The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

“You have drawn up some sort of prospectus?”

“Some sort of prospectus! I think I have. There’s a document there on the table might go before the House of Commons this minute; and the short and the long of it is, Bramleigh” – here he crossed his arms on the table, and dropped his voice to a tone of great confidence – “it is a good thing – a right good thing. There ‘s coal there, of one kind or other, for five-and-twenty years, perhaps more. The real, I may say, the only difficulty of the whole scheme will be to keep old Culduff from running off with all the profits. As soon as the money comes rolling in, he ‘ll set off shelling it out; he ‘s just as wasteful as he was thirty years ago.”

“That will be impossible when a company is once regularly formed.”

“I know that, – I know that; but men of his stamp say, ‘We know nothing about trade. We have n’t been bred up to office-stools and big ledgers; and when we want money, we get it how we can.’”

“We can’t prevent him selling out or mortgaging his shares. You mean, in short, that he should not be on the direction?” added he.

“That’s it, – that’s exactly it,” said Cutbill, joyously.

“Will he like that? Will he submit to it?”

“He ‘ll like whatever promises to put him most speedily into funds; he’ll submit to whatever threatens to stop the supplies. Don’t you know these men better than I do, who pass lives of absenteeism from their country; how little they care how or whence money comes, provided they get it? They neither know, nor want to know, about good or bad seasons, whether harvests are fine, or trade profitable; their one question is, ‘Can you answer my draft at thirty-one days?’”

“Ah, yes; there is too much, far too much, of what you say in the world,” said Bramleigh, sighing.

“These are not the men who want to do something for Ireland,” said the other, quizzically.

“Sir, it may save us both some time and temper if I tell you I have never been ‘chaffed.’”

“That sounds to me like a man saying, I have never been out in the rain; but as it is so, there ‘s no more to be said.”

“Nothing, sir. Positively nothing on that head.”

“Nor indeed on any other. Men in my line of life could n’t get on without it. Chaff lubricates business just the way grease oils machinery. There would be too much friction in life without chaff, Bramleigh.”

“I look upon it as directly the opposite. I regard it as I would a pebble getting amongst the wheels, and causing jar and disturbance, sir.”

“Well, then,” said Cutbill, emptying the last drop into his glass, “I take it I need not go over all the details you will find in those papers. There are plans, and specifications, and estimates, and computations, showing what we mean to do, and how; and as I really could add nothing to the report, I suppose I may wish you a good night.”

“I am very sorry, Mr. Cutbill, if my inability to be jocular should deprive me of the pleasure of your society; but there are still many points on which I desire to be informed.”

“It’s all there. If you were to bray me in a mortar you could n’t get more out of me than you ‘ll find in those papers; and whether it ‘s the heat of the room, or the wine, or the subject, but I am awfully sleepy,” and he backed this assurance with a hearty yawn.

“Well, sir, I must submit to your dictation. I will try and master these details before I go to bed, and will take some favorable moment to-morrow to talk them over.”

“That’s said like a sensible man,” said Cutbill, clapping him familiarly on the shoulder, and steadying himself the while; for as he stood up to go, he found that the wine had been stronger than he suspected. “When we see a little more of each other,” said he, in the oracular tone of a man who had drunk too much; “when we see a little more of each other, we ‘ll get on famously. You know the world, and I know the world. You have had your dealings with men, and I have had my dealings with men, and we know what’s what. Ain’t I right, Bramleigh?”

“I have no doubt there is much truth in what you say.”

“Truth, truth, it’s true as gospel! There’s only one thing, however, to be settled between us. Each must make his little concession with reci-procity – reci-procity, ain’t it?”

“Quite so; but I don’t see your meaning.”

“Here it is, then, Bramleigh; here’s what I mean. If we ‘re to march together we must start fair. No man is to have more baggage than his neighbor. If I ‘m to give up chaff, do you see, you must give up humbug. If I ‘m not to have my bit of fun, old boy, you ‘re not to come over me about doing something for Ireland, that’s all,” and with this he lounged out, banging the door after him as he went.

Mr. Cutbill, as he went to his room, had a certain vague suspicion that he had drunk more wine than was strictly necessary, and that the liquor was not impossibly stronger than he had suspected. He felt, too, in the same vague way, that there had been a passage of arms between his host and himself; but as to what it was about, and who was the victor, he had not the shadow of a conception.

