The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

“Did you not perceive, sir,” asked she, fiercely, “that the topic was too much for his nerves? Did it not occur to you that the moment was inopportune for a very exciting subject?”

“Was his manner easy and natural when you saw him first?” asked Augustus.

“Had he been reading that debate on Servia?” inquired Temple.

“Matter enough there, by Jove, to send the blood to a man’s head,” cried Culduff, warmly.

“I ‘m convinced it was all religious,” chimed in Marion, who triumphed mercilessly over the poor parson’s confusion. “It is what they call ‘in season and out of season,’ and they are true to their device; for no men on earth more heartily defy the dictates of tact or delicacy.”

“Oh, Marion, what are you saying?” whispered Nelly.

“It’s no time for honeyed words, Ellen, in the presence of a heavy calamity; but I ‘d like to ask Mr. L’Estrange why, when he saw the danger of the theme they were discussing, he did not try to change the topic.”

“So I did. I led him to talk of myself and my interests.”

“An admirable antidote to excitement, certainly,” muttered Culduff to Temple, who seemed to relish the joke intensely.

“You say that my father had been reading his letters. Did he appear to have received any tidings to call for unusual anxiety?” asked Augustus.

“I found him, as I thought, looking very ill, careworn almost, when I entered. He had been writing, and seemed fatigued and exhausted. His first remark to me was, I remember, a mistake.” L’Estrange here stopped, suddenly. He did not desire to repeat the speech about being invited to the picnic. It would have been an awkwardness on all sides.

“What do you call a mistake, sir?” asked Marion, calmly.

“I mean he asked me something which a clearer memory would have reminded him not to have inquired after.”

“This grows interesting. Perhaps you will enlighten us a little farther, and say what the blunder was.”

“Well, he asked me how it happened that Julia and myself were not of the picnic; forgetting, of course, that we – we had not heard of it.” A deep flush was now spread over his face and forehead, and he looked overwhelmed with shame.

“I see it all; I see the whole thing,” said Marion, triumphantly. “It was out of the worldliness of the picnic sprung all the saintly conversation that ensued.”

“No, the transition was more gradual,” said L’Estrange, smiling; for he was at last amused at the asperity of this cross-examination. “Nor was there what you call any saintly conversation at all. A few remarks Colonel Bramleigh indeed made on the insufficiency of, not the Church, but churchmen, to resolve doubts and difficulties.”

“I heartily agree with him,” broke in Lord Culduff, with a smile of much intended significance.

“And is it possible; are we to believe that all papa’s attack was brought on by a talk over a picnic?” asked Marion.

“I think I told you that he received many letters by the post, and to some of them he adverted as being very important and requiring immediate attention. One that came from Rome appeared to cause him much excitement.”

Marion turned away her head with an impatient toss, as though she certainly was not going to accept this explanation as sufficient.

“I shall want a few minutes with Mr. L’Estrange alone in the library, if I may be permitted,” said the doctor, who had now entered the room after his visit to the sick man.

“I hope you may be more successful than we have been,” whispered Marion, as she sailed out of the room, followed by Lord Culduff; and after a few words with Augustus, the doctor and L’Estrange retired to confer in the library.

“Don’t flurry me; take me quietly, Doctor,” said the curate, with a piteous smile. “They ‘ve given me such a burster over the deep ground that I ‘m completely blown. Do you know,” added he, seriously, “they’ve cross-questioned me in a way that would imply that I am the cause of this sudden seizure?”

“No, no; they couldn’t mean that.”

“There ‘s no excuse then for the things Miss Bramleigh said to me.”

“Remember what an anxious moment it is; people don’t measure their expressions when they are frightened. When they left him in the morning he was in his usual health and spirits, and they come back to find him very ill, – dangerously ill. That alone would serve to palliate any unusual show of eagerness. Tell me now, was he looking perfectly himself? was he in his ordinary spirits, when you met him?”

“No; I thought him depressed, and at times irritable.”

“I see; he was hasty and abrupt. He did not brook contradiction, perhaps?”

“I never went that far. If I dissented once or twice, I did so mildly and even doubtingly.”

“Which made him more exacting and more intolerant, you would say?”

“Possibly it did. I remember he rated me rather sharply for not being contented with a very humble condition in life, though I assured him I felt no impatience at my lowly state, and was quite satisfied to wait till better should befall me. He called me a casuist for saying this, and hinted that all churchmen had the leaven of the Jesuit in them; but he got out of this after a while, and promised to write a letter in my behalf.”

