The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

“A barcarolle, I declare,” said Lord Culduff, entering. “It was a good inspiration led me up here.”

A jolly roar of laughter at his mistake welcomed him; and Cutty, with an aside, cried out, “He's deaf as a post,” and continued,—

“One of the fishermen's songs,” said Lord Culduff, as he beat time on the table. “I 've passed many a night on the Bay of Naples listening to them.”

And a wild tumultuous laugh now convulsed the company, and Cutbill, himself overwhelmed by the absurdity, rushed to the door, and made his escape without waiting for more.

CHAPTER XIII. AT THE COTTAGE.

Julia L'Estrange was busily engaged in arranging some flowers in certain vases in her little drawing-room, and, with a taste all her own, draping a small hanging lamp with creepers, when Jack Bramleigh appeared at the open window, and leaning on the sill, cried out, “Good-morning.”

“I came over to scold you, Julia,” said he. “It was very cruel of you to desert us last evening, and we had a most dreary time of it in consequence.”

“Come round and hold this chair for me, and don't talk nonsense.”

“And what are all these fine preparations for? You are decking out your room as if for a village fête,” said he, not moving from his place nor heeding her request.

“I fancy that young Frenchman who was here last night,” said she, saucily, “would have responded to my invitation if I had asked him to hold the chair I was standing on.”

“I've no doubt of it,” said he, gravely. “Frenchmen are vastly more gallant than we are.”

“Do you know, Jack,” said she again, “he is most amusing?”

“Very probably.”

“And has such a perfect accent; that sort of purring French one only hears from a Parisian?”

“I am charmed to hear it.”

“It charmed me to hear it, I assure you. One does so long for the sounds that recall bright scenes and pleasant people: one has such a zest for the most commonplace things that bring back the memory of very happy days.”

“What a lucky Frenchman to do all this!”

“What a lucky Irish girl to have met with him!” said she, gayly.

“And how did you come to know him, may I ask?”

“George had been several times over to inquire after him, and out of gratitude Count Pracontal,—I am not sure that he is count though, but it is of no moment,—made it a point to come here the first day he was able to drive out. Mr. Longworth drove him over in his pony carriage, and George was so pleased with them both that he asked them to tea last evening, and they dine here to-day.”

“Hence these decorations?”

“Precisely.”

“What a brilliant neighborhood we have! And there are people will tell you that this is all barbarism here.”

“Come over this evening, Jack, and hear M. Pracontal sing—he has a delicious tenor voice—and you 'll never believe in that story of barbarism again. We had quite a little 'salon' last night.”

“I must take your word for his attractive qualities,” said Jack, as his brow contracted and his face grew darker. “I thought your brother rather stood aloof from Mr. Longworth. I was scarcely prepared to hear of his inviting him here.”

“So he did; but he found him so different from what he expected—so quiet, so well-bred, that George, who always is in a hurry to make an 'amende' when he thinks he has wronged any one, actually rushed into acquaintance with him at once.”

“And his sister Julia,” asked Jack, with a look of impertinent irony, “was she, too, as impulsive in her friendship?”

“I think pretty much the same.”

“It must have been a charming party.”

“I flatter myself it was. They stayed till midnight; and M. Pracontal declared he'd break his other leg to-morrow if it would ensure him another such evening in his convalescence.”

“Fulsome rascal! I protest it lowers my opinion of women altogether when I think these are the fellows that always meet their favor.”

“Women would be very ungrateful if they did not like the people who try to please them. Now, certainly, as a rule, Jack, you will admit foreigners are somewhat more eager about this than you gentlemen of England.”

“I have about as much of this as I am likely to bear well from my distinguished stepmother,” said he, roughly, “so don't push my patience further.”

“What do you say to our little 'salon' now?” said she. “Have you ever seen ferns and variegated ivy disposed more tastefully?”

“I wish—I wish”—stammered he out, and then seemed unable to go on.

“And what do you wish?”

“I suppose I must not say it. You might feel offended besides.”

“Not a bit, Jack. I am sure it never could be your intention to offend me, and a mere blunder could not do so.”

“Well, I 'll go round and tell you what it is I wish,” and with this he entered the house and passed on into the drawing-room, and taking his place at one side of the fire, while she stood at the other, said seriously, “I was wishing, Julia, that you were less of a coquette.”

