“No, I am only frightened, – frightened and grieved.”
“Don’t grieve for me,” said the other, haughtily. “There is nothing I could n’t more easily forgive than pity. But let me turn from my odious self and talk of you. I want you to tell me everything about your own fortune, where you have been all this time, what seeing and doing, and what is the vista in front of you?”
Lucy gave a full account of Cagliari and their life there, narrating how blank their first hopes had been, and what a glorious fortune had crowned them at last. “I ‘m afraid to say what the mine returns at present; and they say it is a mere nothing to what it may yield when improved means of working are employed, new shafts sunk, and steam power engaged.”
“Don’t get technical, darling; I’ll take your word for Sir Brook’s wealth; only tell me what he means to do with it. You know he gambled away one large fortune already, and squandered another, nobody knows how. Has he gained anything by these experiences to do better with the third?”
“I have only heard of his acts of munificence or generosity,” said Lucy, gravely.
“What a reproachful face to put on, and for so little!” said the other, laughing. “You don’t think that when I said he gambled I thought the worse of him.”
“Perhaps not; but you meant that I should.”
“You are too sharp in your casuistry; but you have been living with only men latterly, and the strong-minded race always impart some of their hardness to the women who associate with them. You’ll have to come down to silly creatures like me, Lucy, to regain your softness.”
“I shall be delighted if you let me keep your company.”
“We will be sisters, darling, if you will only be frank with me.”
“Prove me if you like; ask me anything you will, and see if I will not answer you freely.”
“Have you told me all your Cagliari life, – all?”
“I think so; all at least that was worth telling.”
“You had a shipwreck on your island, we heard here; are such events so frequent that they make slight impression?”
“I was but speaking of ourselves and our fortunes,” said Lucy; “my narrative was all selfish.” “Come, – I never beat about the bush, – tell me one thing, – it’s a very abrupt way to ask, but perhaps it’s the best way, – are you going to be married?”
“I don’t know,” said she; and her face and neck became crimson in a moment.
“You don’t know! Do you mean that you ‘re like one of those young ladies in the foreign convents who are sent for to accept a husband whenever the papas and mammas have agreed upon the terms?”
“Not that; but I mean that I am not sure whether grandpapa will give his consent, and without it papa will not either.”
“And why should not grandpapa say yes? Major Traf-ford, – we need n’t talk riddles to each other, – Major Trafford has a good position, a good name, and will have a good estate; are not these the three gifts the mothers of England go in pursuit of?”
“His family, I suspect, wish him to look higher; at all events, they don’t like the idea of an Irish daughter-in-law.”
“More fools they! Irish women of the better class are more ready to respond to good treatment, and less given to resent bad usage, than any I ever met.”
“Then I have just heard since I came over that Lady Trafford has written to grandpapa in a tone of such condescension and gentle sorrow that it has driven him half crazy. Indeed, his continual inference from the letter is, ‘What must the son of such a woman be!’”
“That’s most unfair!”
“So they have all told him, – papa, and Beattie, and even Mr. Haire, who met Lionel one morning at Beattie’s.”
“Perhaps I might be of service here; what a blush, child! dear me, you are crimson, far too deep for beauty. How I have fluttered the dear little bird! but I ‘m not going to rob its nest, or steal its mate away. All I meant was, that I could exactly contribute that sort of worldly testimony to the goodness of the match that old people like and ask for. You must never talk to them about affections, nor so much as allude to tastes or tempers; never expatiate on anything that cannot be communicated by parchment, and attested by proper witnesses. Whatever is not subject to stamp-duty, they set down as mere moonshine.”
While she thus ran on, Lucy’s thoughts never strayed from a certain letter which had once thrown a dark shadow over her, and even yet left a gloomy memory behind it. The rapidity with which Mrs. Sewell spoke, too, had less the air of one carried away by the strong current of feeling than of a speaker who was uttering everything, anything, to relieve her own overburdened mind.
“You look very grave, Lucy,” went she on. “I suspect I know what’s passing in that little brain. You are doubting if I should be the fittest person to employ on the negotiation; come, now, confess it.”
“You have guessed aright,” said Lucy, gravely.
“But all that ‘s past and over, child. The whole is a mere memory now, if even so much. Men have a trick of thinking, once they have interested a woman on their behalf, that the sentiment survives all changes of time and circumstance, and that they can come back after years and claim the deposit; but it is a great mistake, as he has found by this time. But don’t let this make you unhappy, dear; there never was less cause for unhappiness. It is just of these sort of men the model husbands are made. The male heart is a very tough piece of anatomy, and requires a good deal of manipulation to make it tender, and, as you will learn one day, it is far better all this should be done before marriage than after. – Well, Jane, I did begin to think you had forgotten about the chocolate. It is about an hour since I asked for it.”
