“Half-past four, madam. I am really shocked at the length of my visit.”
“Well, I must go away. Perhaps you ‘ll come and see my sister – she’s charming, I assure you, and she ‘d like to know you?”
“If you will vouchsafe to present me on any other day, I shall be but too grateful; but Sir Marcus Cluff gave me a rendezvous for four o’clock.”
“And you ‘ll be with him at five,” cried she, laughing. “Don’t say it was I that made you break your appointment, for he hates me, and would never forgive you. By-by. Tell your mother I ‘ll call on her to-morrow, and hope you ‘ll both dine with me.” And without waiting for a word in reply, she tripped out of the summer-house, and hastened away to the villa.
L’Estrange had little time to think over this somewhat strange interview when he reached the entrance-gate to the grounds of Sir Marcus Cluff, and was scarcely admitted within the precincts when a phaeton and a pair of very diminutive ponies drove up, and a thin, emaciated man, carefully swathed in shawls and wrappers, who held the reins, called out, “Is that Mr. L’Estrange?”
The young parson came forward with his excuses for being late, and begged that he might not interrupt Sir Marcus in his intended drive.
“Will you take a turn with me?” said Sir Marcus, in a whining voice, that sounded like habitual complaint. “I ‘m obliged to do this every day; it ‘s the doctor’s order. He says, ‘Take the air and distract yourself;’ and I do so.” L’Estrange had now seated himself, and they drove away.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” said Sir Marcus. “It will stop all this plotting and intriguing. If you had delayed much longer, I think they ‘d have had a dozen here – one of them a converted Jew, a very dirty fellow. Oh, dear, how fatiguing it is! that little crop-eared pony pulls so he can’t be held, and we call him John Bright; but don’t mention it. I hope you have no family, sir?”
“I have my sister only.”
“A sister isn’t so bad. A sister may marry, or she may – ” What was the other alternative did not appear, for John Bright bolted at this moment, and it was full five minutes ere he could be pulled up again. “This is the distraction I ‘m promised,” said the sick man. “If it was n’t for Mr. Needham – I call the near-sider Mr. Needham, as I bought him of that gentleman – I ‘d have too much distraction; but Needham never runs away – he falls; he comes down as if he was shot!” cried he, with a joyous twinkle of the eye, “and I bought him for that. There’s no drag ever was invented like a horse on his belly – the most inveterate runaway can’t escape against that.” If the little cackle that followed this speech did not sound exactly like a laugh, it was all of that emotion that Sir Marcus ever permitted himself.
“I can’t ask you if you like this place. You ‘re too newly come to answer that question,” resumed he; “but I may ask what is the sort of society you prefer?”
“I ‘ve seen next to nothing of the world since I left the University. I have been living these last four or five years in one of the least visited spots in Great Britain, and only since the arrival of the Bramleigh family had a neighbor to speak to.”
“Ah, then, you know these Bramleighs?” said the other with more animation than he had yet displayed. “Overbearing people, I ‘ve heard they were – very rich, and insolent to a degree.”
“I must say I have found them everything that was kind and considerate, hospitable neighbors, and very warmhearted friends.”
“That ‘s not the world’s judgment on them, my dear sir – far from it. They are a proverb for pretension and impertinence. As for Lady Augusta here – to be sure she ‘s only one of them by marriage – but there’s not a soul in the place she has not outraged. She goes nowhere – of course, that she has a right to do – but she never returns a call, never even sends a card. She went so far as to tell Mr. Pemberton, your predecessor here, that she liked Albano for its savagery; that there was no one to know was its chief charm for her.”
“I saw her for the first time this morning,” said L’Estrange, not liking to involve himself in this censure.
“And she fascinated you, of course? I ‘m told she does that with every good-looking young fellow that comes in her way. She’s a finished coquette, they say. I don’t know what that means, nor do I believe it would have much success with me if I did know. All the coquetry she bestows upon me is to set my ponies off in full gallop whenever she overtakes me driving. She starts away in a sharp canter just behind me, and John Bright fancies it a race, and away he goes too, and if Mr. Needham was of the same mettle I don’t know what would become of us. I’m afraid, besides, she’s a connection of mine. My mother, Lady Marion, was cousin to one of the Delahunts of Kings Cromer. Would you mind taking the reins for a while, John is fearfully rash to-day? Just sit where you are, the near-side gives you the whip-hand for Needham. Ah! that’s a relief! Turn down the next road on your left. And so she never asked you about your tenets – never inquired whether you were High Church or Low Church or no church at all?”