“You don't mean that?” said she, roguishly, dropping her long eyelashes, as she looked down immediately after.

“I mean it seriously, Julia. It is your one fault; but it is an immense one.”

“My dear Jack,” said she, very gravely, “you men are such churls that you are never grateful for any attempts to please you except they be limited strictly to yourselves. You would never have dared to call any little devices, by which I sought to amuse or interest you, coquetry, so long as they were only employed on your own behalf. My real offence is that I thought the world consisted of you and some others.”

“I am not your match in these sort of subtle discussions,” said he, bluntly, “but I know what I say is fact.”

“That I'm a coquette?” said she, with so much feigned horror that Jack could scarcely keep down the temptation to laugh.”

“Just so; for the mere pleasure of displaying some grace or some attraction, you 'd half kill a fellow with jealousy, or drive him clean mad with uncertainty. You insist on admiration—or what you call 'homage,' which I trust is only a French name for it—and what's the end of it all? You get plenty of this same homage; but—but—never mind. I suppose I'm a fool to talk this way. You 're laughing at me besides, all this while. I see it—I see it in your eyes.”

“I was n't laughing, Jack, I assure you. I was simply thinking that this discovery—I mean of my coquetry—was n't yours at all. Come, be frank and own it. Who told you I was a coquette, Jack?”

“You regard me as too dull-witted to have found it out, do you?”

“No, Jack. Too honest-hearted—too unsuspecting, too generous, to put an ill construction where a better one would do as well.”

“If you mean that there are others who agree with me, you're quite right.”

“And who may they be?” asked she, with a quiet smile. “Come, I have a right to know.”

“I don't see the right.”

“Certainly I have. It would be very ungenerous and very unjust to let me continue to exercise all those pleasing devices you have just stigmatized for the delectation of people who condemn them.”

“Oh, you could n't help that. You'd do it just to amuse yourself, as I 'm sure was the case yesterday, when you put forth all your captivations for that stupid old Viscount.”

“Did I?”

“Did you? You have the face to ask it?”

“I have, Jack. I have courage for even more, for I will ask you, was it not Marion said this? Was it not Marion who was so severe on all my little gracefulnesses? Well, you need not answer if you don't like. I 'll not press my question; but own, it is not fair for Marion, with every advantage, her beauty and her surroundings—”

“Her what?”

“Well, I would not use a French word; but I meant to say, those accessories which are represented by dress, and 'toilette'—not mean things in female estimation. With all these, why not have a little mercy for the poor curate's sister, reduced to enter the lists with very uncouth weapons?”

“You won't deny that Ellen loves you?” said he, suddenly.

“I 'd be sorry, very sorry, to doubt it; but she never said I was a coquette?”

“I 'm sure she knows you are,” said he, doggedly.

“Oh, Jack, I hope this is not the way you try people on court-martial?”

“It's the fairest way ever a fellow was tried; and if one does n't feel him guilty he 'd never condemn him.”

“I 'd rather people would feel less, and think a little more, if I was to be 'the accused,'” said she, half pettishly.

“You got that, Master Jack; that round shot was for you,” said he, not without some irritation in his tone.

“Well,” said she, good-humoredly, “I believe we are firing into each other this morning, and I declare I cannot see for what.”

“I 'll tell you, Julia. You grew very cross with me, because I accused you of being a coquette, a charge you 'd have thought pretty lightly of if you had n't known it was deserved.”

“Might there not have been another reason for the crossness, supposing it to have existed?” said she, quietly.

“I 'cannot imagine one; at least, I can't imagine what reason you point at.”

“Simply this,” said she, half carelessly, “that it could have been no part of your duty to have told me so.”

“You mean that it was a great liberty on my part—an unwarrantable liberty?”

“Something like it.”

“That the terms which existed between us”—and now he spoke with a tremulous voice, and a look of much agitation—“could not have warranted my daring to point out a fault, even in your manner; for I am sure, after all, your nature had nothing to do with it?”

She nodded, and was silent.

“That's pretty plain, anyhow,” said he, moving towards the table, where he had placed his hat. “It's a sharp lesson to give a fellow though, all the more when he was unprepared for it.”

“You forget that the first sharp lesson came from you.”

“All true; there 's no denying it.” He took up his hat as she spoke, and moved, half awkwardly, towards the window. “I had a message for you from the girls, if I could only remember it. Do you happen to guess what it was about?”

