The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

“I ‘ve made a little dinner for you for Friday,” said Lady Augusta to her sister. “The Culduff s and Monsignore Ratti – that, with Tonino and ourselves, will be six; and I ‘ll think of another: we can’t be an even number. Marion is heart-broken about coming; indeed, I ‘m not sure we shall see her, after all.”

“Are we so very terrible then?” asked the Countess.

“Not you, dearest; it is I am the dreadful one. I took that old fop a canter into the peerage, and he was so delighted to escape from Bramleighia, that he looked softly into my eyes, and held my hand so unnecessarily long, that she became actually sick with anger. Now, I ‘m resolved that the old Lord shall be one of my adorers.”

“Oh, Gusta!”

“Yes. I say it calmly and advisedly; that young woman must be taught better manners than to pat the ground impatiently with her foot and to toss her head away when one is talking to her husband. Oh, there’s that poor Count Pracontal waiting for me, and looking so piteously at me; I forgot I promised to take him a tour through the rooms, and tell him who everybody is.”

The company began to thin off soon after midnight, and by one o’clock the Countess and her sister found themselves standing by a fireplace in a deserted salon, while the servants passed to and fro extinguishing the lights.

“Who was that you took leave of with such emphatic courtesy a few minutes ago?” asked Lady Augusta, as she leaned on the chimney-piece.

“Don’t you know; don’t you remember him?”

“Not in the least.”

“It was Mr. Temple Bramleigh.”

“What, mon fils Temple! Why didn’t he come and speak to me?”

“He said he had been in search of you all the evening, and even asked me to find you out.”

“These Sevigné curls do that; no one knows me. Monsignore said he thought I was a younger sister just come out, and was going to warn me of the dangerous rivalry. And that was Temple? His little bit of moustache improves him. I suppose they call him good-looking?”

“Very handsome – actually handsome.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed the other, wearily; “one likes these gatherings, but it’s always pleasant when they’re over; don’t you find that?” And not meeting a reply, she went on: “That tiresome man, Sir Marcus Cluff, made a descent upon me, to talk of – what do you think? – the church at Albano. It seems our parson there has nothing to live on during the winter months, and he is expected to be alive and cheery when spring comes round; and Sir Marcus says, that though seals do this, it ‘s not so easy for a curate; and so I said, ‘Why does n’t he join the other army? There’s a cardinal yonder will take him into his regiment;’ and Sir Marcus could n’t stand this, and left me.” She paused, and seemed lost in a deep reverie, and then half-murmured rather than said, “What a nice touch he has on the piano; so light and so liquid withal.”

“Sir Marcus, do you mean?”

“Of course I don’t,” said she, pettishly. “I’m talking of Pracontal. I ‘m sure he sings – he says not, or only for himself; and so I told him he must sing for me, and he replied, ‘Willingly, for I shall then be beside myself with happiness.’ Just fancy a Frenchman trying to say a smart thing in English. I wonder what the Culduffs will think of him?”

“Are they likely to have an opportunity for an opinion?”

“Most certainly they are. I have asked him for Friday. He will be the seventh at our little dinner.”

“Not possible, Gusta! You could n’t have done this!”

“I have, I give you my word. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”

“All the reason in the world. You ask your relatives to a little dinner, which implies extreme intimacy and familiarity; and you invite to meet them a man whom, by every sentiment of self-interest, they must abhor.”

“Cara mia, I can’t listen to such a vulgar argument. Monsieur de Pracontal has charming personal qualities. I chatted about an hour with him, and he is delightfully amusing; he ‘ll no more obtrude his claims or his pretensions than Lord Culduff will speak of his fifty years of diplomatic service. There is no more perfect triumph of good-breeding than when it enables us to enjoy each other’s society irrespective of scores of little personal accidents, political estrangements, and the like; and to show you that I have not been the inconsiderate creature you think me, I actually did ask Pracontal if he thought that meeting the Culduffs would be awkward or unpleasant for him, and he said he was overjoyed at the thought; that I could not have done him a favor he would prize more highly.”

“He, of course, is very vain of the distinction. It is an honor he never could have so much as dreamed of.”

“I don’t know that. I half suspect he is a gentleman who does not take a depreciatory estimate of either himself or his prospects.”

