“I assure you, Mr. Cutbill, as regards my own case, I neither take a high estimate of my own capacity nor a low one of the difficulty of earning a living.”
“Humility never paid a butcher’s bill, any more than conceit!” retorted the inexorable Cutbill, who seemed bent on opposing everything. “Have you thought of nothing you could do? for, if you ‘re utterly incapable, there’s nothing for you but the public service.”
“Perhaps that is the career would best suit me,” said Bramleigh, smiling; “and I have already written to bespeak the kind influence of an old friend of my father’s on my behalf.”
“Who is he?”
“Sir Francis Deighton.”
“The greatest humbug in the Government! He trades on being the most popular man of his day, because he never refused anything to anybody – so far as a promise went; but it’s well known that he never gave anything out of his own connections. Don’t depend on Sir Francis, Bramleigh, whatever you do.”
“That is sorry comfort you give me.”
“Don’t you know any women?”
“Women – women? I know several.”
“I mean women of fashion. Those meddlesome women that are always dabbling in politics and the Stock Exchange – very deep where you think they know nothing, and perfectly ignorant about what they pretend to know best. They ‘ve two-thirds of the patronage of every government in England; you may laugh, but it’s true.”
“Come, Mr. Cutbill, if you ‘ll not take more wine we ‘ll join my sister,” said Bramleigh, with a faint smile.
“Get them to make you a Commissioner – it doesn’t matter of what – Woods and Forests – Bankruptcy – Lunacy – anything; it ‘s always two thousand a year, and little to do for it. And if you can’t be a Commissioner, be an Inspector, and then you have your travelling expenses;” and Cutbill winked knowingly as he spoke, and sauntered away to the drawing-room.
CHAPTER XXXVII. THE APPOINTMENT
“What will Mr. Cutbill say now?” cried Ellen, as she stood leaning on her brother’s shoulder, while he read a letter marked’ “On Her Majesty’s Service,” and sealed with a prodigious extravagance of wax. It ran thus: —
Downing Street, September 10th Sir, – I have received instructions from Sir Francis Deighton, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, to acknowledge your letter of the 9th instant; and while expressing his regret that he has not at this moment any post in his department which he could offer for your acceptance, to state that Her Majesty’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs will consent to appoint you consul at Cattaro, full details of which post, duties, salary, &c, will be communicated to you in the official despatch from the Foreign Office.
Sir Francis Deighton is most happy to have been the means through which the son of an old friend has been introduced into the service of the Crown.
I have the honor to be, sir,
Your obedient Servant,
Grey Egerton D’Eyncourt, Private Secretary.
“What will he say now, Gusty?” said she, triumphantly.
“He will probably say, ‘What ‘s it worth?’ Nelly. ‘How much is the income?’”
“I suppose he will. I take it he will measure a friend’s good feeling towards us by the scale of an official salary, as if two or three hundred a year more or less could affect the gratitude we must feel towards a real patron.”
A slight twinge of pain seemed to move Bramleigh’s mouth; but he grew calm in a moment, and merely said, “We must wait till we hear more.”
“But your mind is at ease, Gusty? Tell me that your anxieties are all allayed?” cried she, eagerly.
“Yes; in so far that I have got something, – that I have not met a cold refusal.”
“Oh, don’t take it that way,” broke she in, looking at him with a half-reproachful expression. “Do not, I beseech you, let Mr. Cutbill’s spirit influence you. Be hopeful and trustful, as you always were.”
“I ‘ll try,” said he, passing his arm round her, and smiling affectionately at her.
“I hope he has gone, Gusty. I do hope we shall not see him again. He is so terribly hard in his judgments, so merciless in the way he sentences people who merely think differently from himself. After hearing him talk for an hour or so, I always go away with the thought that if the world be only half as bad as he says it is, it’s little worth living in.”
“Well, he will go to-morrow, or Thursday at farthest; and I won’t pretend I shall regret him. He is occasionally too candid.”
“His candor is simply rudeness; frankness is very well for a friend, but he was never in the position to use this freedom. Only think of what he said to me yesterday: he said that as it was not unlikely I should have to turn governess or companion, the first thing I should do would be to change my name. ‘They,’ he remarked, – but I don’t well know whom he exactly meant, – ‘they don’t like broken-down gentlefolk. They suspect them of this, that, and the other;’ and he suggested I should call myself Miss Cutbill. Did you ever hear impertinence equal to that?”
