's a document there on the table might go before the House of Commons this minute; and the short and the long of it is, Bramleigh”—here he crossed his arms on the table, and dropped his voice to a tone of great confidence—“it is a good thing—a right good thing. There 's coal there, of one kind or other, for five-and-twenty years, perhaps more. The real, I may say, the only difficulty of the whole scheme will be to keep old Culduff from running off with all the profits. As soon as the money comes rolling in, he 'll set off shelling it out; he 's just as wasteful as he was thirty years ago.”
“That will be impossible when a company is once regularly formed.”
“I know that,—I know that; but men of his stamp say, 'We know nothing about trade. We have n't been bred up to office-stools and big ledgers; and when we want money, we get it how we can.'”
“We can't prevent him selling out or mortgaging his shares. You mean, in short, that he should not be on the direction?” added he.
“That's it,—that's exactly it,” said Cutbill, joyously.
“Will he like that? Will he submit to it?”
“He 'll like whatever promises to put him most speedily into funds; he'll submit to whatever threatens to stop the supplies. Don't you know these men better than I do, who pass lives of absenteeism from their country; how little they care how or whence money comes, provided they get it? They neither know, nor want to know, about good or bad seasons, whether harvests are fine, or trade profitable; their one question is, 'Can you answer my draft at thirty-one days?'”
“Ah, yes; there is too much, far too much, of what you say in the world,” said Bramleigh, sighing.
“These are not the men who want to do something for Ireland,” said the other, quizzically.
“Sir, it may save us both some time and temper if I tell you I have never been 'chaffed.'”
“That sounds to me like a man saying, I have never been out in the rain; but as it is so, there 's no more to be said.”
“Nothing, sir. Positively nothing on that head.”
“Nor indeed on any other. Men in my line of life could n't get on without it. Chaff lubricates business just the way grease oils machinery. There would be too much friction in life without chaff, Bramleigh.”
“I look upon it as directly the opposite. I regard it as I would a pebble getting amongst the wheels, and causing jar and disturbance, sir.”
“Well, then,” said Cutbill, emptying the last drop into his glass, “I take it I need not go over all the details you will find in those papers. There are plans, and specifications, and estimates, and computations, showing what we mean to do, and how; and as I really could add nothing to the report, I suppose I may wish you a good night.”
“I am very sorry, Mr. Cutbill, if my inability to be jocular should deprive me of the pleasure of your society; but there are still many points on which I desire to be informed.”
“It's all there. If you were to bray me in a mortar you could n't get more out of me than you 'll find in those papers; and whether it 's the heat of the room, or the wine, or the subject, but I am awfully sleepy,” and he backed this assurance with a hearty yawn.
“Well, sir, I must submit to your dictation. I will try and master these details before I go to bed, and will take some favorable moment to-morrow to talk them over.”
“That's said like a sensible man,” said Cutbill, clapping him familiarly on the shoulder, and steadying himself the while; for as he stood up to go, he found that the wine had been stronger than he suspected. “When we see a little more of each other,” said he, in the oracular tone of a man who had drunk too much; “when we see a little more of each other, we 'll get on famously. You know the world, and I know the world. You have had your dealings with men, and I have had my dealings with men, and we know what's what. Ain't I right, Bramleigh?”
“I have no doubt there is much truth in what you say.”
“Truth, truth, it's true as gospel! There's only one thing, however, to be settled between us. Each must make his little concession with reci-procity—reci-procity, ain't it?”
“Quite so; but I don't see your meaning.”
“Here it is, then, Bramleigh; here's what I mean. If we 're to march together we must start fair. No man is to have more baggage than his neighbor. If I 'm to give up chaff, do you see, you must give up humbug. If I 'm not to have my bit of fun, old boy, you 're not to come over me about doing something for Ireland, that's all,” and with this he lounged out, banging the door after him as he went.
