“My Lady wishes to know, my Lord, if your Lordship will step upstairs to speak to her?” said a servant at this conjuncture.
“Go up, Temple, and see what it is,” whispered Lord Culduff. “If it be about that box at the St. Carlos, you can say our stay here is now most uncertain. If it be a budget question, she must wait till quarter-day.” He smiled maliciously as he spoke, and waved his hand to dismiss him. Within a minute – it seemed scarcely half that time – Lady Culduff entered the room, with an open letter in her hand; her color was high, and her eyes flashing, as she said: —
“Make your mind at ease, my Lord. It is no question of an opera-box, or a milliner’s bill, but it is a matter of much importance that I desire, to speak about. Will you do me the favor to read that, and say what answer I shall return to it?”
Lord Culduff took the letter and read it over leisurely, and then, laying it down, said, “Lady Augusta is not a very perspicuous letter-writer, or else she feels her present task too much for her tact, but what she means here is, that you should give M. Pracontal permission to ransack your brother’s house for documents, which, if discovered, might deprive him of the title to his estate. The request, at least, has modesty to recommend it.”
“The absurdity is, to my thinking, greater than even the impertinence,” cried Lady Culduff. “She says, that on separating two pages, which by some accident had adhered, of Giacomo Lami’s journal, – whoever Giacomo Lami may be, —we—we being Pracontal and herself – have discovered that it was Giacomo’s habit to conceal important papers in the walls where he painted, and in all cases where he introduced his daughter’s portrait; and that as in the octagon room at Castello there is a picture of her as Flora, it is believed – confidently believed – such documents will be found there as will throw great light on the present claim – ”
“First of all,” said he, interrupting, “is there such a portrait?”
“There is a Flora; I never heard it was a portrait. Who could tell after what the artist copied it?”
“Lady Augusta assumes to believe this story.”
“Lady Augusta is only too glad to believe what everybody else would pronounce incredible; but this is not all, she has the inconceivable impertinence to prefer this request to us, to make us a party to our own detriment, – as if it were matter of perfect indifference who possessed these estates, and who owned Castello.”
“I declare I have heard sentiments from your brother Augustus that would fully warrant this impression. I have a letter of his in my desk wherein he distinctly says, that once satisfied in his own mind – not to the conviction of his lawyer, mark you, nor to the conviction of men well versed in evidence, and accustomed to sift testimony, but simply in his own not very capacious intellect – that the estate belongs to Pracontal, he ‘ll yield him up the possession without dispute or delay.”
“He’s a fool! there is no other name for him,” said she, passionately.
“Yes, and his folly is very mischievous folly, for he is abrogating rights he has no pretension to deal with. It is as well, at all events, that this demand was addressed to us and not to your brother, for I’m certain he’d not have refused his permission.”
“I know it,” said she, fiercely; “and if Lady Augusta only knew his address and how a letter might reach him, she would never have written to us. Time pressed, however; see what she says here. ‘The case will come on for trial in November, and if the papers have the value and significance Count Pracontal’s lawyers suspect, there will yet be time to make some arrangement, – the Count would be disposed for a generous one, – which might lessen the blow, and diminish the evil consequences of a verdict certain to be adverse to the present possessor.’”
“She dissevers her interests from those of her late husband’s family with great magnanimity, I must say.”
“The horrid woman is going to marry Pracontal.”
“They say so, but I doubt it – at least, till he comes out a victor.”
“How she could have dared to write this, how she could have had the shamelessness to ask me, —me whom she certainly ought to know, – to aid and abet a plot directed against the estates – the very legitimacy of my family – is more than I can conceive.”
“She ‘s an implicit believer, one must admit, for she says, ‘if on examining the part of the wall behind the pedestal of the figure nothing shall be found, she desires no further search.’ The spot is indicated with such exactness in the journal that she limits her request distinctly to this.”
“Probably she thought the destruction of a costly fresco might well have been demurred to,” said Lady Culduff, angrily. “Not but, for my part, I ‘d equally refuse her leave to touch the moulding in the surbase. I am glad, however, she has addressed this demand to us, for I know well Augustus is weak enough to comply with it, and fancy himself a hero in consequence. There is something piquant in the way she hints that she is asking as a favor what, for all she knows, might be claimed as a right. Imagine a woman saying this!”
“It is like asking me for the key of my writing-desk to see if I have not some paper or letter there, that might, if published, give me grave inconvenience.”