She shrugged her shoulders slightly as a negative, and was silent.

“I 'll be shot if I can think what it was,” muttered he; “the chances are, however, it was to ask you to do something or other, and as, in your present temper, that would be hopeless, it matters little that I have forgotten it.”

She made no answer to this speech, but quietly occupied herself arranging a braid of her hair that had just fallen down.

“Miss L'Estrange!” said he, in a haughty and somewhat bold tone.

“Mr. Bramleigh,” replied she, turning and facing him with perfect gravity, though her tremulous lip and sparkling eye showed what the effort to seem serious cost her.

“If you will condescend to be real, to be natural, for about a minute and a half, it may save us, or at least one of us, a world of trouble and unhappiness.”

“It 's not a very courteous supposition of yours that implies I am unreal or unnatural,” said she, calmly; “but no matter, go on; say what you desire to say, and you shall find me pretty attentive.”

“What I want to say is this, then,” said he, approaching where she stood, and leaning one arm on the chimney close to where her own arm was resting; “I wanted to tell—no, I wanted to ask you if the old relations between us are to be considered as bygone,—if I am to go away from this to-day believing that all I have ever said to you, all that you heard—for you did hear me, Julia—”

“Julia!” repeated she, in mock amazement. “What liberty is this, sir?” and she almost laughed out as she spoke.

“I knew well how it would be,” said he, angrily. “There is a heartless levity in your nature that nothing represses. I asked you to be serious for one brief instant.”

“And you shall find that I can,” said she, quickly. “If I have not been more so hitherto, it has been in mercy to yourself.”

“In mercy to me? To me! What do you mean?”

“Simply this. You came here to give me a lesson this morning. But it was at your sister's suggestion. It was her criticism that prompted you to the task. I read it all. I saw how ill prepared you were. You have mistaken some things, forgotten others; and, in fact, you showed me that you were far more anxious I should exculpate myself than that you yourself should be the victor. It was for this reason that I was really annoyed,—seriously annoyed, at what you said to me; and I called in what you are so polite as to style my 'levity' to help me through my difficulty. Now, however, you have made me serious enough; and it is in this mood I say, Don't charge yourself another time with such a mission. Reprove whatever you like, but let it come from yourself. Don't think light-heartedness—I 'll not say levity—bad in morals, because it may be bad in taste. There's a lesson for you, sir.” And she held out her hand as if in reconciliation.

“But you have n't answered my question, Julia,” said he, tremulously.

“And what was your question?”

“I asked you if the past—if all that had taken place between us—was to be now forgotten?”

“I declare here is George,” said she, bounding towards the window and opening it. “What a splendid fish, George! Did you take it yourself?”

“Yes, and he cost me the top joint of my rod; and I'd have lost him after all if Lafferty had not waded out and landed him. I 'm between two minds, Julia, whether I 'll send him up to the Bramleighs.”

She put her finger to her lip to impose caution, and said, “The admiral,”—the nickname by which Jack was known—“is here.”

“All right,” replied L'Estrange. “We'll try and keep him for dinner, and eat the fish at home.” He entered as he spoke. “Where 's Jack. Did n't you say he was here?”

“So he was when I spoke. He must have slipped away without my seeing it. He is really gone.”

“I hear he is gazetted; appointed to some ship on a foreign station. Did he tell you of it?”

“Not a word. Indeed, he had little time, for we did nothing but squabble since he came in.”

“It was Harding told me. He said that Jack did not seem overjoyed at his good luck; and declared that he was not quite sure he would accept it.”

“Indeed,” said she, thoughtfully.

“That's not the only news. Colonel Bramleigh was summoned to town by a telegram this morning, but what about I did n't hear. If Harding knew—and I 'm not sure that he did—he was too discreet to tell. But I am not at the end of my tidings. It seems they have discovered coal on Lord Culduff's estate, and a great share company is going to be formed, and untold wealth to be distributed amongst the subscribers.”

“I wonder why Jack did not tell me he was going away?” said she.

“Perhaps he does not intend to go; perhaps the Colonel has gone up to try and get something better for him; perhaps—”

“Any perhaps will do, George,” said she, like one willing to change the theme. “What do you say to my decorations? Have you no compliments to make me on my exquisite taste?”

“Harding certainly thinks well of it,” said he, not heeding her question.

“Thinks well of what, George?”

