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CHAPTER LI. SOME NEWS FROM WITHOUT

There is a sad significance in the fact that the happiest days of our lives are those most difficult to chronicle; it is as though the very essence of enjoyment was its uneventful nature. Thus was it that the little household at the Fontanels felt their present existence. Its simple pleasures, its peacefulness never palled upon them. There was that amount of general similarity in tastes amongst them that secures concord, and that variety of disposition and temperament which promotes and sustains interest.

Julia was the life of all; for, though seeming to devote herself to the cares of housethrift and management, and in reality carrying on all the details of management, it was she who gave to their daily life its color and flavor, she who suggested occupations and interest to each; and while Augustus was charged to devote his gun and his rod to the replenishment of the larder, George was converted into a gardener; all the decorative department of the household being confided to Nelly, who made the bouquets for the breakfast and dinner tables, arranged the fruit in artistic fashion, and was supreme in exacting dinner-dress and the due observance of all proper etiquette. Julia was inflexible on this point; for, as she said, “though people laugh at deposed princes for their persistence in maintaining a certain state and a certain pageantry in their exile, without these, what becomes of their prestige, and what becomes of themselves? they merge into a new existence, and lose their very identity. We, too, may be ‘restored’ one of these days, and let it be our care not to have forgotten the habits of our station.” There was in this, as in most she said, a semi-seriousness that made one doubt when she was in earnest; and this half-quizzing manner enabled her to carry out her will and bear down opposition in many cases where a sterner logic would have failed her.

Her greatest art of all, however, was to induce the others to believe that the chief charm of their present existence was its isolation. She well knew that while she herself and Nelly would never complain of the loneliness of their lives, their estrangement from the world and all its pursuits, its pleasures and its interests, the young men would soon discover what monotony marked their days, how uneventful they were, and how uniform. To convert all these into merits, to make them believe that this immunity from the passing accidents of life was the greatest of blessings, to induce them to regard the peace in which they lived as the highest charm that could adorn existence, and at the same time not suffer them to lapse into dreamy inactivity or lethargic indifference, was a great trial of skill, and it was hers to achieve it. As she said, not without a touch of vainglory, one day to Nelly, “How intensely eager I have made them about small things. Your brother was up at daylight to finish his rock-work for the creepers, and George felled that tree for the keel of his new boat before breakfast. Think of that, Nelly; and neither of them as much as asked if the post had brought them letters and newspapers. Don’t laugh, dearest. When men forget the post-hour, there is something wonderfully good or bad has befallen them.”

“But it is strange, after all, Ju, how little we have come to care for the outer world. I protest I am glad to think that there are only two mails a week, – a thing that when we came here, I would have pronounced unendurable.”

“To George and myself it matters little,” said Julia; and her tone had a touch of sadness in it, in spite of her attempt to smile. “It would not be easy to find two people whom the world can live without at so little cost. There is something in that, Nelly; though I ‘m not sure that it is all gain.”

“Well, you have your recompense, Julia,” said the other, affectionately; “for there is a little ‘world’ here could not exist without you.”

“Two hares, and something like a black cock – they call it a caper, here,” cried Augustus, from beneath the window. “Come down, and let us have breakfast on the terrace. By the way, I have just got a letter in Cutbill’s hand. It has been a fortnight in coming, but I only glanced at the date of it.”

As they gathered around the breakfast-table they were far more eager to learn what had been done in the garden, and what progress was being made with the fish-pond, than to hear Mr. Cutbill’s news; and his letter lay open till nigh the end of the meal, on the table, before any one thought of it.

“Who wants to read Cutbill?” said Augustus, indolently.

“Not I, Gusty, if he writes as he talks.”

“Do you know, I thought him very pleasant?” said L’Estrange. “He told me so much that I had never heard of, and made such acute remarks on life and people.”

“Poor dear George was so flattered by Mr. Cutbill’s praise of his boiled mutton, that he took quite a liking to the man; and when he declared that some poor little wine we gave him had a flavor of ‘muscat’ about it, like old Moselle, I really believe he might have borrowed money of us if he had wanted, and if we had had any.”

“I wish you would read him aloud, Julia,” said Augustus.

