The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

“She always puzzled me,” said L’Estrange, “but that wasn’t hard to do.”

“I suspect, George, that neither you nor I know much about women.”

“For my part, I know nothing at all about them.”

“And I not much.”

After this frank confession on either side, they walked along, each seemingly deep in his own thought, and said little till they reached the city. Leaving them, then, on their way to Lady Augusta’s house, where Bramleigh desired to drop his card, we turn for a moment to the little villa at Albano, in front of which a smart groom was leading a lady’s horse, while in the distance a solitary rider was slowly walking his horse, and frequently turning his looks towards the gate of the villa.

The explanation of all this was, that Lady Augusta had taken the opportunity of being near the L’Estranges to pay a visit to the Bramleighs, leaving Pracontal to wait for her till she came out.

“This visit is for you, Nelly,” said Julia, as she read the card; “and I ‘ll make my escape.”

She had but time to get out of the room when Lady Augusta entered.

“My dear child,” said she, rushing into Nelly’s arms, and kissing her with rapturous affection. “My dear child, what a happiness to see you again, and how well you are looking; you ‘re handsomer, I declare, than Marion. Yes, darling – don’t blush; it’s perfectly true. Where’s Augustus? has he come with you?”

“He has gone in to Rome to see you,” said Nelly, whose face was still crimson, and who felt flurried and agitated by the flighty impetuosity of the other.

“I hope it was to say that you are both coming to me? Yes, dearest, I ‘ll take no excuse. It would be a town-talk if you stopped anywhere else; and I have such a nice little villa – a mere baby-house; but quite large enough to hold you; and my brother-in-law will take Augustus about, and show him Rome, and I shall have you all to myself. We have much to talk of, haven’t we?”

Nelly murmured an assent, and the other continued, —

“It’s all so sudden, and so dreadful – one doesn’t realize it; at least, I don’t. And it usually takes me an hour or two of a morning to convince me that we are all ruined; and then I set to work thinking how I ‘m to live on – I forget exactly what – how much is it, darling? Shall I be able to keep my dear horses? I ‘d rather die than part with Ben Azir; one of the Sultan’s own breeding; an Arab of blue blood, Nelly, think of that! I’ve refused fabulous sums for him; but he is such a love, and follows me everywhere, and rears up when I scold him – and all to be swept away as if it was a dream. What do you mean to do, dearest? Marry, of course. I know that – but in the mean while?”

“We are going to Cattaro. Augustus has been named consul there.”

“Darling child, you don’t know what you are saying. Is n’t a consul a horrid creature that lives in a seaport, and worries merchant seamen, and imprisons people who have no passports?”

“I declare I have n’t a notion of his duties,” said Nelly, laughing.

“Oh, I know them perfectly. Papa always wrote to the consul about getting heavy baggage through the customhouse; and when our servants quarrelled with the porters, or the hotel people, it was the consul sent some of them to jail; but are you aware, darling, he is n’t a creature one knows. They are simply impossible, dear, impossible.” And as she spoke she lay back in her chair, and fanned herself as though actually overcome by the violence of her emotion.

“I must hope Augustus will not be impossible;” and Nelly said this with a dry mixture of humor and vexation.

“He can’t help it, dearest. It will be from no fault of his own. Let a man be what he may, once he derogates there’s an end of him. It sounds beautifully, I know, to say that he will remain gentleman and man of station through all the accidents of life; so he might, darling, so long as he did nothing – absolutely nothing. The moment, however, he touches an emploi it’s all over; from that hour he becomes the Customs creature, or the consul, or the factor, or whatever it be, irrevocably. Do you know that is the only way to keep men of family out of small official life? We should see them keeping lighthouses if it were not for the obloquy.”

“And it would be still better than dependence.”

“Yes, dearest, in a novel – in a three-volume thing from Mudie – so it would; but real life is not half so accommodating. I ‘ll talk to Gusty about this myself. And now, do tell me about yourself. Is there no engagement? no fatal attachment that all this change of fortune has blighted? Who is he, dearest? tell me all! You don’t know what a wonderful creature I am for expedients. There never was the like of me for resources. I could always pull any one through a difficulty but myself.”

“I am sorry I have no web to offer you for disentanglement.”

“So then he has behaved well; he has not deserted you in your change of fortune?”

“There is really no one in the case,” said Nelly, laughing. “No one to be either faithful or unworthy.”