“Pardon me, Sir Marcus; she was particularly anxious that I should guard myself against Romish fascinations and advances.”
“Ah, she knows them all! They thought they had secured her – indeed they were full sure of it; but as she said to poor Mr. Pemberton, they found they had hatched a duck. She was only flirting with Rome. The woman would flirt with the Holy Father, sir, if she had a chance. There’s nothing serious, nothing real, nothing honest about her; but she charmed you, for all that – I see it. I see it all; and you ‘re to take moonlight rides with her over the Campagna. Ha, ha, ha! Haven’t I hit it? Poor old Pemberton – fifty-eight if he was an hour – got a bad bronchitis with these same night excursions. Worse than that, he made the place too hot for him. Mrs. Trumpler – an active woman Mrs. T., and the eye of a hawk – would n’t stand the ‘few sweet moments,’ as poor Pemberton in his simplicity called them. She threatened him with a general meeting, and a vote of censure, and a letter to the Bishop of Gibraltar; and she frightened him so that he resigned. I was away at the time at the baths at Ischia, or I ‘d have tried to patch up matters. Indeed, as I told Mrs. T., I’d have tried to get rid of my Lady, instead of banishing poor Pemberton, as kind-hearted a creature as ever I met, and a capital whist-player. Not one of your new-fangled fellows, with the ‘call for trumps’ and all the last devices of the Portland, but a steady player, who never varied – did n’t go chopping about, changing his suits, and making false leads, but went manfully through his hearts before he opened his spades. We were at Christ Church together. I knew him for a matter of six-and-thirty years, Mr. L’Estrange, and I pledge you my word of honor” – here his voice grew tremulous with agitation – “and in all that time I never knew him revoke!” He drew his hat over his eyes as he spoke, and leaning back in the seat seemed almost overcome by his emotions.
“Will you turn in there at the small gate? It is a private entrance to my grounds. I ‘ll not ask you to come in to-day, sir. I’m a little flurried and nervous; but if you ‘ll join a sick man’s dinner at two o’clock to-morrow – some rice and a chicken and a bit of fish – nothing more, I promise you. Well, well, I see it does not tempt you. My best thanks for your pleasant company. Let me see you soon. Take care of yourself, beware of my Lady, and avoid the moonlight!”
Apparently this little sally seemed to revive the invalid, for he stepped up the approach to his house with a lively air and waved his hand pleasantly as he said adieu.
“There’s another still!” muttered L’Estrange as he inquired the way to Mrs. Trumpler’s; “and I wish with all my heart it was over.”
L’Estrange found Mrs. Trumpler at tea. She was an early diner, and took tea about six o’clock, after which she went out for an evening drive over the Campagna. In aspect, the lady was not prepossessing. She was very red-faced, with large grizzly curls arranged in a straight line across her forehead, and she wore spectacles of such a size as to give her somewhat the look of an owl. In figure, she was portly and stout, and had a stand-up sort of air, that, to a timid or bashful man like the curate, was the reverse of reassuring.
“I perceive, sir, I am the last on your list,” said she, looking at her watch as he entered. “It is past six.”
“I regret, madam, if I have come at an inconvenient hour. Will you allow me to wait on you to-morrow?”
“No, sir. We will, with your permission, avail ourselves of the present to make acquaintance with each other.” She rang the bell after this speech, and ordered that the carriage should be sent away. “I shall not drive, Giacomo,” said she; “and I do not receive if any one calls.”
“You brought me a letter, sir, from the Reverend Silas Smallwood,” said she, very much in the tone of a barrister cross-examining a troublesome witness.
“Yes, madam; that gentleman kindly offered a friend of mine to be the means of presenting me to you.”
“So that you are not personally acquainted, sir?”
“We have never, so far as I know, even seen each other.”
“It is as well, sir, fully as well. Mr. Smallwood is a person for whose judgment or discrimination I would have the very humblest opinion, and I have therefore, from what you tell me, the hope that you are not of his party in the Church.”
