Czytaj książkę: «The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly», strona 29

CHAPTER XLIX. A LONG TÊTE-À-TÊTE

“Scant courtesy, I must say,” exclaimed Lady Augusta, as, after rapidly running her eyes over a note, she flung it across the table towards Pracontal.

They were seated tête-à-tête in that small drawing-room which looked out upon the garden and the grounds of the Borghese Palace.

“Am I to read it?” asked he.

“Yes, if you like. It is from Augustus Bramleigh, a person you feel some interest in.”

Pracontal took up the note, and seemed to go very carefully over its contents.

“So then,” said he, as he finished, “he thinks it better not to meet – not to know me.”

“Which is no reason on earth for being wanting in a proper attention to me,” said she, angrily. “To leave Rome without calling here, without consulting my wishes, and learning my intentions for the future, is a gross forgetfulness of proper respect.”

“I take it, the news of the trial was too much for him. Longworth said it would, and that the comments of the press would be insupportable besides.”

“But what have I to do with that, sir? Mr. Bramleigh’s first duty was to come here. I should have been thought of. I was the first person this family should have remembered in their hour of difficulty.”

“There was no intentional want of respect in it, I ‘ll be bound,” cried Pracontal. “It was just a bashful man’s dread of an awkward moment – that English terror of what you call a ‘scene’ – that sent him off.”

“It is generous of you, sir, to become his apologist. I only wonder – ” Here she stopped and seemed confused.

“Go on, my Lady. Pray finish what you began.”

“No, sir. It is as well unsaid.”

“But it was understood, my Lady, just as well as if it had been uttered. Your Ladyship wondered who was to apologize for me.”

She grew crimson as he spoke; but a faint smile seemed to say how thoroughly she relished that southern keenness that could divine a half-uttered thought.

“How quick you are!” said she, without a trace of irritation.

“Say, rather, how quick he ought to be who attempts to parry you at fence. And, after all,” said he, in a lighter tone, “is it not as well that he has spared us all an embarrassment? I could not surely have been able to condole with him, and how could he have congratulated me?”

“Pardon me, Count, but the matter, so far as I learn, is precisely as it was before. There is neither subject for condolence nor gratulation.”

“So far as the verdict of the jury went, my Lady, you are quite right; but what do you say to that larger, wider verdict pronounced by the press, and repeated in a thousand forms by the public? May I read you one passage, only one, from my lawyer Mr. Kelson’s letter?”

“Is it short?”

“Very short.”

“And intelligible?”

“Most intelligible.”

“Read it, then.”

“Here it is,” said he, opening a letter, and turning to the last page. “‘Were I to sum up what is the popular opinion of the result, I could not do it better than repeat what a City capitalist said to me this morning: “I’d rather lend Count Pracontal twenty thousand pounds to-day, than take Mr. Bramleigh’s mortgage for ten.”’”

“Let me read that. I shall comprehend his meaning better than by hearing it. This means evidently,” said she, after reading the passage, “that your chances are better than his.”

“Kelson tells me success is certain.”

“And your cautious friend Mr. – ; I always forget that man’s name?”

“Longworth?”

“Yes, Longworth. What does he say?”

“He is already in treaty with me to let him have a small farm which adjoins his grounds, and which he would like to throw into his lawn.”

“Seriously?”

“No, not a bit seriously; but we pass the whole morning building these sort of castles in Spain, and the grave way that he entertains such projects ends by making me believe I am actually the owner of Castello and all its belongings.”

“Tell me some of your plans,” said she, with a livelier interest than she had yet shown.

“First of all, reconciliation, if that be its proper name, with all that calls itself Bramleigh. I don’t want to be deemed a usurper, but a legitimate monarch. It is to be a restoration.”

“Then you ought to marry Nelly. I declare, that never struck me before.”

“Nor has it yet occurred to me, my Lady,” said he, with a faint show of irritation.

“And why not, sir? Is it that you look higher?”

“I look higher,” said he; and there was a solemn intensity in his air and manner as he spoke.