Mr. Cutbill, as he went to his room, had a certain vague suspicion that he had drunk more wine than was strictly necessary, and that the liquor was not impossibly stronger than he had suspected. He felt, too, in the same vague way, that there had been a passage of arms between his host and himself; but as to what it was about, and who was the victor, he had not the shadow of a conception.
Neither did his ordinary remedy of pouring the contents of his water-jug over his head aid him on this occasion.
“I'm not a bit sleepy; nonsense!” muttered he, “so I'll go and see what they are doing in the smoking-room.”
Here he found the three young men of the house in that semi-thoughtful dreariness which is supposed to be the captivation of tobacco; as if the mass of young Englishmen needed anything to deepen the habitual gloom of their natures, or thicken the sluggish apathy that follows them into all inactivity.
“How jolly,” cried Cutbill, as he entered. “I 'll be shot if I believed as I came up the stairs that there was any one here. You haven't even got brandy and seltzer.”
“If you touch that bell, they 'll bring it,” said Augustus, languidly.
“Some Moselle for me,” said Temple, as the servant entered.
“I'm glad you've come, Cutty,” cried Jack; “as old Kemp used to say, anything is better than a dead calm; even a mutiny.”
“What an infernal old hurdy-gurdy! Why haven't you a decent piano here, if you have one at all?” said Cutbill, as he ran his hands over the keys of a discordant old instrument that actually shook on its legs as he struck the chords.
“I suspect it was mere accident brought it here,” said Augustus. “It was invalided out of the girls' schoolroom, and sent up here to be got rid of.”
“Sing us something, Cutty,” said Jack; “it will be a real boon at this moment.”
“I'll sing like a grove of nightingales for you, when I have wet my lips; but I am parched in the mouth, like a Cape parrot. I 've had two hours of your governor below stairs. Very dry work, I promise you.”
“Did he offer you nothing to drink?” asked Jack.
“Yes, we had two bottles of very tidy claret. He called it 'Mouton.'”
“By Jove!” said Augustus, “you must have been high in the governor's favor to be treated to his 'Bra Mouton.'”
“We had a round with the gloves, nevertheless,” said Cutbill, “and exchanged some ugly blows. I don't exactly know about what or how it began, or even how it ended; but I know there was a black eye somewhere. He's passionate, rather.”
“He has the spirit that should animate every gentleman,” said Temple.
“That's exactly what I have. I 'll stand anything, I don't care what, if it be fun. Say it's a 'joke,' and you'll never see me show bad temper; but if any fellow tries it on with me because he fancies himself a swell, or has a handle to his name, he 'll soon discover his mistake. Old Culduff began that way. You 'd laugh if you saw how he floundered out of the swamp afterwards.”
“Tell us about it, Cutty,” said Jack, encouragingly.
“I beg to say I should prefer not hearing anything which might, even by inference, reflect on a person holding Lord Culduff's position in my profession,” said Temple, haughtily.
“Is that the quarter the wind 's in?” asked Cutbill, with a not very sober expression in his face.
“Sing us a song, Cutty. It will be better than all this sparring,” said Jack.
“What shall it be?” said Cutbill, seating himself at the piano, and running over the keys with no small skill. “Shall I describe my journey to Ireland?”
“By all means let's hear it,” said Augustus.
“I forget how it goes. Indeed, some verses I was making on the curate's sister have driven the others out of my head.”
Jack drew nigh, and leaning over his shoulder, whispered something in his ear.
“What!” cried Cutbill, starting up; “he says he'll pitch me neck and crop out of the window.”
“Not unless you deserve it—add that,” said Jack, sternly.
“I must have an apology for those words, sir. I shall insist on your recalling them, and expressing your sincere regret for having ever used them.”
“So you shall, Cutty. I completely forgot that this tower was ninety feet high; but I 'll pitch you downstairs, which will do as well.”
