“In one sense it is very like,” said the other, with a greater amount of decision in his tone than usual.
“In which case, then, the sooner we abandon it the better,” said Lord Culduff, rising, and standing with his back to the fire, his head high, and his look intensely haughty.
“It is not for me to dictate to your Lordship, – I could never presume to do so, – but certainly it is not every one in Great Britain who could reconcile himself to relinquish one of the largest sources of wealth in the kingdom. Taking the lowest estimate of Carrick Nuish mine alone, – and when I say the lowest, I mean throwing the whole thing into a company of shareholders and neither working nor risking a shilling yourself, – you may put from twenty to five-and-twenty thousand pounds into your pocket within a twelvemonth.”
“Who will guarantee that, Cutbill?” said Lord Culduff, with a faint smile.
“I am ready myself to do so, provided my counsels be strictly followed. I will do so, with my whole professional reputation.”
“I am charmed to hear you say so. It is a very gratifying piece of news for me. You feel, therefore, certain that we have struck coal?”
“My Lord, when a young man enters life from one of the universities, with a high reputation for ability, he can go a long way, – if he only be prudent, – living on his capital. It is the same thing in a great industrial enterprise; you must start at speed, and with a high pressure, – get way on you, as the sailors say, – and you will skim along for half a mile after the steam is off.”
“I come back to my former question. Have we found coal?”
“I hope so. I trust we have. Indeed, there is every reason to say we have found coal. What we need most at this moment is a man like that gentleman whose note is on the table, – a large capitalist, a great City name. Let him associate himself in the project, and success is as certain as that we stand here.”
“But you have just told me he has given up his business life, – retired from affairs altogether.”
“My Lord, these men never give up. They buy estates, they can live at Rome or Paris, and take a chateau at Cannes, and try to forget Mincing Lane and the rest of it; but if you watch them, you ‘ll see it’s the money article in the ‘Times’ they read before the leader. They have but one barometer for everything that happens in Europe, – how are the exchanges? and they are just as greedy of a good thing as on any morning they hurried down to the City in a hansom to buy in or sell out. See if I ‘m not right. Just throw out a hint, no more, that you ‘d like a word of advice from Colonel Bramleigh about your project; say it’s a large thing, – too large for an individual to cope with, – that you are yourself the least possible of a business man, being always engaged in very different occupations, – and ask what course he would counsel you to take.”
“I might show him these drawings, – these colored plans.”
“Well, indeed, my Lord,” said Cutbill, brushing his mouth with his hand, to hide a smile of malicious drollery, “I’d say I’d not show him the plans. The pictorial rarely appeals to men of his stamp. It’s the multiplication-table they like, and if all the world were like them one would never throw poetry into a project.”
“You ‘ll have to come with me, Cutbill; I see that,” said his Lordship, reflectingly.
“My Lord, I am completely at your orders.”
“Yes; this is a sort of negotiation you will conduct better than myself. I am not conversant with this sort of thing, nor the men who deal in them. A great treaty, a question of boundary, a royal marriage, – any of these would find me ready and prepared, but with the diplomacy of dividends, I own myself little acquainted. You must come with me.” Cutbill bowed in acquiescence, and was silent.
CHAPTER VII. AT LUNCHEON
As the family at the great house were gathered together at luncheon on the day after the events we have just recorded, Lord Culduff’s answer to Temple Bramleigh’s note was fully and freely discussed.
“Of course,” said Jack, “I speak under correction; but how comes it that your high and mighty friend brings another man with him? Is Cutbill an attaché? Is he one of what you call ‘the line’?”
“I am happy to contribute the correction you ask for,” said Temple, haughtily. “Mr. Cutbill is not a member of the diplomatic body, and though such a name might not impossibly be found in the Navy list, you ‘ll scarcely chance upon it at F. O.”
“My chief question is, however, still to be answered. On what pretext does he bring him here?” said Jack, with unbroken good humor.
