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“Ah, madame, how glad would I be to lay my cards on the table, if I could be sure of such an opponent as yourself.”

“Yes, I am generous. It’s the one thing I can say for myself. I’m all for fighting the battle of life honorably and courteously, though I must say one is sure to lose where the others are not equally high-minded. Now I put it to yourself, M. Pracontal, and I ask, was it fair, was it honest, was it decent of Colonel Bramleigh, knowing the insecure title by which he held his estate, to make me his wife? You know, of course, the difference of rank that separated us; you know who I was – I can’t say am, because my family have never forgiven me the mésalliance; therefore, I say, was it not atrocious in him to make a settlement which he felt must be a mockery?”

“Perhaps, madame, he may have regarded our pretensions as of little moment; indeed, I believe he treated my father’s demands with much hauteur.”

“Still, he knew there was a claim, and a claimant, when he married me, and this can neither be denied nor defended.”

“Ah, madame!” sighed he, “who would be stopped by scruples in such a cause?”

“No, there was nothing of love in it; he wanted rank, he wanted high connections. He was fond of me, after his fashion, I ‘ve no doubt, but he was far more proud than fond. I often fancied he must have had something on his mind, he would be so abstracted at times, and so depressed, and then he would seem as if he wanted to tell me a secret, but had not the courage for it, and I set it down to something quite different. I thought – no matter what I thought – but it gave me no uneasiness, for, of course, I never dreamed of being jealous; but that it should be so bad as this never occurred to me – never!”

“I am only surprised that Colonel Bramleigh never thought it worth his while to treat with my father, who, all things considered, would have been easily dealt with; he was always pauvre diable, out of one scrape to fall into another; so reckless that the very smallest help ever seemed to him quite sufficient to brave life with.”

“I know nothing of the story; tell it to me.”

“It is very long, very tiresome, and incumbered with details of dates and eras. I doubt you ‘d have patience for it; but if you think you would, I ‘m ready.”

“Begin, then; only don’t make it more confused or more tangled than you can help, and give me no dates – I hate dates.”

Pracontal was silent for a moment or two, as if reflecting; and then, drawing his chair a little nearer to her sofa, he leaned his forehead on his hand, and in a low, but distinct voice, began: —

“When Colonel Bramleigh’s father was yet a young man, a matter of business required his presence in Ireland. He came to see a very splendid mansion then being built by a rich nobleman, on which his house had advanced a large sum by way of mortgage.”

“Mon cher M. Pracontal, must we begin so far back? It is like the Plaideur in Molière, who commences, ‘Quand je vois le soleil, quand je vois la lune – ‘”

“Very true; but I must begin at the beginning of all things, and, with a little patience, I ‘ll soon get further. Mr. Montague Bramleigh made acquaintance in Ireland with a certain Italian painter called Giacomo Lami, who had been brought over from Rome to paint the frescos of this great house. This Lami – very poor and very humble, ignoble, if you like to say so – had a daughter of surpassing beauty. She was so very lovely that Giacomo was accustomed to introduce her into almost all his frescos, for she had such variety of expression, so many reflets, as one may say, of character in her look, that she was a Madonna here, a Flora there, now a Magdalene, now a Dido. But you need not take my word for it; here she is as a Danaë.” And he opened his watch-case as he spoke, and displayed a small miniature in enamel, of marvellous beauty and captivation.

“Oh, was she really like this?”