“Indeed, ma’am, it was Mr. Cheetor’s fault; he was a shooting rabbits with another gentleman.”
“There, there, spare me Mr. Cheetor’s diversions, and fetch me some sugar.”
“Mr. Lendrick and another gentleman, ma’am, is below, and wants to see Miss Lucy.”
“A young gentleman, Jane?” asked Mrs. Sewell, while her eyes flashed with a sudden fierce brilliancy.
“No, ma’am, an old gentleman, with a white beard, very tall and stern to look at.”
“We don’t care for descriptions of old gentlemen, Jane. Do we, Lucy? Must you go, darling?”
“Yes; papa perhaps wants me.”
“Come back to me soon, pet. Now that we have no false barriers between us, we can talk in fullest confidence.”
Lucy hurried away, but no sooner had she reached the corridor than she burst into tears.
CHAPTER XXV. THE TELEGRAM
When Lacy reached the drawing-room, she found her father and Sir Brook deep in conversation in one of the window-recesses, and actually unaware of her entrance till she stood beside them.
“No,” cried Lendrick, eagerly; “I can’t follow these men in their knaveries. I don’t see the drift of them, and I lose the clew to the whole machinery.”
“The drift is easy enough to understand,” said Foss-brooke. “A man wants to escape from his embarrassments, and has little scruple as to the means.”
“But the certainty of being found out – ”
“There is no greater fallacy than that. Do you imagine that one-tenth of the cheats that men practise on the world are ever brought to light? Or do you fancy that all the rogues are in jail, and all the people who are abroad and free are honest men? Far from it. Many an inspector that comes to taste the prison soup and question the governor, ought to have more than an experimental course of the dietary; and many a juryman sits on the case of a creature far better and purer than himself. But here comes one will give our thoughts a pleasanter channel to run in. How well you look, Lucy! I am glad to see the sunny skies of Sardinia have n’t blanched your cheeks.”
“Such a scheme as Sir Brook has discovered! – such an ignoble plot against my poor dear father!” said Lendrick. “Tell her – tell her the whole of it.”
In a very few words Sir Brook recounted the story of Sewell’s interview with Balfour, and the incident of the stolen draft of the Judge’s writing bartered for money.
“It would have killed my father. The shock would have killed him,” said Lendrick. “And it was this man, – this Sewell, – who possessed his entire confidence of late, – actually wielded complete influence over him. The whole time I sat with my father, he did nothing but quote him, – Sewell said so, Sewell told me, or Sewell suspected such a thing; and always with some little added comment on his keen sharp intellect, his clear views of life, and his consummate knowledge of men. It was by the picture Sewell drew of Lady Trafford that my father was led to derive his impression of her letter. Sewell taught him to detect a covert impertinence and a sneer where none was intended. I read the letter myself, and it was only objectionable on the score of its vanity. She thought herself a very great personage writing to another great personage.”
“Just so,” said Fossbrooke. “It was right royal throughout. It might have begun ‘Madame ma soeur.’ And as I knew something of the writer, I thought it a marvel of delicacy and discretion.”
“My father, unfortunately, deemed it a piece of intolerable pretension and offensive condescension, and he burned to be well enough to reply to it.”
“Which is exactly what we must not permit. If they once get to a regular interchange of letters, there is nothing they will not say to each other. No, no; my plan is the best of all. Lionel made a most favorable impression the only time Sir William saw him. Beattie shall bring him up here again as soon as the Chief can be about: the rest will follow naturally. Lucy agrees with me, I see.”
How Sir Brook knew this is not so easy to say, as Lucy had turned her head away persistently all the time he was speaking, and still continued in that attitude.
“It cannot be to-night, however, and possibly not tomorrow night,” said Fossbrooke, musing; and though Lucy turned quickly and eagerly towards him to explain his words, he was silent for some minutes, when at length he said, “Lionel started this morning by daybreak, and for England. It must have been a sudden thought. He left me a few lines, in pencil, which went thus, – ‘I take the early mail to Holyhead, but mean to be back to-morrow, or at farthest the day after. No time for more.’”
“If the space were not brief that he assigns for his absence, I ‘d say he had certainly gone to see his father,” said Lendrick.
“It’s not at all unlikely that his mother may have arranged to meet him in Wales,” said Sir Brook. “She is a fussy, meddlesome woman, who likes to be, or to think herself, the prime mover in everything. I remember when Hugh Trafford – a young fellow at that time – was offered a Junior Lordship of the Treasury, it was she who called on the Premier, Lord Dornington, to explain why he could not accept office. Nothing but great abilities or great vices enable a man to rise above the crushing qualities of such a wife. Trafford had neither, and the world has always voted him a nonentity.”