There was a terrible gleam of earnestness in Jack's eye as he spoke this laughingly, which appalled Cutbill far more than any bluster, and he stammered out, “Let us have no practical jokes; they're bad taste. You'd be a great fool, admiral”—this was a familiarity he occasionally used with Jack—“you 'd be a great fool to quarrel with me. I can do more with the fellows at Somerset House than most men going; and when the day comes that they 'll give you a command, and you 'll want twelve or fifteen hundred to set you afloat, Tom Cutbill is not the worst man to know in the City. Not to say, that if things go right down here, I could help you to something very snug in our mine. Won't we come out strong then, eh?”
Here he rattled over the keys once more; and after humming to himself for a second or two, burst out with a rattling merry air, to which he sung,—
“With crests on our harness and breechin,
In a carriage and four we shall roll,
With a splendid French cook in the kitchen,
If we only succeed to find coal,
Coal!
If we only are sure to find coal.”
“A barcarolle, I declare,” said Lord Culduff, entering. “It was a good inspiration led me up here.”
A jolly roar of laughter at his mistake welcomed him; and Cutty, with an aside, cried out, “He's deaf as a post,” and continued,—
“If we marry, we 'll marry a beauty,
If single we 'll try and control
Our tastes within limits of duty,
And make ourselves jolly with coal,
Coal!
And make ourselves jolly with coal.
“They may talk of the mines of Golcondar,
Or the shafts of Puebla del Sol;
But to fill a man's pocket, I wonder
If there's anything equal to coal,
Coal!
If there 's anything equal to coal.
“At Naples we 'll live on the Chiaja,
With our schooner-yacht close to the Mole,
And make daily picknickings to Baja,
If we only come down upon coal,
Coal!
If we only come down upon coal.”
“One of the fishermen's songs,” said Lord Culduff, as he beat time on the table. “I 've passed many a night on the Bay of Naples listening to them.”
And a wild tumultuous laugh now convulsed the company, and Cutbill, himself overwhelmed by the absurdity, rushed to the door, and made his escape without waiting for more.
CHAPTER XIII. AT THE COTTAGE.
Julia L'Estrange was busily engaged in arranging some flowers in certain vases in her little drawing-room, and, with a taste all her own, draping a small hanging lamp with creepers, when Jack Bramleigh appeared at the open window, and leaning on the sill, cried out, “Good-morning.”
“I came over to scold you, Julia,” said he. “It was very cruel of you to desert us last evening, and we had a most dreary time of it in consequence.”
“Come round and hold this chair for me, and don't talk nonsense.”
“And what are all these fine preparations for? You are decking out your room as if for a village fête,” said he, not moving from his place nor heeding her request.
“I fancy that young Frenchman who was here last night,” said she, saucily, “would have responded to my invitation if I had asked him to hold the chair I was standing on.”
“I've no doubt of it,” said he, gravely. “Frenchmen are vastly more gallant than we are.”
“Do you know, Jack,” said she again, “he is most amusing?”
“Very probably.”
“And has such a perfect accent; that sort of purring French one only hears from a Parisian?”
“I am charmed to hear it.”
“It charmed me to hear it, I assure you. One does so long for the sounds that recall bright scenes and pleasant people: one has such a zest for the most commonplace things that bring back the memory of very happy days.”
“What a lucky Frenchman to do all this!”
“What a lucky Irish girl to have met with him!” said she, gayly.
“And how did you come to know him, may I ask?”
“George had been several times over to inquire after him, and out of gratitude Count Pracontal,—I am not sure that he is count though, but it is of no moment,—made it a point to come here the first day he was able to drive out. Mr. Longworth drove him over in his pony carriage, and George was so pleased with them both that he asked them to tea last evening, and they dine here to-day.”
“Hence these decorations?”
“Precisely.”
“What a brilliant neighborhood we have! And there are people will tell you that this is all barbarism here.”
“Come over this evening, Jack, and hear M. Pracontal sing—he has a delicious tenor voice—and you 'll never believe in that story of barbarism again. We had quite a little 'salon' last night.”