“That was copied from a picture of her at St. Servain, when she was eighteen, immediately before she accompanied her father to Ireland; and in Giacomo’s sketchbook, which I hope one of these days to have the honor of showing to you, there is a memorandum saying that this portrait of Enrichetta was the best likeness of her he had ever made. He had a younger daughter called Carlotta, also handsome, but vastly inferior in beauty to my grandmother.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Forgive me, madame, if I have anticipated; but Enrichetta Lami became the wife of Montague Bramleigh. The young man, captivated by her marvellous beauty, and enchanted by a winning grace of manner, in which it appears she excelled, made his court to her and married her. The ceremony of marriage presented no difficulty, as Lami was a member of some sect of Waldensian Protestants, who claim a sort of affinity with the Anglican Church, and they were married in the parish church by the minister, and duly registered in the registry-book of the parish. All these matters are detailed in this book of Giacomo Lami’s, which was at once account-book and sketch-book and journal and, indeed, family history. It is a volume will, I am sure, amuse you; for, amongst sketches and studies for pictures, there are the drollest little details of domestic events, with passing notices of the political circumstances of the time – for old Giacomo was a conspirator and a Carbonaro, and Heaven knows what else. He even involved himself in the Irish troubles, and was so far compromised that he was obliged to fly the country and get over to Holland, which he did, taking his two daughters with him. It has never been clearly ascertained whether Montague Bramleigh had quarrelled with his wife or consented to her accompanying her father; for, while there were letters from him to her full of affection and regard, there are some strange passages in Giacomo’s diary that seem to hint at estrangement and coldness. When her child, my father, was born, she pressed Bramleigh strongly to come over to the christening; but, though he promised at first, and appeared overjoyed at the birth of his heir, he made repeated pretexts of this or that engagement, and ended by not coming. Old Lami must have given way to some outburst of anger at this neglect and desertion, for he sent back Bramleigh’s letters unopened; and the poor Enrichetta, after struggling bravely for several months under this heartless and cruel treatment, sunk and died. The old man wandered away towards the south of Europe after this, taking with him his grandchild and his remaining daughter; and the first entry we find in his diary is about three years later, where we read, ‘Chambéry, – Must leave this, where I thought I had at last found a home. Niccolo Baldassare is bent on gaining Carlotta’s affections. Were they to marry it would be the ruin of both. Each has the same faults as the other.’

“And later on, —

“‘Had an explanation with N. B., who declares that, with or without my consent, he will make C. his wife. I have threatened to bring him before the Council; but he defies me, and says he is ready to abandon the society rather than give her up. I must quit this secretly and promptly.’

“We next find him at Treviso, where he was painting the Basilica of St. Guedolfo, and here he speaks of himself as a lonely old man, deserted and forsaken, showing that his daughter had left him some time before. He alludes to offers that had been made him to go to England; but declares that nothing would induce him to set foot in that country more. One passage would imply that Carlotta, on leaving home, took her sister’s boy with her, for in the old man’s writing there are these words, —

“‘I do not want to hear more of them; but I would wish tidings of the boy. I have dreamed of him twice.’

“From that time forth the journal merely records the places he stopped at, the works he was engaged in, and the sums he received in payment. For the most part, his last labors were in out-of-the-way, obscure spots, where he worked for mere subsistence; and of how long he lived there, and where he died, there is no trace.

“Do I weary you, my dear lady, with these small details of very humble people, or do you really bestow any interest on my story?”

“I like it of all things. I only want to follow Carlotta’s history now, and learn what became of her.”

“Of her fate and fortune I know nothing. Indeed, all that I have been telling you heretofore I have gleaned from that book and some old letters of my great-grandfather’s. My own history I will not inflict upon you – at least not now. I was a student of the Naval College of Genoa till I was fourteen, and called Anatole Pracontal, ‘dit’ Lami; but who had entered me on the books of the college, who paid for me or interested himself about me, I never knew.

“A boyish scrape I fell into induced me to run away from the college. I took refuge in a small felucca, which landed me at Algiers, where I entered the French service, and made two campaigns with Pélissier; and only quitted the army on learning that my father had been lost at sea, and had bequeathed me some small property, then in the hands of a banker at Naples.

“The property was next to nothing; but by the papers and letters that I found, I learned who I was, and to what station and fortune I had legitimate claim. It seems a small foundation, perhaps, to build upon; but remember how few the steps are in reality, and how direct besides. My grandmother, Enrichetta, was the married wife of Montague Bramleigh; her son – Godfrey Lami at his birth, but afterwards known by many aliases – married my mother, Marie de Pracontal, a native of Savoy, where I was born, – the name Pracontal being given me. My father’s correspondence with the Bramleighs was kept up at intervals during his life, and frequent mention is made in diaries, as well as the banker’s books, of sums of money received by him from them. In Bolton’s hands, also, was deposited my father’s will, where he speaks of me and the claim which I should inherit on the Bramleigh estates; and he earnestly entreats Bolton, who had so often befriended him, to succor his poor boy, and not leave him without help and counsel in the difficulties that were before him.