“But it may have been kindly intentioned, Nelly. I have no doubt he meant to do a good-natured thing.”
“Save me from good-nature that is not allied with good manners, then,” said she, growing crimson as she spoke.
“I have not escaped scot-free, I assure you,” said he, smiling; “but it seems to me a man really never knows what the world thinks of him till he has gone through the ordeal of broken fortune. By the way, where is Cattaro? the name sounds Italian.”
“I assumed it to be in Italy somewhere, but I can’t tell you why.”
Bramleigh took down his atlas, and pored patiently over Italy and her outlying islands for a long time, but in vain. Nelly, too, aided him in his search, but to no purpose. While they were still bending over the map, Cutbill entered with a large despatch-shaped letter in his hand.
“The Queen’s messenger has just handed me that for you, Bramleigh. I hope it’s good news.”
Bramleigh opened and read: —
“Foreign Office.
“Sir, – I have had much pleasure in submitting your name to Her Majesty for the appointment of consul at Cattaro, where your salary will be two hundred pounds a year, and twenty pounds for office expenses. You will repair to your post without unnecessary delay, and report your arrival to this department.
“I am, &c, &c,
“RIDDLESWORTH.”
“Two hundred a year! Fifty less than we gave our cook!” said Bramleigh, with a faint smile.
“It is an insult, an outrage,” said Nelly, whose face and neck glowed till they appeared crimson. “I hope, Gusty, you ‘ll have the firmness to reject such an offer.”
“What does Mr. Cutbill say?” asked he, turning towards him.
“Mr. Cutbill says that if you ‘re bent on playing Don Quixote, and won’t go back and enjoy what’s your own, like a sensible man, this pittance – it ain’t more – is better than trying to eke out life by your little talents.”
Nelly turned her large eyes, open to the widest, upon him, as he spoke, with an expression so palpably that of rebuke for his freedom, that he replied to her stare by saying, —
“Of course I am very free and easy. More than that, I ‘m downright rude. That’s what you mean – a vulgar dog! but don’t you see that’s what diminished fortune must bring you to? You ‘ll have to live with vulgar dogs. It’s not only coarse cookery, but coarse company a man comes to. Ay, and there are people will tell you that both are useful – as alteratives, as the doctors call them.”
It was a happy accident that made him lengthen out the third syllable of the word, which amused Nelly so much that she laughed outright
“Can you tell us where is Cattaro, Mr. Cutbill?” asked Bramleigh, eager that the other should not notice his sister’s laughter.
“I haven’t the faintest notion; but Bollard, the messenger, is eating his luncheon at the station. I ‘ll run down and ask him.” And without waiting for a reply, he seized his hat and hurried away.
“One must own he is good-natured,” said Nelly, “but he does make us pay somewhat smartly for it. His wholesome truths are occasionally hard to swallow.”
“As he told us, Nelly, we must accept these things as part of our changed condition. Poverty would n’t be such a hard thing to bear if it only meant common food and coarse clothing; but it implies scores of things that are far less endurable.”
While they thus talked, Cutbill had hurried down to the station, and just caught the messenger as he was taking his seat in the train. Two others – one bound for Russia and one for Greece – were already seated in the compartment, smoking their cigars with an air of quiet indolence, like men making a trip by a river steamer.
“I say, Bollard,” cried Cutbill, “where is Cattaro?”
“Don’t know; is he a tenor?”
“It’s a place; a consulate somewhere or other.”
“Never heard of it Have you, Digby?”
“It sounds like Calabria, or farther south.”
“I know it,” said the third man. “It’s a vile hole; it’s on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. I was wrecked there once in an Austrian Lloyd’s steamer, and caught a tertian fever before I could get away. There was a fellow there, a vice-consul they called him. He was dressed in sheepskins, and, I believe, lived by wrecking. He stole my watch, and would have carried away my portmanteau, but I was waiting for him with my revolver, and winged him.”
“Did nothing come of it?” asked another.
“They pensioned him, I think. I ‘m not sure; but I think they gave him twenty pounds a year. I know old Kepsley stopped eight pounds out of my salary for a wooden leg for the rascal. There’s the whistle; take care, sir, you’ll come to grief if you hang on.”
