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“I ‘m not of your mind there, sir. I think it is quite possible to conceive a case in which there could be no doubt on which side lay the right, and not difficult to believe that there are men who would act, on conviction, to their own certain detriment.”

“It’s a very hopeful view of humanity, Mr. Bramleigh,” said the lawyer, and he took a pinch of snuff.

“I am certain it is a just one. At least, I will go this far to sustain my opinion. I will declare to you here, that if the time should ever come that it may depend upon me to decide this matter, if I satisfy my mind that M. Pracontal’s claim be just and equitable, – that, in fact, he is simply asking for his own, – I ‘ll not screen myself behind the law’s delays or its niceties; I ‘ll not make it a question of the longest purse or the ablest advocate, but frankly admit that the property is his, and cede it to him.”

“I have only one remark to make, Mr. Bramleigh, which is, keep this determination strictly to yourself; and above all things, do not acquaint Colonel Bramleigh with these opinions.”

“I suspect that my father is not a stranger to them,” said Augustus, reddening with shame and irritation together.

“It is therefore as well, sir, that there is no question of a compromise to lay before you. You are for strict justice and no favor.”

“I repeat, Mr. Sedley, I am for him who has the right.”

“So am I,” quickly responded Sedley; “and we alone differ about the meaning of that word; but let me ask another question. Are you aware that this claim extends to nearly everything you have in the world; that the interest alone on the debt would certainly swallow up all your funded property, and make a great inroad, besides, on your securities and foreign bonds?”

“I can well believe it,” said the other, mournfully.

“I must say, sir,” said Sedley, as he rose and proceeded to thrust the papers hurriedly into his bag, “that though I am highly impressed – very highly impressed, indeed, with the noble sentiments you have delivered on this occasion – sentiments, I am bound to admit, that a long professional career has never made me acquainted with till this day – yet, on the whole, Mr. Bramleigh, looking at the question with a view to its remote consequences, and speculating on what would result if such opinions as yours were to meet a general acceptance, I am bound, to say I prefer the verdict of twelve men in a jury-box to the most impartial judgment of any individual breathing; and I wish you a very good-night.”

What Mr. Sedley muttered to himself as he ascended the stairs, in what spirit he canvassed the character of Mr. Augustus Bramleigh, the reader need not know; and it is fully as well that our story does not require it should be recorded. One only remark, however, may be preserved; it was said as he reached the door of his room, and apparently in a sort of summing up of all that had occurred to him, – “These creatures, with their cant about conscience, don’t seem to know that this mischievous folly would unsettle half the estates in the kingdom; and there ‘s not a man in England would know what he was born to, till he had got his father in a madhouse.”

CHAPTER XXIX. THE HÔTEL BRISTOL

In a handsome apartment of the Hôtel Bristol at Paris, sat Lord and Lady Culduff at tea. They were in deep mourning; and though they were perfectly alone, the room was splendidly lighted – branches of candles figuring on every console, and the glass lustre that hung from the ceiling a blaze of waxlights.

If Lord Culduff looked older and more careworn than we have lately seem him, Marion seemed in higher bloom and beauty, and the haughty, half-defiant air which had, in a measure, spoiled the charm of her girlhood, sat with a sort of dignity on her features as a woman.

Not a word was spoken on either side; and from her look of intense preoccupation, as she sat gazing on the broad hem of her handkerchief, it was evident that her thoughts were wandering far away from the place she was in. As they sat thus, the door was noiselessly opened by a servant in deep black, who, in a very subdued voice, said, “The Duke de Castro, your Excellency.”

“I don ‘t receive,” was the cold reply, and the man withdrew. In about a quarter of an hour after, he reappeared, and in the same stealthy tone said, “Madame la Comtesse de Renneville begs she may have the honor – ”

“Lady Culduff does not receive,” said his Lordship, sternly.

“The Countess has been very kind; she has been here to inquire after me several times.”

“She is a woman of intense curiosity,” said he, slowly.

“I ‘d have said of great good nature.”

“And you ‘d have said perfectly wrong, madam. The woman is a political intriguante who only lives to unravel mysteries; and the one that is now puzzling her is too much for her good manners.”

“I declare, my Lord, that I do not follow you.”

