The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

“You never told me of this.”

“No. She begged of me not to speak of it; and I meant to have obeyed her, but my temper has betrayed me. What Nelly said was, ‘Don’t tell your brother about these things till he can hear the whole story, which Augustus will write to him as soon as he is able.’”

“What does she allude to?”

“They are ruined – actually ruined.”

“The Bramleighs – the rich Bramleighs?”

“Just so. They were worth millions – at least they thought so – a few weeks back, and now they have next to nothing.”

“This has come of over speculation.”

“No. Nothing of the kind. It is a claimant to the estate has arisen, an heir whose rights take precedence of their father’s; in fact, the grandfather had been privately married early in life, and had a son of whom nothing was heard for years, but who married and left a boy, who, on attaining manhood, preferred his claim to the property. All this mysterious claim was well known to Colonel Bramleigh; indeed, it would appear that for years he was engaged in negotiations with this man’s lawyers, sometimes defiantly challenging an appeal to the law, and sometimes entertaining projects of compromise. The correspondence was very lengthy, and, from its nature, must have weighed heavily on the Colonel’s mind and spirits, and ended, as Nelly suspects, by breaking up his health.

“It was almost the very first news that met Augustus on his accession to his fortune, and so stunned was he that he wrote to Mr. Sedley to say, ‘I have such perfect reliance on both your integrity and ability, that if you assure me this claim is well founded and this demand a just one, I will not contest it.’ He added – ‘I am not afraid of poverty, but a public shame and a scandal would be my death.’”

“Just what I should expect from him. What did Sedley say?”

“He did n’t say he was exactly a fool, but something very like it; and he told him, too, that though he might make very light of his own rights, he could not presume to barter away those of others; and, last of all, he added, what he knew would have its weight with Augustus, that, had his father lived he meant to have compromised this claim. Not that he regarded it either as well founded or formidable, but simply as a means of avoiding a very unpleasant publicity. This last intimation had its effect, and Augustus permitted Sedley to treat. Sedley at once addressed himself to Temple – Jack was not to be found – and to Lord Culduff, to learn what share they were disposed to take in such an arrangement. As Augustus offered to bind himself never to marry, and to make a will dividing the estate equally amongst his brothers and sisters, Lord Culduff and Temple quite approved of this determination, but held that they were not called upon to take any portion of the burden of the compromise.

“Augustus would seem to have been so indignant at this conduct, that he wrote to Sedley to put him at once in direct communication with the claimant. Sedley saw by the terms of the letter how much of it was dictated by passion and offended pride, evaded the demand, and pretended that an arrangement was actually pending, and, if uninterfered with, sure to be completed. To this Augustus replied – for Nelly has sent me a copy of his very words – ‘Be it so. Make such a settlement as you, in your capacity of my lawyer, deem best for my interests. For my own part, I will not live in a house, nor receive the rents of an estate, my rights to which the law may possibly decide against me. Till, then, the matter be determined either way, I and my sister Eleanor, who is like-minded with me in this affair, will go where we can live at least cost, decided, as soon as may be, to have this issue determined, and Castello become the possession of him who rightfully owns it.’

“On the evening of the day he wrote this they left Castello. They only stopped a night in Dublin, and left next morning for the Continent. Nelly’s letter is dated from Ostend. She says she does not know where they are going, and is averse to anything like importuning her brother by even a question. She promises to write soon again, however, and tell me all about their plans. They are travelling without a servant, and, so far as she knows, with very little money. Poor Nelly! she bears up nobly, but the terrible reverse of condition, and the privations she is hourly confronted with, are clearly preying upon her.”

“What a change! Just to think of them a few months back! It was a princely household.”

“Just what Nelly says. ‘It is complete overthrow; and if I am not stunned by the reverse, it is because all my sympathies are engaged for poor Gusty, who is doing his best to bear up well. As for myself, I never knew how helpless I was till I tried to pack my trunk. I suppose time will soften down many things that are now somewhat hard to bear; but for the moment I am impatient and irritable; and it is only the sight of my dear brother – so calm, so manly, and so dignified in his sorrow – that obliges me to forget my selfish grief and compose myself as I ought.’”