Cutbill attended to the admonition, and bidding the travellers good-bye, returned slowly to the Bramleighs’ lodgings, pondering over all he had heard, and canvassing with himself how much of his unpleasant tidings he would venture to relate.
“Where ‘s your map?” said he, entering. “I suspect I can make out the place now. Show me the Adriatic. Zara – Lissa – what a number of islands! Here you are; here’s Bocca di Cattaro – next door to the Turks, by Jove.”
“My dear Gusty, don’t think of this, I beseech you,” said Nelly, whispering. “It is enough to see where it is, to know it must be utter barbarism.”
“I won’t say it looks inviting,” said Cutbill, as he bent over the map, “and the messenger had n’t much to say in its praise, either.”
“Probably not; but remember what you told me awhile ago, Mr. Cutbill, that even this was better than depending on my little talents.”
“He holds little talents in light esteem, then?” said Ellen, tartly.
“That’s exactly what I do,” rejoined Cutbill, quickly. “As long as you are rich enough to be courted for your wealth, your little talents will find plenty of admirers; but as to earning your bread by them, you might as well try to go round the Cape in an outrigger. Take it, by all means, – take it, if it is only to teach you what it is to earn your own dinner.”
“And is my sister to face such a life as this?”
“Your sister has courage for everything – but leaving you,” said she, throwing her arm on his shoulder.
“I must be off. I have only half an hour left to pack my portmanteau and be at the station. One word with you alone, Bramleigh,” said he, in a low tone, and Augustus walked at once into the adjoining room.
“You want some of these, I ‘m certain,” said Cutbill, as he drew forth a roll of crushed and crumpled bank-notes, and pressed them into Bramleigh’s hand. “You ‘ll pay them back at your own time; don’t look so stiff, man, it’s only a loan.”
“I assure you if I look stiff, it’s not what I feel. I ‘m overwhelmed by your good-nature; but, believe me, I ‘m in no want of money.”
“Nobody ever is; but it’s useful, all the same. Take them to oblige me. Take them just to show you ‘re not such a swell as won’t accept even the smallest service from a fellow like me – do now, do!” and he looked so pleadingly that it was not easy to refuse him.
“I ‘m very proud to think I have won such friendship; but I give you my word I have ample means for all that I shall need to do; and if I should not, I ‘ll ask you to help me.”
“Good-bye, then. Good-bye, Miss Ellen,” cried he, aloud. “It’s not my fault that I ‘m not a favorite with you;” and thus saying, he snatched his hat, and was down the stairs and out of the house before Bramleigh could utter a word.
“What a kind-hearted fellow it is!” said he, as he joined his sister. “I must tell you what he called me aside for.”
She listened quietly while he recounted what had just occurred, and then said, —
“The Gospel tells us it’s hard for rich men to get to heaven; but it’s scarcely less hard for them to see what there is good here below! So long as we were well off I could see nothing to like in that man.”
“That was my own thought a few minutes back; so you see, Nelly, we are not only travelling the same road, but gaining the same experiences.”
“Sedley says in this letter here,” said Augustus, the next morning, as he entered the breakfast-room, “that Pracontal’s lawyer is perfectly satisfied with the honesty of our intentions, and we shall go to trial in the November term on the ejectment case. It will raise the whole question, and the law shall decide between us.”
“And what becomes of that – that arrangement,” said she, hesitatingly, “by which M. Pracontal consented to withdraw his claim?”
“It was made against my consent, and I have refused to adhere to it. I have told Sedley so, and told him that I shall hold him responsible to the amount disbursed.”
“But, dear Gusty, remember how much to your advantage that settlement would have been.”
“I only remember the shame I felt on hearing of it, and my sorrow that Sedley should have thought my acceptance of it possible.”
“But how has M. Pracontal taken this money and gone on with his suit? – surely both courses are not open to him?”
“I can tell you nothing about M. Pracontal. I only know that he, as well as myself, would seem to be strangely served by our respective lawyers, who assume to deal for us, whether we will or not.”
“I still cling to the wish that the matter had been left to Mr. Sedley.”