“I’m quite sure of that, madam. The sort of address Madame de Renneville boasts was not a quality that your life in Ireland was likely to make you familiar with.”

“I beg you to remember, my Lord,” said she, angrily, “that all my experiences of the world have not been derived from that side of the Channel.”

“I ‘m cruel enough to say, madam, that I wish they had! There is nothing so difficult as unlearning.”

“I wish, my Lord – I heartily wish – that you had made this discovery earlier.”

“Madam,” said he, slowly, and with much solemnity of manner, “I owe it to each of us to own that I had made what you are pleased to call this ‘discovery’ while there was yet time to obviate its consequences. My very great admiration had not blinded me as to certain peculiarities, let me call them, of manner; and if my vanity induced me to believe that I should be able to correct them, it is my only error.”

“I protest, my Lord, if my temper sustain me under such insult as this, I think I might be acquitted of ill breeding.”

“I live in the hope, madam, that such a charge would be impossible.”

“I suppose you mean,” said she, with a sneering smile, “when I have taken more lessons – when I have completed the course of instruction you so courteously began with me yesterday?”

“Precisely, madam, precisely. There are no heaven-born courtiers. The graces of manner are as much matter of acquirement as are the notes of music. A delicate organization has the same disadvantage in the one case that a fine ear has in the other. It substitutes an aptitude for what ought to be pure acquirement. The people who are naturally well mannered are like the people who sing by ear; and I need not say what inflictions are both.”

“And you really think, my Lord, that I may yet be able to enter a room and leave it with becoming grace and dignity.”

“You enter a room well, madam,” said he, with a judicial slowness. “Now that you have subdued the triumphant air I objected to, and assumed more quietness – the blended softness with reserve – your approach is good, I should say, extremely good. To withdraw is, however, far more difficult. To throw into the deference of leave-taking – for it is always a permission you seem to ask – the tempered sorrow of departure with the sense of tasted enjoyment, to do this with ease and elegance, and not a touch of the dramatic about it, is a very high success; and I grieve to say, madam,” added he, seriously, “it is a success not yet accorded you. Would you do me the great favor to repeat our lesson of this morning – I mean the courtesy with the two steps retiring, and then the slide?”

“If you do not think me well mannered, my Lord, you must at least believe me very good-tempered,” said she, flushing.

“Let me assure you, my Lady, that to the latter quality I attach no importance whatever. Persons who respect themselves never visit peculiarities of temperament on others. We have our infirmities of nature, as we have our maladies; but we keep them for ourselves, or for our doctor. It is the triumph of the well-bred world to need nothing but good manners.”

“What charming people! I take it that heaven must be peopled with lords-in-waiting.”

“Let me observe to your Ladyship that there is no greater enormity in manners than an epigram. Keep this smartness for correspondence exclusively, abstain from it strictly in conversation.”

“I protest, my Lord, your lessons come so thick that I despair of being able to profit by half of them. Meanwhile, if I am not committing another solecism against good manners, I should like to say good-night.”

Lord Culduff arose and walked to the door, to be ready to open it as she approached. Meanwhile, she busied herself collecting her fan and her scent-bottle and her handkerchief, and a book she had been reading.

“Hadn’t Virginie better come for these things?” said he, quietly.

“Oh, certainly,” replied she, dropping them hurriedly on the table; “I’m always transgressing; but I do hope, my Lord, with time, and with that sincere desire to learn that animates me, I may yet attain to at least so many of the habits of your Lordship’s order as may enable me to escape censure.”

He smiled and bowed a courteous concurrence with the wish, but did not speak. Though her lip now trembled with indignation, and her cheek was flushed, she controlled her temper, and as she drew nigh the door dropped a low and most respectful courtesy.

“Very nice, very nice, indeed; a thought, perhaps, too formal – I mean for the occasion – but in admirable taste. Your Ladyship is grace itself.”

“My Lord, you are a model of courtesy.”

“I cannot even attempt to convey what pleasure your words give me,” said he, pressing his hand to his heart and bowing low. Meanwhile, with a darkening brow and a look of haughty defiance, she swept past him and left the room.

“Is n’t Marion well?” said Temple Bramleigh, as he entered a few minutes later; “her maid told me she had gone to her room.”