Neither did his ordinary remedy of pouring the contents of his water-jug over his head aid him on this occasion.

“I’m not a bit sleepy; nonsense!” muttered he, “so I’ll go and see what they are doing in the smoking-room.”

Here he found the three young men of the house in that semi-thoughtful dreariness which is supposed to be the captivation of tobacco; as if the mass of young Englishmen needed anything to deepen the habitual gloom of their natures, or thicken the sluggish apathy that follows them into all inactivity.

“How jolly,” cried Cutbill, as he entered. “I ‘ll be shot if I believed as I came up the stairs that there was any one here. You haven’t even got brandy and seltzer.”

“If you touch that bell, they ‘ll bring it,” said Augustus, languidly.

“Some Moselle for me,” said Temple, as the servant entered.

“I’m glad you’ve come, Cutty,” cried Jack; “as old Kemp used to say, anything is better than a dead calm; even a mutiny.”

“What an infernal old hurdy-gurdy! Why haven’t you a decent piano here, if you have one at all?” said Cutbill, as he ran his hands over the keys of a discordant old instrument that actually shook on its legs as he struck the chords.

“I suspect it was mere accident brought it here,” said Augustus. “It was invalided out of the girls’ schoolroom, and sent up here to be got rid of.”

“Sing us something, Cutty,” said Jack; “it will be a real boon at this moment.”

“I’ll sing like a grove of nightingales for you, when I have wet my lips; but I am parched in the mouth, like a Cape parrot. I ‘ve had two hours of your governor below stairs. Very dry work, I promise you.”

“Did he offer you nothing to drink?” asked Jack.

“Yes, we had two bottles of very tidy claret. He called it ‘Mouton.’”

“By Jove!” said Augustus, “you must have been high in the governor’s favor to be treated to his ‘Bra Mouton.’”

“We had a round with the gloves, nevertheless,” said Cutbill, “and exchanged some ugly blows. I don’t exactly know about what or how it began, or even how it ended; but I know there was a black eye somewhere. He’s passionate, rather.”

“He has the spirit that should animate every gentleman,” said Temple.

“That’s exactly what I have. I ‘ll stand anything, I don’t care what, if it be fun. Say it’s a ‘joke,’ and you’ll never see me show bad temper; but if any fellow tries it on with me because he fancies himself a swell, or has a handle to his name, he ‘ll soon discover his mistake. Old Culduff began that way. You ‘d laugh if you saw how he floundered out of the swamp afterwards.”

“Tell us about it, Cutty,” said Jack, encouragingly.

“I beg to say I should prefer not hearing anything which might, even by inference, reflect on a person holding Lord Culduff’s position in my profession,” said Temple, haughtily.

“Is that the quarter the wind ‘s in?” asked Cutbill, with a not very sober expression in his face.

“Sing us a song, Cutty. It will be better than all this sparring,” said Jack.

“What shall it be?” said Cutbill, seating himself at the piano, and running over the keys with no small skill. “Shall I describe my journey to Ireland?”

“By all means let’s hear it,” said Augustus.

“I forget how it goes. Indeed, some verses I was making on the curate’s sister have driven the others out of my head.”

Jack drew nigh, and leaning over his shoulder, whispered something in his ear.

“What!” cried Cutbill, starting up; “he says he’ll pitch me neck and crop out of the window.”

“Not unless you deserve it – add that,” said Jack, sternly.

“I must have an apology for those words, sir. I shall insist on your recalling them, and expressing your sincere regret for having ever used them.”

“So you shall, Cutty. I completely forgot that this tower was ninety feet high; but I ‘ll pitch you downstairs, which will do as well.”

There was a terrible gleam of earnestness in Jack’s eye as he spoke this laughingly, which appalled Cutbill far more than any bluster, and he stammered out, “Let us have no practical jokes; they’re bad taste. You’d be a great fool, admiral” – this was a familiarity he occasionally used with Jack – “you ‘d be a great fool to quarrel with me. I can do more with the fellows at Somerset House than most men going; and when the day comes that they ‘ll give you a command, and you ‘ll want twelve or fifteen hundred to set you afloat, Tom Cutbill is not the worst man to know in the City. Not to say, that if things go right down here, I could help you to something very snug in our mine. Won’t we come out strong then, eh?”