“I declare, Monsieur de Pracontal, it is scarcely delicate to say this to me.”

“Your Ladyship insists on my being candid, even at the hazard of my courtesy.”

“I do not complain of your candor, sir. It is your – your – ”

“My pretension?”

“Well, yes, pretension will do.”

“Well, my Lady, I will not quarrel with the phrase. I do ‘pretend,’ as we say in French. In fact, I have been little other than a pretender these last few years.”

“And what is it you pretend to? May I ask the question?”

“I do not know if I may dare to answer it,” said he, slowly… “I will explain what I mean,” added he, after a brief silence, and drawing his chair somewhat nearer to where she sat. “I will explain. If, in one of my imaginative gossipries with a friend, I were to put forward some claim – some ambition – which would sound absurd coming from me now, but which, were I the owner of a great estate, would neither be extravagant nor ridiculous, the memory of that unlucky pretension would live against me ever after, and the laugh that my vanity excited would ring in my ears long after I had ceased to regard the sentiment as vanity at all. Do you follow me?”

“Yes, I believe I do. I would only have you remember that I am not Mr. Longworth.”

“A reason the more for my caution.”

“Could n’t we converse without riddles, Count Pracontal?”

“I protest, I should like to do so.”

“And as I make no objection – ”

“Then to begin. You asked me what I should do if I were to gain my suit; and my answer is, if I were not morally certain to gain it, I ‘d never exhibit myself in the absurd position of planning a life I was never to arrive at.”

“You are too much a Frenchman for that.”

“Precisely, madame. I am too much a Frenchman for that. The exquisite sensibility to ridicule puts a very fine edge on national character, though your countrymen will not admit it.”

“It makes very tetchy acquaintances,” said she, with a malicious laugh.

“And develops charming generosity in those who forgive us!”

“I cry off. I can’t keep up this game of give and take flatteries. Let us come back to what we were talking of, – that is, if either of us can remember it. Oh, yes, I know it now. You were going to tell me the splendid establishment you ‘d keep at Castello. I ‘m sure the cook will leave nothing to desire, – but how about the stable? That ‘steppere’ will not exactly be in his place in an Irish county.”

“Madame, you forget I was a lieutenant of hussars.”

“My dear Count, that does not mean riding.”

“Madame!”

“I should now rise and say ‘Monsieur!’ and it would be very good comedy after the French pattern; but I prefer the sofa and my ease, and will simply beg you to remember the contract we made the other day, – that each was to be at liberty to say any impertinence to the other, without offence being taken.”

Pracontal laid his hand on his heart, and bowed low and deep.

“There are some half a dozen people in that garden yonder, who have passed and repassed – I can’t tell how many times – just to observe us. You ‘ll see them again in a few minutes, and we shall be town-talk to-morrow, I ‘m certain. There are no tête-à-têtes ever permitted in Rome if a cardinal or a monsignore be not one of the performers.”

“Are those they?” cried he, suddenly.

“Yes, and there ‘s not the least occasion for that flash of the eye and that hot glow of indignation on the cheek: I assure you, monsieur, there is nobody there to couper la gorge with you, or share in any of those social pleasantries which make the ‘Bois’ famous. The curiously minded individual is a lady, – a Mrs. Trumpler, – and her attendants are a few freshly arrived curates. There, now, sit down again, and look less like a wounded tiger; for all this sort of thing fusses and fevers me. Yes, you may fan me; though if the detectives return it will make the report more highly colored.”

Pracontal was now seated on a low stool beside her sofa, and fanning her assiduously.

“Not but these people are all right,” continued she. “It is quite wrong in me to admit you to my intimacy – wrong to admit you at all. My sister is so angry about it she won’t come here – fact, I assure you. Now don’t look so delighted and so triumphant, and the rest of it. As your nice little phrase has it, you ‘are for nothing’ in the matter at all. It is all myself, my own whim, my fancy, my caprice. I saw that the step was just as unadvisable as they said it was. I saw that any commonly discreet person would not have even made your acquaintance, standing as I did; but unfortunately for me, like poor Eve, the only tree whose fruit I covet is the one I ‘m told is n’t good for me. There go our friends once more. I wish I could tell her who you are, and not keep her in this state of torturing anxiety.”