“Worse again, dearest. There is nothing so good at your age as an unhappy attachment. A girl without a grievance always mopes; and,” added she, with a marked acuteness of look, “moping ages one quicker than downright grief. The eyes get a heavy expression, and the mouth drags at the corners, and the chin – isn’t it funny, now, such a stolid feature as the chin should take on to worry us? – but the chin widens and becomes square, like those Egyptian horrors in the Museum.”

“I must look to that,” said Nelly, gravely. “I’d be shocked to find my chin betraying me.”

“And men are such wretches. There is no amount of fretting they don’t exact from us; but if we show any signs of it afterwards – any hard lines about the eyes, or any patchiness of color in the cheek – they cry out, ‘Is n’t she gone off?’ That’s their phrase. ‘Is n’t she gone off?’”

“How well you understand; how well you read them!”

“I should think I do; but after all, dearest, they have very few devices: if it was n’t that they can get away, run off to the clubs and their other haunts, they would have no chance with us. See how they fare in country houses, for instance. How many escape there! What a nice stuff your dress is made of!”

“It was very cheap.”

“No matter; it’s English. That’s the great thing here. Any one can buy a ‘gros.’ What one really wants is a nameless texture and a neutral tint. You must positively walk with me on the Pincian in that dress. Roman men remark everything. You ‘ll not be ten minutes on the promenade till every one will know whether you wear two buttons on your gloves or three.”

“How odious!”

“How delightful! Why, my dear child, for whom do we dress? Not for each other: no more than the artists of a theatre act or sing for the rest of the company. Our audience is before us; not always a very enlightened or cultivated one, but always critical. There, do look at that stupid groom; see how he suffers my horse to lag behind: the certain way to have him kicked by the other; and I should die, I mean really die, if anything happened to Ben Azir. By the way, how well our parson rides! I declare I like him better in the saddle than in the pulpit. They rave here about the way he jumps the ox-fences. You must say tant des choses for me, to him and his sister, whom I fear I have treated shamefully. I was to have had her to dinner one day, and I forgot all about it; but she did n’t mind, and wrote me the prettiest note in the world. But I always say, it is so easy for people of small means to be good-tempered. They have no jealousies about going here or there; no heartburnings that such a one’s lace is Brussels point, and much finer than their own. Don’t you agree with me? There, I knew it would come to that. He’s got the snaffle out of Ben Azir’s mouth, and he’s sure to break away.”

“That gentleman apparently has come to the rescue. See, he has dismounted to set all to rights.”

“How polite of him! Do you know him, dear?”

“No. I may have seen him before. I ‘m so terribly short-sighted, and this glass does not suit me; but I must be going. I suppose I had better thank that strange man, had n’t I? Oh, of course, dearest, you would be too bashful; but I ‘m not. My old governess, Madame de Forgeon, used to say that English people never knew how to be bashful; they only looked culpable. And I protest she was right.”

“The gentleman is evidently waiting for your gratitude; he is standing there still.”

“What an observant puss it is!” said Lady Augusta, kissing her. “Tell Gusty to come and see me. Settle some day to come in and dine, and bring the parson: he’s a great favorite of mine. Where have I dropped my gauntlet? Oh, here it is. Pretty whip, isn’t it? A present, a sort of a love-gift from an old Russian prince, who wanted me to marry him: and I said I was afraid; that I heard Russians knouted their wives. And so he assured me I should have the only whip he ever used, and sent me this. It was neat, or rather, as Dumas says, ‘La plaisanterie n’était pas mal pour un Cossaque.’ Good-bye, dearest, good-bye.”

So actually exhausted was poor Nelly by the rattling impetuosity of Lady Augusta’s manner, her sudden transitions, and abrupt questionings, that, when Julia entered the room, and saw her lying back in a chair, wearied looking and pale, she asked, —

“Are you ill, dear?”

“No; but I am actually tired. Lady Augusta has been an hour here, and she has talked till my head turned.”

“I feel for you sincerely. She gave me one of the worst headaches I ever had, and then made my illness a reason for staying all the evening here to bathe my temples.”

“That was good-natured, however.”

“So I’d have thought, too, but that she made George attend her with the ice and the eau-de-cologne, and thus maintained a little ambulant flirtation with him, that, sick as I was, almost drove me mad.”

