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.”