“I have often heard of her eccentricities and absurdities, but on this occasion I believe she has actually outdone herself. I suppose, though this appeal is made to us conjointly, as it is addressed to me, I am the proper person to reply to it.”
“Certainly, my Lady.”
“And I may say – Lord Culduff feels shocked equally with myself at the indelicacy of the step you have just taken; failing to respect the tie which connects you with our family, you might, he opines, have had some regard for the decencies which regulate social intercourse, and while bearing our name, not have ranked yourself with those who declare themselves our enemies. I may say this, I may tell her that her conduct is shameless, an outrage on all feeling, and not only derogatory to her station, but unwomanly?”
“I don’t think I ‘d say that,” said he, with a faint simper, while he patted his hand with a gold paper-knife. “I opine the better way would be to accept her Ladyship’s letter as the most natural thing in life from her; that she had preferred a request, which coming from her, was all that was right and reasonable. That there was something very noble and very elevated in the way she could rise superior to personal interests, and the ties of kindred, and actually assert the claims of mere justice; but I’d add that the decision could not lie with us – that your brother being the head of the family, was the person to whom the request must be addressed, and that we would, with her permission, charge ourselves with the task. Pray hear me out – first of all, we have a delay while she replies to this, with or without the permission we ask for; in that interval you can inform your brother that a very serious plot is being concerted against him; that your next letter will fully inform him as to the details of the conspiracy – your present advice being simply for warning, and then, when, if she still persist, the matter must be heard, it will be strange if Augustus shall not have come to the conclusion that the part intended for him is a very contemptible one – that of a dupe.”
“Your Lordship’s mode may be more diplomatic; mine would be more direct.”
“Which is exactly its demerit, my Lady,” said he, with one of his blandest smiles, “In my craft the great secret is never to give a flat refusal to anything. If the French were to ask us for the Isle of Wight, the proper reply would be a polite demand for the reasons that prompted the request – whether ‘Osborne’ might be reserved – and a courteous assurance that the claim should meet with every consideration and a cordial disposition to make every possible concession that might lead to a closer union with a nation it was our pride and happiness to reckon on as an ally.”
“These fallacies never deceive any one.”
“Nor are they meant to do so, any more than the words ‘your most obedient and humble servant’ at the foot of a letter; but they serve to keep correspondence within polite limits.”
“And they consume time,” broke she in, impatiently.
“And, as you observe so aptly, they consume time.”
“Let us have done with trifling, my Lord. I mean to answer this letter in my own way.”
“I can have no other objection to make to that, save the unnecessary loss of time I have incurred in listening to the matter.”
“That time so precious to the nation you serve!” said she, sneeringly.
“Your Ladyship admirably expresses my meaning.”
“Then, my Lord, I make you the only amends in my power; I take my leave of you.”
“Your Ladyship’s politeness is never at fault,” said he, rising to open the door for her.
“Has Temple told you that the box on the lower tier is now free – the box I spoke of?”
“He has; but our stay here is now uncertain. It may be days; it may be hours – ”
“And why was not I told? I have been giving orders to tradespeople – accepting invitations – making engagements, and what not. Am I to be treated like the wife of a subaltern in a marching regiment – to hold myself ready to start when the route comes?”
“How I could envy that subaltern,” said he, with an inimitable mixture of raillery and deference.
She darted on him a look of indignant anger, and swept out of the room.
Lord Culduff rang his bell, and told the servant to beg Mr. Temple Bramleigh would have the kindness to step down to him.
“Write to Filangieri, Temple,” said he, “and say that I desire to have access to the prisoner Rogers. We know nothing of his escape, and the demand will embarrass – There, don’t start objections, my dear boy; I never play a card without thinking what the enemy will do after he scores the trick.”
And with this profound encomium on himself he dismissed the secretary, and proceeded to read the morning papers.
CHAPTER LIII. A RAINY NIGHT AT SEA
The absurd demand preferred by Lady Augusta in her letter to Marion was a step taken without any authority from Pracontal, and actually without his knowledge. On the discovery of the adhering pages of the journal, and their long consideration of the singular memorandum that they found within, Pracontal carried away the book to Longworth to show him the passage and ask what importance he might attach to its contents.
Longworth was certainly struck by the minute particularity with which an exact place was indicated. There was a rough pen sketch of the Flora, and a spot marked by a cross at the base of the pedestal, with the words, “Here will be found the books.” Lower down on the same page was written, “These volumes, which I did not obtain without difficulty, and which were too cumbrous to carry away, I have deposited in this safe place, and the time may come when they will be of value. – G. L.”