“I must take your word for his attractive qualities,” said Jack, as his brow contracted and his face grew darker. “I thought your brother rather stood aloof from Mr. Longworth. I was scarcely prepared to hear of his inviting him here.”
“So he did; but he found him so different from what he expected—so quiet, so well-bred, that George, who always is in a hurry to make an 'amende' when he thinks he has wronged any one, actually rushed into acquaintance with him at once.”
“And his sister Julia,” asked Jack, with a look of impertinent irony, “was she, too, as impulsive in her friendship?”
“I think pretty much the same.”
“It must have been a charming party.”
“I flatter myself it was. They stayed till midnight; and M. Pracontal declared he'd break his other leg to-morrow if it would ensure him another such evening in his convalescence.”
“Fulsome rascal! I protest it lowers my opinion of women altogether when I think these are the fellows that always meet their favor.”
“Women would be very ungrateful if they did not like the people who try to please them. Now, certainly, as a rule, Jack, you will admit foreigners are somewhat more eager about this than you gentlemen of England.”
“I have about as much of this as I am likely to bear well from my distinguished stepmother,” said he, roughly, “so don't push my patience further.”
“What do you say to our little 'salon' now?” said she. “Have you ever seen ferns and variegated ivy disposed more tastefully?”
“I wish—I wish”—stammered he out, and then seemed unable to go on.
“And what do you wish?”
“I suppose I must not say it. You might feel offended besides.”
“Not a bit, Jack. I am sure it never could be your intention to offend me, and a mere blunder could not do so.”
“Well, I 'll go round and tell you what it is I wish,” and with this he entered the house and passed on into the drawing-room, and taking his place at one side of the fire, while she stood at the other, said seriously, “I was wishing, Julia, that you were less of a coquette.”
“You don't mean that?” said she, roguishly, dropping her long eyelashes, as she looked down immediately after.
“I mean it seriously, Julia. It is your one fault; but it is an immense one.”
“My dear Jack,” said she, very gravely, “you men are such churls that you are never grateful for any attempts to please you except they be limited strictly to yourselves. You would never have dared to call any little devices, by which I sought to amuse or interest you, coquetry, so long as they were only employed on your own behalf. My real offence is that I thought the world consisted of you and some others.”
“I am not your match in these sort of subtle discussions,” said he, bluntly, “but I know what I say is fact.”
“That I'm a coquette?” said she, with so much feigned horror that Jack could scarcely keep down the temptation to laugh.”
“Just so; for the mere pleasure of displaying some grace or some attraction, you 'd half kill a fellow with jealousy, or drive him clean mad with uncertainty. You insist on admiration—or what you call 'homage,' which I trust is only a French name for it—and what's the end of it all? You get plenty of this same homage; but—but—never mind. I suppose I'm a fool to talk this way. You 're laughing at me besides, all this while. I see it—I see it in your eyes.”
“I was n't laughing, Jack, I assure you. I was simply thinking that this discovery—I mean of my coquetry—was n't yours at all. Come, be frank and own it. Who told you I was a coquette, Jack?”
“You regard me as too dull-witted to have found it out, do you?”
“No, Jack. Too honest-hearted—too unsuspecting, too generous, to put an ill construction where a better one would do as well.”
“If you mean that there are others who agree with me, you're quite right.”
“And who may they be?” asked she, with a quiet smile. “Come, I have a right to know.”
“I don't see the right.”
“Certainly I have. It would be very ungenerous and very unjust to let me continue to exercise all those pleasing devices you have just stigmatized for the delectation of people who condemn them.”
“Oh, you could n't help that. You'd do it just to amuse yourself, as I 'm sure was the case yesterday, when you put forth all your captivations for that stupid old Viscount.”
“Did I?”
“Did you? You have the face to ask it?”