Here he rattled over the keys once more; and after humming to himself for a second or two, burst out with a rattling merry air, to which he sung, —

“With crests on our harness and breechin,In a carriage and four we shall roll,With a splendid French cook in the kitchen,If we only succeed to find coal,Coal!If we only are sure to find coal.”

“A barcarolle, I declare,” said Lord Culduff, entering. “It was a good inspiration led me up here.”

A jolly roar of laughter at his mistake welcomed him; and Cutty, with an aside, cried out, “He’s deaf as a post,” and continued, —

“If we marry, we ‘ll marry a beauty,If single we ‘ll try and controlOur tastes within limits of duty,And make ourselves jolly with coal,Coal!And make ourselves jolly with coal.“They may talk of the mines of Golcondar,Or the shafts of Puebla del Sol;But to fill a man’s pocket, I wonderIf there’s anything equal to coal,Coal!If there ‘s anything equal to coal.“At Naples we ‘ll live on the Chiaja,With our schooner-yacht close to the Mole,And make daily picknickings to Baja,If we only come down upon coal,Coal!If we only come down upon coal.”

“One of the fishermen’s songs,” said Lord Culduff, as he beat time on the table. “I ‘ve passed many a night on the Bay of Naples listening to them.”

And a wild tumultuous laugh now convulsed the company, and Cutbill, himself overwhelmed by the absurdity, rushed to the door, and made his escape without waiting for more.

CHAPTER XIII. AT THE COTTAGE

Julia L’Estrange was busily engaged in arranging some flowers in certain vases in her little drawing-room, and, with a taste all her own, draping a small hanging lamp with creepers, when Jack Bramleigh appeared at the open window, and leaning on the sill, cried out, “Good-morning.”

“I came over to scold you, Julia,” said he. “It was very cruel of you to desert us last evening, and we had a most dreary time of it in consequence.”

“Come round and hold this chair for me, and don’t talk nonsense.”

“And what are all these fine preparations for? You are decking out your room as if for a village fête,” said he, not moving from his place nor heeding her request.

“I fancy that young Frenchman who was here last night,” said she, saucily, “would have responded to my invitation if I had asked him to hold the chair I was standing on.”

“I’ve no doubt of it,” said he, gravely. “Frenchmen are vastly more gallant than we are.”

“Do you know, Jack,” said she again, “he is most amusing?”

“Very probably.”

“And has such a perfect accent; that sort of purring French one only hears from a Parisian?”

“I am charmed to hear it.”

“It charmed me to hear it, I assure you. One does so long for the sounds that recall bright scenes and pleasant people: one has such a zest for the most commonplace things that bring back the memory of very happy days.”

“What a lucky Frenchman to do all this!”

“What a lucky Irish girl to have met with him!” said she, gayly.

“And how did you come to know him, may I ask?”

“George had been several times over to inquire after him, and out of gratitude Count Pracontal, – I am not sure that he is count though, but it is of no moment, – made it a point to come here the first day he was able to drive out. Mr. Longworth drove him over in his pony carriage, and George was so pleased with them both that he asked them to tea last evening, and they dine here to-day.”

“Hence these decorations?”

“Precisely.”

“What a brilliant neighborhood we have! And there are people will tell you that this is all barbarism here.”

“Come over this evening, Jack, and hear M. Pracontal sing – he has a delicious tenor voice – and you ‘ll never believe in that story of barbarism again. We had quite a little ‘salon’ last night.”

“I must take your word for his attractive qualities,” said Jack, as his brow contracted and his face grew darker. “I thought your brother rather stood aloof from Mr. Longworth. I was scarcely prepared to hear of his inviting him here.”

“So he did; but he found him so different from what he expected – so quiet, so well-bred, that George, who always is in a hurry to make an ‘amende’ when he thinks he has wronged any one, actually rushed into acquaintance with him at once.”

“And his sister Julia,” asked Jack, with a look of impertinent irony, “was she, too, as impulsive in her friendship?”

“I think pretty much the same.”

“It must have been a charming party.”

“I flatter myself it was. They stayed till midnight; and M. Pracontal declared he’d break his other leg to-morrow if it would ensure him another such evening in his convalescence.”

“Fulsome rascal! I protest it lowers my opinion of women altogether when I think these are the fellows that always meet their favor.”