“With all my heart,” said she, turning over the letter to see its length. “It does seem a long document, but it is a marvel of clear writing. Now for it. ‘Naples, Hotel Victoria. My dear Bramleigh.’ Of course you are his dear Bramleigh? Lucky, after all, that it’s not dear Gusty.”

“That’s exactly what makes everything about that man intolerable to me,” said Nelly. “The degree of intimacy between people is not to be measured by the inferior.”

“I will have no discussions, no interruptions,” said Julia. “If there are to be comments, they must be made by me.”

“That’s tyranny, I think,” cried Nelly.

“I call it more than arrogance,” said Augustus.

“My dear Bramleigh,” continued Julia, reading aloud, “I followed the old Viscount down here, not in the best of tempers, I assure you; and though not easily outwitted or baffled in such matters, it was not till after a week that I succeeded in getting an audience. There’s no denying it, he ‘s the best actor on or off the boards in Europe. He met me coldly, haughtily. I had treated him badly, forsooth, shamefully; I had not deigned a reply to any of his letters. He had written me three – he was n’t sure there were not four letters – to Rome. He had sent me cards for the Pope’s chapel – cards for Cardinal Somebody’s receptions – cards for a concert at St. Paul’s, outside the walls. I don’t know what attentions he had not showered on me, nor how many of his high and titled friends had not called at a hotel where I never stopped, or left their names with a porter I never saw. I had to wait till he poured forth all this with a grand eloquence, at once disdainful and damaging; the peroration being in this wise – that such lapses as mine were things unknown in the latitudes inhabited by well-bred people. ‘These things are not done, Mr. Cutbill,’ said he, arrogantly; ‘these things are not done! You may call them trivial omissions, mere trifles, casual forgetful-ness, and such like; but even men who have achieved distinction, who have won fame and honors and reputation, as I am well aware is your case, would do well to observe the small obligations which the discipline of society enforces, and condescend to exchange that small coin of civilities which form the circulating medium of good manners.’ When he had delivered himself of this he sat down overpowered; and though I, in very plain language, told him that I did not believe a syllable about the letters, nor accept one word of the lesson, he only fanned himself and bathed his temples with rose-water, no more heeding me or my indignation than if I had been one of the figures on his Japanese screen.

“‘You certainly said you were stopping at the “Minerva,”’ said he.

“‘I certainly told your Lordship I was at Spilman’s.’

“He wanted to show me why this could not possibly be the case – how men like himself never made mistakes, and men like me continually did so – that the very essence of great men’s lives was to attach importance to those smaller circumstances that inferior people disregarded, and so on; but I simply said, ‘Let us leave that question where it is, and go on to a more important one. Have you had time to look over my account?’

“‘If you had received the second of those letters you have with such unfeigned candor assured me were never written, you’d have seen that I only desire to know the name of your banker in town, that I may order my agent to remit the money.’

“‘Let us make no more mistakes about an address, my Lord,’ said I. ‘I ‘ll take a check for the amount now,’ and he gave it. He sat down and wrote me an order on Hedges and Holt, Pall Mall, for fifteen hundred pounds.

“I was so overcome by the promptitude and by the grand manner he handed it to me, that I am free to confess I was heartily ashamed of my previous rudeness, and would have given a handsome discount off my check to have been able to obliterate all memory of my insolence.

“‘Is there anything more between us, Mr. Cutbill?’ said he, politely; ‘for I think it would be a mutual benefit if we could settle all our outlying transactions at the present interview.’

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘there ‘s that two thousand of the parson’s, paid in, if you remember, after Portlaw’s report to your Lordship that the whole scheme must founder.’

“He tried to browbeat at this. It was a matter in which I had no concern; it was a question which Mr. L’Estrange was at full liberty to bring before the courts of law; my statement about Portlaw was incorrect; dates were against me, law was against me, custom was against me, and at last it was nigh dinner-hour, and time was against me; ‘unless,’ said he, with a change of voice I never heard equalled off the stage, ‘you will stay and eat a very humble dinner with Temple and myself, for my Lady is indisposed.’