“I have, Jack. I have courage for even more, for I will ask you, was it not Marion said this? Was it not Marion who was so severe on all my little gracefulnesses? Well, you need not answer if you don't like. I 'll not press my question; but own, it is not fair for Marion, with every advantage, her beauty and her surroundings—”
“Her what?”
“Well, I would not use a French word; but I meant to say, those accessories which are represented by dress, and 'toilette'—not mean things in female estimation. With all these, why not have a little mercy for the poor curate's sister, reduced to enter the lists with very uncouth weapons?”
“You won't deny that Ellen loves you?” said he, suddenly.
“I 'd be sorry, very sorry, to doubt it; but she never said I was a coquette?”
“I 'm sure she knows you are,” said he, doggedly.
“Oh, Jack, I hope this is not the way you try people on court-martial?”
“It's the fairest way ever a fellow was tried; and if one does n't feel him guilty he 'd never condemn him.”
“I 'd rather people would feel less, and think a little more, if I was to be 'the accused,'” said she, half pettishly.
“You got that, Master Jack; that round shot was for you,” said he, not without some irritation in his tone.
“Well,” said she, good-humoredly, “I believe we are firing into each other this morning, and I declare I cannot see for what.”
“I 'll tell you, Julia. You grew very cross with me, because I accused you of being a coquette, a charge you 'd have thought pretty lightly of if you had n't known it was deserved.”
“Might there not have been another reason for the crossness, supposing it to have existed?” said she, quietly.
“I 'cannot imagine one; at least, I can't imagine what reason you point at.”
“Simply this,” said she, half carelessly, “that it could have been no part of your duty to have told me so.”
“You mean that it was a great liberty on my part—an unwarrantable liberty?”
“Something like it.”
“That the terms which existed between us”—and now he spoke with a tremulous voice, and a look of much agitation—“could not have warranted my daring to point out a fault, even in your manner; for I am sure, after all, your nature had nothing to do with it?”
She nodded, and was silent.
“That's pretty plain, anyhow,” said he, moving towards the table, where he had placed his hat. “It's a sharp lesson to give a fellow though, all the more when he was unprepared for it.”
“You forget that the first sharp lesson came from you.”
“All true; there 's no denying it.” He took up his hat as she spoke, and moved, half awkwardly, towards the window. “I had a message for you from the girls, if I could only remember it. Do you happen to guess what it was about?”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly as a negative, and was silent.
“I 'll be shot if I can think what it was,” muttered he; “the chances are, however, it was to ask you to do something or other, and as, in your present temper, that would be hopeless, it matters little that I have forgotten it.”
She made no answer to this speech, but quietly occupied herself arranging a braid of her hair that had just fallen down.
“Miss L'Estrange!” said he, in a haughty and somewhat bold tone.
“Mr. Bramleigh,” replied she, turning and facing him with perfect gravity, though her tremulous lip and sparkling eye showed what the effort to seem serious cost her.
“If you will condescend to be real, to be natural, for about a minute and a half, it may save us, or at least one of us, a world of trouble and unhappiness.”
“It 's not a very courteous supposition of yours that implies I am unreal or unnatural,” said she, calmly; “but no matter, go on; say what you desire to say, and you shall find me pretty attentive.”
“What I want to say is this, then,” said he, approaching where she stood, and leaning one arm on the chimney close to where her own arm was resting; “I wanted to tell—no, I wanted to ask you if the old relations between us are to be considered as bygone,—if I am to go away from this to-day believing that all I have ever said to you, all that you heard—for you did hear me, Julia—”
“Julia!” repeated she, in mock amazement. “What liberty is this, sir?” and she almost laughed out as she spoke.
“I knew well how it would be,” said he, angrily. “There is a heartless levity in your nature that nothing represses. I asked you to be serious for one brief instant.”
“And you shall find that I can,” said she, quickly. “If I have not been more so hitherto, it has been in mercy to yourself.”
“In mercy to me? To me! What do you mean?”
