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.