As they thus talked, they arrived at the door of the inn, where the landlord met them, with the request that the two gentlemen who had arrived by extra-post, and who could not find horses to proceed on their journey, might be permitted to share the one sitting-room the house contained, and which was at present occupied by the L’Estranges.

“Let us sup in your room, George,” whispered Julia, and passed on into the house. L’Estrange gave orders to send the supper to his room, and told the landlord that the salon was at his guests’ disposal.

About two hours later, as the curate and his sister sat at the open window, silently enjoying the delicious softness of a starry night, they were startled by the loud talking of persons so near as to seem almost in the room with them.

“English – I’ll be sworn they are!” said one. “That instinctive dread of a stranger pertains only to our people. How could it have interfered with their comfort, that we sat and ate our meal in this corner?”

“The landlord says they are young, and the woman pretty. That may explain something. Your countrymen, Philip, are the most jealous race in Europe.”

L’Estrange coughed here three or four times, to apprise his neighbors that they were within earshot of others.

“Listen to that cough,” cried the first speaker. “That was palpably feigned. It was meant to say, ‘Don’t talk so loud.’”

“I always grow more indiscreet under such provocation,” said the other, whose words were slightly tinged with a foreign accent.

A merry laugh burst from Julia at this speech, which the others joined in by very impulse.

“I suspect,” said the first speaker, “we might as well have occupied the same room, seeing in what close proximity we stand to each other.”

“I think it would be as well to go to your room, Julia,” said George, in a low voice. “It is getting late, besides.”

“I believe you are right, George. I will say good-night.”

The last words appeared to have caught the ears of the strangers, who exclaimed together, “Good-night, goodnight;” and he with the foreign accent began to hum, in a very sweet tenor voice, “Buona sera, buona notte, buona sera;” which Julia would fain have listened to, but George hurried her away, and closed the door.

“There is the end of that episode,” said the foreign voice. “Le mari jaloux has had enough of us. Your women in England are taught never to play with fire.”

“I might reply that yours are all pyrotechnists,” said the other, with a laugh.

The clatter of plates and the jingle of glasses, as the waiter laid the table for supper, drowned their voices, and L’Estrange dropped off asleep soon after. A hearty burst of laughter at last aroused him. It came from the adjoining room, where the strangers were still at table, though it was now nigh daybreak.

“Yes,” said he of the foreign accent, “I must confess it. I never made a lucky hit in my life without the ungrateful thought of how much luckier it might have been.”

“It is your Italian blood has given you that temperament.”

“I knew you ‘d say so, Philip; before my speech was well out, I felt the reply you ‘d make me. But let me tell you that you English are not a whit more thankful to fortune than we are; but in your matter-of-fact way you accept a benefit as your just due, while we, more conscious of our deservings, always feel that no recompense fully equalled what we merited. And so it is that ever since that morning at Furnival’s Inn, I keep on asking myself, Why twenty thousand? Why not forty – why not twice forty?”

“I was quite prepared for all this. I think I saw the reaction beginning as you signed the paper.”

“No, there you wrong me, Philip. I wrote boldly, like a man who felt that he was making a great resolve, and could stand by it. You ‘ll never guess when what you have called ‘the reaction’ set in.”

“I am curious to know when that was.”

“I ‘ll tell you. You remember our visit to Castello. You thought it a strange caprice of mine to ask the lawyer whether, now that all was finally settled between us, I might be permitted to see the house – which, as the family had left, could be done without any unpleasantness. I believe my request amused him as much as it did you; he thought it a strange caprice, but he saw no reason to refuse it, and I saw he smiled as he sat down to write the note to the housekeeper. I have no doubt that he thought, ‘It is a gambler’s whim;’ he wants to see the stake he played for, and what he might perhaps have won had he had courage to play out the game.’ You certainly took that view of it.”

The other muttered something like a half assent, and the former speaker continued, “And you were both of you wrong. I wanted to see the finished picture of which I possessed the sketch – the beautiful Flora – whose original was my grandmother. I cannot tell you the intense longing I had to see the features that pertained to one who belonged to me; a man must be as utterly desolate as I am, to comprehend the craving I felt to have something – anything that might stand to me in place of family. It was this led me to Castello, and it was this that made me, when I crossed the threshold, indifferent to all the splendors of the place, and only occupied with one thought, one wish – to see the fresco in the Octagon Tower – poor old Giacomo’s great work – the picture of his beautiful daughter. And was she not beautiful? I ask you, Philip, had Raphael himself ever such a model for sweetness of expression? Come, come. You were just as wild as myself in your enthusiasm as you stood before her; and it was only by a silly jest that you could repress the agitation you were so ashamed of.”