“I am unable to answer you, madam, knowing nothing whatever of Mr. Smallwood’s peculiar views.”
“This is fencing, sir; and I don’t admire fencing. Let us understand each other. What have you come here to preach? I hope my question is a direct one?”
“I am an ordained minister of the Church of England, madam; and when I have said so, I have answered you.”
“What, sir? do you imagine your reply is sufficient. In an age when not alone every doctrine is embraced within the Church, but that there is a very large and increasing party who are prepared to have no doctrine at all? I perceive, sir, I must make my approaches to you in a different fashion. Are you a man of vestments, gesticulations, and glass windows? Do you dramatize your Christianity?”
“I believe I can say no, madam, to all these.”
“Are you a Literalist, then? What about Noah, sir? Let me hear what you have to say about the Flood. Have you ever calculated what forty days’ rainfall would amount to? Do you know that in Assam, where the rains are the heaviest in that part of the world, and in Colon, in Central America, no twelve hours’ rain ever passed five inches and three quarters? You are, I am sure, acquainted with Esch-schormes’ book on the Nile deposits? If not, sir, it is yonder – at your service. Now, sir, we shall devote this evening to the Deluge, and, so far as time permits, the age of the earth. To-morrow evening we’ll take Moses, on Staub’s suggestion that many persons were included under that name. We’ll keep the Pentateuch for Friday, for I expect the Rabbi Bensi will be here by that time.”
“Will you pardon me, madam,” said L’Estrange, rising, “if I decline entering upon all discussion of these momentous questions with you? I have no such scholarship as would enable me to prove instructive, and I have conviction sufficiently strong, in my faith in other men’s learning, to enable me to reject quibbles and be unmoved by subtleties. Besides,” added he, in a sharper tone, “I have come here to have the honor of making your acquaintance, and not to submit myself to an examination. May I wish you a good evening?”
How he took his leave, how he descended the stairs, and rushed into the street, and found his way to the little inn where his sister wearily was waiting dinner for him, the poor curate never knew to the last day of his life.
CHAPTER XXXIII. A SMALL LODGING AT LOUVAIN
In a very humble quarter of the old town of Louvain, at the corner of La Rue des Moines, Augustus Bramleigh and his sister had taken up their lodgings. Madame Jervasse, the proprietress of the house, had in her youth been the femme-de-chambre of some high-born dame of Brussels, and offered her services in the same capacity to Ellen, while, with the aid of her own servant, she prepared their meals, thus at once supplying the modest requirements they needed. Augustus Bramleigh was not a very resolute or determined man, but his was one of those natures that acquire solidity from pressure. When once he found himself on the road of sacrifices, his self-esteem imparted vigor and energy to his character. In the ordinary course of events he was accustomed to hold himself – his abilities and his temperament – cheaply enough. No man was ever less self-opinionated or self-confident. If referred to for advice, or even for opinion, he would modestly decline the last, and say, “Marion or Temple perhaps could help you here.” He shrank from all self-assertion whatever, and it was ever a most painful moment to him when he was presented to any one as the future head of the house and the heir to the Bramleigh estates. To Ellen, from whom he had no secrets, he had often confessed how he wished he had been a younger son. All his tastes and all his likings were those to be enjoyed by a man of moderate fortune, and an ambition even smaller than that fortune. He would say, too, half-jestingly, “With such aspiring spirits amongst us as Marion and Temple, I can afford myself the luxury of obscurity. They are sure to carry our banner loftily, and I may with safety go on my humble path unnoticed.”
Jack had always been his favorite brother: his joyous nature, his sailor-like frankness, his spirit, and his willingness to oblige, contrasted very favorably with Temple’s sedate, cautious manner, and the traces of a selfishness that never forgot itself. Had Jack been the second son instead of the youngest, Augustus would have abdicated in his favor at once, but he could not make such a sacrifice for Temple. All the less that the very astute diplomatist continually harped on the sort of qualities which were required to dispense an ample fortune, and more than insinuated how much such a position would become himself, while another might only regard it as a burden and a worry. It was certainly a great shock to him to learn that there was a claimant to his family fortune and estate: the terrible feeling that they were to appear before the world as impostors – holding a station and dispensing a wealth to which they had no right – almost overcame him. The disgrace of a public exposure, the notoriety it would evoke, were about the most poignant sufferings such a man could be brought to endure. He to whom a newspaper comment, a mere passing notice of his name, was a source of pain and annoyance, – that he should figure in a great trial, and his downfall be made the theme of moral reflections in a leading article! How was this to be borne? What could break the fall from a position of affluence and power to a condition of penury and insignificance? Nothing, – if not the spirit which, by meeting disaster half-way, seemed at least to accept the inevitable with courage, and so carry a high heart in the last moments of defeat.