“Women would be very ungrateful if they did not like the people who try to please them. Now, certainly, as a rule, Jack, you will admit foreigners are somewhat more eager about this than you gentlemen of England.”

“I have about as much of this as I am likely to bear well from my distinguished stepmother,” said he, roughly, “so don’t push my patience further.”

“What do you say to our little ‘salon’ now?” said she. “Have you ever seen ferns and variegated ivy disposed more tastefully?”

“I wish – I wish” – stammered he out, and then seemed unable to go on.

“And what do you wish?”

“I suppose I must not say it. You might feel offended besides.”

“Not a bit, Jack. I am sure it never could be your intention to offend me, and a mere blunder could not do so.”

“Well, I ‘ll go round and tell you what it is I wish,” and with this he entered the house and passed on into the drawing-room, and taking his place at one side of the fire, while she stood at the other, said seriously, “I was wishing, Julia, that you were less of a coquette.”

“You don’t mean that?” said she, roguishly, dropping her long eyelashes, as she looked down immediately after.

“I mean it seriously, Julia. It is your one fault; but it is an immense one.”

“My dear Jack,” said she, very gravely, “you men are such churls that you are never grateful for any attempts to please you except they be limited strictly to yourselves. You would never have dared to call any little devices, by which I sought to amuse or interest you, coquetry, so long as they were only employed on your own behalf. My real offence is that I thought the world consisted of you and some others.”

“I am not your match in these sort of subtle discussions,” said he, bluntly, “but I know what I say is fact.”

“That I’m a coquette?” said she, with so much feigned horror that Jack could scarcely keep down the temptation to laugh.”

“Just so; for the mere pleasure of displaying some grace or some attraction, you ‘d half kill a fellow with jealousy, or drive him clean mad with uncertainty. You insist on admiration – or what you call ‘homage,’ which I trust is only a French name for it – and what’s the end of it all? You get plenty of this same homage; but – but – never mind. I suppose I’m a fool to talk this way. You ‘re laughing at me besides, all this while. I see it – I see it in your eyes.”

“I was n’t laughing, Jack, I assure you. I was simply thinking that this discovery – I mean of my coquetry – was n’t yours at all. Come, be frank and own it. Who told you I was a coquette, Jack?”

“You regard me as too dull-witted to have found it out, do you?”

“No, Jack. Too honest-hearted – too unsuspecting, too generous, to put an ill construction where a better one would do as well.”

“If you mean that there are others who agree with me, you’re quite right.”

“And who may they be?” asked she, with a quiet smile. “Come, I have a right to know.”

“I don’t see the right.”

“Certainly I have. It would be very ungenerous and very unjust to let me continue to exercise all those pleasing devices you have just stigmatized for the delectation of people who condemn them.”

“Oh, you could n’t help that. You’d do it just to amuse yourself, as I ‘m sure was the case yesterday, when you put forth all your captivations for that stupid old Viscount.”

“Did I?”

“Did you? You have the face to ask it?”

“I have, Jack. I have courage for even more, for I will ask you, was it not Marion said this? Was it not Marion who was so severe on all my little gracefulnesses? Well, you need not answer if you don’t like. I ‘ll not press my question; but own, it is not fair for Marion, with every advantage, her beauty and her surroundings – ”

“Her what?”

“Well, I would not use a French word; but I meant to say, those accessories which are represented by dress, and ‘toilette’ – not mean things in female estimation. With all these, why not have a little mercy for the poor curate’s sister, reduced to enter the lists with very uncouth weapons?”

“You won’t deny that Ellen loves you?” said he, suddenly.

“I ‘d be sorry, very sorry, to doubt it; but she never said I was a coquette?”

“I ‘m sure she knows you are,” said he, doggedly.

“Oh, Jack, I hope this is not the way you try people on court-martial?”

“It’s the fairest way ever a fellow was tried; and if one does n’t feel him guilty he ‘d never condemn him.”

“I ‘d rather people would feel less, and think a little more, if I was to be ‘the accused,’” said she, half pettishly.

“You got that, Master Jack; that round shot was for you,” said he, not without some irritation in his tone.

“Well,” said she, good-humoredly, “I believe we are firing into each other this morning, and I declare I cannot see for what.”

“I ‘ll tell you, Julia. You grew very cross with me, because I accused you of being a coquette, a charge you ‘d have thought pretty lightly of if you had n’t known it was deserved.”