“I remember I told you that the family had terribly degenerated since her day.”

“And yet you tried to trace a likeness between us.”

“You won’t say that I succeeded,” said he, with a laugh.

“It was then as I stood there gazing on her, thinking of her sad story, that I bethought me what an ignoble part it was I played to compromise the rights that she had won, and how unworthy I was to be the descendant of the beautiful Enrichetta.”

“You are about the only man I ever met who was in love with his grandmother.”

“Call it how you like, her lovely face has never left me since I saw it there.”

“And yet your regret implies that you are only sorry not to have made a better bargain.”

“No, Philip: my regret is not to have stood out for terms that must have been refused to me; I wish I had asked for the ‘impossible.’ I tried to make a laughing matter of it when I began, but I cannot – I cannot. I have got the feeling that I have been selling my birthright.”

“And you regret that the mess of pottage has not been bigger.”

“There’s the impossibility in making a friend of an Englishman! It is the sordid side of everything he will insist on turning uppermost. Had I told a Frenchman what I have told you, he would have lent me his whole heart in sympathy.”

“To be sure he would. He would have accepted all that stupid sentimentality about your grandmother as refined feeling, and you ‘d have been blubbering over each other this half-hour.”

“If you only knew the sublime project I had. I dare not tell you of it in your miserable spirit of depreciating all that is high in feeling and noble in aspiration. You would ridicule it. Yes, mon cher, you would have seen nothing in my plan, save what you could turn into absurdity.”

“Let me hear it. I promise you to receive the information with the most distinguished consideration.”

“You could not. You could not elevate your mind even to comprehend my motives. What would you have said, if I had gone to this Mr. Bramleigh, and said, Cousin – ”

“He is not your cousin, to begin with.”

“No matter; one calls every undefined relation cousin. Cousin, I would have said, this house that you live in, these horses that you drive, this plate that you dine off, these spreading lawns and shady woods that lie around, are mine; I am their lawful owner; I am the true heir to them; and you are nothing – nobody – the son of an illegitimate – ”

“I ‘d say he ‘d have pitched you out of the window.”

“Wait a while; not so fast. Nevertheless, I would have said, Yours is the prescription and the habit. These things have pertained to you since your birth: they are part of you, and you of them. You cannot live without them, because you know no other life than where they enter and mingle; while I, poor and an adventurer, have never tasted luxury, nor had any experiences but of trouble and difficulty. Let us each keep the station to which habit and time have accustomed him. Do you live, as you have ever lived, grand seigneur as you are – rich, honored, and regarded. I will never dispute your possession nor assail your right. I only ask that you accept me as your relation – a cousin, who has been long absent in remote lands; a traveller, an ‘eccentric,’ who likes a life of savagery and adventure, and who has come back, after years of exile, to see his family and be with his own. Imagine yourself for an instant to be Bramleigh, and what you would have said to this? Had I simply asked to be one of them, to call them by their Christian names, to be presented to their friends as Cousin Anatole – I ask you now – seriously, what you would have replied to such a noble appeal?”

“I don’t know exactly what I should have said, but I think I can tell you what I would have done.”

“Well, out with it.”

“I ‘d have sent for the police, and handed you over to the authorities for either a rogue or a madman.”

“Bon soir. I wish you a good-night – pleasant dreams, too, if that be possible.”

“Don’t go. Sit down. The dawn is just breaking, and you know I ordered the horses for the first light.”

“I must go into the air then. I must go where I can breathe.”

“Take a cigar, and let us talk of something else.”

“That is easy enough for you; you who treat everything as a mere passing incident, and would make life a series of unconnected episodes. You turn from this to that, just as you taste of this dish and that at dinner; but I, who want to live a life —entends-tu?– to live a life: to be to-morrow the successor of myself to-day, to carry with me an identity – how am I to practise your philosophy?”