“There, Lucy,” said Lendrick, laughing, – “there at least is one danger you must avoid in married life.”
“Lucy needs no teachings of mine,” said Sir Brook. “Her own instincts are worth all my experiences twice told. But who is this coming up to the door?”
“Oh, that is Mr. Haire, a dear friend of grandpapa’s.” And Lucy ran to meet him, returning soon after to the room, leaning on his arm.
Lendrick and Haire were very old friends, and esteemed each other sincerely; and though on the one occasion on which Sir Brook and Haire had met, Fossbrooke had been the object of the Chief’s violence and passion, his dignity and good temper had raised him highly in Haire’s estimation, and made him glad to meet him again.
“You are half surprised to see me under this roof, sir,” said Sir Brook, referring to their former meeting; “but there are feelings with me stronger than resentments.”
“And when my poor father knows how much he is indebted to your generous kindness,” broke in Lendrick, “he will be the first to ask your forgiveness.”
“That he will. Of all the men I ever met, he is the readiest to redress a wrong he has done,” cried Haire, warmly. “If the world only knew him as I know him! But his whole life long he has been trying to make himself appear stern and cold-hearted and pitiless, with, all the while, a nature overflowing with kindness.”
“The man who has attached to himself such a friendship as yours,” said Fossbrooke, warmly, “cannot but have good qualities.”
“My friendship!” said Haire, blushing deeply; “what a poor tribute to such a man as he is! Do you know, sir,” and here he lowered his voice till it became a confidential whisper, – “do you know, sir, that since the great days of the country, – since the time of Burke, we have had nothing to compare with the Chief Baron. Plunkett used to wish he had his law, and Bushe envied his scholarship, and Lysaght often declared that a collection of Lendrick’s epigrams and witty sayings would be the pleasantest reading of the day. And such is our public press, that it is for the quality in which he was least eminent they are readiest to praise him. You would n’t believe it, sir. They call him a ‘master of sarcastic eloquence.’ Why, sir, there was a tenderness in him that would not have let him descend to sarcasm. He could rebuke, censure, condemn if you will; but his large heart had not room for a sneer.”
“You well deserve all the love he bears you,” said Len-drick, grasping his hand and pressing it affectionately.
“How could I deserve it? Such a man’s friendship is above all the merits of one like me. Why, sir, it is honor and distinction before the world. I would not barter his regard for me to have a seat beside him on the Bench. By the way,” added he, cautiously, “let him not see the papers this morning. They are at it again about his retirement. They say that Lord Wilmington had actually arranged the conditions, and that the Chief had consented to everything; and now they are beaten. You have heard, I suppose, the Ministry are out?”
“No; were they Whigs?” asked Lendrick, innocently.
Haire and Fossbrooke laughed heartily at the poor doctor’s indifference to party, and tried to explain to him something of the struggle between rival factions, but his mind was full of home events, and had no place for more. “Tell Haire,” said he at last, – “tell Haire the story of the letter of resignation; none so fit as he to break the tale to my father.”
Fossbrooke took from his pocket a piece of paper, and handed it to Haire, saying, “Do you know that handwriting?”
“To be sure I do! It is the Chief’s.”
“Does it seem a very formal document?”
Haire scanned the back of it, and then scrutinized it all over for a few seconds. “Nothing of the kind. It’s the sort of thing I have seen him write scores of times. He is always throwing off these sketches. I have seen him write the preamble to a fancied Act of Parliament, – a peroration to an imaginary speech; and as to farewells to the Bar, I think I have a dozen of them, – and one, and not the worst, is in doggerel.”
Though, wherever Haire’s experiences were his guides, he could manage to comprehend a question fairly enough, yet where these failed him, or wherever the events introduced into the scene characters at all new or strange, he became puzzled at once, and actually lost himself while endeavoring to trace out motives for actions, not one of which had ever occurred to him to perform.
Through this inability on his part, Sir Brook was not very successful in conveying to him the details of the stolen document; nor could Haire be brought to see that the Government officials were the dupes of Sewell’s artifice as much as, or even more than, the Chief himself.
“I think you must tell the story yourself, Sir Brook; I feel I shall make a sad mess of it if you leave it to me,” said he, at last; “and I know, if I began to blunder, he ‘d overwhelm me with questions how this was so, and why that had not been otherwise, till my mind would get into a helpless confusion, and he’d send me off in utter despair.”
“I have no objection whatever, if Sir William will receive me. Indeed, Lord Wilmington charged me to make the communication in person, if permitted to do so.”
“I ‘ll say that,” said Haire, in a joyful tone, for already he saw a difficulty overcome. “I ‘ll say it was at his Excellency’s desire you came;” and he hurried away to fulfil his mission. He came almost immediately in’ radiant delight. “He is most eager to see you, Sir Brook; and, just as I said, impatient to make you every amende, and ask your forgiveness. He looks more like himself than I have seen him for many a day.”