“As to that,” broke in Augustus, “Lord Culduff’s note is perfectly explanatory; he says his friend is travelling with him; they came here on a matter of business, and, in fact, there would be an awkwardness on his part in separating from him, and on ours, if we did not prevent such a contingency.”
“Quite so,” chimed in Temple. “Nothing could be more guarded or courteous than Lord Culduff’s reply. It was n’t in the least like an Admiralty minute, Jack, or an order to Commander Spiggins, of the ‘Snarler,’ to take in five hundred firkins of pork.”
“I might say, now, that you ‘ll not find that name in the Navy list, Temple,” said the sailor, laughing.
“Do they arrive to-day?” asked Marion, not a little uncomfortable at this exchange of tart things.
“To dinner,” said Temple.
“I suppose we have seen the last leg of mutton we are to meet with till he goes,” cried Jack: “that precious French fellow will now give his genius full play, and we ‘ll have to dine off ‘salmis’ and ‘suprêmes,’ or make our dinner off bread-and-cheese.”
“Perhaps you would initiate Bertond into the mystery of a sea-pie, Jack,” said Temple, with a smile.
“And a precious mess the fellow would make of it! He’d fill it with cocks’ combs and mushrooms, and stick two skewers in it with a half-boiled truffle on each – lucky if there would n’t be a British flag in spun sugar between them; and he ‘d call the abomination ‘pâté à la gun-room,’ or some such confounded name.”
A low, quiet laugh was now heard from the end of the table, and the company remembered, apparently for the first time, that Mr. Harding, the agent, was there, and very busily engaged with a broiled chicken.
“Ain’t I right, Mr. Harding?” cried Jack, as he heard the low chuckle of the small, meek, submissive-looking little man, at the other end of the table.
“Ain’t I right?”
“I have met with very good French versions of English cookery abroad, Captain Bramleigh.”
“Don’t call me ‘captain’ or I ‘ll suspect your accuracy about the cookery,” interrupted Jack. “I fear I ‘m about as far off that rank as Bertond is from the sea-pie.”
“Do you know Cutbill, Harding?” said Augustus, addressing the agent in the tone of an heir expectant.
“Yes. We were both examined in the same case before a committee of the House, and I made his acquaintance then.”
“What sort of person is he?” asked Temple.
“Is he jolly, Mr. Harding? – that’s the question,” cried Jack. “I suspect we shall be overborne by greatness, and a jolly fellow would be a boon from heaven.”
“I believe he is what might be called jolly,” said Harding, cautiously.
“Jolly sounds like a familiar word for vulgar,” said Marion. “I hope Mr. Harding does not mean that.”
“Mr. Harding means nothing of that kind, I ‘ll be sworn,” broke in Jack. “He means an easy-tempered fellow, amusing and amusable. Well, Nelly, if it’s not English, I can’t help it – it ought to be; but when one wants ammunition, one takes the first heavy thing at hand. Egad! I’d ram down a minister plenipotentiary, rather than fire blank-cartridge.”
“Is Lord Culduff also jolly, Mr. Harding?” asked Eleanor, now looking up with a sparkle in her eye.
“I scarcely know – I have the least possible acquaintance with his Lordship; I doubt, indeed, if he will recollect me,” said Harding, with diffidence.
“What are we to do with this heavy swell when he comes, is the puzzle to me,” said Augustus, gravely. “How is he to be entertained, – how amused? Here’s a county with nothing to see – nothing to interest – without a neighborhood. What are we to do with him?”
“The more one is a man of the world, in the best sense of that phrase, the more easily he finds how to shape his life to any and every circumstance,” said Temple, with a sententious tone and manner.
“Which means, I suppose, that he’ll make the best of a bad case, and bear our tiresomeness with bland urbanity?” said Jack. “Let us only hope, for all our sakes, that his trial may not be a long one.”
“Just to think of such a country!” exclaimed Marion; “there is absolutely no one we could have to meet him.”
“What’s the name of that half-pay captain who called here t’other morning? – the fellow who sat from luncheon till nigh dusk?” asked Jack.