“You must not say so, Nelly; you must never tell me you would wish I had been a party to my own dishonor. Either Pracontal or I own this estate; no compromise could be possible without a stain to each of us, and for my own part, I will neither resist a just claim nor give way to an unfair demand. Let us talk of this no more.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII. WITH LORD CULDUFF
In a room of a Roman palace large enough to be a church, but furnished with all the luxury of an English drawing-room, stood Lord Culduff, with his back to an ample fire, smoking a cigarette; a small table beside him supported a very diminutive coffee-service of chased silver, and in a deep-cushioned chair at the opposite side of the fireplace lay a toy terrier, asleep.
There were two fireplaces in the spacious chamber, and at a writing-table drawn close to the second of these sat Temple Bramleigh writing. His pen as it ran rapidly along was the only sound in the perfect stillness, till Lord Culduff, throwing the end of his cigarette away, said, “It is not easy to imagine so great an idiot as your worthy brother Augustus.”
“A little selfishness would certainly not disimprove him,” said Temple, coldly.
“Say sense, common sense, sir; a very little of that humble ingredient that keeps a man from walking into a well.”
“I think you judge him hardly.”
“Judge him hardly! Why, sir, what judgment can equal the man’s own condemnation of himself? He has some doubts – some very grave doubts – about his right to his estate, and straightway he goes and throws it into a law-court. He prefers, in fact, that his inheritance should be eaten up by lawyers than quietly enjoyed by his own family. Such men are usually provided with lodgings at Hanwell; their friends hide their razors, and don’t trust them with toothpicks.”
“Oh, this is too much: he may take an extreme view of what his duty is in this matter, but he ‘s certainly no more mad than I am.”
“I repeat, sir, that the man who takes conscience for his guide in the very complicated concerns of life is unfit to manage his affairs. Conscience is a constitutional peculiarity, nothing more. To attempt to subject the business of life to conscience would be about as absurd as to regulate the funds by the state of the barometer.”
“I ‘ll not defend what he is doing – I ‘m as sorry for it as any one; I only protest against his being thought a fool.”
“What do you say then to this last step of his, if it be indeed true that he has accepted this post?”
“I’m afraid it is; my sister Ellen says they are on their way to Cattaro.”
“I declare that I regard it as an outrage. I can give it no other name. It is an outrage. What, sir, am I, who have reached the highest rank of my career, or something very close to it; who have obtained my Grand Cross; who stand, as I feel I do, second to none in the public service; – am I to have my brother-in-law, my wife’s brother, gazetted to a post I might have flung to my valet!”’
“There I admit he was wrong.”
“That is to say, sir, that you feel the personal injury his indiscreet conduct has inflicted. You see your own ruin in his rashness.”
“I can’t suppose it will go that far.”
“And why not, pray? When a Minister or Secretary of State dares to offend me – for it is levelled at me– by appointing my brother to such an office, he says as plainly as words can speak, ‘Your sun is set; your influence is gone. We place you below the salt to-day, that to-morrow we may put you outside the door.’ You cannot be supposed to know these things, but I know them. Shall I give you a counsel, sir?”
“Any advice from you, my Lord, is always acceptable.”
“Give up the line. Retire; be a gamekeeper, a billiard-marker; turn steward of a steamer, or correspond for one of the penny papers, but don’t attempt to serve a country that pays its gentlemen like toll-keepers.”
Temple seemed to regard this little outburst as such an ordinary event that he dipped his pen into the ink-bottle, and was about to resume writing, when Lord Culduff said, in a sharp, peevish tone, —
“I trust your brother and sister do not mean to come to Rome?”
“I believe they do, my Lord. I think they have promised to pay the L’Estranges a visit at Albano.”
“My Lady must write at once and prevent it. This cannot possibly be permitted. Where are they now?”
“At Como. This last letter was dated from the inn at that place.”
Lord Culduff rang the bell, and directed the servant to ask if her Ladyship had gone out.
The servant returned to say that her Ladyship was going to dress, but would see his Lordship on her way downstairs.
“Whose card is this? Where did this come from?” asked Lord Culduff, as he petulantly turned it round and round, trying to read the name.
“Oh, that’s Mr. Cutbill. He called twice yesterday. I can’t imagine what has brought him to Rome.”
“Perhaps I might hazard a guess,” said Lord Culduff, with a grim smile. “But I’ll not see him. You’ll say, Bramleigh, that I am very much engaged; that I have a press of most important business; that the Cardinal Secretary is always here. Say anything, in short, that will mean No, Cutbill!”
“He ‘s below at this moment.”