“Now,” said Longworth, after some minutes of deep thought, “Lami was a man engaged in every imaginable conspiracy. There was not a state in Europe, apparently, where he was not, to some extent, compromised. These books he refers to may be the records of some secret society, and he may have stored them there as a security against the lukewarmness or the treachery of men whose fate might be imperilled by certain documents. Looking to the character of Lami, his intense devotion to these schemes, and his crafty nature and the Italian forethought which seems always to have marked whatever he did, I half incline to this impression. Then, on the other hand, you remember, Pracontal, when we went over to Portshandon to inquire about the registry books, we heard that they had all been stolen or destroyed by the rebels in ‘98?”
“Yes. I remember that well. I had not attached any importance to the fact; but I remember how much Kelson was disconcerted and put out by the intelligence, and how he continually repeated, ‘This is no accident; this is no accident.’”
“It would be a rare piece of fortune if they were the church books, and that they contained a formal registry of the marriage.”
“But who doubts it?”
“Say rather, my dear friend, why should any one believe it? Just think for one moment who Montague Bramleigh was, what was his station and his fortune, and then remember the interval that separated him from the Italian painter – a man of a certain ability, doubtless. Is it the most likely thing in the world that if the young Englishman fell in love with the beautiful Italian, that he would have sacrificed his whole ambition in life to his passion? Is it not far more probable, in fact, that no marriage whatever united them? Come, come, Pracontal, this is not, now at least, a matter to grow sulky over; you cannot be angry or indignant at my frankness, and you ‘ll not shoot me for this slur on your grandmother’s fair reputation.”
“I certainly think that with nothing better than a theory to support it, you might have spared her memory this aspersion.”
“If I had imagined you could not talk of it as unconcernedly as myself, I assure you I would never have spoken about it.”
“You see now, however, that you have mistaken me – that you have read me rather as one of your own people than as a Frenchman,” said the other, warmly.
“I certainly see that I must not speak to you with frankness, and I shall use caution not to offend you by candor.”
“This is not enough, sir,” said the Frenchman, rising and staring angrily at him.
“What is not enough?” said Longworth, with a perfect composure.
“Not enough for apology, sir; not enough as amende for an unwarrantable and insolent calumny.”
“You are getting angry at the sound of your own voice, Pracontal. I now tell you that I never meant – never could have meant – to offend you. You came to me for a counsel which I could only give by speaking freely what was in my mind. This is surely enough for explanation.”
“Then let it all be forgotten at once,” cried the other, warmly.
“I ‘ll not go that far,” said Longworth, in the same calm tone as before. “You have accepted my explanation; you have recognized what one moment of justice must have convinced you of – that I had no intention to wound your feelings. There is certainly, however, no reason in the world why I should expose my own to any unnecessary injury. I have escaped a peril; I have no wish to incur another of the same sort.”
“I don’t think I understand you,” said Pracontal, quickly. “Do you mean we should quarrel?”
“By no means.”
“That we should separate, then?”
“Certainly.”
The Frenchman became pale, and suddenly his face flushed till it was deep crimson, and his eyes flashed with fire. The effort to be calm was almost a strain beyond his strength; but he succeeded, and in a voice scarcely above a whisper, he said, “I am deeply in your debt. I cannot say how deeply. My lawyer, however, does know, and I will confer with him.”
“This is a matter of small consequence, and does not press: besides, I beg you will not let it trouble you.”
The measured coldness with which these words were spoken seemed to jar painfully on Pracontal’s temper, for he snatched his hat from the table, and with a hurried “Adieu – adieu, then,” left the room. The carriages of the hotel were waiting in the courtyard to convey the travellers to the station.
“Where is the train starting for?” asked he of a waiter.
“For Civita, sir.”
“Step up to my room, then, and throw my clothes into a portmanteau – enough for a few days. I shall have time to write a note, I suppose?”
“Ample, sir. You have forty minutes yet.” Pracontal opened his writing-desk and wrote a few lines to Lady Augusta, to tell how a telegram had just called him away – it might be to Paris, perhaps London. He would be back within ten days, and explain all. He wished he might have her leave to write, but he had not a moment left him to ask the permission. Should he risk the liberty? What if it might displease her? He was every way unfortunate; nor, in all the days of a life of changes and vicissitudes, did he remember a sadder moment than this in which he wrote himself her devoted servant, A. Pracontal de Bramleigh. This done, he jumped into a carriage, and just reached the train in time to start for Civita.