“Have you followed, or can you follow, the tangled scheme?” cried he, after a pause; “for you are either very patient, or completely exhausted, – which is it?”

“But why have you taken the name of Pracontal, and not your real name, Bramleigh?” asked she, eagerly.

“By Bolton’s advice, in the first instance; he wisely taking into account how rich the family were whose right I was about to question, and how poor I was. Bolton inclined to a compromise; and, indeed, he never ceased to press upon me that it would be the fairest and most generous of all arrangements; but that to effect this, I must not shock the sensibilities of the Bramleighs by assuming their name, – that to do so was to declare war at once.”

“And yet had you called yourself Bramleigh, you would have warned others that the right of the Bramleighs to this estate was at least disputed.”

Pracontal could scarcely repress a smile at a declaration so manifestly prompted by selfish considerations; but he made no reply.

“Well, and this compromise, do they agree to it?” asked she, hastily.

“Some weeks ago, I believed it was all concluded; but this very morning my lawyer’s letter tells me that Augustus Bramleigh will not hear of it, that he is indignant at the very idea, and that the law alone must decide between us.”

“What a scandal!”

“So I thought. Worse, of course, for them, who are in the world, and well known. I am a nobody.”

“A nobody who might be somebody to-morrow,” said she, slowly and deliberately.

“After all, the stage of pretension is anything but pleasant, and I cannot but regret that we have not come to some arrangement.”

“Can I be of use? Could my services be employed to any advantage?”

“At a moment, I cannot answer; but I am very grateful for even the thought.”

“I cannot pretend to any influence with the family. Indeed, none of them ever liked me; but they might listen to me, and they might also believe that my interest went with their own. Would you like to meet Augustus Bramleigh?”

“There is nothing I desire so much.”

“I ‘ll not promise he ‘ll come; but if he should consent, will you come here on Tuesday morning – say, at eleven o’clock – and meet him? I know he ‘s expected at Albano by Sunday, and I ‘ll have a letter to propose the meeting, in his hands, on his arrival.”

“I have no words to speak my gratitude to you.”

CHAPTER XLIII. A SPECIAL MISSION

When a very polite note from Lord Culduff to Mr. Cutbill expressed the deep regret he felt at not being able to receive that gentleman at dinner, as an affair of much moment required his immediate presence at Naples, the noble lord was more correct than it was his usual fate to be in matters of apology. The fact was, that his Lordship had left England several weeks before, charged with a most knotty and difficult mission to the Neapolitan court; and though the question involved the misery of imprisonment to some of the persons concerned, and had called forth more than one indignant appeal for information in the House, the great diplomatist sauntered leisurely over the Continent, stopping to chat with a Minister here, or dine with a reigning Prince there, not suffering himself to be hurried by the business before him, or in any way influenced by the petulant despatches and telegrams which F. O. persistently sent after him.

One of his theories was, that in diplomacy everything should be done in a sort of dignified languor that excluded all thought of haste or of emergency. “Haste implies pressure,” he would say, “and pressure means weakness: therefore, always seem slow, occasionally even to indolence.”

There was no denying it, he was a great master in that school of his art which professed to baffle every effort at inquiry. No man ever wormed a secret from him that he desired to retain, or succeeded in entrapping him into any accidental admission. He could talk for hours with a frankness that was positively charming. He could display a candor that seemed only short of indiscretion; and yet, when you left him, you found you had carried away nothing beyond some neatly turned aphorisms and a few very harmless imitations of Machiavelian subtlety. Like certain men who are fond of showing how they can snuff a candle with a bullet, he was continually exhibiting his skill at fence, with the added assurance that nothing would grieve him so ineffably as any display of his ability at your expense.

He knew well that these subtleties were no longer the mode; that men no longer tried to outwit each other in official intercourse; that the time for such feats of smartness had as much gone by as the age of high neckcloths and tight coats; but yet, as he adhered to the old dandyism of the Regency in his dress, he maintained the old traditions of finesse in his diplomacy, and could no more have been betrayed into a Truth than he could have worn a Jim Crow. For that mere plodding, commonplace race of men that now filled “the line” he had the most supreme contempt; men who had never uttered a smart thing, or written a clever one. Diplomacy without epigram was like a dinner without truffles. It was really pleasant to hear him speak of the great days of Metternich and Nesselrode and Talleyrand, when a frontier was settled by a bon mot, and a dynasty decided by a doggerel. The hoarse roar of the multitude had not in those times disturbed the polished solemnity of the council-chamber, and the high priests of statecraft celebrated their mysteries unmolested.

