The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

“Do you like him better now?” asked Longworth, in English.

And the fellow grinned at the words.

“You understand English, eh?” asked Pracontal.

“Ay, I know most modern languages.”

“What nation are you?”

“A Savoyard.”

“Whence do you come now?”

“From the galleys at Ischia.”

“Frank that, anyhow,” cried Longworth. “Were you under sentence there?”

“Yes, for life.”

“For what offence?”

“For a score that I committed, and twice as many that I failed in.”

“Murder, assassination?”

He nodded.

“Let us hear about some of them,” said Pracontal, with interest.

“I don’t talk of these things; they are bygones, and I ‘d as soon forget them.”

“And do you fancy they ‘ll be forgotten up there,” said Pracontal, pointing upwards as he spoke.

“What do you know about ‘up there,’” said he, sternly, “more than myself? Are not your vague words, ‘up there,’ the proof that it ‘s as much a mystery to you as to me?”

“Don’t get into theology with him, or you ‘ll have to listen to more blasphemy than you bargain for,” whispered Longworth; and whether the fellow overheard or merely guessed the meaning of the words, he grinned diabolically, and said, —

“Yes, leave that question there.”

“Are you not afraid of the police, my friend?” asked Longworth. “Is it not in their power to send you back to those you have escaped from?”

“They might with another, but the Cardinal Secretary knows me. I have told him I have some business to do at Rome, and want only a day or two to do it, and he knows I will keep my word.”

“My faith, you are a very conscientious galley-slave!” cried Pracontal. “Are you hungry?” and he took a large piece of bread from the sideboard and handed it to him. The man bowed, took the bread, and laid it beside him on the window-board.

“And so you and Antonelli are good friends?” said Longworth sneeringly.

“I did not say so. I only said he knew me, and knew me to be a man of my word.”

“And how could a Cardinal know – ” when he got thus far he felt the unfairness of saying what he was about to utter, and stopped, but the man took up the words with perfect calmness, and said: —

“The best and the purest people in this world will now and then have to deal with the lowest and the worst, just as men will drink dirty water when they are parched with thirst.”

“Is it some outlying debt of vengeance, an old vendetta, detains you here?” asked Longworth.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” replied he, slowly, “but I’d not be surprised if it took something of that shape, after all.”

“And do you know any other great folk?” asked Pracontal, with a laugh. “Are you acquainted with the Pope?”

“No, I have never spoken to him. I know the French envoy here, the Marquis de Caderousse. I know Field-Marshall Kleinkoff. I know Brassieri – the Italian spy – they call him the Duke of Brassieri.”

“That is to say, you have seen them as they drove by on the Corso, or walked on the Pincian?” said Longworth.

“No, that would not be acquaintance. When I said ‘know’ I meant it.”

“Just as you know my friend here, and know me perhaps?” said Pracontal.

“Not only him, but you,” said the fellow, with a fierce determination.

“Me, know me? what do you know about me?”

“Everything,” and now he drew himself up, and stared at him defiantly.

“I declare I wonder at you, Anatole,” whispered Longworth. “Don’t you know the game of menace and insolence these rascals play at?” And again the fellow seemed to divine what passed, for he said: —

“Your friend is wrong this time. I am not the cheat he thinks me.”

“Tell me something you know about me,” said Pracontal, smiling; and he filled a goblet with wine, and handed it to him.

The other, however, made a gesture of refusal, and coldly said, – “What shall it be about? I ‘ll answer any question you put to me.”

“What is he about to do?” cried Longworth. “What great step in life is he on the eve of taking?”

“Oh, I’m not a fortune teller,” said the man, roughly; “though I could tell you that he’s not to be married to this rich Englishwoman. That fine bubble is burst already.”

Pracontal tried to laugh, but he could not; and it was with difficulty he could thunder out, – “Servants’ stories and lackeys’ talk!”

“No such thing, sir. I deal as little with these people as yourself. You seem to think me an impostor; but I tell you I am less of a cheat than either of you. Ay, sir, than you, who play fine gentlemen, mi Lordo, here in Italy, but whose father was a land-steward; or than you – ”

“What of me – what of me?” cried Pracontal, whose intense eagerness now mastered every other emotion.

“You I who cannot tell who or what you are, who have a dozen names, and no right to any of them; and who, though you have your initials burned in gunpowder in the bend of your arm, have no other baptismal registry. Ah! do I know you now?” cried he, as Pracontal sank upon a seat, covered with a cold sweat and fainting.

“This is some rascally trick. It is some private act of hate. Keep him in talk till I fetch a gendarme.” Longworth whispered this, and left the room.

“Bad counsel that he has given you,” said the man. “My advice is better. Get away from this at once – get away before he returns. There’s only shame and disgrace before you now.”