“Quite well: a little fagged, perhaps, by a day of visiting; nothing beyond that. You have been dining at the embassy? whom had you there?”

“A family party and a few of the smaller diplomacies.”

“To be sure. It was Friday. Any news stirring?”

“Nothing whatever.”

“Does Bartleton talk of retiring still?”’

“Yes. He says he is sick of sending in his demand for retirement. That they always say, ‘We can’t spare you; you must hold on a little longer. If you go out now, there’s Bailey and Hammersmith, and half a dozen others will come insisting on advancement.’”

“Did n’t he say Culduff too? eh, didn’t he?” said the old lord, with a wicked twinkle of the eye.

“I’m not sure he didn’t,” said Temple, blushing.

“He did, sir, and he said more – he said, ‘Rather than see Culduff here, I ‘d stay on and serve these twenty years.’”

“I did n’t hear him say that, certainly.”

“No, sir, perhaps not, but he said it to himself, as sure as I stand here. There is n’t a country in Europe – I say it advisedly – where intellect – I mean superior intellect – is so persistently persecuted as in England. I don’t want my enemy to have any heavier misfortune than to be born a man of brains and a Briton! Once that it’s known that you stand above your fellow-men, the whole world is arrayed against you. Who knows that better than he who now speaks to you? Have I ever been forgiven the Erzeroum convention? Even George Canning – from whom one might have expected better – even he used to say, ‘How well Culduff managed that commercial treaty with the Hanse Towns!’ he never got over it, sir, never! You are a young fellow entering upon life – let me give you a word of counsel. Always be inferior to the man you are, for the time being, in contact with. Outbid him, outjockey him, overreach him, but never forget to make him believe he knows more of the game than you do. If you have any success over him, ascribe it to ‘luck,’ mere ‘luck.’ The most envious of men will forgive ‘luck,’ all the more if they despise the fellow who has profited by it. Therefore, I say, if the intellectual standard of your rival is only four feet, take care that with your tallest heels on, you don’t stand above three feet eleven! No harm if only three ten and a half.”

The little applauding ha! ha! ha! with which his Lordship ended was faintly chorussed by the secretary.

“And what is your news from home; you ‘ve had letters, have n’t you?”

“Yes. Augustus writes me in great confusion. They have not found the will, and they begin to fear that the very informal scrap of paper I already mentioned is all that represents one.”

“What! do you mean that memorandum stating that your father bequeathed all he had to Augustus, and trusted he would make a suitable provision for his brothers and sisters?”

“Yes; that is all that has been found. Augustus says in his last letter, my poor father would seem to have been most painfully affected for some time back by a claim put forward to the title of all his landed property, by a person assuming to be the heir of my grandfather, and this claim is actually about to be asserted at law. The weight of this charge and all its consequent publicity and exposure appear to have crushed him for some months before his death, and he had made great efforts to effect a compromise.”

A long, low, plaintive whistle from Lord Culduff arrested Temple’s speech, and for a few seconds there was a dead silence in the room.

“This, then, would have left you all ruined – eh?” asked Culduff, after a pause.

“I don’t exactly see to what extent we should have been liable – whether only the estated property, or also all funded moneys.”

“Everything; every stick and stone; every scrip and debenture, you may swear. The rental of the estates for years back would have to be accounted for – with interest.”

“Sedley does not say so,” said Temple, in a tone of considerable irritation.

“These fellows never do; they always imply there is a game to be played, an issue to be waited for, else their occupation were gone. How much of all this story was known to your sister Marion?”

“Nothing. Neither she nor any of us ever suspected it.”

“It’s always the same thing,” said the Viscount, as he arose and settled his wig before the glass. “The same episode goes on repeating itself forever. These trade fortunes are just card-houses; they are raised in a night, and blown away in the morning.”

“You forget, my Lord, that my father inherited an entailed estate.”

“Which turns out not to have been his,” replied he, with a grin.

“You are going too fast, my Lord, faster than judge and jury. Sedley never took a very serious view of this claim, and he only concurred in the attempt to compromise it out of deference to my father’s dislike to public scandal.”

“And a very wise antipathy it was, I must say. No gentleman ever consulted his self-respect by inviting the world to criticise his private affairs. And how does this pleasing incident stand now? In which act of the drama are we at this moment? Is there an action at law, or are we in the stage of compromise?”

