“I thought of asking you to write to Lionel, but I will do so myself, painful as it is. I feel I am very forgiving to write you in this strain, seeing how great was the share you took in involving us all in this unhappy business. At one moment I positively detested – I don’t suspect yet that I entirely pardon – you, though I may when you come here, especially if you bring me any good news of this peerage business, which I look to as our last refuge. Lendrick is a very odd name, – are there many of them? Of course, it will be well understood that we only know the immediate relations, – father and brother, I mean. We stand no cousins, still less uncles or aunts.
“Sir Hugh thinks I ought to write to the old Judge. I opine he would be flattered by the attention, but I have not yet made up my mind upon it. Give me some advice on this, and believe me sincerely yours.”
After despatching a telegram to Cagliari, to say he was well and at large, and would soon be on his way back again, Fossbrooke wrote a few lines to Lord Wilmington of regret that he could not afford time to go over and see him, and assuring him that the late incident that had befallen him was not worth a thought. “He must be a more irritable fellow than I am,” he wrote, “who would make a personal grievance of a mere accident, against which, in a time of trouble, it would be hard to provide. While I say this, I must add that I think the spy system is a mistake, – that there is an over-eagerness in your officials to procure committals; and I declare to you I have often had more difficulty to get out of a crowded evening party than I should have felt in making my escape from your jail or bridewell, whichever be its name. I don’t suspect your law-officers are marvels of wisdom, and your Chief Secretary is an ass.”
To Lady Trafford he wrote a very brief reply. He scarcely thought his engagements would enable him to make a visit to Holt. “I will, however, come if I can, chiefly to obtain your full and free pardon, though for what, beyond rendering you an invaluable service, I am puzzled to understand; and I repeat, if your son obtain this young lady in marriage, he will be, after Sir Hugh, the luckiest man of his name and family.
“As to the peerage, I can tell you nothing. I believe there is rather a prejudice against sending Irishmen up to the Lords; and it is scarcely ever done with lawyers. In regard to writing to Baron Lendrick, I hardly know what to say. He is a man of great ability, but of even greater vanity, and it should be a cleverly worded epistle that would not ruffle some one of his thousand sensibilities. If you feel, however, adroit enough to open the negotiation, do so by ‘all means;’ but don’t make me responsible for what may come of it if the rejoinder be not to your taste. For myself, I ‘d rather poke up a grizzly bear with my umbrella than I ‘d provoke such a man to an exchange of letters.”
To get back to Cagliari as soon as possible, and relieve Tom of that responsibility which seemed to weigh so heavily upon him, was Fossbrooke’s first resolve. He must see Sewell at once, and finish the business; and however unpleasant the step might be, he must seek him at the Priory, if he could not meet him elsewhere. He wished also to see Beattie, – he wanted to repay the loan he had made him. The doctor, too, could tell him how he could obtain an interview with Sewell without any intrusion upon the Chief Baron.
It was evening before Fossbrooke could make his visit to Beattie, and the doctor had just sat down to dinner with a gentleman who had arrived by the mail-packet from England, giving orders that he was not to be disturbed on any score.
“Will you merely take in my name,” said Sir Brook, “and beg, with my respects, to learn at what hour to-morrow Dr. Beattie would accord me a few minutes.” The butler’s hesitation was mildly overcome by the persuasive touch of a sovereign, and he retired with the message.
Before a minute elapsed, Dr. Beattie came out, napkin in hand, and his face beaming with delight. “If there was a man in Europe I was wishing for this moment, it was yourself, Sir Brook,” said he. “Do you know who is dining with me? Come in and see. – No, no, I ‘ll not be denied.”
A sudden terror crossed Fossbrooke’s mind that his guest might be Colonel Sewell, and he hung back, muttering some words of apology.
“I tell you,” repeated the doctor, “I’ll take no refusal. It’s the rarest piece of luck ever befell, to have chanced upon you. Poor Lendrick is dying for some news of his son and daughter.”
“Lendrick! Dr. Lendrick?”