There was little of exaggeration when he said he had never known greater misery and depression than he now felt. The thought of that last meeting with Longworth overwhelmed him with sorrow. When we bear in mind how slowly and gradually the edifice of friendship is built up; how many of our prejudices have often to be overcome; how much of self-education is effected in the process; the thought that all this labor of time and feeling should be cast to the winds at once for a word of passion or a hasty expression, is humiliating to a degree. Pracontal had set great store by Longworth’s friendship for him. He had accepted great favors at his hand; but so kindly and so gracefully conferred as to double the obligations by the delicacy with which they were bestowed. And this was the man whose good feeling for him he had outraged and insulted beyond recall. “If it had been an open quarrel between us, I could have stood his fire and shown him how thoroughly I knew myself in the wrong; but his cold disdain is more than I can bear. And what was it all about? How my old comrades would laugh if they heard that I had quarrelled with my best friend. Ah, my grandmother’s reputation! Ma foi, how much more importance one often attaches to a word than to what it represents!” Thus angry with himself, mocking the very pretensions on which he had assumed to reprehend his friend, and actually ridiculing his own conduct, he embarked from Marseilles to hasten over to England, and entreat Kelson to discharge the money obligation which yet bound him to Longworth.
It was a rough night at sea, and the packet so crowded by passengers that Pracontal was driven to pass the night on deck. In the haste of departure he had not provided himself with overcoats or rugs, and was but ill-suited to stand the severity of a night of cold cutting wind and occasional drifts of hail. To keep himself warm he walked the deck for hours, pacing rapidly to and fro: perhaps not sorry at heart that physical discomfort compelled him to dwell less on the internal griefs that preyed upon him. One solitary passenger besides himself had sought the deck, and he had rolled himself in a multiplicity of warm wrappers, and lay snugly under the shelter of the binnacle – a capacious tarpaulin cloak surmounting all his other integuments.
Pracontal’s campaigning experiences had taught him that the next best thing to being well cloaked oneself is to lie near the man that is so; and thus, seeing that the traveller was fast asleep, he stretched himself under his lee, and even made free to draw a corner of the heavy tarpaulin over him.
“I say,” cried the stranger, on discovering a neighbor; “I say, old fellow, you are coming it a bit too free and easy. You’ve stripped the covering off my legs.”
“A thousand pardons,” rejoined Pracontal. “I forgot to take my rugs and wraps with me; and I am shivering with cold. I have not even an overcoat.”
The tone – so evidently that of a gentleman, and the slight touch of a foreign accent – apparently at once conciliated the stranger, for he said, “I have enough and to spare; spread this blanket over you; and here ‘s a cushion for a pillow.”
These courtesies, accepted frankly as offered, soon led them to talk together; and the two men speedily found themselves chatting away like old acquaintances.
“I am puzzling myself,” said the stranger at last, “to find out are you an Englishman, who has lived long abroad, or are you a foreigner?”
“Is my English so good as that?” asked Pracontal, laughing.
“The very best I ever heard from any not a born Briton.”
“Well, I’m a Frenchman – or a half Frenchman – with some Italian and some English blood, too, in me.”
“Ah! I knew you must have had a dash of John Bull in you. No man ever spoke such English as yours without it.”
“Well, but my English temperament goes two generations back. I don’t believe my father was ever in England.”
With this opening they talked away about national traits and peculiarities: the Frenchman with all the tact and acuteness travel and much intercourse with life conferred; and the other with the especial shrewdness that marks a Londoner. “How did you guess I was a Cockney?” asked he, laughingly. “I don’t take liberties with my H ‘s.”
“If you had, it’s not likely I’d have known it,” said Pracontal. “But your reference to town, the fidelity with which you clung to what London would think of this, or say to that, made me suspect you to be a Londoner; and I see I was right.”
“After all, you Frenchmen are just as full of Paris.”
“Because Paris epitomizes France, and France is the greatest of all countries.”
“I ‘ll not stand that. I deny it in toto.”
“Well, I’ll not open the question now, or maybe you’d make me give up this blanket.”
“No. I ‘ll have the matter out on fair grounds. Keep the blanket, but just let me hear on what grounds you claim precedence for France before England.”
“I’m too unlucky in matters of dispute to-day,” said Pracontal, sadly, “to open a new discussion. I quarrelled with, perhaps, the best friend I had in the world this morning for a mere nothing; and though there is little fear that anything we could say to each other now would provoke ill feeling between us, I ‘ll run no risks.”