“This is what Augustus says,” said Temple, taking the letter from his pocket and reading: “‘Sedley thinks that a handsome offer of a sum down – say twenty thousand pounds – might possibly be accepted; but to meet this would require a united effort by all of us. Would Lord Culduff be disposed to accept his share in this liability? Would he, I mean, be willing to devote a portion of Marion’s fortune to this object, seeing that he is now one of us? I have engaged Cutbill to go over to Paris and confer with him, and he will probably arrive there by Tuesday. Nelly has placed at my disposal the only sum over which she has exclusive control – it is but two thousand pounds. As for Jack, matters have gone very ill with him, and rather than accept a court-martial, he has thrown up his commission and left the service. We are expecting him here to-night, but only to say good-bye, as he sails for China on Thursday.’”

Lord Culduflf walked quietly towards the chimney-piece as Temple concluded, and took up a small tobacco-box of chased silver, from which he proceeded to manufacture a cigarette – a process on which he displayed considerable skill and patience; having lighted which, and taken a couple of puffs, he said, “You’ll have to go to Bogota, Temple, that’s clear.”

“Go to Bogota! I declare I don’t see why.”

“Yes, you’ll have to go; every man has to take his turn of some objectionable post, his Gaboon and yellow fever days. I myself passed a year at Stutgard. The Bramleighs are now events of the past. There’s no use in fighting against these things. They were, and they are not: that’s the whole story. It’s very hard on every one, especially hard upon me. Reverses in life sit easily enough on the class that furnishes adventurers, but in my condition there are no adventurers. You and others like you descend to the ranks, and nobody thinks the worse of you. We– we cannot! that’s the pull you have. We are born with our epaulettes, and we must wear them till we die.”

“It does not seem a very logical consequence, notwithstanding, to me, that because my brother may have to defend his title to his estate, that I must accept a post that is highly distasteful to me.”

“And yet it is the direct consequence. Will you do me the favor to touch that bell. I should like some claret-cup. The fact is, we all of us take too little out of our prosperity! Where we err is, we experiment on good fortune: now we should n’t do that, we should realize. You, for instance, ought to have made your ‘running’ while your father was entertaining all the world in Belgravia The people could n’t have ignored you, and dined with him; at least, you need not have let them.”

“So that your Lordship already looks upon us as bygones, as things of the past?”

“I am forced to take this very disagreeable view. Will you try that cup? it is scarcely iced enough for my liking. Have you remarked that they never make cup properly in an hotel? The clubs alone have the secret.”

“I suppose you will confer with Cutbill before you return an answer to Augustus?” said Temple, stiffly.

“I may – that is, I may listen to what that very plausible but not very polished individual has to say, before I frame the exact terms of my reply. We are all of us, so to say, ‘dans des mauvais draps.’ You are going where you hate to go, and I, who really should have had no share in this general disaster, have taken my ticket in the lottery when the last prize has just been paid over the counter.”

“It is very hard on you indeed,” said the other, scornfully.

“Nothing less than your sympathy would make it endurable;” and as he spoke he lighted a bedroom candle and moved towards the door. “Don’t tell them at F. O. that you are going out unwillingly, or they’ll keep you there. Trust to some irregularity when you are there, to get recalled, and be injured. If a man can only be injured and brought before the House, it’s worth ten years’ active service to him. The first time I was injured I was made secretary of embassy. The second gave me my K. C. B., and I look to my next misfortune for the Grand Cross. Good-bye. Don’t take the yellow fever, don’t marry a squaw.”

And with a graceful move of the hand he motioned an adieu, and disappeared.

CHAPTER XXX. ON THE ROAD

L’Estrange and his sister were on their way to Italy. The curate had been appointed to the church at Albano, and he was proceeding to his destination with as much happiness as is permitted to a man who, with a very humble opinion of himself, feels called on to assume a position of some importance.