“At all events, Gusta, there shall be no ambuscade in the matter, that I ‘m determined on. The Culduffs shall know whom they are to meet. I ‘ll write a note to them before I sleep.”

“How angry you are for a mere nothing! Do you imagine that the people who sit round a dinner-table have sworn vows of eternal friendship before the soup?”

“You are too provoking, too thoughtless,” said the other, with much asperity of voice; and taking up her gloves and her fan from the chimney-piece, she moved rapidly away and left the room.

CHAPTER XLI. SOME “SALON DIPLOMACIES”

Lord Culduff, attired in a very gorgeous dressing-gown and a cap whose gold tassel hung down below his ear, was seated at a writing-table, every detail of whose appliances was an object of art. From a little golden censer at his side a light blue smoke curled, that diffused a delicious perfume through the room, for the noble Lord held it that these adventitious aids invariably penetrated through the sterner material of thought, and relieved by their graceful influence the more labored efforts of the intellect.

He had that morning been preparing a very careful confidential despatch; he meant it to be a state paper. It was a favorite theory of his, that the Pope might be exploité, – and his own phrase must be employed to express his meaning, – that is, that for certain advantages, not very easily defined, nor intelligible at first blush, the Holy Father might be most profitably employed in governing Ireland. The Pope, in fact, in return for certain things which he did not want, and which we could not give him if he did, was to do for us a number of things perfectly impossible, and just as valueless had they been possible. The whole was a grand dissolving view of millennial Ireland, with all the inhabitants dressed in green broadcloth, singing, “God save the Queen;” while the Pope and the Sacred College were to be in ecstasy over some imaginary concessions of the British Government, and as happy over these supposed benefits as an Indian tribe over a present of glass beads from Birmingham.

The noble diplomatist had just turned a very pretty phrase on the peculiar nature of the priest; his one-sided view of life, his natural credulity, nurtured by church observances, his easily satisfied greed, arising from the limited nature of his ambitions, and, lastly, the simplicity of character engendered by the want of those relations of the family which suggest acute study of moral traits, strongly tinctured with worldliness. Rising above the dialectics of the “Office,” he had soared into the style of the essayist. It was to be one of those despatches which F. O. prints in blue-books, and proudly points to, to show that her sons are as distinguished in letters as they are dexterous in the conduct of negotiations. He had just read aloud a very high-sounding sentence, when Mr. Temple Bramleigh entered, and in that nicely subdued voice which private-secretaryship teaches, said, “Mr. Cutbill is below, my Lord; will you see him?”

“On no account! The porter has been warned not to admit him, on pain of dismissal See to it that I am not intruded on by this man.”

“He has managed to get in somehow, – he is in my room this moment.”

“Get rid of him, then, as best you can. I can only repeat that here he shall not come.”

“I think, on the whole, it might be as well to see him; a few minutes would suffice,” said Temple, timidly.

“And why, sir, may I ask, am I to be outraged by this man’s vulgar presence, even for a few minutes? A few minutes of unmitigated rudeness is an eternity of endurance!”

“He threatens a statement in print; he has a letter ready for the ‘Times,’” muttered Temple.

“This is what we have come to in England. In our stupid worship of what we call public opinion, we have raised up the most despotic tribunal that ever decided a human destiny. I declare solemnly, I ‘d almost as soon be an American. I vow to heaven that, with the threat of Printing-House Square over me, I don’t see how much worse I had been if born in Kansas or Ohio!”

“It is a regular statement of the Lisconnor Mine, drawn up for the money article, and if only a tithe of it be true – ”

“Why should it be true, sir?” cried the noble Lord, in a tone that was almost a scream. “The public does not want truth, – what they want is a scandal – a libellous slander on men of rank, men of note like myself. The vulgar world is never so happy as when it assumes to cancel great public services by some contemptible private scandal. Lord Culduff has checkmated the Russian Ambassador. I know that, but Moses has three acceptances of his protested for nonpayment. Lord Culduflf has outwitted the Tuileries. Why does n’t he pay his bootmaker? That’s their chanson, sir – that’s the burden of their low vulgar song. As if I, and men of my stamp, were amenable to every petty rule and miserable criticism that applies to a clerk in Somerset House. They exact from us the services of a giant, and then would reduce us to their own dwarfish standard whenever there is question of a moral estimate.”