“And which he told me you would find sealed and addressed on this table here. Here it is.”

“How kind of him to remember me through all his suffering!”

“He said something about it being the only reparation he could make you; but his voice was not very clear or distinct, and I could n’t be sure I caught his words correctly.”

“Reparation! he owed me none.”

“Well, well, it is possible I may have mistaken him. One thing is plain enough; you cannot give me any clew to this seizure beyond the guess that it may have been some tidings he received by post.”

L’Estrange shook his head in silence, and after a moment said, “Is the attack serious?”

“Highly so.”

“And is his life in danger?”

“A few hours will decide that, but it may be days before we shall know if his mind will recover. Craythorpe has been sent for from Dublin, and we shall have his opinion this evening. I have no hesitation in saying that mine is unfavorable.”

“What a dreadful thing, and how fearfully sudden. I cannot conceive how he could have bethought him of the letter for me at such a moment.”

“He wrote it, he said, as you left him; you had not quitted the house when he began. He said to me, ‘I saw I was growing worse, I felt my confusion was gaining on me, and a strange commixture of people and events was occurring in my head; so I swept all my letters and papers into a drawer and locked it, wrote the few lines I had promised, and with my almost last effort of consciousness rang the bell for my servant.’”

“But he was quite collected when he told you this?”

“Yes, it was in one of those lucid intervals when the mind shines out clear and brilliant; but the effort cost him dearly: he has not rallied from it since.”

“Has he over-worked himself; is this the effect of an over-exerted brain?”

“I ‘d call it rather the result of some wounded sensibility; he appears to have suffered some great reverse in ambition or in fortune. His tone, so far as I can fathom it, implies intense depression. After all, we must say he met much coldness here. The people did not visit him, there was no courtesy, no kindliness shown him; and though he seemed indifferent to it, who knows how he may have felt it?”

“I do not suspect he gave any encouragement to intimacy; beseemed to me as if declining acquaintance with the neighborhood.”

“Ay, but it was in resentment, I opine; but you ought to know best. You were constantly here?”

“Yes, very frequently; but I am not an observant person; all the little details which convey a whole narrative to others are utterly lost upon me.”

The doctor smiled. It was an expression that appeared to say he concurred in the curate’s version of his own nature.

“It is these small gifts of combining, arranging, sifting, and testing, that we doctors have to cultivate,” said he, as he took his hat. “The patient the most eager to be exact and truthful will, in spite of himself, mislead and misguide us. There is a strange bend sinister in human nature, against sincerity, that will indulge itself even at the cost of life itself. You are the physician of the soul, sir; but take my word for it, you might get many a shrewd hint and many a useful suggestion from us, the meaner workmen who only deal with nerves and arteries.”

As he wended his solitary road homewards, L’Estrange pondered thoughtfully over the doctor’s words. He had no need, he well knew, to be reminded of his ignorance of mankind; but here was a new view of it, and it seemed immeasurable.

On the whole he was a sadder man than usual on that day. The world around him – that narrow circle whose diameter was perhaps a dozen miles or so – was very sombre in its coloring. He had left sickness and sorrow in a house where he had hitherto only seen festivity and pleasure; and worse again, as regarded himself, he had carried away none of those kindlier sympathies and friendly feelings which were wont to greet him at the great house. Were they really then changed to him? and if so, why so? There is a moral chill in the sense of estrangement from those we have lived with on terms of friendship that, like the shudder that precedes ague, seems to threaten that worse will follow. Julia would see where the mischief lay had she been in his place. Julia would have read the mystery, if there were a mystery, from end to end; but he, he felt it, – he had no powers of observation, no quickness, no tact. He saw nothing that lay beneath the surface, nor, indeed, much that was on the surface. All that he knew was, that at the moment when his future was more uncertain than ever, he found himself more isolated and friendless than ever he remembered to have been. The only set-off against all this sense of desertion was the letter which Colonel Bramleigh had written in his behalf, and which he had remembered to write as he lay suffering on his sick bed. He had told the doctor where to find it, and said it lay sealed and directed. The address was there, but no seal. It was placed in an open envelope, on which was written, “Favored by the Rev. G. L’Estrange.” Was the omission of the seal accident or intention? Most probably accident, because he spoke of having sealed it. And yet that might have been a mere phrase to imply that the letter was finished. Such letters were probably, in most cases, either open, or only closed after being read by him who bore them. Julia would know this. Julia would be able to clear up this point, thought he, as he pondered and plodded homeward.