“To be sure, – who else? When your knock came to the door, I was telling him that I heard you were in Dublin, and only doubted it because you had never called on me; but come along, we can say all these things over our soup. Look whom I have brought you, Tom,” cried Beattie, as he led Sir Brook into the room, – “here’s Sir Brook Fossbrooke come to join us.” And the two men grasped hands in heartiest embrace, while Fossbrooke, not waiting for a word of question, said, “Both well and hearty. I had a telegram from Tom this morning.”
“How much I owe you! – how much, how much!” was all that Lendrick could say, and his eyes swam as he said it.
“It is I am the debtor, and well I know what it is worth to be so! Their loving kindness and affection have rescued me from the one terror of my life, – the fear of becoming a discontented, incredulous old bachelor. Heaven bless them for it; their goodness has kept me out of that danger.”
“And how are they looking? Is Lucy – ” He stopped and looked half ashamed.
“More beautiful than ever,” broke in Fossbrooke. “I think she is taller than when you last saw her, and perhaps a shade more thoughtful looking; and Tom is a splendid fellow. I scarcely know what career he could not follow, nor where he would not seem too good for whatever he was doing.”
“Ah, if I could but tell you how happy you have made me!” muttered Lendrick. “I ought never to have left them, – never broken up my home. I did it unwillingly, it is true; but I ought never to have done it.”
“Who knows if it may not turn out for the best, after all? You need never be separated henceforth. Tom’s last letter to me – I ‘ll bring it over to you to-morrow – tells me what I well knew must befall us sooner or later, – that we are rolling in wealth, have silver enough to pave the streets, and more money than we shall be able to spend – though I once had rather a knack that way.”
“That’s glorious news!” said Beattie. “It’s our mine, I suppose?” added he, laughing.
“To be sure it is; and I have come prepared to buy you out, doctor, or pay you your first dividend, cent. per cent., whichever you prefer.”
“Let us hear about this mine,” said Beattie.
“I ‘d rather talk to you about the miners, Tom and Lucy,” said Fossbrooke.
“Yes, yes, tell us of them. Do they ever talk of the Nest? Do they ever think of the happy days we passed there?” cried Lendrick.
“Ay, and more. We have had a project this many a day – we can realize it now – to buy it out and out. And I ‘m to build a cabin for myself by the river-side, where the swan’s hut stood, and I ‘m to be asked to dinner every Sunday.”
“By Jove, I think I’ll run down by the rail for one of those dinners,” said Beattie; “but I certainly hope the company will have better appetites than my guests of to-day.”
“I am too happy to feel hungry,” said Lendrick. “If I only knew that my poor dear father could live to see us all united, – all together again, I ‘d ask for no more in life.”
“And so he may, Tom; he was better this afternoon, and though weak and low, perfectly collected and sensible. Mrs. Sewell has been his nurse to-day, and she seems to manage him cleverly.”
“I saw her at the Cape. She was nicely mannered, and, if I remember aright, handsome,” said Lendrick, in his half-abstracted way.
“She was beautiful – perfectly beautiful – as a girl: except your own Lucy, I never saw any one so lovely,” said Fossbrooke, whose voice shook with emotion as he spoke.
“I wish she had better luck in a husband,” said Beattie. “For all his graceful address and insinuating ways, I ‘m full sure he’s a bad fellow.”
Fossbrooke checked himself with a great effort, and merely nodded an assent to the other’s words.
“How came it, Sir Brook,” asked Beattie, suddenly, “that you should have been in Dublin so long without once coming to see me?”
“Are you very discreet? – may I be sure that neither of you will ever accidentally let drop a word of what I shall tell you?”
“You may rely upon my secrecy, and upon Tom Lendrick’s ignorance, for there he is now in one of his reveries, thinking of his children in all probability; and I ‘ll guarantee you to any amount, that he ‘ll not hear one word you say for the next half-hour.”
“The fact is, they took me up for a rebel, – some one with more zeal than discrimination fancied I looked like a ‘Celt,’ as these fellows call themselves; and my mode of life, and my packet of lead ore, and some other things of little value, completed the case against me, and they sent me to jail.”
“To jail!”
“Yes; to a place called Richmond Bridewell, where I passed some seven or eight days, by no means unpleasantly. It was very quiet, very secure against intrusion. I had a capital room, and very fair food. Indeed I ‘m not sure that I did not leave it with a certain regret; but as I had written to my old friend Lord Wilmington, to apprise him of the mistake, and to warn him against the consequences such a blunder might occasion if it befell one less well disposed towards him than myself, I had nothing for it but to take a friendly farewell of my jailer and go.”