Wishing, partly from motives of enjoyment, partly from economy, to avoid the route most frequented by travellers, they had taken the road through Zurich and the valley of the Upper Rhine, and had now reached the little village of Dornbirn in the Vorarlberg – a spot of singular beauty, in the midst of a completely pastoral country. High mountains, snow-capped above, pine-clad lower down, descended by grassy slopes into rich pasture-lands, traversed by innumerable streams, and dotted over with those cottages of framed wood, which, with their ornamented gables and quaint galleries, are the most picturesque peasant houses in existence. Beautiful cattle covered the hills, their tinkling bells ringing out in the clear air, and blending their tones with the ceaseless flow of falling water, imparting just that amount of sound that relieved the solemn character of the scene, and gave it vitality.

Day after day found our two travellers still lingering here. There was a charm in the spot, which each felt, without confessing it to the other, and it was already the fourth evening of their sojourn as they were sitting by the side of a little rivulet, watching the dipping flies along the stream, that Julia said suddenly, —

“You’d like to live your life here, George; isn’t that so?”

“What makes you think so, Julia?” said he, coloring slightly as he spoke.

“First tell me if I have not read you aright? You like this quiet, dreamy landscape. You want no other changes than in the varying effects of cloud, and shadow, and mist; and you ‘d like to think this a little haven against the storms and shipwrecks of life?”

“And if I really did think all this, would my choice of an existence be a very bad one, Julia?”

“No. Not if one could insure the same frame of mind in which first he tasted the enjoyment. I, for instance, like what is called the world very much. I like society, life, and gayety. I like the attentions, I like the flatteries one meets with, but if I could be always as happy, always as tranquil as we have felt since we came here, I ‘d be quite willing to sign a bond to live and die here.”

“So that you mean our present enjoyment of the place could not last.”

“I am sure it could not. I am sure a great deal of the pleasure we now feel is in the relief of escaping from the turmoil and bustle of a world that we don’t belong to. The first sense of this relief is repose, the next would be ennui.”

“I don’t agree with you, Julia. There is a calm acceptance of a humble lot in life, quite apart from ennui.”

“Don’t believe it. There is no such philosophy. A great part of your happiness here is in fact that you can afford to live here. Oh, hold up your hands, and be horrified. It is very shocking to have a sister who will say such vulgar things, but I watched you, George, after you paid the bill this morning, and I marked the delighted smile in which you pointed out some effect of light on the ‘Sentis,’ and I said to myself, ‘It is the landlord has touched up the landscape.’”

“I declare, Julia, you make me angry. Why will you say such things?”

“Why are we so poor, George? Tell me that, brother mine. Why are we so poor?”

“There are hundreds as poor; thousands poorer.”

“Perhaps they don’t care, don’t fret about it, don’t dwell on all the things they are debarred from, don’t want this or that appliance to make life easier. Now look there! what a difference in one’s existence to travel that way.”

As she spoke, she pointed to a travelling-carriage which swept over the bridge, with all the speed of four posters, and, with all the clatter of cracking whips and sounding horns, made for the inn of the village.

“How few travel with post now, in these days of railroad,” said he, not sorry to turn the conversation into another channel.

“I hope they are going on. I trust they ‘ll not stop here. We have been the great folk of the place up to this, but you ‘ll see how completely the courier or the femme de chambre will eclipse us now,” said she, rising. “Let us go back, or perhaps they ‘ll give our very rooms away.”

“How can you be so silly, Julia?”

“All because we are poor, George. Let me be rich, and you ‘ll be surprised, not only how generous I shall be, but how disposed to think well of every one. Poverty is the very mother of distrust.”

“I never heard you rail at our narrow fortune like this before.”

“Don’t be angry with me, dear George, and I’ll make a confession to you. I was not thinking of ourselves, nor of our humble lot all this while; it was a letter I got this morning from Nelly Bramleigh was running in my mind. It has never been out of my thoughts since I received it.”

“You never told me of this.”

“No. She begged of me not to speak of it; and I meant to have obeyed her, but my temper has betrayed me. What Nelly said was, ‘Don’t tell your brother about these things till he can hear the whole story, which Augustus will write to him as soon as he is able.’”

“What does she allude to?”

“They are ruined – actually ruined.”

“The Bramleighs – the rich Bramleighs?”

“Just so. They were worth millions – at least they thought so – a few weeks back, and now they have next to nothing.”

“This has come of over speculation.”