“Simply this. You came here to give me a lesson this morning. But it was at your sister's suggestion. It was her criticism that prompted you to the task. I read it all. I saw how ill prepared you were. You have mistaken some things, forgotten others; and, in fact, you showed me that you were far more anxious I should exculpate myself than that you yourself should be the victor. It was for this reason that I was really annoyed,—seriously annoyed, at what you said to me; and I called in what you are so polite as to style my 'levity' to help me through my difficulty. Now, however, you have made me serious enough; and it is in this mood I say, Don't charge yourself another time with such a mission. Reprove whatever you like, but let it come from yourself. Don't think light-heartedness—I 'll not say levity—bad in morals, because it may be bad in taste. There's a lesson for you, sir.” And she held out her hand as if in reconciliation.
“But you have n't answered my question, Julia,” said he, tremulously.
“And what was your question?”
“I asked you if the past—if all that had taken place between us—was to be now forgotten?”
“I declare here is George,” said she, bounding towards the window and opening it. “What a splendid fish, George! Did you take it yourself?”
“Yes, and he cost me the top joint of my rod; and I'd have lost him after all if Lafferty had not waded out and landed him. I 'm between two minds, Julia, whether I 'll send him up to the Bramleighs.”
She put her finger to her lip to impose caution, and said, “The admiral,”—the nickname by which Jack was known—“is here.”
“All right,” replied L'Estrange. “We'll try and keep him for dinner, and eat the fish at home.” He entered as he spoke. “Where 's Jack. Did n't you say he was here?”
“So he was when I spoke. He must have slipped away without my seeing it. He is really gone.”
“I hear he is gazetted; appointed to some ship on a foreign station. Did he tell you of it?”
“Not a word. Indeed, he had little time, for we did nothing but squabble since he came in.”
“It was Harding told me. He said that Jack did not seem overjoyed at his good luck; and declared that he was not quite sure he would accept it.”
“Indeed,” said she, thoughtfully.
“That's not the only news. Colonel Bramleigh was summoned to town by a telegram this morning, but what about I did n't hear. If Harding knew—and I 'm not sure that he did—he was too discreet to tell. But I am not at the end of my tidings. It seems they have discovered coal on Lord Culduff's estate, and a great share company is going to be formed, and untold wealth to be distributed amongst the subscribers.”
“I wonder why Jack did not tell me he was going away?” said she.
“Perhaps he does not intend to go; perhaps the Colonel has gone up to try and get something better for him; perhaps—”
“Any perhaps will do, George,” said she, like one willing to change the theme. “What do you say to my decorations? Have you no compliments to make me on my exquisite taste?”
“Harding certainly thinks well of it,” said he, not heeding her question.
“Thinks well of what, George?”
“He's a shrewd fellow,” continued he; “and if he deems the investment good enough to venture his own money in, I suspect, Ju, we might risk ours.”
“I wish you would tell me what you are talking about; for all this is a perfect riddle to me.”
“It 's about vesting your two thousand pounds, Julia, which now return about seventy pounds a year, in the coal speculation. That's what I am thinking of. Harding says, that taking a very low estimate of the success, there ought to be a profit on the shares of fifteen per cent. In fact, he said he wouldn't go into it himself for less.”
“Why, George, why did he say this? Is there anything wrong or immoral about coal?”
“Try and be serious for one moment, Ju,” said he, with a slight touch of irritation in his voice. “What Harding evidently meant was, that a speculative enterprise was not to be deemed good if it yielded less. These shrewd men, I believe, never lay out their money without large profit.”
“And, my dear George, why come and consult me about these things? Can you imagine more hopeless ignorance than mine must be on all such questions?”
“You can understand that a sum of money yielding three hundred a year is more profitably employed than when it only returned seventy.”
“Yes; I think my intelligence can rise to that height.”
“And you can estimate, also, what increase of comfort we should have if our present income were to be more than doubled—which it would be in this way.”
“I'd deem it positive affluence, George.”