CHAPTER XXIV. DOUBTS AND FEARS

“And here is the letter, Julia,” said L’Estrange, as they sat at tea together that same evening. “Here is the letter; and if I were as clever a casuist as Colonel Bramleigh thought me, I should perhaps know whether I have the right to read it or not.”

“Once I have begun to discuss such a point, I distrust my judgment; but when I pronounce promptly, suddenly, out of mere woman’s instinct, I have great faith in myself.”

“And how does your woman’s instinct incline here?”

“Not to read it. It may or may not have been the writer’s intention to have sealed it; the omission was possibly a mere accident. At all events, to have shown you the contents would have been a courtesy at the writer’s option. He was not so inclined – ”

“Stop a bit, Julia,” cried he, laughing. “Here you are arguing the case, after having given me the instinctive impulse that would not wait for logic. Now, I’ll not stand ‘floggee and preachee’ too.”

“Don’t you see, sir,” said she, with a mock air of being offended, “that the very essence of this female instinct is its being the perception of an inspired process of reasoning, an instinctive sense of right, that did not require a mental effort to arrive at?”

“And this instinctive sense of right says, Don’t read?”

“Exactly so.”

“Well, I don’t agree with you,” said he, with a sigh. “I don’t know, and I want to know, in what light Colonel Bramleigh puts me forward. Am I a friend? am I a dependent? am I a man worth taking some trouble about? or am I merely, as I overheard him saying to Lord Culduff, ‘a young fellow my boys are very fond of’?”

“Oh, George. You never told me this.”

“Because it’s not safe to tell you anything. You are sure to resent things you ought never to show you have known. I’d lay my life on it that had you heard that speech, you’d have contrived to introduce it into some narrative or some description before a week went over.”

“Well, it’s a rule of war, if the enemy fire unfair ammunition, you may send it back to him.”

“And then,” said L’Estrange, reverting to his own channel of thought, “and then it’s not impossible that it might be such a letter as I would not have stooped to present.”

“If I were a man, nothing would induce me to accept a letter of introduction to any one,” said she, boldly. “It puts every one concerned in a false position. ‘Give the bearer ten pounds’ is intelligible; but when the request is, ‘Be polite to the gentleman who shall deliver this; invite him to dine; present him to your wife and daughters; give him currency amongst your friends;’ all because of certain qualities which have met favor with some one else; why, this subverts every principle of social intercourse; this strikes at the root of all that lends a charm to intimacy. I want to find out the people who suit me in life, just as I want to display the traits that may attract others to me.”

“I’d like to know what’s inside this,” said L’Estrange, who only half followed what she was saying.

“Shall I tell you?” said she, gravely.

“Do, if you can.”

“Here it is: ‘The bearer of this is a young fellow who has been our parson for some time back, and now wants to be yours at Albano. There’s not much harm in him; he is well-born, well-mannered, preaches but twelve minutes, and rides admirably to hounds. Do what you can for him; and believe me yours truly.”

“If I thought – ”

“Of course you ‘d put it in the fire,” said she, finishing his speech; “and I’d have put it there though it should contain something exactly the reverse of all this.”

“The doctor told me that Bramleigh said something about a reparation that he owed me; and although the phrase, coming from a man in his state, might mean nothing, or next to nothing, it still keeps recurring to my mind, and suggesting an eager desire to know what he could point to.”

“Perhaps his conscience pricked him, George, for not having made more of you while here. I ‘d almost say it might with some justice.”

“I think they have shown us great attention – have been most hospitable and courteous to us.”

“I ‘m not a fair witness, for I have no sort of gratitude for social civilities. I think it’s always the host is the obliged person.”

“I know you do,” said he, smiling.

“Who knows,” said she, warmly, “if he has not found out that the ‘young fellow the boys were so fond of’ was worthy of favor in higher quarters? Eh, George, might not this give the clew to the reparation he speaks of?”

“I can make nothing of it,” said he, as he tossed the letter on the table with an impatient movement. “I ‘ll tell you what I ‘ll do, Julia,” cried he, after a pause. “I’ll take the letter over to Castello to-morrow, and ask Augustus if he feels at liberty to read it to me; if he opine not, I ‘ll get him to seal it then and there.”