“Captain Craufurd,” replied Marion. “I hope nobody thinks of inviting him; he is insufferably vulgar, and presuming besides.”
“Was n’t that the man, Marion, who told you that as my father and Lady Augusta didn’t live together the county gentry could n’t be expected to call on us?” asked Augustus, laughing.
“He did more: he entered into an explanation of the peculiar tenets of the neighborhood, and told me if we had had the good luck to have settled in the south or west of Ireland, they’d not have minded it, ‘but here,’ he added, ‘we are great sticklers for morality.’”
“And what reply did you make him, Marion?” asked Jack.
“I was so choked with passion that I could n’t speak, or if I did say anything I have forgotten it. At all events, he set me off laughing immediately after, as he said, – ‘As for myself, I don’t care a rush. I’m a bachelor, and a bachelor can go anywhere.’”
She gave these words with such a close mimicry of his voice and manner, that a general burst of laughter followed them.
“There’s the very fellow we want,” cried Jack. “That’s the man to meet our distinguished guest; he ‘ll not let him escape without a wholesome hint or two.”
“I ‘d as soon see a gentleman exposed to the assault of a mastiff as to the insulting coarseness of such a fellow as that,” said Temple, passionately.
“The mischief’s done already; I heard the governor say, as he took leave, – ‘Captain Craufurd, are you too strait-laced to dine out on a Sunday? if not, will you honor us with your company at eight o’clock?’ And though he repeated the words ‘eight o’clock’ with a groan like a protest, he muttered something about being happy, a phrase that evidently cost him dearly, for he went shuffling down the avenue afterwards with his hat over his eyes, and gesticulating with his hands as if some new immorality had suddenly broke in upon his mind.”
“You mean to say that he is coming to dinner here next Sunday?” asked Temple, horrified.
“A little tact and good management are always sufficient to keep these sort of men down,” said Augustus.
“I hope we don’t ask a man to dinner with the intention to ‘keep him down,’” said Jack, sturdily.
“At all events,” cried Temple, “he need not be presented to Lord Culduff.”
“I suspect you will see very little of him after dinner,” observed Harding, in his meek fashion, “That wonderful ‘32 port will prove a detainer impossible to get away from.”
“I ‘ll keep him company, then. I rather like to meet one of those cross-grained dogs occasionally.”
“Not impossibly you’ll learn something more of that same ‘public opinion’ of our neighbors regarding us,” said Marion, haughtily.
“With all my heart,” cried the sailor, gayly; “they ‘ll not ruffle my temper, even if they won’t flatter my vanity.”
“Have you asked the L’Estranges, Marion?” said Augustus.
“We always ask them after church; they are sure to be disengaged,” said she. “I wish, Nelly, that you, who are such a dear friend of Julia’s, would try and persuade her to wear something else than that eternal black silk. She is so intently bent on being an Andalusian. Some one unluckily said she looked so Spanish, that she has got up the dress, and the little fan coquetry, and the rest of it, in the most absurd fashion.”
“Her grandmother was a Spaniard,” broke in Nelly, warmly.
“So they say,” said the other, with a shrug of the shoulders.
“There’s a good deal of style about her,” said Temple, with the tone of one who was criticising what he understood. “She sings prettily.”
“Prettily?” groaned Jack. “Why, where, except amongst professionals, did you ever hear her equal?”
“She sings divinely,” said Ellen; “and it is, after all, one of her least attractions.”
“No heroics, for Heaven’s sake; leave that to your brothers, Nelly, who are fully equal to it. I really meant my remark about her gown for good nature.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Augustus, “though she is certainly a bit of a coquette.”
“True; but it’s very good coquetry,” drawled out Temple. “It’s not that jerking, uncertain, unpurpose-like style of affectation your English coquette displays. It is not the eternal demand for attention or admiration. It is simply a desire to please thrown into a thousand little graceful ways, each too slight, and too faint, to be singled out for notice, but making up a whole of wonderful captivation.”