“Might I ask, my Lady,” said he, gravely, “if you have heard anything to my discredit or disparagement, as a reason for the severe sentence you have just spoken?”

“No, unfortunately not; for in that case my relatives would have forgiven me. They know the wonderful infatuation that attracts me to damaged reputations, and as they have not yet found out any considerable flaw in yours, they are puzzled, out of all measure, to know what it is I see in you.”

“I am overwhelmed by your flattery, madam,” said he, trying to seem amused; but, in spite of himself, showing some irritation.

“Not that,” resumed she, in that quiet manner which showed that her mind had gone off suddenly in another direction, – “not that I owe much deference to the Bramleighs, who, one and all, have treated me with little courtesy. Marion behaved shamefully; that, of course, was to be expected. To marry that odious old creature for a position implied how she would abuse the position when she got it. As I said to Gusty, when a young Oxford man gives five guineas for a mount, he does n’t think he has the worth of his money if he does n’t smash his collar-bone. There, put down that fan; you are making me feverish. Then the absurdity of playing peeress to me! How ashamed the poor old man was; he reddened through all his rouge. Do you know,” added she, in an excited manner, “that she had the impertinence to compare her marriage with mine, and say that at least rank and title were somewhat nobler ambitions than a mere subsistence and a settlement. But I answered her. I told her, ‘You have forgotten one material circumstance. I did not live with your father!’ Oh, yes! we exchanged a number of little courtesies of this kind, and I was so sorry when I heard she had gone to Naples. I was only getting into stride when the race was over. As to my settlement, I have not the very vaguest notion who ‘ll pay it; perhaps it may be you. Oh, of course I know the unutterable bliss; but you must really ask your lawyer, how is my lien to be disposed of. Some one said to me the other day that, besides the estate, you would have a claim for about eighty thousand pounds.”

“It was Longworth said so.”

“I don’t like your friend Longworth. Is he a gentleman?”

“Most unquestionably.”

“Well, but I mean a born gentleman? I detest, and I distrust your nature-made gentlemen, who, having money enough to ‘get up’ the part, deem that quite sufficient. I want the people whose families have given guarantees for character during some generations. Six o’clock! only think, you are here three mortal hours! I declare, sir, this must not occur again; and I have to dress now. I dine at the Prince Cornarini’s. Do you go there?”

“I go nowhere, my Lady. I know no one.”

“Well, I can’t present you. It would be too compromising. And yet they want men like you, very much, here. The Romans are so dull and stately, and the English who frequent the best houses are so dreary. There, go away now. You want leave to come to-morrow, but I ‘ll not grant it. I must hear what Mrs. Trumpler says before I admit you again.”

“When, then, may I – ”

“I don’t know; I have not thought of it. Let it be – let it be when you have gained your lawsuit,” cried she, in a burst of laughter, and hurried out of the room.