“But suppose he consents to read it, and suppose it should contain something, I ‘ll not say offensive, but something disagreeable, something that you certainly would not wish to have said; will you be satisfied at being the listener while he reads it?”

“I think I ‘d rather risk that than bear my present uncertainty.”

“And if you ‘ll let me, George, I ‘ll go with you, I ‘ll loiter about the grounds, and you can tell Nelly where to find me, if she wishes to see me.”

“By the way, she asked me why you had not been to Castello; but my head being very full of other things, I forgot to tell you; and then there was something else I was to say.”

“Try and remember it, George,” said she, coaxingly.

“What was it? Was it? – no – it couldn’t have been about Lord Culduff carrying away the doctor to his own room, and having him there full half an hour in consultation before he saw Colonel Bramleigh.”

“Did he do that?”

“Yes. It was some redness, or some heat, or something or other that he remarked about his ears after eating. No, no; it was n’t that. I remember all about it now. It was a row that Jack got into with his Admiral; he did n’t report himself, or he reported to the wrong man, or he went on board when he ought n’t; in fact, he did something irregular, and the Admiral used some very hard language, and Jack rejoined, and the upshot is he’s to be brought before a court-martial; at least he fears so.”

“Poor fellow: what is to become of him?”

“Nelly says that there is yet time to apologize; that the Admiral will permit him to retract or recall what he said, and that his brother officers say he ought – some of them at least.”

“And it was this you forgot to tell me?” said she, reproachfully.

“No. It was all in my head, but along with so many things; and then I was so badgered and bullied by the cross-examination they submitted me to; and so anxious and uneasy, that it escaped me till now.”

“Oh, George, let us do a good-natured thing; let us go over and see Nelly; she’ll have so many troubles on her heart, she ‘ll want a word of advice and kindness. Let us walk over there now.”

“It’s past ten o’clock, Julia.”

“Yes; but they ‘re always late at Castello.”

“And raining heavily besides; – listen to that!”

“What do we care for rain? did bad weather ever keep either of us at home when we wished to be abroad?”

“We can go to-morrow. I shall have to go to-morrow about this letter.”

“But if we wait we shall lose a post. Come, George, get your coat and hat, and I ‘ll be ready in an instant.”

“After all, it will seem so strange in us presenting ourselves at such an hour, and in such a trim. I don’t know how we shall do it.”

“Easily enough. I ‘ll go to Mrs. Eady the housekeeper’s room, and you ‘ll say nothing about me, except to Nelly; and as for yourself, it will be only a very natural anxiety on your part to learn how the Colonel is doing. There, now, don’t delay. Let us be off at once.”

“I declare I think it a very mad excursion, and the only thing certain to come of it will be a heavy cold or a fever.”

“And we face the same risks every day for nothing. I’m sure wet weather never kept you from joining the hounds.”

This home-thrust about the very point on which he was then smarting decided the matter, and he arose and left the room without a word.

“Yes,” muttered he, as he mounted the stairs, “there it is! That’s the reproach I can never make head against. The moment they say, ‘You were out hunting,’ I stand convicted at once.”

There was little opportunity for talk as they breasted the beating rain on their way to Castello; great sheets of water came down with a sweeping wind, which at times compelled them to halt and seek shelter ere they could recover breath to go on.

“What a night,” muttered be. “I don’t think I was ever out in a worse.”

“Is n’t it rare fun, George?” said she, laughingly. “It’s as good as swimming in a rough sea.”

“Which I always hated.”

“And which I delighted in! Whatever taxes one’s strength to its limits, and exacts all one’s courage besides, is the most glorious of excitements. There’s a splash; that was hail, George.”

He muttered something that was lost in the noise of the storm; and though from time to time she tried to provoke him to speak, now by some lively taunt, now by some jesting remark on his sullen humor, he maintained his silence till he reached the terrace, when he said, —

“Here we are, and I declare, Julia, I ‘d rather go back than go forward.”

“You sha’ n’t have the choice,” said she, laughing, as she rang the bell. “How is your master, William?” asked she, as the servant admitted them.

“No better, miss; the Dublin doctor’s upstairs now in consultation, and I believe there’s another to be sent for.”