“Then get rid of him! My dear fellow, the A B C of your craft is to dismiss the importunate. Go and send him off!”
Lord Culduff turned to caress his whiskers as the other left the room; and having gracefully disposed a very youthful curl of his wig upon his forehead, was smiling a pleasant recognition of himself in the glass, when voices in a louder tone than were wont to be heard in such sacred precincts startled him. He listened, and suddenly the door was opened rudely, and Mr. Cutbill entered, Temple Bramleigh falling back as the other came forward, and closing the door behind.
“So, my Lord, I was to be told you’d not see me, eh?” said Cutbill, his face slightly flushed by a late altercation.
“I trusted, sir, when my private secretary had told you I was engaged, that I might have counted upon not being broken in upon.”
“There you were wrong, then,” said Cutbill, who divested himself of an overcoat, threw it on the back of a chair, and came forward towards the fire. “Quite wrong. A man does n’t come a thousand and odd miles to be ‘not-at homed’ at the end of it.”
“Which means, sir, that I am positively reduced to the necessity of receiving you, whether I will or not?”
“Something near that, but not exactly. You see, my Lord, that when to my application to your lawyer in town I received for answer the invariable rejoinder, ‘it is only my Lord himself can reply to this; his Lordship alone knows what this, that, or t’other refers to,’ I knew pretty well, the intention was to choke me off. It was saying to me, Is it worth a journey to Rome to ask this question? and my reply to myself was, ‘Yes, Tom Cutbill, go to Rome by all means.’ And here I am.”
“So I perceive, sir,” said the other dryly and gravely.
“Now, my Lord, there are two ways of transacting business. One may do the thing pleasantly, with a disposition to make matters easy and comfortable; or one may approach everything with a determination to screw one’s last farthing out of it, to squeeze the lemon to the last drop. Which of these is it your pleasure we should choose?”
“I must endeavor to imitate, though I cannot rival your frankness, sir; and therefore I would say, let us have that mode in which we shall see least of each other.”
“All right. I am completely in your Lordship’s hands. You had your choice, and I don’t dispute it. There, then, is my account. It’s a trifle under fourteen hundred pounds. Your Lordship’s generosity will make it the fourteen, I ‘ve no doubt. All the secret-service part – that trip to town and the dinner at Greenwich – I ‘ve left blank. Fill it up as your conscience suggests. The Irish expenses are also low, as I lived a good deal at Bishop’s Folly. I also make no charge for keeping you out of ‘Punch.’ It was n’t easy, all the same, for the fellows had you, wig, waistcoat, and all. In fact, my Lord, it’s a friendly document, though your present disposition doesn’t exactly seem to respond to that line of action; but Tom Cutbill is a forgiving soul. Your Lordship will look over this paper, then; and in a couple of days – no hurry, you know, for I have lots to see here – in a couple of days I ‘ll drop in, and talk the thing over with you; for you see there are two or three points – about the way you behaved to your brother-in-law, and such like – that I ‘d like to chat a little with you about.”
As Lord Culduff listened his face grew redder and redder, and his fingers played with the back of the chair on which he leaned with a quick, convulsive motion; and as the other went on he drew from time to time long, deep inspirations, as if invoking patience to carry him through the infliction. At last he said, in a half-faint voice, “Have you done, sir, – is it over?”
“Well, pretty nigh. I ‘d like to have asked you about my Lady. I know she had a temper of her own before you married her, and I ‘m rather curious to hear how you hit it off together. Does she give in – eh? Has the high and mighty dodge subdued her? I thought it would.”
“Do me the great favor, sir, to ring that bell and to leave me. I am not very well,” said Culduff, gasping for breath.
“I see that. I see you’ve got the blood to your head. When a man comes to your time of life, he must mind what he eats, and stick to pint bottles too. That’s true as the Bible – pint bottles and plenty of Seltzer when you ‘re amongst the seventies.”
And with this aphorism he drew on his coat, buttoned it leisurely to the collar, and with a familiar nod left the room.
“Giacomo,” said Lord Culduff, “that man is not to be admitted again on any pretext. Tell the porter his place shall pay for it, if he passes the grille.”
Giacomo bowed silent acquiescence, and Lord Culduff lay back on a sofa and said, “Tell Dr. Pritchard to come here; tell my Lady, tell Mr. Temple, I feel very ill;” and so saying he closed his eyes and seemed overcome.