“She means nothing, I am certain, by all these levities, or, rather, she does not care what they mean; but here come our brothers, and I am eager for news, if they have any.”

“Where’s George?” asked Julia, as Augustus entered alone.

“Sir Marcus something caught him at the gate, and asked to have five minutes with him.”

“That means putting off dinner for an hour at least,” said she, half pettishly. “I must go and warn the cook.”

CHAPTER XLVII. A PROPOSAL IN FORM

When Sir Marcus Cluff was introduced into L’Estrange’s study, his first care was to divest himself of his various “wraps,” a process not very unlike that of the Hamlet gravedigger. At length, he arrived at a suit of entire chamois-leather, in which he stood forth like an enormous frog, and sorely pushed the parson’s gravity in consequence.

“This is what Hazeldean calls the ‘chest-sufferer’s true cuticle,’ Nothing like leather, my dear sir, in pulmonic affections. If I ‘d have known it earlier in life, I ‘d have saved half of my left lung, which is now hopelessly hepatized.”

L’Estrange looked compassionate, though not very well knowing what it was he had pity for.

“Not,” added the invalid, hastily, “that even this constitutes a grave constitutional defect. Davies says, in his second volume, that among the robust men of England you would not find one in twenty without some lungular derangement. He percussed me all over, and was some time before he found out the blot.” The air of triumph in which this was said showed L’Estrange that he too might afford to look joyful.

“So that, with this reservation, sir, I do consider I have a right to regard myself, as Boreas pronounced me, sound as a roach.”

“I sincerely hope so.”

“You see, sir, I mean to be frank with you. I descend to no concealments.”

It was not very easy for L’Estrange to understand this speech, or divine what especial necessity there was for his own satisfaction as to the condition of Sir Marcus Cluff’s viscera; he, however, assented in general terms to the high esteem he felt for candor and openness.

“No, my dear Mr. L’Estrange,” resumed he, “without this firm conviction – a sentiment based on faith and the stethoscope together – you had not seen me here this day.”

“The weather is certainly trying,” said L’Estrange.

“I do not allude to the weather, sir; the weather is, for the season, remarkably fine weather; there was a mean temperature of 68° Fahrenheit during the last twenty-four hours. I spoke of my pulmonary condition, because I am aware people are in the habit of calling me consumptive. It is the indiscriminating way ignorance treats a very complex question; and when I assured you that without an honest conviction that organic mischief had not proceeded far, I really meant what I said when I told you you would not have seen me here this day.”

Again was the parson mystified, but he only bowed.

“Ah, sir,” sighed the other, “why will not people be always candid and sincere? And when shall we arrive at the practice of what will compel – actually compel sincerity? I tell you, for instance, I have an estate worth so much – house property here, and shares in this or that company – but there are mortgages, I don’t say how much against me; I have no need to say it. You drive down to the Registration Office and you learn to a shilling to what extent I am liable. Why not have the same system for physical condition, sir? Why can’t you call on the College of Physicians, or whatever the body be, and say, ‘How is Sir Marcus Cluff? I’d like to know about that right auricle of his heart. What about his pancreas?’ Don’t you perceive the inestimable advantage of what I advise?”

“I protest, sir, I scarcely follow you. I do not exactly see how I have the right, or to what extent I am interested, to make this inquiry.”

“You amaze – you actually amaze me!” and Sir Marcus sat for some seconds contemplating the object of his astonishment. “I come here, sir, to make an offer for your sister’s hand – ”

“Pardon my interrupting, but I learn this intention only now.”

“Then you didn’t read my note. You didn’t read the ‘turn-over.’”

“I ‘m afraid not. I only saw what referred to the Church.”

“Then, sir, you missed the most important; had you taken the trouble to turn the page, you would have seen that I ask your permission to pay my formal attentions to Miss L’Estrange. It was with intention I first discussed and dismissed a matter of business; I then proceeded to a question of sentiment, premising that I held myself bound to satisfy you regarding my property, and my pulmonary condition. Mind, body, and estate, sir, are not coupled together ignorantly, nor inharmoniously; as you know far better than me – mind, body, and estate,” repeated he slowly. “I am here to satisfy you on each of them.”

“Don’t you think, Sir Marcus, that there are questions which should possibly precede these?”