“He's a shrewd fellow,” continued he; “and if he deems the investment good enough to venture his own money in, I suspect, Ju, we might risk ours.”

“I wish you would tell me what you are talking about; for all this is a perfect riddle to me.”

“It 's about vesting your two thousand pounds, Julia, which now return about seventy pounds a year, in the coal speculation. That's what I am thinking of. Harding says, that taking a very low estimate of the success, there ought to be a profit on the shares of fifteen per cent. In fact, he said he wouldn't go into it himself for less.”

“Why, George, why did he say this? Is there anything wrong or immoral about coal?”

“Try and be serious for one moment, Ju,” said he, with a slight touch of irritation in his voice. “What Harding evidently meant was, that a speculative enterprise was not to be deemed good if it yielded less. These shrewd men, I believe, never lay out their money without large profit.”

“And, my dear George, why come and consult me about these things? Can you imagine more hopeless ignorance than mine must be on all such questions?”

“You can understand that a sum of money yielding three hundred a year is more profitably employed than when it only returned seventy.”

“Yes; I think my intelligence can rise to that height.”

“And you can estimate, also, what increase of comfort we should have if our present income were to be more than doubled—which it would be in this way.”

“I'd deem it positive affluence, George.”

“That's all I want you to comprehend. The next question is to get Vickars to consent; he is the surviving trustee, and you'll have to write to him, Ju. It will come better from you than me, and say—what you can say with a safe conscience—that we are miserably poor, and that, though we pinch and save in every way we can, there's no reaching the end of the year without a deficit in the budget.”

“I used that unlucky phrase once before, George, and he replied, 'Why don't you cut down the estimates?'”

“I know he did. The old curmudgeon meant I should sell Nora, and he has a son, a gentleman commoner at Cambridge, that spends more in wine-parties than our whole income.”

“But it 's his own, George. It is not our money he is wasting.”

“Of course it is not; but does that exempt him from all comment? Not that it matters to us, however,” added he, in a lighter tone. “Sit down, and try what you can do with the old fellow. You used to be a great pet of his once on a time.”

“Yes, he went so far as to say that if I had even twenty thousand pounds, he did n't know a girl he 'd rather have for a daughter-in-law.”

“He did n't tell you that, Ju?” said L'Estrange, growing almost purple with shame and rage together.

“I pledge you my word he said it.”

“And what did you say? What did you do?”

“I wiped my eyes with my handkerchief, and told him it was for the first time in my life I felt the misery of being poor.”

“And I wager that you burst out laughing.”

“I did, George. I laughed till my sides ached. I laughed till he rushed out of the room in a fit of passion, and I declare, I don't think he ever spoke ten words to me after.”

“This gives me scant hope of your chance of success with him.”

“I don't know, George. All this happened ten months ago, when he came down here for the snipe-shooting. He may have forgiven, or better still, forgotten it. In any case, tell me exactly what I 'm to write, and I 'll see what I can do with him.”

“You're to say that your brother has just heard from a person, in whom he places the most perfect confidence, say Harding in short—Colonel Bramleigh's agent—that an enterprise which will shortly be opened here offers an admirable opportunity of investment, and that as your small fortune in Consols—”

“In what?”

“No matter. Say that as your two thousand pounds—which now yield an interest of seventy, could secure you an income fully four times that sum, you hope he will give his consent to withdraw the money from the Funds, and employ it in this speculation. I 'd not say speculation, I 'd call it mine at once—coal-mine.”

“But if I own this money, why must I ask Mr. Vickars' leave to make use of it as I please?”

“He is your trustee, and the law gives him this power, Ju, till you are nineteen, which you will not be till May next.”

“He'll scarcely be disagreeable, when his opposition must end in five months.”

“That's what I think too, but before that five months run over the share list may be filled, and these debentures be probably double the present price.”

“I 'm not sure I understand your reasoning, but I 'll go and write my letter, and you shall see if I have said all that you wished.”

CHAPTER XIV. OFFICIAL CONFIDENCES.

Lord Culduff accompanied Colonel Bramleigh to town. He wanted a renewal of his leave, and deemed it better to see the head of the department in person than to address a formal demand to the office. Colonel Bramleigh, too, thought that his Lordship's presence might be useful when the day of action had arrived respecting the share company—a lord in the City having as palpable a value as the most favorable news that ever sent up the Funds.