“By Jove! it must be Scotch blood is in you. I never heard of such caution!”
“No, I believe my English connection is regular Saxon. When a man has been in the newspapers in England, he need not affect secrecy or caution in talking of himself. I figured in a trial lately; I don’t know if you read the cause. It was tried in Ireland – Count Bramleigh de Pracontal against Bramleigh.”
“What, are you Pracontal?” cried the stranger, starting to a sitting posture. “Yes. Why are you so much interested?”
“Because I have seen the place. I have been over the property in dispute, and the question naturally interests me.”
“Ha! you know Castello, then?”
“Castello, or Bishop’s Folly. I know it best by the latter name.”
“And whom am I speaking to?” said Pracontal; “for as you know me, perhaps I have some right to ask this.”
“My name is Cutbill; and now that you’ve heard it, you’re nothing the wiser.”
“You probably know the Bramleighs?”
“Every one of them; Augustus, the eldest, I am intimate with.”
“It’s not my fault that I have no acquaintance with him. I desired it much; and Lady Augusta conveyed my wish to Mr. Bramleigh, but he declined. I don’t know on what grounds; but he refused to meet me, and we have never seen each other.”
“If I don’t greatly mistake, you ought to have met. I hope it may not be yet too late.”
“Ah, but it is! We are en pleine guerre now, and the battle must be fought out. It is he, and not I, would leave the matter to this issue. I was for a compromise; I would have accepted an arrangement; I was unwilling to overthrow a whole family and consign them to ruin. They might have made their own terms with me; but no, they preferred to defy me. They determined I should be a mere pretender. They gave me no alternative; and I fight because there is no retreat open to me.”
“And yet if you knew Bramleigh – ”
“Mon cher, he would not give me the chance; he repulsed the offer I made; he would not touch the hand I held out to him.”
“I am told that the judge declared that he never tried a cause where the defendant displayed a more honorable line of conduct.”
“That is all true. Kelson, my lawyer, said that everything they did was straightforward and creditable; but he said, too, don’t go near them, don’t encourage any acquaintance with them, or some sort of arrangement will be patched up which will leave everything unsettled to another generation – when all may become once more litigated with less light to guide a decision and far less chance of obtaining evidence.”
“Never mind the lawyers, Count, never mind the lawyers. Use your own good sense, and your own generous instincts; place yourself – in idea – in Bramleigh’s position, and ask yourself could you act more handsomely than he has done? and then bethink you, what is the proper way to meet such conduct.”
“It’s all too late for this now; don’t ask me why, but take my word for it, it is too late.”
“It’s never too late to do the right thing, though it may cost a man some pain to own he is changing his mind.”
“It’s not that; it’s not that,” said the other, peevishly, “though I cannot explain to you why or how.”
“I don’t want to hear secrets,” said Cutbill, bluntly; “all the more that you and I are strangers to each other. I don’t think either of us has had a good look at the other’s face yet.”
“I’ve seen yours, and I don’t distrust it,” said the Frenchman.
“Good-night, then, there’s a civil speech to go to sleep over,” and so saying, he rolled over to the other side, and drew his blanket over his head.
Pracontal lay a long time awake, thinking of the strange companion he had chanced upon, and that still stranger amount of intimacy that had grown up between them. “I suppose,” muttered he to himself, “I must be the most indiscreet fellow in the world; but after all, what have I said that he has not read in the newspapers, or may not read next week or the week after? I know how Kelson would condemn me for this careless habit of talking of myself and my affairs to the first man I meet on a railroad or a steamer; but I must be what nature made me, and after all, if I show too much of my hand, I gain something by learning what the bystanders say of it.”
It was not till nigh daybreak that he dropped off to sleep; and when he awoke it was to see Mr. Cutbill with a large bowl of hot coffee in one hand, and a roll in the other, making an early breakfast; a very rueful figure, too, was he – as, black with smoke and coal-dust, he propped himself against the binnacle, and gazed out over the waste of waters.
“You are a good sailor, I see, and don’t fear sea-sickness,” said Praoontal.
“Don’t I? that’s all you know of it; but I take everything they bring me. There’s a rasher on its way to me now, if I survive this.”
“I’m for a basin of cold water and coarse towels,” said the other, rising.
“That’s two points in your favor towards having English blood in you,” said Cutbill, gravely, for already his qualms were returning; “when a fellow tells you he cares for soap, he can’t be out and out a Frenchman.” This speech was delivered with great difficulty, and when it was done he rolled over and covered himself up, over face and head, and spoke no more.