“The ninth telegram, my Lord,” said Temple, as he stood with a cipher despatch in his hand, just as Lord Culduff had reached his hotel at Naples.

“Transcribe it, my dear boy, and let us hear it.”

“I have, my Lord. It runs, ‘Where is the special envoy? Let him report himself by telegraph.’”

“Reply, ‘At dinner, at the Hôtel Victoria; in passably good health, and indifferent spirits. ‘”

“But, my Lord – ”

“There, you ‘d better dress. You are always late. And tell the people here to serve oysters every day till I countermand them; and taste the Capri, please; I prefer it to Sauterne, if it be good. The telegram can wait.”

“I was going to mention, my Lord, that Prince Castelmuro has called twice to-day, and begged he might be informed of your arrival. Shall I write him a line?”

“No. The request must be replied to by him to whom it was addressed, – the landlord, perhaps, or the laquaisde-place.”

“The King is most anxious to learn if you have come.”

“His Majesty shall be rewarded for his courteous impatience. I shall ask an audience to-morrow.”

“They told me dinner was served,” said Lady Culduff, angrily, as she entered the room, dressed as if for a court entertainment; “and I hurried down without putting on my gloves.”

“Let me kiss your Ladyship’s hand so temptingly displayed,” said he, stooping and pressing it to his lips.

An impatient gesture of the shoulder, and a saucy curl of the lip were the only response to this gallantry.

A full half-hour before Lord Culduff appeared Temple Bramleigh re-entered, dressed for dinner.

“Giacomo is at his old tricks, Temple,” said she, as she walked the room impatiently. “His theory is that every one is to be in waiting on my Lord; and I have been here now close on three-quarters of an hour, expecting dinner to be announced. Will you please to take some trouble about the household, or let us have an attaché who will?”

“Giacomo is impossible – that’s the fact; but it’s no use saying so.”

“I know that,” said she, with a malicious twinkle of the eye. “The man who is so dexterous with rouge and pomatum cannot be spared. But can you tell me, Temple, why we came here? There was no earthly reason to quit a place that suited us perfectly because Lady Augusta Bramleigh wished to do us an impertinence.”

“Oh, but we ought to have been here six weeks ago. They are frantic at ‘the Office’ at our delay, and there will be a precious to-do about it in the House.”

“Culduff likes that. If he has moments that resemble happiness they are those when he is so palpably in the wrong that they would ruin any other man than himself.”

“Well, he has got one of them now, I can tell you.”

“Oh, I am aware of what you diplomatic people call great emergencies, critical conjunctures, and the like; but as Lord Watermore said the other evening, ‘all your falls are like those in the circus – you always come down upon sawdust.’”

“There’s precious little sawdust here. It’s a case will make a tremendous noise in England. When a British subject has been ironed and – ”

“Am I late? I shall be in despair, my Lady, if I have kept you waiting,” said Lord Culduff, entering in all the glory of red ribbon and Guelph, and with an unusually brilliant glow of youth and health in his features.

It was with a finished gallantry that he offered his arm; and his smile, as he led her to the dinner-room, was triumph itself. What a contrast to the moody discontent on her face; for she did not even affect to listen to his excuses, or bestow the slightest attention on his little flatteries and compliments. During the dinner Lord Culduff alone spoke. He was agreeable after his manner, which was certainly a very finished manner; and he gave little reminiscences of the last time he had been at Naples, and the people he had met, sketching their eccentricities and oddities most amusingly, for he was a master in those light touches of satire which deal with the ways of society, and, perhaps, to any one but his wife he would have been most entertaining and pleasant. She never deigned the very faintest recognition of what he said. She neither smiled when he was witty, nor looked shocked at his levities. Only once, when, by a direct appeal to her, silence was impossible, she said, with a marked spitefulness, “You are talking of something very long ago. I think I heard of that when I was a child.” There was a glow under his Lordship’s rouge as he raised his glass to his lips, and an almost tremor in his voice when he spoke again.