“Might there not have been another reason for the crossness, supposing it to have existed?” said she, quietly.

“I ‘cannot imagine one; at least, I can’t imagine what reason you point at.”

“Simply this,” said she, half carelessly, “that it could have been no part of your duty to have told me so.”

“You mean that it was a great liberty on my part – an unwarrantable liberty?”

“Something like it.”

“That the terms which existed between us” – and now he spoke with a tremulous voice, and a look of much agitation – “could not have warranted my daring to point out a fault, even in your manner; for I am sure, after all, your nature had nothing to do with it?”

She nodded, and was silent.

“That’s pretty plain, anyhow,” said he, moving towards the table, where he had placed his hat. “It’s a sharp lesson to give a fellow though, all the more when he was unprepared for it.”

“You forget that the first sharp lesson came from you.”

“All true; there ‘s no denying it.” He took up his hat as she spoke, and moved, half awkwardly, towards the window. “I had a message for you from the girls, if I could only remember it. Do you happen to guess what it was about?”

She shrugged her shoulders slightly as a negative, and was silent.

“I ‘ll be shot if I can think what it was,” muttered he; “the chances are, however, it was to ask you to do something or other, and as, in your present temper, that would be hopeless, it matters little that I have forgotten it.”

She made no answer to this speech, but quietly occupied herself arranging a braid of her hair that had just fallen down.

“Miss L’Estrange!” said he, in a haughty and somewhat bold tone.

“Mr. Bramleigh,” replied she, turning and facing him with perfect gravity, though her tremulous lip and sparkling eye showed what the effort to seem serious cost her.

“If you will condescend to be real, to be natural, for about a minute and a half, it may save us, or at least one of us, a world of trouble and unhappiness.”

“It ‘s not a very courteous supposition of yours that implies I am unreal or unnatural,” said she, calmly; “but no matter, go on; say what you desire to say, and you shall find me pretty attentive.”

“What I want to say is this, then,” said he, approaching where she stood, and leaning one arm on the chimney close to where her own arm was resting; “I wanted to tell – no, I wanted to ask you if the old relations between us are to be considered as bygone, – if I am to go away from this to-day believing that all I have ever said to you, all that you heard – for you did hear me, Julia – ”

“Julia!” repeated she, in mock amazement. “What liberty is this, sir?” and she almost laughed out as she spoke.

“I knew well how it would be,” said he, angrily. “There is a heartless levity in your nature that nothing represses. I asked you to be serious for one brief instant.”

“And you shall find that I can,” said she, quickly. “If I have not been more so hitherto, it has been in mercy to yourself.”

“In mercy to me? To me! What do you mean?”

“Simply this. You came here to give me a lesson this morning. But it was at your sister’s suggestion. It was her criticism that prompted you to the task. I read it all. I saw how ill prepared you were. You have mistaken some things, forgotten others; and, in fact, you showed me that you were far more anxious I should exculpate myself than that you yourself should be the victor. It was for this reason that I was really annoyed, – seriously annoyed, at what you said to me; and I called in what you are so polite as to style my ‘levity’ to help me through my difficulty. Now, however, you have made me serious enough; and it is in this mood I say, Don’t charge yourself another time with such a mission. Reprove whatever you like, but let it come from yourself. Don’t think light-heartedness – I ‘ll not say levity – bad in morals, because it may be bad in taste. There’s a lesson for you, sir.” And she held out her hand as if in reconciliation.

“But you have n’t answered my question, Julia,” said he, tremulously.

“And what was your question?”

“I asked you if the past – if all that had taken place between us – was to be now forgotten?”

“I declare here is George,” said she, bounding towards the window and opening it. “What a splendid fish, George! Did you take it yourself?”

“Yes, and he cost me the top joint of my rod; and I’d have lost him after all if Lafferty had not waded out and landed him. I ‘m between two minds, Julia, whether I ‘ll send him up to the Bramleighs.”

She put her finger to her lip to impose caution, and said, “The admiral,” – the nickname by which Jack was known – “is here.”

“All right,” replied L’Estrange. “We’ll try and keep him for dinner, and eat the fish at home.” He entered as he spoke. “Where ‘s Jack. Did n’t you say he was here?”

“So he was when I spoke. He must have slipped away without my seeing it. He is really gone.”

“I hear he is gazetted; appointed to some ship on a foreign station. Did he tell you of it?”