“I declare few men would have treated the incident so temperately.”
“Wilmington’s father was my fag at Eton, let me see – no, I ‘ll not see – how long ago; and Wilmington himself used to come and spend his summer vacations with me when I had that Wiltshire place; and I was very fond of the boy, and as he liked my partridge-shooting, we grew to be fast friends; but why are we talking of these old histories when it is the present that should engage us? I would only caution you once again against letting the story get abroad: there are fellows would like to make a House of Commons row out of it, and I ‘d not stand it. Is the doctor sleeping?” added he, in a whisper, as Lendrick sat with closed eyes and clasped hands, mute and motionless.
“No,” said Beattie; “it is his way when he is very happy. He is going over to himself all you have been telling him of his children, and he neither sees nor hears aught around him.”
“I was going to tell him another piece of news that would probably please him,” said Sir Brook, in the same low tone. “I have nearly completed arrangements for the purchase of the Nest; by this day week I hope it will be Lucy’s.”
“Oh! do tell him that. I know of nothing that would delight him as much. Lendrick,” said he, touching his arm, “here is something you would like to hear.”
“No, no!” muttered he, softly. “Life is too short for these things. No more separations, – no more; we must live together, come what may;” and he stretched out his hands on either side of him, as though to grasp his children.
“It is a pity to awaken him from such a dream,” said Fossbrooke, cautiously; “let us steal over to the window and not disturb him.”
They crept cautiously away to a window-bench, and talked till late into the night.
CHAPTER XIX. MAN TO MAN
As Sewell awoke, it was already evening. Fatigue and anxiety together had so overcome him that he slept like one drugged by a narcotic; nor did he very quickly recall on awakening how and wherefore he had not been to bed. His servant had left two letters on his table while he slept, and these served to remind him of some at least of the troubles that last oppressed him. One was from his law-agent, regretting that he could not obtain for him the loan he solicited on any terms whatever, and mildly suggesting that he trusted the Colonel would be prepared to meet certain acceptances which would fall due in the coming week. The other was from a friend whom he had often assisted in moments of difficulty, and ran: —
“Dear S., – I lost two hundred last night at pool, and, what’s worse, can’t pay it. That infernal rule of yours about prompt payment will smash us both, – but it’s so like you! You never had a run of luck yet that you didn’t do something that turned against you afterwards. Your clever rule about the selling-stakes cost me the best mare I ever had; and now this blessed stroke of your genius leaves me in doubt whether to blow my brains out or start for Boulogne. As Tom Beecher said, you are a ‘deuced deal too ‘cute to prosper.’ If I have to cross the water, I suspect you might as well come with me. – Yours,
“Dick Vaughan.”
Sewell tore the note up into the smallest fragments, muttering savagely to himself the while. “I’ll be bound,” said he, “the cur is half consoled for his mishap by seeing how much worse ruin has befallen me, – What is it, Watkin? What do you want?” cried he to his servant, who came hastily into the room.
“His Lordship has taken a bad turn, sir, and Mrs. Sewell wants to see you immediately.”
“All right! Say I’m coming. Who knows,” muttered he, “but there’s a chance for me yet?” He turned into his dressing-room and bathed his temples and his head with cold water, and, refreshed at once, he ascended the stairs.
“Another attack has come on. He was sleeping calmly,” said Mrs. Sewell as she met him, “when he awoke with a start, and broke out into wild raving. I have sent for Beattie; but what is to be done meanwhile?”
“I ‘m no doctor; I can’t tell you.”
“Haire thinks the ice ought to be applied; the nurse says-a blister or mustard to the back of the neck.”
“Is he really in danger? – that’s the question.”
“I believe so. I never saw him so ill.”
“You think he’s dying?” said he, fiercely, as though he would not brook any sort of equivocation; but the coarseness of his manner revolted her, and she turned away without reply. “There’s no time to be lost,” muttered Sewell, as he hastened downstairs. “Tell George I want the carriage to the door immediately,” said he; and then, entering his own room, he opened his writing-desk, and, after some search, came upon a packet, which he sealed and addressed.