Augustus well knew what a mistaken estimate the world had ever formed of his timid, bashful nature, and this had given his manner a semblance of pride and hauteur which made the keynote of his character. It was all in vain that he tried to persuade people that he had not an immeasurable self-conceit. They saw it in his every word and gesture, in his coolness when they approached him, in his almost ungraciousness when they were courteous to him. “Many will doubtless declare,” said he, “that this reverse of fortune is but a natural justice on one who plumed himself too much on his prosperity, and who arrogated too far on the accident of his wealth. If so, I can but say they will not judge me fairly. They will know nothing of where my real suffering lies. It is less the loss of fortune I deplore, than the world’s judgment on having so long usurped that we had no right to.”
From the day he read Sedley’s letter and held that conversation with the lawyer, in which he heard that the claimant’s case seemed a very strong one, and that perhaps the Bramleighs had nothing to oppose to it of so much weight as the great fact of possession, – from that hour he took a despairing view of the case. There are men who at the first reverse of fortune throw down their cards and confess themselves beaten. There are men who can accept defeat itself better than meet the vacillating events of a changeful destiny; who have no persistence in their courage, nor any resources to meet the coming incidents of life. Augustus Bramleigh possessed a great share of this temperament. It is true that Sedley, after much persuasion, induced him to entertain the idea of a compromise, carefully avoiding the use of that unhappy word, and substituting for it the less obnoxious expression “arrangement.” Now this same arrangement, as Mr. Sedley put it, was a matter which concerned the Bramleighs collectively, – seeing that if the family estates were to be taken away, nothing would remain to furnish a provision for younger children. “You must ascertain what your brothers will do,” wrote Sedley; “you must inquire how far Lord Culduff – who through his marriage has a rent-charge on the estate – will be willing to contribute to an ‘arrangement.’”
Nothing could be less encouraging than the answer this appeal called forth. Lord Culduff wrote back in the tone of an injured man, all but declaring that he had been regularly taken in; indeed, he did not scruple to aver that it had never been his intention to embark in a ship that was sure to founder, and he threw out something like a rebuke on the indelicacy of asking him to add to the sacrifice he had already made for the honor of being allied to them.
Temple’s note ran thus: —
Dear Gusty, – If your annoyances have not affected your brain, I am at a loss for an explanation of your last letter. How, I would ask you, is a poor secretary of legation to subsist on the beggarly pittance F. O. affords him? Four hundred and fifty per annum is to supply rent, clothes, club expenses, a stall at the opera, and one’s little charities in perhaps one of the dearest capitals in Europe. So far from expecting the demands you have made upon me, I actually, at the moment of receiving yours, had a half-finished note on my writing-table asking you to increase my poor allowance. When I left Castello, I think you had sixteen horses. Can you possibly want more than two for the carriage and one for your own riding? As to your garden and greenhouse expenses, I ‘ll lay ten to one your first peas cost you a guinea a quart, and you never saw a pine at your table under five-and-twenty pounds; and now that I am on the theme of reduction, I would ask what do you want with a chef at two hundred and fifty a year? Do you, or does Ellen, ever eat of anything but the simplest diet at table? Don’t you send away the entrées every day, wait for the roast gigot, or the turkey, or the woodcocks, and in consequence, does not Monsieur Grégoire leave the cookery to be done by one of his “aides,” and betake himself to the healthful pursuit of snipe-shooting, and the evening delight of Mrs. Somebody’s tea at Portshandon? Why not add this useless extravagance to the condemned list of the vineries, the stables, and the score of other extraordinaires, which an energetic hand would reduce in half an hour?
I ‘m sure you ‘ll not take it in ill part that I bring these things under your notice. Whether out of the balance in hand you will give me five hundred a year, or only three, I shall ever remain Your affectionate brother,
Temple Edgerton Bramleigh.