When they reached London they separated, Bramleigh taking up his quarters in the Burlington, while Lord Culduff—on pretence of running down to some noble duke's villa near Richmond—snugly installed himself in a very modest lodging off St. James's Street, where a former valet acted as his cook and landlord, and on days of dining out assisted at the wonderful toilet, whose success was alike the marvel and the envy of Culduff s contemporaries.

Though a man of several clubs, his Lordship's favorite haunt was a small unimposing-looking house close to St. James's Square, called the “Plenipo.” Its members were all diplomatists, nothing below the head of a mission being eligible for ballot. A Masonic mystery pervaded all the doings of that austere temple, whose dinners were reported to be exquisite, and whose cellar had such a fame that “Plenipo Lafitte” had a European reputation.

Now, veteran asylums have many things recommendatory about them, but from Greenwich and the Invalides downwards there is one especial vice that clings to them—they are haunts of everlasting complaint. The men who frequent them all belong to the past, their sympathies, their associations, their triumphs and successes, all pertain to the bygone. Harping eternally over the frivolity, the emptiness, and sometimes the vulgarity of the present, they urge each other on to most exaggerated notions of the time when they were young, and a deprecatory estimate of the world then around them.

It is not alone that the days of good dinners and good conversation have passed away, but even good manners have gone, and more strangely too, good looks. “I protest you don't see such women now”—one of these bewigged and rouged old debauchees would say, as he gazed at the slow procession moving on to a drawing-room, and his compeers would concur with him, and wonderingly declare that the thing was inexplicable.

In the sombre-looking breakfast-room of this austere temple, Lord Culduff sat reading the “Times.” A mild, soft rain was falling without; the water dripping tepid and dirty through the heavy canopy of a London fog; and a large coal fire blazed within—that fierce furnace which seems so congenial to English taste; not impossibly because it recalls the factory and the smelting-house—the “sacred fire” that seems to inspire patriotism by the suggestion of industry.

Two or three others sat at tables through the room, all so wonderfully alike in dress, feature, and general appearance, that they almost seemed reproductions of the same figure by a series of mirrors; but they were priests of the same “caste,” whose forms of thought and expression were precisely the same; and thus as they dropped their scant remarks on the topics of the day, there was not an observation or a phrase of one that might not have fallen from any of the others.

“So,” cried one, “they 're going to send the Grand Cross to the Duke of Hochmaringen. That will be a special mission. I wonder who 'll get it?”

“Cloudesley, I'd say,” observed another; “he's always on the watch for anything that comes into the 'extraordinaries.'”

“It will not be Cloudesley,” said a third. “He stayed away a year and eight months when they sent him to Tripoli, and there was a rare jaw about it for the estimates.”

“Hochmaringen is near Baden, and not a bad place for the summer,” said Culduff. “The duchess, I think, was daughter of the margravine.”

“Niece, not daughter,” said a stern-looking man, who never turned his eyes from his newspaper.

“Niece or daughter, it matters little which,” said Culduff, irritated at correction on such a point.

“I protest I 'd rather take a turn in South Africa,” cried another, “than accept one of those missions to Central Germany.”

“You 're right, Upton,” said a voice from the end of the room; “the cookery is insufferable.”

“And the hours. You retire to bed at ten.”

“And the ceremonial. Blounte never threw off the lumbago he got from bowing at the court of Bratensdorf.”

“They 're ignoble sort of things, at the best, and should never be imposed on diplomatic men. These investitures should always be entrusted to court functionaries,” said Culduff, haughtily. “If I were at the head of F. O., I'd refuse to charge one of the 'line' with such a mission.”

And now something that almost verged on an animated discussion ensued as to what was and what was not the real province of diplomacy; a majority inclining to the opinion that it was derogatory to the high dignity of the calling to meddle with what, at best, was the function of the mere courtier.

“Is that Culduff driving away in that cab?” cried one, as he stood at the window.

“He has carried away my hat, I see, by mistake,” said another. “What is he up to at this hour of the morning?”

“I think I can guess,” said the grim individual who had corrected him in the matter of genealogy; “he's off to F. O. to ask for the special mission he has just declared that none of us should stoop to accept.”

“You 've hit it, Grindesley,” cried another. “I 'll wager a pony you 're right.”

“It's so like him.”