“That's all I want you to comprehend. The next question is to get Vickars to consent; he is the surviving trustee, and you'll have to write to him, Ju. It will come better from you than me, and say—what you can say with a safe conscience—that we are miserably poor, and that, though we pinch and save in every way we can, there's no reaching the end of the year without a deficit in the budget.”
“I used that unlucky phrase once before, George, and he replied, 'Why don't you cut down the estimates?'”
“I know he did. The old curmudgeon meant I should sell Nora, and he has a son, a gentleman commoner at Cambridge, that spends more in wine-parties than our whole income.”
“But it 's his own, George. It is not our money he is wasting.”
“Of course it is not; but does that exempt him from all comment? Not that it matters to us, however,” added he, in a lighter tone. “Sit down, and try what you can do with the old fellow. You used to be a great pet of his once on a time.”
“Yes, he went so far as to say that if I had even twenty thousand pounds, he did n't know a girl he 'd rather have for a daughter-in-law.”
“He did n't tell you that, Ju?” said L'Estrange, growing almost purple with shame and rage together.
“I pledge you my word he said it.”
“And what did you say? What did you do?”
“I wiped my eyes with my handkerchief, and told him it was for the first time in my life I felt the misery of being poor.”
“And I wager that you burst out laughing.”
“I did, George. I laughed till my sides ached. I laughed till he rushed out of the room in a fit of passion, and I declare, I don't think he ever spoke ten words to me after.”
“This gives me scant hope of your chance of success with him.”
“I don't know, George. All this happened ten months ago, when he came down here for the snipe-shooting. He may have forgiven, or better still, forgotten it. In any case, tell me exactly what I 'm to write, and I 'll see what I can do with him.”
“You're to say that your brother has just heard from a person, in whom he places the most perfect confidence, say Harding in short—Colonel Bramleigh's agent—that an enterprise which will shortly be opened here offers an admirable opportunity of investment, and that as your small fortune in Consols—”
“In what?”
“No matter. Say that as your two thousand pounds—which now yield an interest of seventy, could secure you an income fully four times that sum, you hope he will give his consent to withdraw the money from the Funds, and employ it in this speculation. I 'd not say speculation, I 'd call it mine at once—coal-mine.”
“But if I own this money, why must I ask Mr. Vickars' leave to make use of it as I please?”
“He is your trustee, and the law gives him this power, Ju, till you are nineteen, which you will not be till May next.”
“He'll scarcely be disagreeable, when his opposition must end in five months.”
“That's what I think too, but before that five months run over the share list may be filled, and these debentures be probably double the present price.”
“I 'm not sure I understand your reasoning, but I 'll go and write my letter, and you shall see if I have said all that you wished.”
CHAPTER XIV. OFFICIAL CONFIDENCES.
Lord Culduff accompanied Colonel Bramleigh to town. He wanted a renewal of his leave, and deemed it better to see the head of the department in person than to address a formal demand to the office. Colonel Bramleigh, too, thought that his Lordship's presence might be useful when the day of action had arrived respecting the share company—a lord in the City having as palpable a value as the most favorable news that ever sent up the Funds.
When they reached London they separated, Bramleigh taking up his quarters in the Burlington, while Lord Culduff—on pretence of running down to some noble duke's villa near Richmond—snugly installed himself in a very modest lodging off St. James's Street, where a former valet acted as his cook and landlord, and on days of dining out assisted at the wonderful toilet, whose success was alike the marvel and the envy of Culduff s contemporaries.
Though a man of several clubs, his Lordship's favorite haunt was a small unimposing-looking house close to St. James's Square, called the “Plenipo.” Its members were all diplomatists, nothing below the head of a mission being eligible for ballot. A Masonic mystery pervaded all the doings of that austere temple, whose dinners were reported to be exquisite, and whose cellar had such a fame that “Plenipo Lafitte” had a European reputation.