“Are you going for Beattie?” asked Mrs. Sewell, as she appeared at the door; “for Haire says it would be better to fetch some one – any one – at once.”
“I have ordered the carriage. I ‘ll get Lysaght or Adams-if I should not find Beattie; and mind, if Beattie come while I am away, detain him, and don’t let him leave this till I return. Do you mind me?”
“Yes; I ‘ll tell him what you say.”
“Ay, but you must insist upon his doing it. There will be all sorts of stories if he should die – ”
“Stories? what do you mean by stories?” cried she, in alarm.
“Rumors of neglect, of want of proper care of him, and such-like, which would be most insulting. At all events, I am resolved Beattie should be here at the last; and take care that he does not leave. I ‘ll call at my mother’s too; she ought to come back with me. We have to deal with a scandal-loving world, and let us leave them as little to fall foul of as may be.” All this was said hurriedly, as he bustled about the room, fussy and impatient, and with an eagerness to be off which certainly surprised her.
“You know where to find these doctors, – you have their addresses?” asked she.
“George knows all about them.”
“And William does, at all events.”
“I’m not taking William. I don’t want a footman with a brougham. It is a light carriage and speedy cattle that are needed at this moment; and here they come. Now, mind that you keep Beattie till I come back; and if there be any inquiries, simply say the Chief Baron is the same as yesterday.”
“Had I not better consult Dr. Beattie?”
“You will do as I tell you, Madam,” said he, sternly. “You have heard my directions; take care that you follow them. To Mr. Lysaght’s, George – no, first to Dr. Beattie’s, Merrion Square,” cried he, as he stepped into the carriage, “and drive fast.”
“Yes, sir,” said the coachman, and started at once. He had not proceeded more than half-way down the avenue, however, when Sewell, leaning out of the window, said, “Don’t go into town, George; make for the Park by the shortest cut you can, the Secretary’s Lodge.”
“All right, sir; the beasts are fresh. We ‘ll be there in thirty minutes.” True to his word, within the half-hour the horses, white with sweat and flanking like racero, stood at the door of the Secretary’s Lodge. Four or five private carriages and some cabs were also at the door, signs of a dinner-party which had not yet broken up.
“Take this card in to Mr. Balfour, Mr. Wells,” said he to the butler, who was an old acquaintance, “and say I want one minute in private with him, – strictly private, mind. I ‘ll step into the library here and wait.”
“What’s up, Sewell? Are you in a new scrape, eh?” said Balfour, entering, slightly flushed with wine and conversation, and half put out by the interruption.
“Not much of a scrape, – can you give me five minutes?”
“Wells said one minute, and that’s why I came. The Castledowns and Eyres and the Ashes are here, and the Langrish girls, and Dick Upton.”
“A very choice company, for robbing you of which even for a moment I owe every apology, but still my excuse is a good one. Are you as anxious to promote your Solicitor-General as you were a week or two ago?”
“If you mean Pemberton, I wish he was – on the Bench, or in Abraham’s bosom – I don’t much care which, for he is the most confounded bore in Christendom. Do you come to tell me that you’ll poison him?”
“No; but I can promote him.”
“Why – how – in what way?”
“I told you a few days ago that I could manage to make the old man give in his resignation; that it required some tact and address, and especially the absence of everything like menace or compulsion.”
“Well, well, well – have you done it – is it a fact?”
“It is.”
“I mean, an indisputable, irrevocable fact, – something not to be denied or escaped from?”
“Just so; a fact not to be denied or escaped from.”
“It must come through me, Sewell, mind that. I took charge of the negotiation two years ago, and no one shall step in and rob me of my credit. I have had all the worry and fatigue of the transaction, and I insist, if there be any glory in success, it shall be mine.”
“You shall have all the glory, as you call it. What I aspire to is infinitely less brilliant.”
“You want a place – hard enough to find one – at least to find something worth having. You ‘ll want something as good as the Registrarship, eh?”
“No; I’ll not pester you with my claims. I’m not in love with official life. I doubt if I am well fitted for it.”
“You want a seat in the House, – is that it?”
“Not exactly,” said Sewell, laughing; “though there is a good stroke of business to be done in private bills and railway grants. My want is the simplest of all wants, – money.”