“After all, it's the sort of thing he's best up to. La Ferronaye told me he was the best master of the ceremonies in Europe.”

“Why come amongst us at all, then? Why not get himself made a gold-stick, and follow the instincts of his genius?”

“Well, I believe he wants it badly,” said one who affected a tone of half kindliness. “They tell me he has not eight hundred a year left him.”

“Not four. I doubt if he could lay claim to three.”

“He never had in his best day above four or five thousand, though he tells you of his twenty-seven or twenty-eight.”

“He had originally about six; but he always lived at the rate of twelve or fifteen, and in mere ostentation too.”

“So I 've always heard.” And then there followed a number of little anecdotes of Culduff's selfishness, his avarice, his meanness, and such like, told with such exactitude as to show that every act of these men's lives was scrupulously watched, and when occasion offered mercilessly recorded.

While they thus sat in judgment over him, Lord Culduff himself was seated at a fire in a dingy old room in Downing Street, the Chief Secretary for Foreign Affairs opposite him. They were talking in a tone of easy familiarity, as men might who occupied the same social station, a certain air of superiority, however, being always apparent in the manner of the Minister towards the subordinate.

“I don't think you can ask for this, Culduff,” said the great man, as he puffed his cigar tranquilly in front of him. “You've had three of these special missions already.”

“And for the simple reason that I was the one man in England who knew how to do them.”

“We don't dispute the way you did them; we only say all the prizes in the wheel should not fall to the same man.”

“You have had my proxy for the last five years.”

“And we have acknowledged the support—acknowledged it by more than professions.”

“I can only say this, that if I had been with the other side, I 'd have met somewhat different treatment.”

“Don't believe it, Culduff. Every party that is in power inherits its share of obligations. We have never disowned those we owe to you.”

“And why am I refused this, then?”

“If you wanted other reasons than those I have given you, I might be able to adduce them—not willingly indeed—but under pressure, and especially in strict confidence.” “Reasons against my having the mission?”

“Reasons against your having the mission.”

“You amaze me, my Lord. I almost doubt that I have heard you aright I must, however, insist on your explaining yourself. Am I to understand that there are personal grounds of unfitness?”

The other bowed in assent.

“Have the kindness to let me know them.”

“First of all, Culduff, this is to be a family mission—the duchess is a connection of our own royal house—and a certain degree of display and consequent expense will be required. Your fortune does not admit of this.”

“Push on to the more cogent reason, my Lord,” said Culduff, stiffly.

“Here, then, is the more cogent reason. The court has not forgotten—what possibly the world may have forgotten—some of those passages in your life for which you, perhaps, have no other remorse than that they are not likely to recur; and as you have given no hostages for good behavior, in the shape of a wife, the court, I say, is sure to veto your appointment. You see it all as clearly as I do.”

“So far as I do see,” said Culduff, slowly: “the first objection is my want of fortune, the second, my want of a wife?”

“Exactly so.”

“Well, my Lord, I am able to meet each of these obstacles; my agent has just discovered coal on one of my Irish estates, and I am now in town to make arrangements on a large scale to develop the source of wealth. As to the second disability, I shall pledge myself to present the Viscountess Culduff at the next drawing-room.”

“Married already?”

“No, but I may be within a few weeks. In fact, I mean to place myself in such a position, that no one holding your office can pass me over by a pretext, or affect to ignore my claim by affirming that I labor under a disability.”

“This sounds like menace, does it not?” said the other as he threw his cigar impatiently from him.

“A mere protocol, my Lord, to denote intention.”

“Well, I'll submit your name. I'll go further,—I'll support it. Don't leave town for a day or two. Call on Beadlesworth and see Repsley; tell him what you 've said to me. If you could promise it was one of his old maiden sisters that you thought of making Lady Culduff, the thing could be clenched at once. But I take it you have other views?”

“I have other views,” said he, gravely.

“I'm not indiscreet, and I shall not ask you more on that head. By the way, is n't your leave up, or nearly up?”

“It expired on Wednesday last, and I want it renewed for two months.”

“Of course, if we send you on this mission, you 'll not want the leave. I had something else to say. What was it?”

“I have not the very vaguest idea.”

“Oh! I remember. It was to recommend you not to take your wife from the stage. There's a strong prejudice in a certain quarter as to that—in fact, I may say it couldn't be got over.”