“Here come the horses; and I must say I am for once grateful to their jingling bells, helping as they do to drown more nonsense than even you usually give way to.”

“How did we ever become friends? Can you explain that to me?”

“I suppose it must have been in one of your lucid moments, Anatole – for you have them at times.”

“Ah, I have! But if you ‘re getting complimentary, I ‘d better be off. Will you look to the bill? And I’ll take charge of the baggage.”

CHAPTER XXXI. ON THE ROAD TO ITALY

“You ‘d not guess who our neighbors of last night were, Julia,” said L’Estrange, as they sat at breakfast the next morning.

“I need not guess, for I know,” said she, laughing. “The fact is, George, my curiosity was so excited to see them that I got up as they were about to start, and though the gray morning was only breaking at the time, there was light enough for me to recognize Mr. Longworth and his French friend, Count Pracontal.”

“I know that; but I know more than that, Julia. What do you think of my discovery, when I tell you that this same Count Pracontal is the claimant of the Bramleigh estate?”

“Is it possible?”

“It is beyond a question or a doubt. I was awakened from my sleep last night by their loud talking, and unwittingly made a listener to all they said. I heard the Frenchman deplore how he had ever consented to a compromise of his claim, and then Longworth quizzed him a good deal, and attributed the regret to his not having made a harder bargain. My own conviction is that the man really felt it as a point of honor, and was ashamed at having stooped to accept less than his right.”

“So then they have made a compromise, and the Bramleighs are safe?” cried she, eagerly.

“That much seems certain. The Count even spoke of the sum he had received. I did not pay much attention to the amount, but I remember it struck me as being considerable; and he also referred to his having signed some document debarring him, as it seemed, from all renewal of his demand. In a word, as you said just now, the Bramleighs are safe, and the storm that threatened their fate has passed off harmlessly.”

“Oh, you have made me so happy, George. I cannot tell you what joy this news is to me. Poor Nelly, in all her sorrow and privation, has never been out of my thoughts since I read her letter.”

“I have not told you the strangest part of all – at least, so it certainly seemed to me. This Count Pracontal actually regretted the compromise, as depriving him of a noble opportunity of self-sacrifice. He wished, he said, he could have gone to Augustus Bramleigh, and declared, ‘I want none of this wealth. These luxuries and this station are all essential to you, who have been born to them, and regard them as part of your very existence. To me they are no wants – I never knew them. Keep them, therefore, as your own. All I ask is, that you regard me as one of your kindred and your family. Call me cousin – let me be one of you – to come here, under your roof, when fortune goes ill with me.’ When he was saying this, Longworth burst out into a coarse laugh, and told him, that if he talked such rotten sentimentality to any sane Englishman, the only impression it would have left would be that he was a consummate knave or an idiot.”

“Well, George,” asked she, seriously, “that was not the conviction it conveyed to your mind?”

“No, Julia; certainly not; but somehow – perhaps it is my colder northern blood, perhaps it is the cautious reserve of one who has not had enough experience of life – but I own to you I distrust very high-flown declarations, and as a rule I like the men who do generous things, and don’t think themselves heroes for doing them.”

“Remember, George, it was a Frenchman who spoke thus; and from what I have seen of his nation, I would say that he meant all that he said. These people do the very finest things out of an exalted self-esteem. They carry the point of honor so high that there is no sacrifice they are not capable of making, if it only serve to elevate their opinion of themselves. Their theory is, they belong to the ‘great nation,’ and the motives that would do well enough for you or me would be very ignoble springs of action to him whom Providence had blessed with the higher destiny of being born a Frenchman.”

“You disparage while you praise them, Julia.”

“I do not mean it, then. I would simply say, I believe in all Count Praoontal said, and I give you my reason for the belief.”

“How happy it would have made poor Augustus to have been met in this spirit! Why don’t these two men know each other?”

“My dear George, the story of life could no more go on than the story of a novel if there was no imbroglio. Take away from the daily course of events all misunderstandings, all sorrows, and all misconceptions, and there would be no call on humanity for acts of energy, or trustfulness, or devotion. We want all these things just that we may surmount them.”