“Money! But how am I to give you money? Out of what fund is it to come? You don’t imagine we live in the old days of secret-service funds, with unlimited corruption to back us, do you?”
“I suspect that the source from which it is to come is a matter of perfect indifference to me. You can easily squeeze me into the estimates as a special envoy, or a Crown Prosecution, or a present to the Emperor of Morocco.”
“Nothing of the kind. You are totally in error. All these fine days are past and gone. They go over us now like a schedule in bankruptcy; and it would be easier to make you a colonial bishop than give you fifty pounds out of the Consolidated Fund.”
“Well, I ‘d not object to the Episcopate if there was some good shooting in the diocese.”
“I ‘ve no time for chaff,” said Balfour, impatiently. “I am leaving my company too long, besides. Just come over here to-morrow to breakfast, and we ‘ll talk the whole thing over.”
“No, I ‘ll not come to breakfast; I breakfast in bed: and if we are to come to any settlement of this matter, it shall be here and now.”
“Very peremptory all this, considering that the question is not of your retirement.”
“Quite true. It is not my retirement we have to discuss, but it is, whether I shall choose to hand you the Chief Baron’s, which I hold here,” – and he produced the packet as he spoke, – “or go back and induce him to reconsider and withdraw it. Is not that a very intelligible way to put the case, Balfour? Did you expect such a business-like tone from an idle dog like me?”
“And I am to believe that the document in your hand contains the Chief Baron’s resignation?”
“You are to believe it or not, – that’s at your option. It is the fact, at all events.”
“And what power have you to withhold it, when he has determined to tender it?”
“About the same power I have to do this,” said Sewell, as, taking up a sheet of note-paper from the table, he tore it into fragments, and threw them into the fire. “I think you might see that the same influence by which I induced him to write this would serve to make him withhold it. The Judge condescends to think me a rather shrewd man of the world, and takes my advice occasionally.”
“Well, but – another point,” broke in Balfour, hurriedly. “What if he should recall this to-morrow or the day after? What if he were to say that on reconsideration he felt unwilling to retire? It is clear we could not well coerce him.”
“You know very little of the man when you suggest such a possibility. He ‘d as soon think of suicide as doubt any decision he had once formally announced to the world. The last thing that would ever occur to him would be to disparage his infallibility.”
“I declare I am quite ashamed of being away so long; could n’t you come down to the office to-morrow, at your own hour, and talk the whole thing over quietly?”
“Impossible. I ‘ll be very frank with you. I lost a pot of money last night to Langton, and have n’t got it to pay him. I tried twenty places during the day, and failed. I tossed over a score of so-called securities, not worth sixpence in a time of pressure, and I came upon this, which has been in my hands since Monday last, and I thought, Now Balfour would n’t exactly give me five hundred pounds for it, but there’s no reason in life that he might not obtain that sum for me in some quarter. Do you see?”
“I see, – that is, I see everything but the five hundred.”
“If you don’t, then you’ll never see this,” said Sewell, replacing it in his pocket.
“You won’t comprehend that I’ve no fund to go to; that there ‘s no bank to back me through such a transaction. Just be a little reasonable, and you ‘ll see that I can’t do this out of my own pocket. It is true I could press your claim on the party. I could say, what I am quite ready to say, that we owe the whole arrangement to you, and that, especially as it will cost you the loss of your Registrarship, you must not be forgotten.”
“There’s the mistake, my dear fellow. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be made supervisor of mad-houses, or overlooker of light-ships. Until office hours are comprised between five and six o’clock of the afternoon, and some of the cost of sealing-wax taken out in sandwiches, I don’t mean to re-enter public life. I stand out for cash payment. I hope that’s intelligible.”
“Oh, perfectly so; but as impossible as intelligible.”
“Then, in that case, there ‘s no more to be said. All apologies for having taken you so long from your friends. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Balfour. “I ‘m sorry we can’t come to some arrangement. Good-night.”
“As this document will now never see the light, and as all action in the matter will be arrested,” said Sewell, gravely, “I rely upon your never mentioning our present interview.”
“I declare I don’t see why I am precluded from speaking of it to my friends, – confidentially, of course.”
“You had better not.”