He walked to and fro as he spoke, his excitement increasing at every word, the veins in his forehead swelling and the angles of his mouth twitching with a spasmodic motion. “There, sir,” cried he, with a wave of his hand; “let there be no more mention of this man. I shall want to see a draft of the educational project, as soon as it is completed. That will do;” and with this he dismissed him.

No sooner was the door closed on his departure, than Lord Culduflf poured some scented water into a small silver ewer, and proceeded to bathe his eyes and temples, and then, sitting down before a little mirror, he smoothed his eyebrows, and patiently disposed the straggling hairs into line. “Who ‘s there? come in,” cried he, impatiently, as a tap was heard at the door, and Mr. Cutbill entered, with the bold and assured look of a man determined on an insolence.

“So, my Lord, your servants have got orders not to admit me, – the door is to be shut against me!” said he, walking boldly forward and staring fiercely at the other’s face.

“Quite true, however you came to know it,” said Culduflf, with a smile of the easiest, pleasantest expression imaginable. “I told Temple Bramleigh this morning to give the orders you speak of. I said it in these words: Mr. Cutbill got in here a couple of days ago, when I was in the middle of a despatch, and we got talking of this, that, and t’other, and the end was, I never could take up the clew of what I had been writing. A bore interrupts but does not distract you: a clever man is sure, by his suggestiveness, to lead you away to other realms of thought: and so I said, a strict quarantine against two people – I’ll neither see Antonelli nor Cutbill.”

It was a bold shot, and few men would have had courage for such effrontery; but Lord Culduff could do these things with an air of such seeming candor and naturalness, nothing less than a police-agent could have questioned its sincerity. Had a man of his own rank in life “tried it on” in this fashion, Cutbill would have detected the impudent fraud at once. It was the superb dignity, the consummate courtesy of this noble Viscount, aided by every appliance of taste and luxury around him, that assured success here.

“Take that chair, Cutbill, and try a cheroot – I know you like a cheroot. And now for a pleasant gossip; for I will give myself a holiday this morning.”

“I am really afraid I interrupt you,” began Cutbill.

“You do; I won’t affect to deny it. You squash that despatch yonder, as effectually as if you threw the ink bottle over it. When once I get to talk with a man like you, I can’t go back to the desk again. Don’t you know it yourself? Haven’t you felt it scores of times? The stupid man is got rid of just as readily as you throw a pebble out of your shoe; it is your clever fellow that pricks you like a nail.”

“I ‘m sorry, my Lord, you should feel me so painfully,” said Cutbill, laughing, but with an expression that showed how the flattery had touched him.

“You don’t know what a scrape I’ve got into about you.”

“About me?”

“Yes. My Lady heard you were here the other morning, and gave me a regular scolding for not having sent to tell her. You know you were old friends in Ireland.”

“I scarcely ventured to hope her Ladyship would remember me.”

“What! Not remember your admirable imitation of the speakers in the House? – your charming songs that you struck off with such facility, – the very best impromptus I ever heard. And, mark you, Cutbill, I knew Theodore Hook intimately, – I mean, difference of age and such-like considered, for I was a boy at the time, – and I say it advisedly, you are better than Hook.”

“Oh, my Lord, this is great flattery!”

“Hook was uncertain, too. He was what the French call ‘journalier.’ Now, that, you are not.”

Cutbill smiled; for, though he did not in the least know the quality ascribed to him, he was sure it was complimentary, and was satisfied.

“Then there was another point of difference between you. Hook was a snob. He had the uneasy consciousness of social inferiority, which continually drove him to undue familiarities. Now, I will say, I never met a man so free from this as yourself. I have made a positive study of you, Cutbill, and I protest I think, as regards tact, you are unrivalled.”

“I can only say, my Lord, that I never knew it.”

“After all,” said Lord Culduff, rising and standing with his back to the fire, while, dropping his eyelids, he seemed to fall into a reflective vein, – “after all, this, as regards worldly success, is the master quality. You may have every gift and every talent and every grace, and, wanting ‘tact’, they are all but valueless.”

Cutbill was silent. He was too much afraid to risk his newly acquired reputation by the utterance of even a word.

“How do you like Rome?” asked his Lordship, abruptly.