“To be almost on fighting terms with a man ten minutes ago, and to accept his invitation to dinner now, seemed to me one of those things perfectly beyond human accomplishment; but the way in which he tendered the invitation, and the altered tone he imparted to his manner, made me feel that not to imitate him was to stamp myself forever as one of those vulgar dogs whom he had just been ridiculing, and I assented.

“I have a perfect recollection of a superb dinner; but beyond that, and that the champagne was decanted, and that there was a large cheese stuffed with truffles, and that there were ortolans in ice, I know nothing. It was one of the pleasantest evenings I ever passed in my life. I sang several songs, and might have sung more if a message had not come from my Lady to beg that the piano might be stopped, – an intimation which closed the seance; and I said good-night. The next morning Temple called to say my Lord was too much engaged to be able to receive me again; and as to that little matter I had mentioned, he had an arrangement to propose which might be satisfactory. And whether it was that my faculties were not the clearer for my previous night’s convivialities, or that Temple’s explanations were of the most muddled description, or that the noble lord had purposely given him a tangled skein to unravel, I don’t know; but all I could make out of the proposed arrangement was that he would n’t give any money back, – no, not on any terms: to do so would be something so derogatory to himself, to his rank, to his position in diplomacy, it would amount to a self-accusation of fraud; what would be thought of him by his brother peers, by society, by the world, and by The Office?

“He had, however, the alternate presentation to the living of Oxington in Herts. It was two hundred and forty pounds per annum and a house, – in fact, ‘a provision more than ample,’ he said, ‘for any man not utterly a worldling.’ He was not sure whether the next appointment lay with himself or a certain Sir Marcus Cluff, – a retired fishmonger, he thought, – then living at Rome; but as well as I could make out, if it was Lord Culduff’s turn he would appoint L’Estrange, and if it was Cluff’s we were to cajole, or to bully, or to persuade him out of it; and L’Estrange was to be inducted as soon as the present incumbent, who only wanted a few months of ninety, was promoted to a better place. This may all seem very confused, dim, and unintelligible, but it is a plain ungarbled statement in comparison with what I received from Temple, who, to do him justice, felt all the awkwardness of being sent out to do something he did n’t understand by means that he never possessed. He handed me, however, a letter for Cluff from the noble Viscount, which I was to deliver at once; and, in fact, this much was intelligible, that the sooner I took myself away from Naples, in any direction I liked best, the better. There are times when it is as well not to show that you see the enemy is cheating you, when the shrewdest policy is to let him deem you a dupe and wait patiently till he has compromised himself beyond recall. In this sense I agreed to be the bearer of the letter, and started the same night for Rome.

“Cluff was installed at the same hotel where I was stopping, and I saw him the next morning. He was a poor broken-down creature, sitting in a room saturated with some peculiar vapor which seemed to agree with him, but half suffocated me. The Viscount’s letter, however, very nearly put us on a level, for it took his breath away, and all but finished him.

“‘Do you know, sir,’ said he, ‘that Lord Culduff talks here of a title to a presentation that I bought with the estate thirty years ago, and that he has no more right in the matter than he has to the manor-house. The vicarage is my sole gift, and though the present incumbent is but two-and-thirty, he means to resign and go out to New Zealand.’ He maundered on about Lord Culduff’s inexplicable blunder; what course he ought to adopt towards him; if it were actionable, or if a simple apology would be the best solution, and at last said, ‘There was no one for whom he had a higher esteem than Mr. L’Estrange, and that if I would give him his address he would like to communicate with him personally in the matter.’ This looked at least favorable, and I gave it with great willingness; but I am free to own I have become now so accustomed to be jockeyed at every step I go, that I would n’t trust the Pope himself, if he promised me anything beyond his blessing.

“I saw Cluff again to-day, and he said he had half-written his letter to L’Estrange; but being his postfumigation day, when his doctor enjoined complete repose, he could not complete or post the document till Saturday. I have thought it best, however, to apprise you, and L’Estrange through you, that such a letter is on its way to Cattaro, and, I trust, with satisfactory intelligence. And now that I must bring this long narrative to an end, I scarcely know whether I shall repeat a scandal you may have heard already, or, more probably still, not like to hear now; but it is the town-talk here, – that Pracontal, or Count Bramleigh – I don’t know which name he is best known by – is to marry Lady Augusta. Some say that the marriage will depend on the verdict of the trial being in his favor; others declare that she has accepted him unconditionally. I was not disposed to believe the story, but Cluff assures me that it is unquestionable, and that he knows a lady to whom Lady Augusta confided this determination. And, as Cluff says, such an opportunity of shocking the world will not occur every day, and it cannot be expected she could resist the temptation.