He moved over to where Pracontal was seated, and placing his mouth close to his ear, whispered some words slowly and deliberately.

“And are you Niccolo Baldassare?” muttered Pracontal.

“Come with me, and learn all,” said the man, moving to the door; “for I will not wait to be arrested and made a town talk.”

Pracontal arose and followed him.

The old man walked with a firm and rapid step. He descended the stairs that led to the Piazza del Popolo, crossed the wide piazza, and issued from the gate out upon the Campagna, and skirting the ancient wall, was soon lost to view among the straggling hovels which cluster at intervals beneath the ramparts. Pracontal continued to walk behind him, his head sunk on his bosom, and his steps listless and uncertain, like one walking in sleep. Neither were seen more after that night.

CHAPTER LXIX. THE LAST OF ALL

All the emissaries had returned to the villa except Sedley, who found himself obliged to revisit England suddenly, but from whom came a few lines of telegram, stating that the “case of Pracontal de Bramleigh v. Bramleigh had been struck out of the cause list; Kelson a heavy loser, having made large advances to plaintiff.”

“Was n’t it like the old fox to add this about his colleague? As if any of us cared about Kelson, or thought of him!”

“Good fortune is very selfish, I really believe,” said Nelly. “We have done nothing but talk of ourselves, our interests, and our intentions for the last four days, and the worst of it is we don’t seem tired of doing so yet.”

“It would be a niggardly thing to deny us that pleasure, seeing what we have passed through to reach it,” cried Jack.

“Who ‘ll write to Marion with the news?” said Augustus.

“Not I,” said Jack; “or if I do it will be to sign myself ‘late Sam Rogers.’”

“If George accepts the embassy chaplaincy,” said Julia, “he can convey the tidings by word of mouth.”

“To guess by his dreary face,” said Jack, “one would say he had really closed with that proposal. What’s the matter, old fellow; has the general joy here not warmed your heart?”

L’Estrange, pale and red alternately, blundered out a few scarcely coherent words; and Julia, who well knew what feelings were agitating him, and how the hopes that adversity had favored might be dashed, now that a brighter fortune had dawned, came quickly to his rescue, and said, “I see what George is thinking of. George is wondering when we shall all be as happy and as united again, as we have been here, under this dear old roof.”

“But why should we not?” broke in Augustus. “I mean to keep the anniversary of our meeting here, and assemble you all every year at this place. Perhaps I have forgotten to tell you that I am the owner of the villa. I have signed the contract this morning.”

A cry of joy – almost a cheer – greeted this announcement, and Augustus went on, —

“My ferns, and my green beetles, and my sea anemones, as Nelly enumerates them, can all be prosecuted here, and I purpose to remain and live here.”

“And Castello?”

“Jack will go and live at Castello,” continued he. “I have interceded with a lady of my acquaintance” – he did not glance at Julia, but she blushed as he spoke – “to keep a certain green room, with a little stair out of it down to the garden, for me when I go there. Beyond that I reserve nothing.”

“We ‘ll only half value the gift without you, old fellow,” said Jack, as he passed his arm around her, and drew her fondly towards him.

“As one of the uninstructed public,” interposed Cutbill, “I desire to ask, who are meant by ‘We’?”

A half insolent toss of the head from Julia, meant specially for the speaker, was, however, seen by the others, who could not help laughing at it heartily.

“I think the uninstructed public should have a little deference for those who know more,” broke in Jack, tartly, for he resented hotly whatever seemed to annoy Julia.

“Tom Cutbill is shunted off the line, I see,” said Cutbill, mournfully.

“If he were,” cried Augustus, “we should be about the most worthless set of people living. We owe him much, and like him even more.”

“Now, that’s what I call handsome,” resumed Cutbill, “and if it was n’t a moment when you are all thinking of things a precious sight more interesting than T. C, I ‘d ask permission to return my acknowledgments in a speech.”

“Oh, don’t make a speech, Mr. Cutbill,” said Julia.

“No, ma’am, I’ll reserve myself till I return thanks for the bridesmaids.”

“Will no one suppress him?” said Julia, in a whisper.

“Oh, I am so glad you are to live at Castello, dearest,” said Nelly, as she drew Julia to her, and kissed her. “You are just the châtelaine to become it.”

“There is such a thing as losing one’s head, Nelly, out of sheer delight, and when I think I shall soon be one of you I run this risk; but tell me, dearest” – and here she whispered her lowest – “why is not our joy perfect? Why is poor George to be left out of all this happiness?”

“You must ask him that,” muttered she, hiding her head on the other’s shoulder.

“And may I, dearest?” cried Julia, rapturously. “Oh, Nelly, if there be one joy in the world I would prize above all it would be to know you were doubly my sister – doubly bound to me in affection. See, darling, see – even as we are speaking – George and your brother have walked away together. Oh, can it be – can it be? Yes, dearest,” cried she, throwing her arms around her; “your brother is holding him by the hand, and the tears are falling along George’s cheek; his happiness is assured, and you are his own.”