CHAPTER L. CATTARO

If Cattaro was more picturesque and strange-looking than the Bramleighs had expected, it was also far more poverty-stricken and desolate. The little town, escarped out of a lofty mountain, with the sea in front, consisted of little more than one straggling street, which followed every bend and indentation of the shore. It is true, wherever a little plateau offered on the mountain, a house was built; and to these small winding paths led up, through rocks bristling with the cactus, or shaded by oleanders large as olive-trees. Beautiful little bits of old Venetian architecture, in balconies or porticos, peeped out here and there through the dark foliage of oranges and figs; and richly ornamented gates, whose arabesques yet glistened with tarnished gilding, were festooned with many a flowery creeper, and that small banksia-rose, so tasteful in its luxuriance. From the sea it would be impossible to imagine anything more beautiful or more romantic. As you landed, however, the illusion faded, and dirt, misery, and want stared at you at every step. Decay and ruin were on all sides. Palaces, whose marble mouldings and architraves were in the richest style of Byzantine art, were propped up by rude beams of timber that obstructed the footway, while from their windows and balconies hung rags and tattered draperies, the signs of a poverty within great as the ruin without. The streets were lined with a famished, half-clothed population, sitting idly or sleeping. A few here and there affected to be vendors of fruit and vegetables; but the mass were simply loungers reduced to the miserable condition of an apathy which saw nothing better to be done with life than dream it away. While Bramleigh and L’Estrange were full of horror at the wretchedness of the place, their sisters were almost wild with delight at its barbaric beauty, its grand savagery, and its brilliantly picturesque character. The little inn, which probably for years had dispensed no other hospitalities than those of the café, that extended from the darkly columned portico to half across the piazza, certainly contributed slightly to allay the grumblings of the travellers. The poorly furnished rooms were ill kept and dirty, the servants lazy, and the fare itself the very humblest imaginable.

Nothing short of the unfailing good temper and good spirits of Julia and Nelly could have rallied the men out of their sulky discontent; that spirit to make the best of everything, to catch at every passing gleam of sunlight on the landscape, and even in moments of discouragement to rally at the first chance of what may cheer and gladden, – this is womanly, essentially womanly. It belongs not to the man’s nature; and even if he should have it, he has it in a less discriminative shape and in a coarser fashion.

While Augustus and L’Estrange then sat sulkily smoking their cigars on the sea-wall, contemptuously turning their backs on the mountain variegated with every hue of foliage, and broken in every picturesque form, the girls had found out a beautiful old villa, almost buried in orange-trees in a small cleft of the mountain, through which a small cascade descended and fed a fountain that played in the hall; the perfect stillness, only broken by the splash of the falling water, and the sense of delicious freshness imparted by the crystal circles eddying across the marble fount, so delighted them that they were in ecstasies when they found that the place was to be let, and might be their own for a sum less than a very modest “entresol” would cost in a cognate city.

“Just imagine, Gusty, he will let it to us for three hundred florins a year; and for eighteen hundred we may buy it out and out, forever.” This was Nelly’s salutation as she came back, full of all she had seen, and glowing with enthusiasm over the splendid luxuriance of the vegetation and the beauty of the view.

“It is really princely inside, although in terrible dilapidation and ruin. There are over two of the fireplaces the Doge’s arms, which shows that a Venetian magnate once lived there.”

“What do you say, George?” cried Bramleigh. “Don’t you think you ‘d rather invest some hundred florins in a boat to escape from this dreary hole than purchase a prison to live in?”

“You must come and see the ‘Fontanella’ – so they call it – before you decide,” said Julia. “Meanwhile here is a rough sketch I made from the garden side.”

“Come, that looks very pretty, indeed,” cried George. “Do you mean to say it is like that?”

“That’s downright beautiful!” said Bramleigh. “Surely these are not marble, – these columns!”

“It is all marble, – the terrace, the balconies, the stairs, the door-frames; and as to the floors, they are laid down in variegated slabs, with a marvellous instinct as to color and effect. I declare I think it handsomer than Castello,” cried Nelly.

“Have n’t I often said,” exclaimed Bramleigh, “there was nothing like being ruined to impart a fresh zest to existence? You seem to start anew in the race, and unweighted, too.”

“As George and I have always been in the condition you speak of,” said Julia, “this charm of novelty is lost to us.”

“Let us put it to the vote,” said Nelly, eagerly. “Shall we buy it?”

“First of all, let us see it,” interposed Bramleigh. “Today I have to make my visit to the authorities. I have to present myself before the great officials, and announce that I have come to be the representative of the last joint of the British lion’s tail; but that he, being a great beast of wonderful strength and terrific courage, to touch a hair of him is temerity itself.”

“And they will believe you?” asked Julia.

“Of course, they will. It would be very hard that we should not survive in the memories of people who live in lonely spots, and read no newspapers.”