“I am going back to England at once, and I enclose you my town address in case you want me: ‘4, Joy Court, Cannon Street’ The Culduff mining scheme is now wound up, and the shareholders have signed a consent. Their first dividend of fourpence will be paid in January, future payment will be announced by notice. Tell L’Estrange, however, not to ‘come in,’ but to wait.

“If I can be of service in any way, make use of me, and if I cannot, don’t forget me, but think of me as, what I once overheard L’Estrange’s sister call me, – a well-meaning snob, and very faithfully yours,

“T. Cutbill.”

CHAPTER LII. ISCHIA

The sun had just sunk below the horizon, and a blaze of blended crimson and gold spread over the Bay of Naples, coloring the rocky island of Ischia till it glowed like a carbuncle. Gradually, however, the rich warm tints began to fade away from the base of the mountains, and a cold blue color stole slowly up their sides, peak after peak surrendering their gorgeous panoply, till at length the whole island assumed a tinge blue as the sea it stood in.

But for the memory of the former glory it would have been difficult to imagine a more beautiful picture. Every cliff and jutting promontory tufted with wild olives and myrtle was reflected in the waveless sea below; and feathery palm-trees and broad-leaved figs trembled in the water, as that gentle wash eddied softly round the rocks, or played on the golden shore.

It was essentially the hour of peace and repose. Along the shores of the bay, in every little village, the angelus was ringing, and kneeling groups were bowed in prayer; and even here, on this rocky islet, where crime and wretchedness were sent to expiate by years of misery their sins against their fellow-men, the poor galley-slaves caught one instant of kindred with the world, and were suffered to taste in peace the beauty of the hour. There they were in little knots and groups – some lying listlessly in the deep grass; some gathered on a little rocky point, watching the fish as they darted to and fro in the limpid water, and doubtless envying their glorious freedom: and others, again, seated under some spreading tree, and seeming, at least, to feel the calm influence of the hour.

The soldiers who formed their guard had piled their arms, leaving here and there merely a sentinel, and had gone down amongst the rocks, to search for limpets, or those rugged “ricci di mare” which humble palates accept as delicacies. A few, too, dashed in for a swim, and their joyous voices and merry laughter were heard amid the plash of the water they disported in.

In a small cleft of a rock overshadowed by an old ilex-tree two men sat moodily gazing on the sea. In dress they were indeed alike, for both wore that terrible red and yellow livery that marks a life-long condemnation, and each carried the heavy chain of the same terrible sentence. They were linked together at the ankle, and thus, for convenience’ sake, they sat shoulder to shoulder. One was a thin, spare, but still wiry-looking man, evidently far advanced in life, but with a vigor in his look and a quick intelligence in his eye that showed what energy he must have possessed in youth. He had spent years at the galleys, but neither time nor the degradation of his associations had completely eradicated the traces of something above the common in his appearance; for No. 97 – he had no other name as a prisoner – had been condemned for his share in a plot against the life of the king; three of his associates having been beheaded for their greater criminality. What station he might originally have belonged to was no longer easy to determine; but there were yet some signs that indicated that he had been at least in the middle rank of life. His companion was unlike him in every way. He was a young man with fresh complexion and large blue eyes, the very type of frankness and good-nature. Not even prison diet and discipline had yet hollowed his cheek, though it was easy to see that unaccustomed labor and distasteful food were beginning to tell upon his strength, and the bitter smile with which he was gazing on his lank figure and wasted hands showed the weary misery that was consuming him.

“Well, old Nick,” said the young man at length, “this is to be our last evening together; and if ever I should touch land again, is there any way I could help you – is there anything I could do for you?”

“So then you’re determined to try it?” said the other, in a low growling tone.

“That I am. I have not spent weeks filing through that confounded chain for nothing: one wrench now and it’s smashed.”

“And then?” asked the old man with a grin.