Nelly’s chest heaved violently, and two low deep sobs burst from her, but her face was buried in Julia’s bosom, and she never uttered a word. And thus Julia led her gently away down one of the lonely alleys of the garden, till they were lost to sight.

Lovers are proverbially the very worst of company for the outer world, nor is it easy to say which is more intolerable – their rapture or their reserve. The overweening selfishness of the tender passion conciliates no sympathy; very fortunately, it is quite indifferent to it. If it were not all-sufficing, it would not be that glorious delirium that believes the present to be eternal, and sees a world peopled only by two.

What should we gain, therefore, if we loitered in such company? They would not tell us their secrets – they would not care to hear ours. Let it be enough to say that, after some dark and anxious days in life, fortune once more shone out on those whom we saw so prosperous when first we met them. If they were not very brilliant nor very good, they were probably – with defects of temper and shortcomings in high resolve – pretty much like the best of those we know in life. Augustus, with a certain small vanity that tormented him into thinking that he had a lesson to read to the world, and that he was a much finer creature than he seemed or looked, was really a generously minded and warm-hearted fellow, who loved his neighbor – meaning his brother or his sister – a great deal better than himself.

Nelly was about as good as – I don’t think better than – nineteen out of every twenty honestly brought-up girls, who, not seduced by the luxuries of a very prosperous condition, come early to feel and to know what money can and what it cannot do.

Jack had many defects of hot temper and hastiness, but on the whole was a fine, sailor-like fellow, carrying with him through life the dashing hardihood that he would have displayed in a breach or on a boarding, and thus occasionally exuberant, where smaller and weaker traits would have sufficed. Such men, from time to time, make troublesome first lieutenants, but women do not dislike them, and there is an impression abroad that they make good husbands, and that all the bluster they employ towards the world subsides into the mildest possible murmur beside the domestic hearthrug.

Marion was not much more or much less than we have seen her; and though she became, by the great and distinguished services of her husband, a countess, she was not without a strange sentiment of envy for a certain small vicarage in Herts, where rosy children romped before the latticed porch, beneath which sat a very blooming and beautiful mother, and worked as her husband read for her. A very simple little home sketch; but it was the page of a life where all harmonized and all went smoothly on: one of those lives of small ambitions and humble pleasures which are nearer Paradise than anything this world gives us.

Temple Bramleigh was a secretary of legation, and lived to see himself – in the uniformity of his manuscript, the precision of his docketing, and the exactness of his sealing wax – the pet of “the Office.” Acolytes who swung incense before permanent secretaries, or held up the vestments of chief clerks, and who heard the words which drop from the high priests of foolscap, declared Temple was a rising man; and with a brother-in-law in the Lords, and a brother rich enough to contest a seat in the Lower House, one whose future pointed to a high post and no small distinction: for, happily for us, we live in an age where self-assertion is as insufficient in public life as self-righteousness in religion, and our merits are always best cared for by imputed holiness.

The story of this volume is of the Bramleighs, and I must not presume to suppose that my reader interests himself in the fate of those secondary personages who figure in the picture. Lady Augusta, however, deserves a passing mention, but perhaps her own words will be more descriptive than any of mine; and I cannot better conclude than with the letter she wrote to Nelly, and which ran thus: —

“Villa Altieri, Rome.

“Dearest Child, – How shall I ever convey to you one-half the transport, the joy, the ecstasy I am filled with by this glorious news! There is no longer a question of law or scandal or exposure. Your estates are your own, and your dear name stands forth untarnished and splendid as it has ever done. It is only as I bethink me of what you and dearest Augustus and darling Jack must have gone through that I spare you the narrative of my own sufferings, my days of sorrow, my nights of crying. It was indeed a terrific trial to us all, and those horrid stories of hair turning white from grief made me rush to the glass every morning at daybreak with a degree of terror that I know well I shall never be able to throw off for many a year; for I can assure you, dearest, that the washes are a mistake, and most pernicious! They are made of what chemists call Ethiops mineral, which is as explosive as nitro-glycerine; and once penetrating the pores, the head becomes, as Doctor Robertson says, a ‘charged shell.’ Can you fancy anything as horrible? Incipient grayness is best treated with silver powder, which, when the eyelashes are properly darkened at the base, gives a very charming lustre to the expression. On no account use gold powder.