“Read that, Nelly,” said Augustus, as he threw it across the table. “I ‘m almost afraid to say what I think of it.”
This was said as they sat in their little lodgings in the Rue des Moines; for the letter had been sent through an embassy bag, and consequently had been weeks on the road, besides lying a month on a tray in the Foreign Office till some idle lounger had taken the caprice to forward it.
“Her Majesty’s Legation at Naples. Lord Culduff is there special, and Temple is acting as secretary to him.”
“And does Marion send no message?”
“Oh, yes. She wants all the trunks and carriage-boxes which she left at Castello to be forwarded to town for transmission abroad. I don’t think she remembers us much further. She hopes I will not have her old mare sold, but make arrangements for her having a free paddock for the rest of her life; and she adds that you ought to take the pattern of the slipper on her side-saddle, for if it should happen that you ever ride again, you ‘ll find it better than any they make now.”
“Considerate, at all events. They tell us that love alone remembers trifles. Is n’t this a proof of it, Gusty?”
“Read Temple now, and try to put me in better temper with him than I feel at this moment.”
“I could n’t feel angry with Temple,” said she, quietly. “All he does and all he says so palpably springs from consideration of self, that it would be unjust to resent in him what one would not endure from another. In fact, he means no harm to any one, and a great deal of good to Temple Bramleigh.”
“And you think that commendable?”
“I have not said so; but it certainly would not irritate me.”
She opened the letter after this and read it over leisurely.
“Well, and what do you say now, Nelly?” asked he.
“That it’s Temple all over; he does not know why in this shipwreck every one is not helping to make a lifeboat for him. It seems such an obvious and natural thing to do that he regards the omission as scarcely credible.”
“Does he not see – does he not care for the ruin that has overtaken us?”
“Yes, he sees it, and is very sorry for it; but he opines, at the same time, that the smallest amount of the disaster should fall to his share. Here’s something very different,” said she, taking a letter from her pocket. “This is from Julia. She writes from her little villa at Albano, and asks us to come and stay with them.”
“How thoroughly kind and good-natured!”
“Was it not, Gusty? She goes over how we are to be lodged, and is full of little plans of pleasure and enjoyment; she adds, too, what a benefit you would be to poor George, who is driven half wild with the meddlesome interference of the Church magnates. They dictate to him in everything, and a Mrs. Trumpler actually sends him the texts on which she desires him to hold forth; while Lady Augusta persecutes him with projects in which theological discussion, as she understands it, is to be carried on in rides over the Campagna, and picnics to the hills behind Albano. Julia says that he will not be able to bear it without the comfort and companionship of some kind friend, to whom he can have recourse in his moments of difficulty.”
“It would be delightful to go there, Nelly; but it is impossible.”
“I know it is,” said she, gravely.
“We could not remove so far from England while this affair is yet undetermined. We must remain where we can communicate easily with Sedley.”
“There are scores of reasons against the project,” said she, in the same grave tone. “Let us not speak of it more.”
Augustus looked at her, but she turned away her face, and he could only mark that her cheeks and throat were covered with a deep blush.
“This part of Julia’s letter is very curious,” said she, turning to the last page. “They were stopping at a little inn, one night, where Pracontal and Longworth arrived, and George, by a mere accident, heard Pracontal declare that he would have given anything to have known you personally; that he desired, above everything, to be received by you on terms of friendship, and even of kindred; that the whole of this unhappy business could have been settled amicably, and, in fact, he never ceased to blame himself for the line into which his lawyer’s advice had led him, while all his wishes tended to an opposite direction.”
“But Sedley says he has accepted the arrangement, and abandoned all claim in future.”
“So he has, and it is for that he blames himself. He says it debars him from the noble part he desired to take.”
“I was no part to this compromise, Nelly; remember that. I yielded to reiterated entreaty a most unwilling assent, declaring, always, that the law must decide the case between us, and the rightful owner have his own. Let not Mr. Pracontal imagine that all the high-principled action is on his side; from the very first, I declared that I would not enjoy for an hour what I did not regard undisputably as my own. You can bear witness to this, Nelly. I simply assented to the arrangement, as they called it, to avoid unnecessary scandal. What the law shall decide between us, need call forth no evil passions or ill-will. If the fortune we had believed our own belongs to another, let him have it.”