“Mind that you don’t say I ‘m here. I ‘m going to Mrs. Eady’s room to dry my cloak, and I don’t wish the young ladies to be disturbed,” said she, passing hastily on to the housekeeper’s room, while L’Estrange made his way to the drawing-room. The only person here, however, was Mr. Harding, who, with his hands behind his back and his head bowed forward, was slowly pacing the room in melancholy fashion.

“Brain fever, sir,” muttered he, in reply to the curate’s inquiry. “Brain fever, and of a severe kind. Too much application to business – did not give up in time, they say.”

“But he looked so well; seemed always so hearty and so cheerful.”

“Very true, sir, very true; but as you told us on Sunday, in that impressive discourse of yours, we are only whited sepulchres.”

L’Estrange blushed. It was so rare an event for him to be complimented on his talents as a preacher that he half mistrusted the eulogy.

“And what else, indeed, are we?” sighed the little man.

“Here’s our dear friend, with all that the world calls prosperity; he has fortune, station, and fine family, and – ”

The enumeration of the gifts that made up this lucky man’s measure of prosperity was here interrupted by the entrance of Ellen Bramleigh, who came in abruptly and eagerly.

“Where’s Julia?” cried she; “my maid told me she was here.”

L’Estrange answered in a low tone. Ellen, in a subdued voice, said, —

“I’ll take her up to my room. I have much to say to her. Will you let her remain here to-night? – you can’t refuse. It is impossible she could go back in such weather.” And without waiting for his reply, she hurried away.

“I suppose they sent for you, sir?” resumed Harding. “They wished you to see him?” and he made a slight gesture, to point out that he meant the sick man.

“No; I came up to see if I could say a few words to Augustus – on a matter purely my own.”

“Ha! indeed! I ‘m afraid you are not likely to have the opportunity. This is a trying moment, sir. Dr. B., though only a country practitioner, is a man of much experience, and he opines that the membranes are affected.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes; he thinks it’s the membranes; and he derives his opinion from the nature of the mental disturbance, for there are distinct intervals of perfect sanity – indeed, of great mental power. The Colonel was a remarkable man, Mr. L’Estrange; a very remarkable man.”

“I ‘ve always heard so.”

“Ah, sir, he had great projects – I might call them grand projects, for Ireland, had he been spared to carry them out.”

“Let us still hope that he may.”

“No, no, sir, that is not to be; and if Belton be correct, it is as well, perhaps, it should not be.” Here he touched his forehead with the top of his finger, and gave a glance of most significant meaning.

“Does he apprehend permanent injury to the brain?”

The other pursed his mouth, and shook his head slowly, but did not speak.

“That’s very dreadful,” said L’Estrange, sadly.

“Indeed it is, sir; take this from us,” and here he touched his head, “and what are we? What are we better than the beasts of the field? But why do I say this to you, sir? Who knows these things better than yourself?”

The curate was half inclined to smile at the ambiguity of the speech, but he kept his gravity, and nodded assent.

“Nobody had the slightest conception of his wealth,” said Harding, coming up, and actually whispering the words into the other’s ear. “We knew all about the estated property; I did at least, I knew every acre of it, and how it was let; but of his money in shares, in foreign securities, on mortgages, and in various investments; what he had out at venture in Assam and Japan, and what he drew twenty-five per cent from in Peru; – of these, sir, none of us had any conception; and would you believe it, Mr. L’Estrange, that he can talk of all these things at some moments as collectedly as if he was in perfect health? He was giving directions to Simcox about his will, and he said, ‘Half a sheet of note-paper will do it, Simcox. I ‘ll make my intentions very clear, and there will be nobody to dispute them. And as to details of what little’ – he called it little! – ‘I possess in the world, I want no notes to aid my memory.’ The doctor, however, positively prevented anything being done to-day, and strictly interdicted him from hearing any matters of business whatsoever. And it is strange enough, that if not brought up before him, he will not advert to these topics at all, but continue to wander on about his past life, and whether he had done wisely in this, or that, or the other, mixing very worldly thoughts and motives very oddly at times with those that belong to more serious considerations. Poor Mr. Augustus,” continued he, after a short breathing moment. “He does not know what to do! He was never permitted to take any part in business, and he knows no more of Bramleigh and Underwood than you do. And now he is obliged to open all letters marked immediate or urgent, and to make the best replies he can, to give directions, and to come to decisions, in fact, on things he never so much as heard of. And all this while he is well aware that if his father should recover, he ‘ll not forgive him the liberty he has taken to open his correspondence. Can you imagine a more difficult or painful situation?”