“Well done, diplomacy! egad! I did n’t know there was that much blood in the Foreign Office,” cried Jack, laughing, “and now I ‘m off to look after my night-lines. I quite forgot all about them till this minute.”
“Take me with you, Jack,” said Nelly, and hastened after him, hat in hand.
CHAPTER VIII. THE ARRIVAL OF A GREAT MAN
It was within a quarter of eight o’clock – forty-five minutes after the usual dinner-hour – when Lord Culduff’s carriage drove up to the door.
“The roads are atrocious down here,” said Temple, apologizing in advance for an offence which his father rarely, if ever, forgave. “Don’t you think you ought to go out to meet him, sir?” asked he, half timidly.
“It would only create more delay; he ‘ll appear, I take it, when he is dressed,” was the curt rejoinder, but it was scarcely uttered when the door was thrown wide open, and Lord Culduff and Mr. Cutbill were announced.
Seen in the subdued light of a drawing-room before dinner, Lord Culduff did not appear more than half his real age, and the jaunty stride and the bland smile he wore – as he made his round of acquaintance – might have passed muster for five-and-thirty; nor was the round vulgar figure of the engineer, awkward and familiar alternately, a bad foil for the very graceful attractions of his Lordship’s manner.
“We should have been here two hours ago,” said he, “but my friend here insisted on our coming coastwise to see a wonderful bay, – a natural harbor one might call it. What’s the name, Cutbill?”
“Portness, my Lord.”
“Ah, to be sure, Portness. On your property, I believe?”
“I am proud to say it is. I have seen nothing finer in the kingdom,” said Bramleigh; “and if Ireland were anything but Ireland, that harbor would be crowded with shipping, and this coast one of the most prosperous and busy shores of the island.”
“Who knows if we may not live to see it such? Cutbill’s projects are very grand, and I declare that though I deemed them Arabian Night stories a few weeks back, I am a convert now. Another advantage we gained,” said he, turning to Marion; “we came up through a new shrubbery, which we were told had been all planned by you.”
“My sister designed it,” said she, as she smiled and made a gesture towards Ellen.
“May I offer you my most respectful compliments on your success? I am an enthusiast about landscape-gardening, and though our English climate gives us many a sore rebuff in our attempts, the soil and the varied nature of the surface lend themselves happily to the pursuit. I think you were at the Hague with me, Bramleigh?” asked he of Temple.
“Does he know how late it is?” whispered Augustus to his father. “Does he know we are waiting dinner?”
“I’ll tell him,” and Colonel Bramleigh walked forward from his place before the fire. “I’m afraid, my Lord, the cold air of our hills has not given you an appetite?”
“Quite the contrary, I assure you. I am very hungry.”
“By Jove, and so are we!” blurted out Jack; “and it’s striking eight this instant.”
“What is your dinner-hour?”
“It ought to be seven,” answered Jack.
“Why, Cutbill, you told me nine.”
Cutbill muttered something below his breath, and turned away; and Lord Culduff laughingly said, “I declare I don’t perceive the connection. My friend, Colonel Bramleigh, opines that a French cook always means nine-o’clock dinner. I ‘m horrified at this delay: let us make a hasty toilette, and repair our fault at once.”
“Let me show you where you are lodged,” said Temple, not sorry to escape from the drawing-room at a moment when his friend’s character and claims were likely to be sharply criticised.
“Cutty’s a vulgar dog,” said Jack, as they left the room. “But I ‘ll be shot if he’s not the best of the two.”
A haughty toss of Marion’s head showed that she was no concurring party to the sentiment.
“I ‘m amazed to see so young a man,” said Colonel Bramleigh. “In look at least, he is n’t forty.”
“It’s all make-up,” cried Jack.
“He can’t be a great deal under seventy, taking the list of his services. He was at Vienna as private secretary to Lord Borchester – ” As Augustus pronounced the words Lord Culduff entered the room in a fragrance of perfume and a brilliancy of color that was quite effective; for he wore his red ribbon, and his blue coat was lined with white silk, and his cheeks glowed with a bloom that youth itself could not rival.