Whether he did not fully concur with the theory, or that it puzzled him, L’Estrange made no reply, and soon after left the room to prepare for their departure. And now they went the road up the valley of the Upper Rhine – that wild and beautiful tract, so grand in outline and so rich in color, that other landscapes seem cold after it. They wound along the Via Mala, and crossed over the Splugen, most picturesque of Alpine passes, and at last reached Chiavenna.

“All this is very enjoyable, George,” said Julia, as they strolled carelessly in a trellised vine-walk; “but as I am the courier, and carry the money-sack, it is my painful duty to say, we can’t do it much longer. Do you know how much remains in that little bag?”

“A couple of hundred francs perhaps,” said he, listlessly.

“Not half that – how could there, you careless creature? You forget all the extravagances we have been committing, and this entire week of unheard-of indulgence.”

‘I was always ‘had up’ for my arithmetic at school. Old Hoskins used to say my figures would be the ruin of me.

The tone of honest sorrow in which he said this threw Julia into a fit of laughing.

“Here is the total of our worldly wealth,” said she, emptying on a rustic table the leather bag, and running her fingers through a mass of silver in which a few gold coins glittered.

“It seems very little, Julia,” said he, despondingly.

“Worse than that. It is less than it looks, George; these tarnished pieces, with a mock air of silver, are of most ignoble origin; they were born copper, and are only silver by courtesy. Let me see what it all makes.”

While she was arranging the money in little piles on the table L’Estrange lighted a cigarette, and puffed it in leisurely fashion.

“Julia,” said he, at last, “I hope I haven’t committed a dreadful folly in that investment of your two thousand. You know I took the shares I told you of?”

“I remember, George, you said so; but has anything occurred to make you augur ill of the enterprise?”

“No; I know no more of it now than on the first day I heard of it. I was dazzled by the splendid promise of twenty per cent instead of three that you had received heretofore. It seemed to me to be such a paltry fear to hesitate about doing what scores of others were venturing. I felt as if I were turning away from a big fence while half the field were ready to ride at it. In fact, I made it a question of courage, Julia, which was all the more inexcusable as the money I was risking was not my own.”

“Oh, George, you must not say that to me.”

“Well, well, I know what I think of myself, and I promise you it is not the more favorable because of your generosity.”

“My dear George, that is a word that ought never to occur between us. Our interests are inseparable. When you have done what you believed was the best for me there is no question of anything more. There, now, don’t worry yourself further about it. Attend to what I have to say to you here. We have just one hundred and twelve francs to carry us to Milan, where our letter of credit will meet us; so that there must be no more boat excursions; no little picnics, with a dainty basket sent up the mountain at sunrise; none of that charming liberality which lights up the road with pleasant faces, and sets one a-thinking how happy Dives might have been if he had given something better than crumbs to Lazarus. No, this must be what you used to call a week of cold-mutton days, mind that, and resist all temptation to money-spending.”

L’Estrange bowed his head in quiet acquiescence; his was the sad thought that so many of us have felt; how much of enjoyment life shows us, just one hair’s breadth beyond our power to grasp; vistas of lovely scenery that we are never to visit; glimpses of bliss closed to us even as we catch them; strains of delicious music of which all our efforts can but retain the dying cadences. Not that he felt all these in any bitterness of spirit; even in narrowed fortune life was very pleasant to him, and he was thoroughly, heartily grateful for the path fate had assigned him to walk in.

How would they have liked to have lingered in the Brianza, that one lovely bit of thoroughly rural Italy, with the green of the west blending through all the gorgeous glow of tropical vegetation; how gladly they would have loitered on the lake at Como – the brightest spot of landscape in Europe; with what enjoyment had they halted at Milan, and still more in Florence! Stern necessity, however, whispered ever onwards; and all the seductions of Raffaels and Titians yielded before the hard demands of that fate that draws the purse-strings. Even at Rome they did not venture to delay, consoling themselves with the thought that they were to dwell so near, they could visit it at will. At last they reached Albano, and as they drove into the village caught sight of a most picturesque little cottage, enshrined in a copse of vines. It was apparently untenanted, and they eagerly asked if it were to be let. The answer was, No, it was waiting for the “Prête Inglese,” who was daily expected to arrive.