While Sir Brook accompanied Haire to the Judge’s room, Lendrick took his daughter’s arm within his own, saying, “Now for a stroll through the wood, Lucy. It has been one of my day-dreams this whole year past.”
Leaving the father and daughter to commune together undisturbed, let us turn for a moment to Mrs. Sewell, who, with feverish anxiety, continued to watch from her window for the arrival of a telegraph messenger. It was already two o’clock. The mail-packet for Ireland would have reached Holyhead by ten, and there was therefore ample time to have heard what had occurred afterwards.
From the servant who had carried Sewell’s letter to Traf-ford, she had learned that Trafford had set out almost immediately after receiving it; the man heard the order given to the coachman to drive to Richmond Barracks. From this she gathered he had gone to obtain the assistance of a friend. Her first fear was that Trafford, whose courage was beyond question, would have refused the meeting, standing on the ground that no just cause of quarrel existed. This he would certainly have done had he consulted Fossbrooke, who would, besides, have seen the part her own desire for vengeance played in the whole affair. It was with this view that she made Sewell insert the request that Fossbrooke might not know of the intended meeting. Her mind, therefore, was at rest on two points. Trafford had not refused the challenge, nor had he spoken of it to Fossbrooke.
But what had taken place since? that was the question. Had they met, and with what result? If she did not dare to frame a wish how the event might come off, she held fast by the thought that, happen what might, Trafford never could marry Lucy Lendrick after such a meeting. The mere exchange of shots would place a whole hemisphere between the two families, while the very nature of the accusation would be enough to arouse the jealousy and insult the pride of such a girl as Lucy. Come, therefore, what might, the marriage is at an end.
If Sewell were to fall! She shuddered to think what the world would say of her! One judgment there would be no gainsaying. Her husband certainly believed her false, and with his life he paid for the conviction. But would she be better off if Trafford were the victim? That would depend on how Sewell behaved. She would be entirely at his mercy, – whether he determined to separate from her or not. His mercy, seemed a sorry hope to cling to. Hopeless as this alternative looked, she never relented, even for an instant, as to what she had done; and the thought that Lucy should not be Trafford’s wife repaid her for all and everything.
While she thus waited in all the feverish torture of suspense, her mind travelled over innumerable contingencies of the case, in every one of which her own position was one of shame and sorrow; and she knew not whether she would deem it worse to be regarded as the repentant wife, taken back by a forgiving pitying husband, or the woman thrown off and deserted! “I suppose I must accept either of those lots, and my only consolation will be my vengeance.”
“How absurd!” broke she out, “are they who imagine that one only wants to be avenged on those who hate us! It is the wrongs done by people who are indifferent to us, and who in search of their own objects bestow no thought upon us, – these are the ills that cannot be forgiven. I never hated a human being – and there have been some who have earned my hate – as I hate this girl; and just as I feel the injustice of the sentiment, so does it eat deeper and deeper into my heart.”
“A despatch, ma’am,” said her maid, as she laid a paper on the table and withdrew. Mrs. Sewell clutched it eagerly, but her hand trembled so she could not break the envelope. To think that her whole fate lay there, within that fold of paper, so overcame her that she actually sickened with fear as she looked on it.
“Whatever is done, is done,” muttered she, as she broke open the cover. There were but two lines; they ran thus: —
“Holyhead, 12 o’clock.
“Have thought better of it. It would be absurd to meet him. I start for town at once, and shall be at Boulogne to-morrow.
“Dudley.”
She sat pondering over these words till the paper became blurred and blotted by her tears as they rolled heavily along her cheeks, and dropped with a distinct sound. She was not conscious that she wept. It was not grief that moved her; it was the blankness of despair, – the sense of hopelessness that comes over the heart when life no longer offers a plan or a project, but presents a weariful road to be travelled, uncheered and dreary.
Till she had read these lines it never occurred to her that such a line of action was possible. But now that she saw them there before her, her whole astonishment was that she had not anticipated this conduct on his part. “I might have guessed it; I might have been sure of it,” muttered she. “The interval was too long; there were twelve mortal hours for reflection. Cowards think acutely, – at least, they say that in their calculations they embrace more casualties than brave men. And so he has ‘thought better of it,’ – a strange phrase. ‘Absurd to meet him!’ but not absurd to run away. How oddly men reason when they are terrified! And so my great scheme has failed, all for want of a little courage, which I could have supplied, if called on; and now comes my hour of defeat, if not worse, – my hour of exposure. I am not brave enough to confront it. I must leave this; but where to go is the question. I suppose Boulogne, since it is there I shall join my husband;” and she laughed hysterically as she said it.