“Such a place for vegetation I never saw,” cried Nelly. “There are no glass windows in the hall, but through the ornamental ironwork the oranges and limes pierce through and hang in great clusters; the whole covered with the crimson acanthus and the blue japonica, till the very brilliancy of color actually dazzles you.”

“We ‘ll write a great book up there, George, – ‘Cattaro under the Doges:’ or shall it be a romance?” said Bramleigh.

“I ‘m for a diary,” said Julia, “where each of us shall contribute his share of life among the wild-olives.”

“Ju’s right,” cried Nelly; “and as I have no gift of authorship, I’ll be the public.”

“No, you shall be the editor, dearest,” said Julia. “He is always like the Speaker in the House, – the person who does the least, and endures the most.”

“All this does not lead us to any decision,” said L’Estrange. “Shall I go up there all alone, and report to you this evening what I see and what I think of the place?”

This proposal was at once acceded to; and now they went their several ways, not to meet again till a late dinner.

“How nobly and manfully your brother bears up!” said Julia, as she walked back to the inn with Nelly.

“And there is no display in it,” said Nelly, warmly. “Now that he is beyond the reach of condolence and compassion, he fears nothing. And you will see that when the blow falls, as he says it must, he will not wince nor shrink.”

“If I had been a man I should like to have been of that mould.”

“And it is exactly what you would have been, dear Julia. Gusty said, only yesterday, that you had more courage than us all.”

When L’Estrange returned, he came accompanied by an old man in very tattered clothes, and the worst possible hat, whose linen was far from spotless, as were his hands innocent of soap. He was, however, the owner of the villa, and a Count of the great family of Kreptowicz. If his appearance was not much in his favor, his manners were those of a well-bred person, and his language that of education. He was eager to part with this villa, as he desired to go and live with a married daughter at Ragusa; and he protested that, at the price he asked, it was not a sale, but a present; that to any other than Englishmen he never would part with a property that had been six hundred years in the family, and which contained the bones of his distinguished ancestors, of which, incidentally, he threw in small historic details; and, last of all, he avowed that he desired to confide the small chapel where these precious remains were deposited to the care of men of station and character. This chapel was only used once a year, when a mass for the dead was celebrated, so that the Count insisted no inconvenience could be incurred by the tenant. Indeed, he half hinted that, if that one annual celebration were objected to, his ancestors might be prayed for elsewhere, or even rest satisfied with the long course of devotion to their interests which had been maintained up to the present time. As for the chapel itself, he described it as a gem that even Venice could not rival. There were frescos of marvellous beauty, and some carvings in wood and ivory that were priceless. Some years back he had employed a great artist to restore some of the paintings, and supply the place of others that were beyond restoration; and now it was in a state of perfect condition, as he would be proud to show them.

“You are aware that we are heretics, monsieur?” said Julia.

“We are all sons of Adam, mademoiselle,” said he, with a polite bow; and it was clear that he could postpone spiritual questions to such time as temporal matters might be fully completed.

As the chapel was fully twenty minutes’ walk from the villa, and much higher on the mountain side, had it even been frequented by the country people it could not have been any cause of inconvenience to the occupants of the villa; and this matter being settled, and some small conditions as to surrender being agreed to, Bramleigh engaged to take it for three years, with a power to purchase if he desired it.

Long after the contract was signed and completed, the old Count continued, in a half-complaining tone, to dwell on the great sacrifice he had made, what sums of money were to be made of the lemons and oranges, how the figs were celebrated even at Ragusa, and Fontanella melons had actually brought ten kreutzers – three-halfpence – apiece in the market at Zara.

“Who is it,” cried Julia, as the old man took his leave, “who said that the old mercantile spirit never died out in the great Venetian families, and that the descendants of the doges, with all their pride of blood and race, were dealers and traders whenever an occasion of gain presented itself?”

“Our old friend there has not belied the theory,” said Bramleigh; “but I am right glad that we have secured La Fontanella.”