“I ‘m afraid you don’t like Naples, my Lady?”

“I detest it.”

“The word is strong; let it be my care to try and induce you to recall it.”

“It will be lost time, my Lord. I always hated the place, and the people, too.”

“You were pleased with Rome, I think?”

“And that possibly was the reason we left it. I mean,” said she, blushing with shame at the rudeness that had escaped her, “I mean that one is always torn away from the place they are content to live in. It is the inevitable destiny.”

“Very pleasant claret that for hotel wine,” said Lord Culduff, passing the bottle to Temple. “The small race of travellers who frequent the Continent now rarely call for the better wines, and the consequence is that Margaux and Marcobrunner get that time to mature in the cellars which was denied to them in former times.”

A complete silence now ensued. At last Lord Culduff said, “Shall we have coffee?” and offering his arm with the same courteous gallantry as before, he led Lady Culduff into the drawing-room, bowing as he relinquished her hand, as though he stood in presence of a queen. “I know you are very tolerant,” said he, with a bewitching smile, “and as we shall have no visitors this evening, may I ask the favor of being permitted a cigarette – only one?”

“As many as you like. I am going to my room, my Lord.” And ere he could hasten to open the door, she swept haughtily out of the room and disappeared.

“We must try and make Naples pleasant for my Lady,” said Lord Culduff, as he drew his chair to the fire; but there was, somehow, a malicious twinkle in his eye, and a peculiar curl of the lip, as he spoke, that scarcely vouched for the loyalty of his words; and that Temple heard him with distrust seemed evident by his silence. “You ‘d better go over to the Legation and say we have arrived. If Blagden asks when he may call, tell him at two tomorrow. Let them send over all the correspondence; and I think we shall want some one out of the chancellerie. Whom have they got? Throw your eye over the list.”

Opening a small volume bound in red morocco, Temple read out, “Minister and envoy, Sir Geoffrey Blagden, K.C.B.; first secretary, Mr. Tottenham; second secretaries, Ralph Howard, the Hon. Edward Eccles, and W. Thornton; third secretary, George Hilliard; attaché, Christopher Stepney.”

“I only know one of these men; indeed, I can scarcely say I know him. I knew his father, or his grandfather, perhaps. At all events, take some one who writes a full hand, with the letters very upright, and who seldom speaks, and never has a cold in his head.”

“You don’t care for any one in particular?” asked Temple, meekly.

“Of course not; no more than for the color of the horse in a hansom. If Blagden hints anything about dining with him, say I don’t dine out; though I serve her Majesty, I do not mean to destroy my constitution, and I know what a Legation dinner means, with a Scotchman for the chief of the mission. I ‘m so thankful he ‘s not married, or we should have his wife calling on my Lady. You can dine there if you like; indeed, perhaps, you ought. If Blagden has an opera-box, say my Lady likes the theatre. I think that’s all. Stay, don’t let him pump you about my going to Vienna; and drop in on me when you come back.”

Lord Culduff was fast asleep in a deep arm-chair before his dressing-room fire when Temple returned. The young man looked wearied and worn out, as well he might; for the Minister had insisted on going over the whole “question” to him, far less, indeed, for his information or instruction, than to justify every step the Legation had taken, and to show the utter unfairness and ungenerosity of the Foreign Office in sending out a special mission to treat a matter which the accredited envoy was already bringing to a satisfactory conclusion.

“No, no, my dear boy, no blue-books, no correspondence. I shook my religious principles in early life by reading Gibbon, and I never was quite sure of my grammar since I studied diplomatic despatches. Just tell me the matter as you ‘d tell a scandal or a railway accident.”

“Where shall I begin, then?”

“Begin where we come in.”

“Ah, but I can’t tell where that is. You know, of course, that there was a filibustering expedition which landed on the coast, and encountered the revenue guard, and overpowered them, and were in turn attacked, routed, and captured by the Royal troops.”

“Ta, ta, ta! I don’t want all that. Come down to the events of June – June 27 they call it.”