“Better not! better in what sense? As regards the public interests, or my personal ones?”
“I simply repeat, you had better not.” He put on his hat as he spoke, and without a word of leave-taking moved towards the door.
“Stop one moment, – a thought has just struck me. You like a sporting offer. I ‘ll bet you twenty pounds even, you ‘ll not let me read the contents of that paper; and I ‘ll lay you long odds – two hundred to one, in pounds – that you don’t give it to me.”
“You certainly do like a good thing, Balfour. In plain words, you offer me two hundred and twenty. I ‘ll be shot if I see why they should have higgled so long about letting the Jews into Parliament when fellows like you have seats there.”
“Be good enough to remember,” said Balfour, with an easy smile, “that I ‘m the only bidder, and if the article be not knocked down to me there’s no auction.”
“I was certain I’d hear that from you! I never yet knew a fellow do a stingy thing, that he had n’t a shabbier reason to sustain it.”
“Come, come, there’s no need of this. You can say no to my offer without a rudeness to myself.”
“Ay, that’s all true, if one only had temper for it, but I have n’t; and I have my doubts that even you would if you were to be tried as sorely as I am.”
“I never do get angry; a man shows his hand when he loses his temper, and the fellow who keeps cool can always look at the other’s cards.”
“Wise precepts, and worth coming out here to listen to,” said Sewell, whose thoughts were evidently directed elsewhere. “I take your offer; I only make one condition, – you keep the negotiation a secret, or only impart it where it will be kept secret.”
“I think that’s all fair. I agree to that. Now for the document”
“There it is,” said Sewell, as he threw the packet on the table, while he seated himself in a deep chair, and crossed his arms on his chest.
Balfour opened the paper and began to read, but soon burst forth with – “How like him – how like him! – ‘Less oppressed, indeed, by years than sustained by the conscious sense of long services to the State.’ I think I hear him declaiming it.
“This is not bad: ‘While at times afflicted by the thought, that to the great principles of the law, of which I had made this Court the temple and the sanctuary, there will now succeed the vague decisions and imperfect judgments of less learned expositors of justice, I am comforted by remembering that I leave behind me some records worthy of memory, – traditions that will not easily die.’”
“That’s the modest note; hear him when he sounds the indignant chord,” said Sewell.
“Ay, here we have it: ‘If I have delayed, my Lord, in tendering to you this my resignation, it is that I have waited till, the scurrilous tongues of slander silenced, and the smaller, but not less malevolent, whisperings of jealousy subdued, I might descend from the Bench amidst the affectionate regrets of those who regard me as the last survivor of that race which made Ireland a nation.’ The liquor is genuine,” cried Balfour, laughing. “There’s no disputing it, you have won your money.”
“I should think so,” was Sewell’s cool reply. “He has the same knack in that sort of thing that the girl in the well-known shop in Seville has in twisting a cigarette.”
Balfour took out his keys to open his writing-desk, and, pondering for a moment or two, at last said, “I wish any man would tell me why I am going to give you this money, – do you know, Sewell?”
“Because you promised it, I suppose.”
“Yes; but why should I have promised it? What can it possibly signify to me which of our lawyers presides in Her Majesty’s Irish Exchequer? I ‘m sure you ‘d not give ten pounds to insure this man or that, in or out of the Cabinet.”
“Not ten shillings. They ‘re all dark horses to me, and if you offered me the choice of the lot, I ‘d not know which to take; but I always heard that you political fellows cared so much for your party, and took your successes and failures so much to heart, that there was no sacrifice you were not ready to make to insure your winning.”
“We now and then do run a dead-heat, and one would really give something to come in first; but what’s that? – I declare there ‘s a carriage driving off – some one has gone. I ‘ll have to swear that some alarming news has come from the South. Good-night – I must be off.”
“Don’t forget the cash before you go.”
“Oh, to be sure, here you are – crisp and clean, ain’t they? I got them this morning, and certainly never intended to part with them on such an errand.”
Sewell folded up the notes with a grim smile, and said, “I only wish I had a few more big-wigs to dispose of, – you should have them cheap; as Stag and Mantle say, ‘articles no longer in great vogue.’”
“There’s another departure!” cried Balfour. “I shall be in great disgrace!” and hurried away without a “goodbye.”