“I may relieve you of any apprehensions on that score. Indeed, I don't know what fact in my life should expose me to the mere suspicion.”

“Nothing, nothing—except that impulsive generosity of your disposition, which might lead you to do what other men would stop short to count the cost of.”

“It would never lead me to derogate, my Lord,” said he, proudly, as he took his hat, and bowing haughtily left the room.

“The greatest ass in the whole career, and the word is a bold one,” said the Minister, as the door closed. “Meanwhile, I must send in his name for this mission, which he is fully equal to. What a happy arrangement it is, that in an age when our flunkies aspire to be gentlemen, there are gentlemen who ask nothing better than to be flunkies!”

CHAPTER XV. WITH HIS LAWYER.

Though Colonel Bramleigh's visit to town was supposed to be in furtherance of that speculation by which Lord Culduff calculated on wealth and splendor, he had really another object, and while Culduff imagined him to be busy in the City, and deep in shares and stock lists, he was closely closeted with his lawyer, and earnestly poring over a mass of time-worn letters and documents, carefully noting down dates, docketing, and annotating, in a way that showed what importance he attached to the task before him.

“I tell you what, Sedley,” said he, as he threw his pen disdainfully from him, and lay back in his chair, “the whole of this move is a party dodge. It is part and parcel of that vile persecution with which the Tory faction pursued me during my late canvass. You remember their vulgar allusions to my father, the brewer, and their coarse jest about my frothy oratory? This attack is but the second act of the same drama.”

“I don't think so,” mildly rejoined the other party. “Conflicts are sharp enough while the struggle lasts; but they rarely carry their bitterness beyond the day of battle.”

“That is an agent's view of the matter,” said Bramleigh, with asperity. “The agent always persists in believing the whole thing a sham fight; but though men do talk a great deal of rot and humbug about their principles on the hustings, their personal feelings are just as real, just as acute, and occasionally just as painful, as on any occasion in their lives; and I repeat to you, the trumped-up claim of this foreigner is neither more nor less than a piece of party malignity.”

“I cannot agree with you. The correspondence we have just been looking at shows how upwards of forty years ago the same pretensions were put forward, and a man calling himself Montagu Lami Bramleigh declared he was the rightful heir to your estates.”

“A rightful heir whose claims could be always compromised by a ten-pound note was scarcely very dangerous.”

“Why make any compromise at all if the fellow was clearly an impostor?”

“For the very reason that you yourself now counsel a similar course: to avoid the scandal of a public trial. To escape all those insolent comments which a party press is certain to pass on a political opponent.”

“That could scarcely have been apprehended from the Bramleigh I speak of, who was clearly poor, illiterate, and friendless; whereas the present man has, from some source or other, funds to engage eminent counsel and retain one of the first men at the bar.”

“I protest, Sedley, you puzzle me,” said Bramleigh, with an angry sparkle in his eye. “A few moments back you treated all this pretension as a mere pretext for extorting money, and now you talk of this fellow and his claim as subjects that may one day be matter for the decision of a jury. Can you reconcile two views so diametrically opposite?”

“I think I can. It is at law as in war. The feint may be carried on to a real attack whenever the position assailed be possessed of an over-confidence or but ill defended. It might be easy enough, perhaps, to deal with this man. Let him have some small success, however; let him gain a verdict, for instance, in one of those petty suits for ejectment, and his case at once becomes formidable.”

“All this,” said Bramleigh, “proceeds on the assumption that there is something in the fellow's claim?”

“Unquestionably.”

“I declare,” said Bramleigh, rising and pacing the room, “I have not temper for this discussion. My mind has not been disciplined to that degree of refinement that I can accept a downright swindle as a demand founded on justice.”

“Let us prove it a swindle, and there is an end of it.”

“And will you tell me, sir,” said he, passionately, “that every gentleman holds his estates on the condition that the title may be contested by any impostor who can dupe people into advancing money to set the law in motion?”

“When such proceedings are fraudulent a very heavy punishment awaits them.”

“And what punishment of the knave equals the penalty inflicted on the honest man in exposure, shame, insolent remarks, and worse than even these, a contemptuous pity for that reverse of fortune which newspaper writers always announce as an inevitable consummation?”

“These are all hard things to bear, but I don't suspect they ever deterred any man from holding an estate.”