“Well, it was on that day when the ‘Ercole’ was about to get under weigh, with two hundred of these fellows sentenced to the galleys for life, that a tremendous storm broke over the Bay of Naples. Since the memorable hurricane of ‘92 there had been nothing like it. The sea-wall of the Chiaja was washed away, and a frigate was cast on shore at Caserta with her bowsprit in the palace windows; all the lower town was under water, and many lives lost. But the damage at sea was greatest of all: eight fine ships were lost, the crews having, with some few exceptions, perished with them.”

“Can’t we imagine a great disaster – a very great disaster? I’ll paint my own storm, so pray go on.”

“Amongst the merchant shipping was a large American bark which rode out the gale, at anchor, for several hours; but, as the storm increased, her captain, who was on shore, made signal to the mate to slip his cable and run for safety to Castellamare. The mate, a young Englishman, named Rogers – ”

“Samuel Rogers?”

“The same, my Lord, though it is said not to be his real name. He, either misunderstanding the signal, – or, as some say, wilfully mistaking its meaning, – took to his launch, with the eight men he had with him, and rowed over to a small despatch-boat of the Royal Navy, which was to have acted as convoy to the ‘Ercole,’ but whose officers were unable to get on board of her, so that she was actually under the command of a petty officer. Rogers boarded her, and proposed to the man in command to get up the steam and try to save the lives of the people who were perishing on every hand. He refused; an altercation ensued, and the English – for they were all English – overpowered them and sent them below – ”

“Don’t say under hatches, my dear boy, or I shall expect to see you hitching your trousers next.”

Temple reddened, but went on: “They got up steam in all haste, and raised their anchor, but only at the instant that the ‘Ercole’ foundered, quite close to them, and the whole sea was covered with the soldiers and the galley-slaves, who had jumped overboard, and the ship went down. Rogers made for them at once, and rescued above a hundred, – chiefly of the prisoners; but he saved also many of the crew, and the soldiers. From four o’clock till nigh seven, he continued to cruise back and forward through the bay, assisting every one who needed help, and saving life on every side. As the gale abated, yielding to the piteous entreaties of the prisoners, whom he well knew were political offenders, he landed them all near Baia, and was quietly returning to the mooring-ground whence he had taken the despatch-boat, when he was boarded by two armed boats’ crews of the Royal Navy, ironed and carried off to prison.”

“That will do; I know the rest. Blagden asked to have them tried in open court, and was told that the trial was over, and that they had been condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted by royal mercy to hard labor at the galleys. I knew your long story before you told it, but listened to hear what new element you might have interpolated since you saw the people at the Legation. I find you, on the whole, very correct. How the Neapolitan Government and H. M.‘s Ministers have mistaken, mystified, and slanged each other; how they have misinterpreted law and confounded national right; how they have danced a reel through all justice, and changed places with each other some half-dozen times, so that an arbiter – if there were one – would put them both out of court – I have read already in the private correspondence. Even the people in Parliament, patent bunglers as they are in foreign customs, began to ask themselves, Is Filangieri in the pay of her Majesty? and how comes it that Blagden is in the service of Naples?”

“Oh, it ‘s not so bad as that!”

“Yes, it’s fully as bad as that. Such a muddled correspondence was probably never committed to print. They thought it a controversy, but the combatants never confronted each other. One appealed to humanity, the other referred to the law; one went off in heroics about gallantry, and the other answered by the galleys. People ought to be taught that diplomatists do not argue, or if they do, they are mere tyros at their trade. Diplomatists insinuate, suppose, suggest, hope, fear, and occasionally threaten; and with these they take in a tolerably wide sweep of human motives. There, go to bed now, my dear boy; you have had enough of precepts for one evening; tell Giacomo not to disturb me before noon – I shall probably write late into the night.”

Temple bowed and took his leave; but scarcely had he reached the stairs than Lord Culduff laid himself in his bed and went off into a sound sleep. Whether his rest was disturbed by dreams; whether his mind went over the crushing things he had in store for the Neapolitan Minister, or the artful excuses he intended to write home; whether he composed sonorous sentences for a blue-book, or invented witty epigrams for a “private and confidential;” or whether he only dreamed of a new preparation of glycerine and otto of roses, which he had seen advertised as an “invaluable accessory to the toilet,” this history does not, perhaps need not, record.

As, however, we are not about to follow the course of his diplomatic efforts in our next chapter, it is pleasant to take leave of him in his repose.