“And then I’ll have a swim for it. I know all that – I know it all,” said he, answering a gesture of the other’s hand; “but do you think I care to drag out such a life as this?”

“I do,” was the quiet reply.

“Then why you do is clear and clean beyond me. To me it is worse than fifty deaths.”

“Look here, lad,” said the old man, with a degree of animation he had not shown before. “There are four hundred and eighty of us here: some for ten, some for twenty years, some for life; except yourself alone there is not one has the faintest chance of a pardon. You are English, and your nation takes trouble about its people, and, right or wrong, in the end gets them favorable treatment, and yet you are the only man here would put his life in jeopardy on so poor a chance.”

“I ‘ll try it, for all that.”

“Did you ever hear of a man that escaped by swimming?”

“If they did n’t it was their own fault – at least, they gave themselves no fair chance: they always made for the shore, and generally the nearest shore, and of course they were followed and taken. I’ll strike out for the open sea, and when I have cut the cork floats off a fishing-net, I’ll be able to float for hours, if I should tire swimming. Once in the open, it will be hard luck if some coasting vessel, some steamer to Palermo or Messina, should not pick me up. Besides, there are numbers of fishing-boats – ”

“Any one of which would be right glad to make five ducats by bringing you safe back to the police.”

“I don’t believe it – I don’t believe there is that much baseness in a human heart.”

“Take my word for it, there are depths a good deal below even that,” said the old man, with a harsh grating laugh.

“No matter, come what will of it, I’ll make the venture; and now, as our time is growing short, tell me if there is anything I can do for you, if I live to get free again. Have you any friends who could help you? or is there any one to whom you would wish me to go on your behalf?”

“None – none,” said he, slowly but calmly.

“As yours was a political crime – ”

“I have done all of them, and if my life were to be drawn out for eighty years longer it would not suffice for all the sentences against me.”

“Still I ‘d not despair of doing something – ”

“Look here, lad,” said the other, sharply; “it is my will that all who belong to me should believe me dead. I was shipwrecked twelve years ago, and reported to have gone down with all the crew. My son – ”

“Have you a son, then?”

“My son inherits rights that, stained as I am by crime and condemnation, I never could have maintained. Whether he shall make them good or not will depend on whether he has more or less of my blood in his veins. It may be, however, he will want money to prosecute his claim. I have none to send him, but I could tell him where he is almost certain to find not only money, but what will serve him more than money, if you could make him out. I have written some of the names he is known by on this paper, and he can be traced through Bolton, the banker at Naples. Tell him to seek out all the places old Giacomo Lami worked at. He never painted his daughter Enrichetta in a fresco, that he didn’t hide gold, or jewels, or papers of value somewhere near. Tell him, above all, to find out where Giacomo’s last work was executed. You can say that you got this commission from me years ago in Monte Video; and when you tell him it was Niccolo Baldassare gave it, he’ll believe you. There. I have written Giacomo Lami on that paper, so that you need not trust to your memory. But why do I waste time with these things? You’ll never set foot on shore, lad – never.”

“I am just as certain that I shall. If that son of yours was only as certain of winning his estate, I’d call him a lucky fellow. But see, they are almost dressed. They ‘ll be soon ready to march us home. Rest your foot next this rock till I smash the link, and when you see them coming roll this heavy stone down into the sea. I ‘ll make for the south side of the island, and, once night falls, take to the water. Good-bye, old fellow. I ‘ll not forget you – never, never,” and he wrung the old man’s hand in a strong grasp. The chain gave way at the second blow, and he was gone.

Just as the last flickering light was fading from the sky, three cannon shots, in quick succession, announced that a prisoner had made his escape, and patrols issued forth in every direction to scour the island, while boats were manned to search the caves and crevasses along the shore.

The morning’s telegram to the Minister of Police ran thus: “No. 11 made his escape last evening, filing his ankle-iron. The prisoner, 97, to whom he was linked, declares that he saw him leap into the sea and sink. This statement is not believed; but up to this, no trace of the missing man has been discovered.”