The tone of high excitement in which he spoke plainly revealed how far a nervous temperament and a susceptible nature had to do with his present resolve. Nelly had seen this before, but never so fully revealed as now. She knew well the springs which could move him to acts of self-sacrifice and devotion, but she had not thoroughly realized to herself that it was in a paroxysm of honorable emotion he had determined to accept the reverse of fortune, which would leave him penniless in the world.
“No, Nelly!” said he, as he arose and walked the room, with head erect, and a firm step. “We shall not suffer these people who talk slightingly of the newly risen gentry to have their scoff unchallenged! It is the cant of the day to talk of mercantile honor and City notions of what is high-minded and right, and I shall show them that we– ‘Lombard Street people,’ as some newspaper scribe called us the other day – that we can do things the proudest earl in the peerage would shrink back from as from a sacrifice he could not dare to face. There can be no sneer at a class that can produce men who accept beggary rather than dishonor. As that Frenchman said, these habits of luxury and splendor were things he had never known, – the want of them would leave no blank in his existence. Whereas to us they were the daily accidents of life; they entered into our ways and habits, and made part of our very natures; giving them up was like giving up ourselves, – surrendering an actual identity. You saw our distinguished connection, Lord Culduff, how he replied to my letter, – a letter, by the way, I should never have stooped to write; but Sedley had my ear at the time, and influenced me against my own convictions. The noble Viscount, however, was free from all extraneous pressure, and he told us as plainly as words could tell it, that he had paid heavily enough already for the honor of being connected with us, and had no intention to contribute another sacrifice. As for Temple, – I won’t speak of him; poor Jack, how differently he would have behaved in such a crisis.”
Happy at the opportunity to draw her brother away, even passingly, from a theme that seemed to press upon him unceasingly, she drew from the drawer of a little work-table a small photograph, and handed it to him, saying, “Is it not like?”
“Jack!” cried he. “In a sailor’s jacket, too! What is this?”
“He goes out as a mate to China,” said she, calmly. “He wrote me but half a dozen lines, but they were full of hope and cheerfulness. He said that he had every prospect of getting a ship, when he was once out; that an old messmate had written to his father – a great merchant at Shanghai – about him, and that he had not the slightest fears for his future.”
“Would any one believe in a reverse so complete as this?” cried Augustus, as he clasped his hands before him. “Who ever heard of such ruin in so short a time?”
“Jack certainly takes no despairing view of life,” said she, quietly.
“What! does he pretend to say it is nothing to descend from his rank as an officer of the navy, with a brilliant prospect before him, and an affluent connection at his back, to be a common sailor, or, at best, one grade removed from a common sailor, and his whole family beggared? Is this the picture he can afford to look on with pleasure or with hope? The man who sees in his downfall no sacrifice or no degradation, has no sympathy of mine. To tell me that he is stout-hearted is absurd; he is simply unfeeling.”
Nelly’s face and even her neck became crimson, and her eyes flashed indignantly; but she repressed the passionate words that were almost on her lips, and taking the photograph from him, replaced it in the drawer, and turned the key.
“Has Marion written to you?” asked he, after a pause.
“Only a few lines. I ‘m afraid she ‘s not very happy in her exalted condition, after all, for she concluded with these words: ‘It is a cruel blow that has befallen you, but don’t fancy that there are not miseries as hard to bear in life as those which display themselves in public and flaunt their sufferings before the world.’”
“That old fop’s temper, perhaps, is hard to bear with,” said he, carelessly.
“You must write to George L’Estrange, Gusty,” said she, coaxingly. “There are no letters he likes so much as yours. He says you are the only one who ever knew how to advise without taking that tone of superiority that is so offensive, and he needs advice just now, – he is driven half wild with dictation and interference.”
She talked on in this strain for some time, till he grew gradually calmer; and his features, losing their look of intensity and eagerness, regained their ordinary expression of gentleness and quiet.
“Do you know what was passing through my mind just now?” said he, smiling half sadly. “I was wishing it was George had been Marion’s husband instead of Lord Culduff. We ‘d have been so united, the very narrowness of our fortunes would have banded us more closely together, and I believe, firmly believe, we might have been happier in these days of humble condition than ever we were in our palmy ones; do you agree with me, Nelly?”