The half jocular tone of his remark rather jarred on Bramleigh's sensibilities, and he continued to walk the room in silence; at last, stopping short, he wheeled round and said,—

“Do you adhere to your former opinion? would you try a compromise?”

“I would. The man has a case quite good enough to interest a speculative lawyer—good enough to go before a jury—good enough for everything but success. One half what the defence would cost you will probably satisfy his expectations, not to speak of all you will spare yourself in unpleasantness and exposure.”

“It is a hard thing to stoop to,” said Bramleigh, painfully.

“It need not be, at least not to the extent you imagine; and when you throw your eye over your lawyer's bill of costs, the phrase 'incidental expenses' will spare your feelings any more distinct reference to this transaction.”

“A most considerate attention. And now for the practical part. Who is this man's lawyer?”

“A most respectable practitioner, Kelson, of Temple Court. A personal friend of my own.”

“And what terms would you propose?”

“I 'd offer five thousand, and be prepared to go to eight, possibly to ten.”

“To silence a mere menace?”

“Exactly. It's a mere menace to-day, but six months hence it may be something more formidable. It is a curious case, cleverly contrived and ingeniously put together. Don't say that we could n't smash it; such carpentry always has a chink or an open somewhere. Meanwhile the scandal is spreading over not only England, but over the world, and no matter how favorable the ultimate issue, there will always remain in men's minds the recollection that the right to your estate was contested, and that you had to defend your possession.”

“I had always thought till now,” said Bramleigh, slowly, “that the legal mind attached very little importance to the flying scandals that amuse society. You appear to accord them weight and influence.”

“I am not less a man of the world because I am a lawyer, Colonel Bramleigh,” said the other, half tartly.

“If this must be done the sooner it be over the better. A man of high station—a peer—is at this moment paying such attention to one of my daughters that I may expect at any moment, to-day perhaps, to receive a formal proposal for her hand. I do not suspect that the threat of an unknown claimant to my property would disturb his Lordship's faith in my security or my station, but the sensitive dislike of men of his class to all publicity that does not redound to honor or distinction—the repugnance to whatever draws attention to them for aught but court favor or advancement—might well be supposed to have its influence with him, and I think it would be better to spare him—to spare us, too—this exposure.”

“I 'll attend to it immediately. Kelson hinted to me that the claimant was now in England.”

“I was not aware of that.”

“Yes, he is over here now, and I gather, too, has contrived to interest some people in his pretensions.”

“Does he affect the station of a gentleman?”

“Thoroughly; he is, I am told, well-mannered, prepossessing in appearance, and presentable in every respect.”

“Let us ask him over to Castello, Sedley,” said Bramleigh, laughing.

“I 've known of worse strategy,” said the lawyer, dryly.

“What! are you actually serious?”

“I say that such a move might not be the worst step to an amicable settlement. In admitting the assailant to see all the worth and value of the fortress, it would also show him the resources for defence, and he might readily compute what poor chances were his against such odds.”

“Still, I doubt if I could bring myself to consent to it. There is a positive indignity in making any concession to such a palpable imposture.”

“Not palpable till proven. The most unlikely cases have now and then pushed some of our ablest men to upset. Attack can always choose its own time, its own ground, and is master of almost every condition of the combat.”

“I declare, Sedley, if this man had retained your services to make a good bargain for him, he could scarcely have selected a more able agent.”

“You could not more highly compliment the zeal I am exercising in your service.”

“Well, I take it I must leave the whole thing in your hands. I shall not prolong my stay in town. I wanted to do something in the city, but I find these late crashes in the banks have spread such terror and apprehension, that nobody will advance a guinea on anything. There is an admirable opening just now—coal.”

“In Egypt?”

“No, in Ireland.”

“Ah, in Ireland? That's very different. You surely cannot expect capital will take that channel?”

“You are an admirable lawyer, Sedley. I am told London has not your equal as a special pleader, but let me tell you you are not either a projector or a politician. I am both, and I declare to you that this country which you deride and distrust is the California of Great Britain. Write to me at your earliest; finish this business if you can, out of hand, and if you make good terms for me I 'll send you some shares in an enterprise—an Irish enterprise—which will pay you a better dividend than some of your East county railroads.”

“Have you changed the name of your place? Your son, Mr. John Bramleigh, writes 'Bishop's Folly' at the top of his letter.”

“It is called Castello, sir. I am not responsible for the silly caprices of a sailor.”