“Who talks of old Borchester?” said he, gayly. “My father used to tell me such stories of him. They sent him over to Hanover once, to report on the available Princesses to marry the Prince: and, egad! he played his part so well that one of them – Princess Helena I think it was – fell in love with him; and if it was ‘t that he had been married already, – May I offer my arm?” And the rest of the story was probably told as he led Miss Bramleigh in to dinner.
Mr. Cutbill only arrived as they took their places, and slunk into a seat beside Jack, whom, of all the company, he judged would be the person he could feel most at ease with.
“What a fop!” whispered Jack, with a glance at the peer.
“Is n’t he an old humbug?” muttered Cutbill. “Do you know how he managed to appear in so short a time? We stopped two hours at a little inn on the road while he made his toilette; and the whole get-up – paint and padding and all – was done then. The great fur pelisse, in which he made his entrance into the drawing-room, removed, he was in full dinner-dress underneath. He’s the best actor living.”
“Have you known him long?”
“Oh, yes! I know all of them,” said he, with a little gesture of his hand: “that is, they take devilish good care to know me.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Jack, in the tone which seemed to ask for some explanation.
“You see, here’s how it is,” said Cutbill, as he bent over his plate and talked in a tone cautiously subdued: “All those swells – especially that generation yonder – are pretty nigh aground. They have been living for forty or fifty years at something like five times their income; and if it had n’t been for this sudden rush of prosperity in England, caused by railroads, mines, quarries, or the like, these fellows would have been swept clean away. He ‘s watching me now. I ‘ll go on by-and-by. Have you any good hunting down here, Colonel Bramleigh?” asked he of the host, who sat half hid by a massive centrepiece.
“You ‘ll have to ask my sons what it’s like; and I take it they ‘ll give you a mount too.”
“With pleasure, Mr. Cutbill,” cried Augustus. “If we have no frost, we’ll show you some sport on Monday next.”
“Delighted, – I like hunting of all things.”
“And you, my Lord, is it a favorite sport of yours?” asked Temple.
“A long life out of England – which has unfortunately been my case – makes a man sadly out of gear in all these things; but I ride, of course,” and he said the last words as though he meant to imply “because I do everything.”
“I’ll send over to L’Estrange,” said Augustus; “he’s sure to know where the meet is for Monday.”
“Who is L’Estrange?” asked his Lordship.
“Our curate here,” replied Colonel Bramleigh, smiling. “An excellent fellow, and a very agreeable neighbor.”
“Our only one, by Jove!” cried Jack.
“How gallant to forget Julia!” said Nelly, tartly.
“And the fair Julia, – who is she?” asked Lord Culduff.
“L’Estrange’s sister,” replied Augustus.
“And now, my Lord,” chimed in Jack, “you know the whole neighborhood, if we don’t throw in a cross-grained old fellow, a half-pay lieutenant of the Buffs.”
“Small but select,” said Lord Culduff, quietly. “May I venture to ask you, Colonel Bramleigh, what determined you in your choice of a residence here?”
“I suppose I must confess it was mainly a money consideration. The bank held some rather heavy mortgages over this property, which they were somewhat disposed to consider as capable of great improvement, and as I was growing a little wearied of City life, I fancied I ‘d come over here and – ”
“Regenerate Ireland, eh?”
“Or, at least, live very economically,” added he, laughing.
“I may be permitted to doubt that part of the experiment,” said Lord Culduff, as his eyes ranged over the table, set forth in all the splendor that plate and glass could bestow.
“I suspect papa means a relative economy,” said Marion, “something very different from our late life in England.”
“Yes, my last three years have been very costly ones,” said Colonel Bramleigh, sighing. “I lost heavily by the sale of Earlshope, and my unfortunate election, too, was an expensive business. It will take some retrenchment to make up for all this. I tell the boys they’ll have to sell their hunters, or be satisfied, like the parson, to hunt one day a week.” The self-complacent, mock humility of this speech was all too apparent.