“It was a Mr. Longworth, a neighbor of yours, whom you don’t know, brought me the first news; but it was soon all over Rome, for his father – I mean Pracontal’s – was formerly much employed by Antonelli, and came here with the tidings that the mine had exploded, and blown up only themselves. A very dreadful man his father, with a sabre scar down the cheek, and deep marks of manacles on his wrists and ankles; but would n’t take money from the Cardinal, nor anything but a passport. And they went away, so the police say, on foot, P. dressed in some horrid coarse clothes like his father; and oh, darling, how handsome he was, and how distinguished-looking! It was young France, if you like; but, after all, don’t we all like the Boulevard de Ghent better than the Faubourg St. Germain? He was very witty, too; that is, he was a master of a language where wit comes easy, and could season talk with those nice little flatteries which, like fioriture in singing, heighten the charm, but never impair the force of the melody. And then, how he sang! Imagine Mario in a boudoir with a cottage piano accompaniment, and then you have it. It is very hard to know anything about men, but, so far as I can see, he was not a cheat; he believed the whole stupid story, and fancied that there had been a painter called Lami, and a beautiful creature who married somebody and was the mother of somebody else. He almost made me believe it, too; that is, it bored me ineffably, and I used to doze over it, and when I awoke I was n’t quite sure whether I dreamed he was a man of fortune or that such was a fact. Do you think he ‘ll shoot himself? I hope he ‘ll not shoot himself. It would throw such a lasting gloom over the whole incident that one could never fall back upon it in memory without deep sorrow; but men are so essentially selfish I don’t think that this consideration would weigh with him.

“Some malicious people here circulated a story that he had made me an offer of marriage, and that I had accepted it. Just as they said some months ago that I had gone over to Rome, and here I am still, as the police-sheet calls me, a ‘Widow and a Protestant.’ My character for eccentricity exposes me naturally to these kinds of scandal; but, on the other hand, it saves me from the trouble of refuting or denying them. So that I shall take no notice whatever either of my conversion or my marriage, and the dear world – never ill-natured when it is useless – will at last accept the fact, small and insignificant though it be, just as creditors take half a crown in the pound after a bankruptcy.

“And now, dearest, is it too soon, is it too importunate, or is it too indelicate to tell your brother that, though I’m the most ethereal of creatures, I require to eat occasionally, and that, though I am continually reproved for the lowness of my dresses, I still do wear some clothes. In a word, dearest, I am in dire poverty, and to give me simply a thousand a year is to say, be a casual pauper. No one – my worst enemy – and I suppose I have a few who hate and would despitefully use me – can say I am extravagant. The necessaries of life, as they are called, are the costly things, and these are what I can perfectly well dispense with. I want its elegancies, its refinements, and these one has so cheaply. What, for instance, is the cost of the bouquet on your dinner-table? Certainly not more than one of your entrées; and it is infinitely more charming and more pleasure-giving. My coffee costs me no more out of Sèvres than out of a white mug with a lip like a milk-pail; and will you tell me that the Mocha is the same in the one as the other? What I want is that life should be picturesque, that its elegancies should so surround one that its coarser, grosser elements be kept out of sight; and this is a cheap philosophy. My little villa here – and nothing can be smaller – affords it; but come and see dearest – that is the true way – come and see how I live. If ever there was an existence of simple pleasures it is mine. I never receive in the morning – I study. I either read improving books – I ‘ll show you some of them – or I converse with Monsignore Galloni. We talk theology and mundane things at times, and we play besique, and we flirt a little; but not as you would understand flirtation. It is as though a light zephyr stirred the leaves of the affections and shook out the perfume, but never detached a blossom nor injured a bud. Monsignore is an adept at this game; so serious, and yet so tender, so spiritual, and at the same time so compassionate to poor weak human nature – which, by the way, he understands in its conflicts with itself, its motives, and its struggles, as none of your laymen do. Not but poor Pracontal had a very ingenious turn, and could reconcile much that coarser minds would have called discrepant and contradictory.

“So that, dearest, with less than three thousand, or two five hundred, I must positively go to jail. It has occurred to me that, if none care to go over to that house in Ireland, I might as well live there, at least for the two or three months in the year that the odious climate permits. As to the people, I know they would dote on me. I feel for them very much, and I have learned out here the true chords their natures respond to. What do you say to this plan? Would it not be ecstasy if you agreed to share it? The cheapness of Ireland is a proverb. I had a grand-uncle who once was Viceroy there, and his letters show that he only spent a third of his official income.

“I ‘d like to do this, too, if I only knew what my official income was. Ask Gusty this question, and kiss every one that ought to be kissed, and give them loves innumerable, and believe me ever your ‘Doting mamma’ (or mamina, that is prettier),

“Augusta Bramleigh.

“I shall write to Marion to-morrow. It will not be as easy a task as this letter; but I have done even more difficult ones. So they are saying now that Culduff’s promotion was a mere mistake; that there never was such a man as Sam Rogers at all – no case – no indemnity – no escape – no anything. Oh, dear me, as Monsignore says, what rest have our feet once we leave total incredulity?”

THE END.