“Do you mean Miss L’Estrange’s sentiments, sir?” George bowed, and Sir Marcus continued: “I am vain enough to suppose I can make out a good case for myself. I look more, but I’m only forty-eight, forty-eight on the twelfth September. I have twenty-seven thousand pounds in bank stock – stock, mind you – and three thousand four hundred a year in land, Norfolk property. I have a share – we ‘ll not speak of it now – in a city house; and what ‘s better than all, sir, not sixpence of debt in the world. I am aware your sister can have no fortune, but I can afford myself, what the French call a caprice, though this ain’t a caprice, for I have thought well over the matter, and I see she would suit me perfectly. She has nice gentle ways, she can be soothing without depression, and calm without discouragement. Ah, that is the secret of secrets! She gave me my drops last evening with a tenderness, a graceful sympathy, that went to my heart. I want that, sir – I need it, I yearn for it. Simpson said to me years ago, ‘Marry, Sir Marcus, marry! yours is a temperament that requires study and intelligent care. A really clever woman gets to know a pulse to perfection; they have a finer sensibility, a higher organization, too, in the touch.’ Simpson laid great stress on that; but I have looked out in vain, sir. I employed agents: I sent people abroad; I advertised in the ‘Times’ – M. C. was in the second column – for above two years; and with a correspondence that took two clerks to read through and minute. All to no end! All in vain! They tell me that the really competent people never do reply to an advertisement; that one must look out for them oneself, make private personal inquiry. Well, sir, I did that, and I got into some unpleasant scrapes with it, and two actions for breach of promise; two thousand, pounds the last cost me, though I got my verdict, sir; the Chief Baron very needlessly recommending me, for the future, to be cautious in forming the acquaintance of ladies, and to avoid widows as a general rule. These are the pleasantries of the Bench, and doubtless they amuse the junior bar. I declare to you, sir, in all seriousness, I ‘d rather that a man should give me a fillip on the nose than take the liberty of a joke with me. It is the one insufferable thing in life.” This sally had so far excited him that it was some minutes ere he recovered his self-possession. “Now, Mr. L’Estrange,” said he, at last, “I bind you in no degree – I pledge you to nothing; I simply ask leave to address myself to your sister. It is what lawyers call a ‘motion to show cause why.’”

“I perceive that,” broke in L’Estrange; “but even that much I ought not to concede without consulting my sister and obtaining her consent. You will allow me therefore time.”

“Time, sir! My nerves must not be agitated. There can be no delays. It was not without a great demand on my courage, and a strong dose of chlorodine – Japps’s preparation – that I made this effort now. Don’t imagine I can sustain it much longer. No, sir, I cannot give time.”

“After all, Sir Marcus, you can scarcely suppose that my sister is prepared for such a proposition.”

“Sir, they are always prepared for it. It never takes them unawares. I have made them my study for years, and I do think I have some knowledge of their way of thinking and acting. I ‘ll lay my life on it, if you will go and say, ‘Maria’ – ”

“My sister’s name is Julia,” said the other, dryly.

“It may be, sir – I said ‘Maria’ generically, and I repeat it – ‘Maria, there is in my study at this moment a gentleman, of irreproachable morals and unblemished constitution, whose fortune is sufficiently ample to secure many comforts and all absolute necessaries, who desires to make you his wife;’ her first exclamation will be, ‘It is Sir Marcus Cluff.’”

“It is not impossible,” said L’Estrange, gravely.

“The rest, sir, is not with you, nor even with me. Do me, then, the great favor to bear my message.”

Although seeing the absurdity of the situation, and vaguely forecasting the way Julia might possibly hear the proposition, L’Estrange was always so much disposed to yield to the earnestness of any one who persisted in a demand, that he bowed and left the room.

“Well, George, he has proposed?” cried Julia, as her brother entered the room, where she sat with Nelly Bramleigh.

He nodded only, and the two girls burst out into a merry laugh.

“Come, come, Julia,” said he, reprovingly. “Absurd as it may seem, the man is in earnest, and must be treated with consideration.”

“But tell us the whole scene. Let us have it all as it occurred.”

“I ‘ll do nothing of the kind. It ‘s quite enough to say that he declares he has a good fortune, and wishes to share it with you; and I think the expression of that wish should secure him a certain deference and respect.”