“I take it,” said Culduff, authoritatively, “that every gentleman” – and he laid a marked emphasis on the “gentleman” – “must at some period or the other of his life have spent more money than he ought – more than was subsequently found to be convenient.”
“I have repeatedly done so,” broke in Cutbill, “and invariably been sorry for it afterwards, inasmuch as each time one does it the difficulty increases.”
“Harder to get credit, you mean?” cried Jack, laughing.
“Just so; and one’s friends get tired of helping one. Just as they told me, there was a fellow at Blackwall used to live by drowning himself. He was regularly fished up once a week, and stomach-pumped and ‘cordialled’ and hot-blanketed, and brought round by the Humane Society’s people, till at last they came to discover the dodge, and refused to restore him any more; and now he’s reduced to earn his bread as a water-bailiff – cruel hard on a fellow of such an ingenious turn of mind.”
While the younger men laughed at Cutbill’s story, Lord Culduff gave him a reproving glance from the other end of the table, palpably intended to recall him to a more sedate and restricted conviviality.
“Are we not to accompany you?” said Lord Culduff to Marion, as she and her sister arose to retire. “Is this barbarism of sitting after dinner maintained here?”
“Only till we finish this decanter of claret, my Lord,” said Colonel Bramleigh, who caught what was not intended for his ears.
“Ask the governor to give you a cigar,” whispered Jack to Cutbill; “he has some rare Cubans.”
“Now, this is what I call regular jolly,” said Cutbill, as he drew a small spider table to his side, and furnished himself with a glass and a decanter of Madeira, “and,” added he in a whisper to Jack, “let us not be in a hurry to leave it. We only want one thing to be perfect, Colonel Bramleigh.”
“If I can only supply it, pray command me, Mr. Cutbill.”
“I want this, then,” said Cutbill, pursing up his mouth at one side, while he opened the other as if to emit the smoke of a cigar.
“Do you mean smoking?” asked Colonel Bramleigh, in a half-irritable tone.
“You have it.”
“Are you a smoker, my Lord?” asked the host, turning to Lord Culduff.
“A very moderate one. A cigarette after breakfast, and another at bed time, are about my excesses in that direction.”
“Then I’m afraid I must defraud you of the full measure of your enjoyment, Mr. Cutbill; we never smoke in the dining-room. Indeed, I myself have a strong aversion to tobacco, and though I have consented to build a smoking-room, it is as far off from me as I have been able to contrive it.”
“And what about his choice Cubans, eh?” whispered Cutbill to Jack.
“All hypocrisy. You’ll find a box of them in your dressing-room,” said Jack, in an undertone, “when you go upstairs.”
Temple now led his distinguished friend into those charming pasturages where the flocks of diplomacy love to dwell, and where none other save themselves could find herbage. Nor was it amongst great political events, of peace or war, alliances or treaties, they wandered – for perhaps in these the outer world, taught as they are by newspapers, might have taken some interest and some share. No; their talk was all of personalities, of Russian princes and grandees of Spain, archduchesses and “marchesas,” whose crafts and subtleties, and pomps and vanities, make up a world like no other world, and play a drama of life – happily it may be for humanity – like no other drama that other men and women ever figured in. Now it is a strange fact – and I appeal to my readers if their experience will not corroborate mine – that when two men thoroughly versed in these themes will talk together upon them, exchanging their stories and mingling their comments, the rest of the company will be struck with a perfect silence, unable to join in the subject discussed, and half ashamed to introduce any ordinary matter into such high and distinguished society. And thus Lord Culduff and Temple went on for full an hour or more, pelting each other with little court scandals and small state intrigues, till Colonel Bramleigh fell asleep, and Cutbill, having finished his Madeira, would probably have followed his host’s example, when a servant announced tea, adding, in a whisper, that Mr. L’Estrange and his sister were in the drawing-room.