“I can scarcely say; I ‘ve seen very little of it. I know nobody; and, on the whole, I find time hang heavily enough on me.”

“But you must know people, Cutbill; you must go out. The place has its amusing side; it’s not like what we have at home. There’s another tone, another style; there is less concentration, so to say, but there ‘s more ‘finesse.’”

Cutbill nodded, as though he followed and assented to this.

“Where the priest enters, as such a considerable element of society, there is always a keener study of character than elsewhere. In other places you ask, What a man does? here you inquire, Why he does it?”

Cutbill nodded again.

“The women, too, catch up the light delicate touch which the churchmen are such adepts in; and conversation is generally neater than elsewhere. In a fortnight or ten days hence, you ‘ll see this all yourself. How are you for Italian? Do you speak it well?”

“Not a word, my Lord.”

“Never mind. French will do perfectly. I declare I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the First Empire for having given us a language common to all Europe. Neither cooking nor good manners could go on without it, and apropos of cooking, when will you dine? They are good enough to say here that my cook is the best in Rome. When will you let me have your verdict on him?”

Cutbill felt all the awkwardness that is commonly experienced when a man is asked to be his own inviter.

“To-day,” continued Lord Culduff, “we dine at the Duc de Rignano’s; we have promised Lady Augusta for Friday; but Saturday, I believe Saturday is free. Shall we say Saturday, Cutbill – eight for half-past? Now, don’t fail us. We shall have a few people in the evening, so make no other engagement. By-by.”

Cutbill muttered out his acceptance, and retired, half delighted with his success, and half distrustful as to whether he had done what he had come to do, or whether, in not approaching the subject, he had not earned a stronger claim to the possession of that “tact” which his Lordship had so much admired in him.

“I’m sure he’s an old fox; but he’s wonderfully agreeable,” muttered he, as he descended the stairs. It was only as he turned into the Piazzo di Spagna, and saw L’Estrange standing looking in at a print-shop, that he remembered how he had left the curate to wait for him, while he made his visit.

“I’m afraid, from your look,” said L’Estrange, “that you have no very good news for me. Am I right?”

“Well,” said the other, in some confusion, “I won’t say that I have anything one could call exactly reassuring to tell.”

“Did he suffer you to go into the question fully? Did he show a disposition to treat the matter with any consideration?”

Cutbill shook his head. The consciousness that he had done nothing, had not even broached the subject for which his visit was ostensibly made, overwhelmed him with shame; and he had not the courage to avow how he had neglected the trust committed to him.

“Don’t mince matters with me, for the sake of sparing me,” continued L’Estrange. “I never closed my eyes last night, thinking over it all; and you can’t lower me in my own esteem below what I now feel. Out with it, then, and let me hear the worst, if I must hear it.”

“You must have a little patience. Things are not always so bad as they look. I’m to have another interview; and though I won’t go so far as to bid you hope, I ‘d be sorry to say despair. I ‘m to see him again on Saturday.”

“Two more days and nights of anxiety and waiting! But I suppose I deserve it all, and worse. It was in a spirit of greed – ay, of gambling – that I made this venture; and if the punishment could fall on myself alone, I deserve it all.”

“Come, come, don’t take on in that fashion; never say die. When do the Bramleighs arrive? – don’t you expect them this week?”

“They promised to eat their Christmas dinner with us; but shall we have one to give them? You know, I suppose, how matters have gone at Albano? The church patrons have quarrelled, and each has withdrawn his name. No: Mrs. Trumpler remains, and she has drawn out a new code of her own – a thirty-nine articles of her own devising, which I must subscribe, or forfeit her support. The great feature of it all is, that the Bible is never to be quoted except to disprove it; so that what a man lacks in scholarship, he may make up in scepticism.”

“And do you take to that?”

“Not exactly; and in consequence I have resigned my chaplaincy, and this morning I received a notice to vacate my house by the last day of the year, and go – I don’t think it was suggested where to in particular – but here comes my sister – let us talk of something else.”

“Oh, George,” cried she, “I have got you such a nice warm coat for your visiting in the cold weather. Will you promise me to wear it, though you will look like a bear? How d’ye do, Mr. Cutbill?”