Now, veteran asylums have many things recommendatory about them, but from Greenwich and the Invalides downwards there is one especial vice that clings to them—they are haunts of everlasting complaint. The men who frequent them all belong to the past, their sympathies, their associations, their triumphs and successes, all pertain to the bygone. Harping eternally over the frivolity, the emptiness, and sometimes the vulgarity of the present, they urge each other on to most exaggerated notions of the time when they were young, and a deprecatory estimate of the world then around them.
It is not alone that the days of good dinners and good conversation have passed away, but even good manners have gone, and more strangely too, good looks. “I protest you don't see such women now”—one of these bewigged and rouged old debauchees would say, as he gazed at the slow procession moving on to a drawing-room, and his compeers would concur with him, and wonderingly declare that the thing was inexplicable.
In the sombre-looking breakfast-room of this austere temple, Lord Culduff sat reading the “Times.” A mild, soft rain was falling without; the water dripping tepid and dirty through the heavy canopy of a London fog; and a large coal fire blazed within—that fierce furnace which seems so congenial to English taste; not impossibly because it recalls the factory and the smelting-house—the “sacred fire” that seems to inspire patriotism by the suggestion of industry.
Two or three others sat at tables through the room, all so wonderfully alike in dress, feature, and general appearance, that they almost seemed reproductions of the same figure by a series of mirrors; but they were priests of the same “caste,” whose forms of thought and expression were precisely the same; and thus as they dropped their scant remarks on the topics of the day, there was not an observation or a phrase of one that might not have fallen from any of the others.
“So,” cried one, “they 're going to send the Grand Cross to the Duke of Hochmaringen. That will be a special mission. I wonder who 'll get it?”
“Cloudesley, I'd say,” observed another; “he's always on the watch for anything that comes into the 'extraordinaries.'”
“It will not be Cloudesley,” said a third. “He stayed away a year and eight months when they sent him to Tripoli, and there was a rare jaw about it for the estimates.”
“Hochmaringen is near Baden, and not a bad place for the summer,” said Culduff. “The duchess, I think, was daughter of the margravine.”
“Niece, not daughter,” said a stern-looking man, who never turned his eyes from his newspaper.
“Niece or daughter, it matters little which,” said Culduff, irritated at correction on such a point.
“I protest I 'd rather take a turn in South Africa,” cried another, “than accept one of those missions to Central Germany.”
“You 're right, Upton,” said a voice from the end of the room; “the cookery is insufferable.”
“And the hours. You retire to bed at ten.”
“And the ceremonial. Blounte never threw off the lumbago he got from bowing at the court of Bratensdorf.”
“They 're ignoble sort of things, at the best, and should never be imposed on diplomatic men. These investitures should always be entrusted to court functionaries,” said Culduff, haughtily. “If I were at the head of F. O., I'd refuse to charge one of the 'line' with such a mission.”
And now something that almost verged on an animated discussion ensued as to what was and what was not the real province of diplomacy; a majority inclining to the opinion that it was derogatory to the high dignity of the calling to meddle with what, at best, was the function of the mere courtier.
“Is that Culduff driving away in that cab?” cried one, as he stood at the window.
“He has carried away my hat, I see, by mistake,” said another. “What is he up to at this hour of the morning?”
“I think I can guess,” said the grim individual who had corrected him in the matter of genealogy; “he's off to F. O. to ask for the special mission he has just declared that none of us should stoop to accept.”
“You 've hit it, Grindesley,” cried another. “I 'll wager a pony you 're right.”
“It's so like him.”
“After all, it's the sort of thing he's best up to. La Ferronaye told me he was the best master of the ceremonies in Europe.”
“Why come amongst us at all, then? Why not get himself made a gold-stick, and follow the instincts of his genius?”
“Well, I believe he wants it badly,” said one who affected a tone of half kindliness. “They tell me he has not eight hundred a year left him.”
“Not four. I doubt if he could lay claim to three.”