“No. Nothing of the kind. It is a claimant to the estate has arisen, an heir whose rights take precedence of their father’s; in fact, the grandfather had been privately married early in life, and had a son of whom nothing was heard for years, but who married and left a boy, who, on attaining manhood, preferred his claim to the property. All this mysterious claim was well known to Colonel Bramleigh; indeed, it would appear that for years he was engaged in negotiations with this man’s lawyers, sometimes defiantly challenging an appeal to the law, and sometimes entertaining projects of compromise. The correspondence was very lengthy, and, from its nature, must have weighed heavily on the Colonel’s mind and spirits, and ended, as Nelly suspects, by breaking up his health.

“It was almost the very first news that met Augustus on his accession to his fortune, and so stunned was he that he wrote to Mr. Sedley to say, ‘I have such perfect reliance on both your integrity and ability, that if you assure me this claim is well founded and this demand a just one, I will not contest it.’ He added – ‘I am not afraid of poverty, but a public shame and a scandal would be my death.’”

“Just what I should expect from him. What did Sedley say?”

“He did n’t say he was exactly a fool, but something very like it; and he told him, too, that though he might make very light of his own rights, he could not presume to barter away those of others; and, last of all, he added, what he knew would have its weight with Augustus, that, had his father lived he meant to have compromised this claim. Not that he regarded it either as well founded or formidable, but simply as a means of avoiding a very unpleasant publicity. This last intimation had its effect, and Augustus permitted Sedley to treat. Sedley at once addressed himself to Temple – Jack was not to be found – and to Lord Culduff, to learn what share they were disposed to take in such an arrangement. As Augustus offered to bind himself never to marry, and to make a will dividing the estate equally amongst his brothers and sisters, Lord Culduff and Temple quite approved of this determination, but held that they were not called upon to take any portion of the burden of the compromise.

“Augustus would seem to have been so indignant at this conduct, that he wrote to Sedley to put him at once in direct communication with the claimant. Sedley saw by the terms of the letter how much of it was dictated by passion and offended pride, evaded the demand, and pretended that an arrangement was actually pending, and, if uninterfered with, sure to be completed. To this Augustus replied – for Nelly has sent me a copy of his very words – ‘Be it so. Make such a settlement as you, in your capacity of my lawyer, deem best for my interests. For my own part, I will not live in a house, nor receive the rents of an estate, my rights to which the law may possibly decide against me. Till, then, the matter be determined either way, I and my sister Eleanor, who is like-minded with me in this affair, will go where we can live at least cost, decided, as soon as may be, to have this issue determined, and Castello become the possession of him who rightfully owns it.’

“On the evening of the day he wrote this they left Castello. They only stopped a night in Dublin, and left next morning for the Continent. Nelly’s letter is dated from Ostend. She says she does not know where they are going, and is averse to anything like importuning her brother by even a question. She promises to write soon again, however, and tell me all about their plans. They are travelling without a servant, and, so far as she knows, with very little money. Poor Nelly! she bears up nobly, but the terrible reverse of condition, and the privations she is hourly confronted with, are clearly preying upon her.”

“What a change! Just to think of them a few months back! It was a princely household.”

“Just what Nelly says. ‘It is complete overthrow; and if I am not stunned by the reverse, it is because all my sympathies are engaged for poor Gusty, who is doing his best to bear up well. As for myself, I never knew how helpless I was till I tried to pack my trunk. I suppose time will soften down many things that are now somewhat hard to bear; but for the moment I am impatient and irritable; and it is only the sight of my dear brother – so calm, so manly, and so dignified in his sorrow – that obliges me to forget my selfish grief and compose myself as I ought.’”

As they thus talked, they arrived at the door of the inn, where the landlord met them, with the request that the two gentlemen who had arrived by extra-post, and who could not find horses to proceed on their journey, might be permitted to share the one sitting-room the house contained, and which was at present occupied by the L’Estranges.

“Let us sup in your room, George,” whispered Julia, and passed on into the house. L’Estrange gave orders to send the supper to his room, and told the landlord that the salon was at his guests’ disposal.

About two hours later, as the curate and his sister sat at the open window, silently enjoying the delicious softness of a starry night, they were startled by the loud talking of persons so near as to seem almost in the room with them.

“English – I’ll be sworn they are!” said one. “That instinctive dread of a stranger pertains only to our people. How could it have interfered with their comfort, that we sat and ate our meal in this corner?”