“I’m bobbish, miss, thank you. And you?” “I don’t exactly know if I’m bobbish, but I’m certainly in good spirits, for I have heard from some very dear friends, who are on their way to see, and spend the Christmas with us.”

L’Estrange turned a sudden glance on Cutbill. It was a mere glance, but it said more than words, and was so inexpressibly sad besides, that the other muttered a hurried good-bye and left them.

CHAPTER XLII. A LONG TÊTE-À-TÊTE

Pracontal and Longworth sat at breakfast at Freytag’s Hotel at Rome. They were splendidly lodged, and the table was spread with all the luxury and abundance which are usually displayed where well-paying guests are treated by wise inn-keepers. Fruit and flowers decorated the board, arranged as a painter’s eye might have suggested, and nothing was wanting that could gratify the sense of sight or tempt the palate.

“After all,” said Longworth, “your song-writer blundered when he wrote ‘l’amour.’ It is ‘l’argent’ that ‘makes the world go round.’ Look at that table, and say what sunshine the morning breaks with, when one doesn’t fret about the bill.”

“You are right, O Philip,” said the other. “Let people say what they may, men love those who spend money. See what a popularity follows the Empire in France, and what is its chief claim? Just what you said a moment back. It never frets about the bill. Contrast the splendor of such a Government with the mean mercantile spirit of your British Parliament, higgling over contracts and cutting down clerks’ salaries, as though the nation were glorified when its servants wore broken boots and patched pantaloons.”

“The world needs spendthrifts as it needs tornadoes. The whirlwind purifies even as it devastates.”

“How grand you are at an aphorism, Philip! You have all the pomp of the pulpit when you deliver a mere platitude.”

“To a Frenchman, everything is a platitude that is not a paradox.”

“Go on, your vein is wonderful this morning.”

“A Frenchman is the travesty of human nature; every sentiment of his is the parody of what it ought to be. He is grave over trifles and evokes mirth out of the deepest melancholy; he takes sweet wine with his oysters, and when the post has brought him letters that may actually decide his destiny, he throws them aside to read a critique on the last ballet, or revive his recollections of its delight by gazing on a colored print of the ballerina.”

“I’m getting tired of the Gitana,” said Pracontal, throwing the picture from him; “hand me the chocolate. As to the letters, I have kept them for you to read, for, although I know your spluttering, splashing, hissing language, for all purposes of talk, its law jargon is quite beyond me.”

“Your lawyer – so far as I have seen – is most careful in his avoidance of technicals with you; he writes clearly and succinctly.”

“Break open that great packet, and tell me about its clear and distinct contents.”

“I said succinct, not distinct, O man of many mistakes. This is from Kelson himself, and contains an enclosure.” He broke the seal as he spoke, and read, —

Dear Sir, – I am exceedingly distressed to be obliged to inform you that the arrangement which, in my last letter, I had understood to be finally and satisfactorily concluded between myself on your part, and Mr. Sedley of Furnival’s Inn, on the part of Mr. Bramleigh, is now rescinded and broken, Mr. Bramleigh having entered a formal protest, denying all concurrence or approval, and in evidence of his dissent has actually given notice of action against his solicitor, for unauthorized procedure. The bills therefore drawn by you I herewith return as no longer negotiable. I am forced to express not only my surprise, but my indignation, at the mode in which we have been treated in this transaction. Awaiting your instructions as to what step you will deem it advisable to take next, —

I am, dear sir, your obedient servant,

J. Kelson.

“This is a bad affair,” said Longworth. “That twenty thousand that you thought to have lived on for two years, astonishing the vulgar world, like some Count of Monte Cristo, has proved a dissolving view, and there you sit a candidate for one of the Pope’s prisons, which, if accounts speak truly, are about the vilest dens of squalor and misery in Europe.”

“Put a lump of ice in my glass, and fill it up with champagne. It was only yesterday I was thinking whether I ‘d not have myself christened Esau, and it is such a relief to me now to feel that I need not. Monsieur Le Comte Pracontal de Bramleigh, I have the honor to drink your health.” As he spoke he drained his glass, and held it out to be refilled.

“No; I’ll give you no more wine. You’ll need all the calm and consideration you can command to answer this letter, which requires prompt reply. And as to Esau, my friend, the parallel scarcely holds, for when he negotiated the sale of his reversion he was next of kin beyond dispute.”