In the afternoon of the same day, Temple Bramleigh learned the news, and hastened home to the hotel to inform his chief. Lord Culduff was not in the best of tempers. Some independent member below the gangway had given notice of a question he intended to ask the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and the leader of a Radical morning paper had thus paraphrased the inquiry: “What Mr. Bechell wishes to ascertain, in fact, amounts to this, – ‘Could not the case of Samuel Rogers have been treated by our resident envoy at Naples, or was it necessary that the dignity and honor of England should be maintained by an essenced old fop, whose social successes – and we never heard that he had any other – date from the early days of the Regency?’”

Lord Culduff was pacing his room angrily when Temple entered, and, although nothing would have induced him to show the insolent paragraph of the paper, he burst out into a violent abuse of those meddlesome Radicals, whose whole mission in life was to assail men of family and station.

“In the famous revolution of France, sir,” cried he, “they did their work with the guillotine; but our cowardly canaille never rise above defamation. You must write to the papers about this, Temple. You must expose this system of social assassination, or the day will come, if it has not already come, when gentlemen of birth and blood will refuse to serve the Crown.”

“I came back to tell you that our man has made his escape,” said Temple, half trembling at daring to interrupt this flow of indignation.

“And whom do you call our man, sir?” “I mean Rogers – the fellow we have been writing about.”

“How and when has this happened?”

Temple proceeded to repeat what he had learned at the prefecture of the police, and read out the words of the telegram.

“Let us see,” said Lord Culduff, seating himself in a well-cushioned chair. “Let us see what new turn this will give the affair. He may be recaptured, or he may be, most probably is, drowned. We then come in for compensation. They must indemnify. There are few claims so thoroughly chronic in their character as those for an indemnity. You first discuss the right, and you then higgle over the arithmetic. I don’t want to go back to town this season. See to it then, Temple, that we reserve this question entirely to ourselves. Let Blagden refer everything to us.”

“They have sent the news home already.”

“Oh! they have. Very sharp practice. Not peculiar for any extreme delicacy either. But I cannot dine with Blagden, for all that. This escape gives a curious turn to the whole affair. Let us look into it a little. I take it the fellow must have gone down – eh?”

“Most probably.”

“Or he might have been picked up by some passing steamer or by a fishing-boat. Suppose him to have got free, he ‘ll get back to England, and make capital out of the adventure. These fellows understand all that nowadays.”

Temple, seeing a reply was expected, assented.

“So that we must not be precipitate, Temple,” said Lord Culduff, slowly. “It’s a case for caution.”

These words, and the keen look that accompanied them, were perfect puzzles to Temple, and he did not dare to speak.

“The thing must be done this wise,” said Lord Culduff. “It must be a ‘private and confidential’ to the office, and a ‘sly and ambiguous’ to the public prints. I ‘ll charge myself with the former; the latter shall be your care, Temple. You are intimate with Flosser, the correspondent of the ‘Bell-Weather.’ Have him to dinner and be indiscreet. This old Madeira here will explain any amount of expansiveness. Get him to talk of this escape, and let out the secret that it was we who managed it all. Mind, however, that you swear him not to reveal anything. It would be your ruin, you must say, if the affair got wind; but the fact was Lord Culduff saw the Neapolitans were determined not to surrender him, and knowing what an insult it would be to the public feeling of England that an Englishman was held as a prisoner at the galleys, for an act of heroism and gallantry, the only course was to liberate him at any cost and in any way. Flosser will swear secrecy, but hints at this solution as the on dit in certain keen coteries. Such a mode of treating the matter carries more real weight than a sworn affidavit. Men like the problem that they fancy they have unravelled by their own acuteness. And then it muzzles discussion in the House, since even the most blatant Radical sees that it cannot be debated openly; for all Englishmen, as a rule, love compensation, and we can only claim indemnification here on the assumption that we were no parties to the escape. Do you follow me, Temple?”

“I believe I do. I see the drift of it at last.”

“There’s no drift, sir. It is a full, palpable, well-delivered blow. We saved Rogers; but we refuse to explain how.”

“And if he turns up one of these days, and refuses to confirm us?”

“Then we denounce him as an impostor; but always, mark you, in the same shadowy way that we allude to our share in his evasion. It must be a sketch in water-colors throughout, Temple, – very faint and very transparent. When I have rough-drafted my despatch you shall see it. Once the original melody is before you, you will see there is nothing to do but invent the variations.”