“But who refuses, who thinks of refusing him all the deference and respect he could ask for? Not I, certainly. Come now, like a dear good boy, let us hear all he said, and what you replied. I suspect there never was a better bit of real-life comedy. I only wish I could have had a part in it.”

“Not too late yet, perhaps,” said Nelly, with a dry humor. “The fifth act is only beginning.”

“That is precisely what I am meditating. George will not tell me accurately what took place in his interview, and I think I could not do better than go and learn Sir Marcus’ sentiments for myself.”

She arose and appeared about to leave the room, when L’Estrange sprang towards the door, and stood with his back against it.

“You ‘re not serious, Ju?” cried he, in amazement.

“I should say very serious. If Sir Marcus only makes out his case, as favorably as you, with all your bungling, can’t help representing it, why – all things considered, eh, Nelly? you, I know, agree with me – I rather suspect the proposition might be entertained.”

“Oh, this is too monstrous. It is beyond all belief,” cried L’Estrange.

And he rushed from the room in a torrent of passion, while Julia sank back in a chair, and laughed till her eyes ran over with tears of merriment.

“How could you, Julia! Oh, how could you!” said Nelly, as she leaned over her and tried to look reproachful.

“If you mean, how could I help quizzing him, I can understand you; but I could not – no, Nelly, I could not help it! It is my habit to seize on the absurd side of any embarrassment; and you may be sure there is always one if you only look for it; and you ‘ve no idea how much pleasanter – ay, and easier, too – it is to laugh oneself out of difficulties than to grieve over them. You ‘ll see George, now, will be spirited up, out of pure fright, to do what he ought; to tell this man that his proposal is an absurdity, and that young women, even as destitute of fortune as myself, do not marry as nursetenders. There! I declare that is Sir Marcus driving away already. Only think with what equanimity I can see wealth and title taking leave of me. Never say after that that I have not courage.”

CHAPTER XLVII. “A TELEGRAM”

“This is a very eventful day for me, George,” said Augustus, as they strolled through the garden after breakfast. “The trial was fixed for the 13th, and to-day is the 14th; I suppose the verdict will be given to-day.”

“But you have really no doubt of the result? I mean, no more than anxiety on so momentous a matter must suggest?”

“Pardon me. I have grave doubts. There was such a marriage, as is alleged, formed by my grandfather; a marriage in every respect legal. They may not have the same means of proving that which we have; but we know it. There was a son born to that marriage. We have the letter of old Lami, asking my grandfather to come over to Bruges for the christening, and we have the receipt of Hodges and Smart, the jewellers, for a silver gilt ewer and cup which were engraved with the Bramleigh crest and cypher, and despatched to Belgium as a present; for my grandfather did not go himself, pretexting something or other, which evidently gave offence; for Lami’s next letter declares that the present has been returned, and expresses a haughty indignation at my grandfather’s conduct I can vouch for all this. It was a sad morning when I first saw those papers; but I did see them, George, and they exist still. That son of my grandfather’s they declare to have married, and his son is this Pracontal. There is the whole story, and if the latter part of the narrative be only as truthful as I believe the first to be, he, and not I, is the rightful owner of Castello.”

L’Estrange made no reply; he was slowly going over in his mind the chain of connection, and examining, link by link, how it held together.

“But why,” asked he at length, “was not this claim preferred before? Why did a whole generation suffer it to lie dormant?”

“That is easily – too easily explained. Lami was compromised in almost every country in Europe; and his son succeeded him in his love of plot and conspiracy. Letters occasionally reached my father from this latter; some of them demanding money in a tone of actual menace. A confidential clerk, who knew all my father’s secrets, and whom he trusted most implicitly, became one day a defaulter, and absconded, carrying with him a quantity of private papers, some of which were letters written by my father, and containing remittances which Montague Lami, – or Louis Langrange, or whatever other name he bore, – of course, never received, and indignantly declared he believed had never been despatched. This clerk, whose name was Hesketh, made Lami’s acquaintance in South America, and evidently encouraged him to prefer his claim with greater assurance, and led him to suppose that any terms he preferred must certainly be complied with! But I cannot go on, George; the thought of my poor father struggling through life in this dark conflict rises up before me, and now I estimate the terrible alternation of hope and fear in which he must have lived, and how despairingly he must have thought of a future, when this deep game should be left to such weak hands as mine. I thought they were cruel words once, in which he spoke of my unfitness to meet a great emergency – but now I read them very differently.”