Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume II.

Leaving them thus in happy pleasantry and enjoyment, let us turn for a moment to a very different scene, – to a drawing-room in Merrion Square, where at that same hour Lady Lendrick and Mrs. Sewell sat in close conference.

Mrs. Sewell had related the whole story of the intended duel, and its finale, and was now explaining to her mother-in-law how impossible it would be for her to continue any longer to live under the Chief Baron’s roof, if even – which she deemed unlikely – he would still desire it.

“He ‘ll not turn you out, dear, – of that I am quite certain. I suspect I am the only one in the world he would treat in that fashion.”

“I must not incur the risk.”

“Dear me, have you not been running risks all your life, Lucy? Besides, what else have you open to you?”

“Join my husband, I suppose, whenever he sends for me, – whenever he says he has a home to receive me.” “Dudley, I ‘m certain, will do his best,” said Lady Lendrick, stiffly. “It is not very easy for a poor man to make these arrangements in a moment. But, with all his faults, – and even his mother must own that he has many faults, – yet I have never known him to bear malice.” “Certainly, Madam, you are justified in your panegyric by his conduct on the present occasion; he has, indeed, displayed a most forgiving nature.”

“You mean by not fighting Trafford, I suppose; but come now, Lucy, we are here alone, and can talk freely to each other; why should he fight him?”

“I will not follow you, Lady Lendrick, into that inquiry, nor give you any pretext for saying to me what your candor is evidently eager for. I will only repeat that the one thing I ever knew Colonel Sewell pardon was the outrage that no gentleman ever endures.”

“He fought once before, and was greatly condemned for it.”

“I suppose you know why, Madam. I take it you have no need I should tell you the Agra story, with all its shameful details?”

“I don’t want to hear it; and if I did I would certainly hesitate to listen to it from one so deeply and painfully implicated as yourself.”

“Lady Lendrick, I will have no insinuations,” said she, haughtily. “When I came here, it never occurred to me I was to be insulted.”

“Sit down again, Lucy, and don’t be angry with me,” said Lady Lendrick, pressing her back into her chair. “Your position is a very painful one, – let us not make it worse by irritation; and to avoid all possibility of this, we will not look back at all, but only regard the future.”

“That may be more easy for you to do than for me”

“Easy or not easy, Lucy, we have no alternative; we cannot change the past.”

“No, no, no! I know that, – I know that,” cried she, bitterly, as her clasped hands dropped upon her knee.

“For that reason then, Lucy, forget it, ignore it. I have no need to tell you, my dear, that my own life has not been a very happy one, and if I venture to give advice, it is not without having had my share of sorrows. You say you cannot go back to the Priory?”

“No; that is impossible.”

“Unpleasant it would certainly be, and all the more so with these marriage festivities. The wedding, I suppose, will take place there?”

“I don’t know; I have not heard;” and she tried to say this with an easy indifference.

“Trafford is disinherited, is he not? – passed over in the entail, or something or other?”

“I don’t know,” she muttered out; but this time her confusion was not to be concealed.

“And will this old man they talk of – this Sir Brook somebody – make such a settlement on them as they can live on?”

“I know nothing about it at all.”

“I wonder, Lucy dear, it never occurred to you to fascinate Dives yourself. What nice crumbs these would have been for Algy and Cary!”

“You forget, Madam, what a jealous husband I have!” and her eyes now darted a glance of almost wild malignity.

“Poor Dudley, how many faults we shall find in you if we come to discuss you!”

“Let us not discuss Colonel Sewell, Madam; it will be better for all of us. A thought has just occurred; it was a thing I was quite forgetting. May I send one of your servants with a note, for which he will wait the answer?”

“Certainly. You will find paper and pens there.”

The note was barely a few lines, and addressed to George Kincaid, Esq., Ely Place. “You are to wait for the answer, Richard,” said she, as she gave it to the servant.

“Do you expect he will let you have some money, Lucy?” asked Lady Lendrick, as she heard the name.

“No; it was about something else I wrote. I’m quite sure he would not have given me money if I asked for it.”

“I wish I could, my dear Lucy; but I am miserably poor. Sir William, who was once the very soul of punctuality, has grown of late most neglectful. My last quarter is over-due two months. I must own all this has taken place since Dudley went to live at the Priory. I hear the expenses were something fabulous.”

“There was a great deal of waste; a great deal of mock splendor and real discomfort.”

“Is it true the wine bill was fifteen hundred pounds for the last year?”

“I think I heard it was something to that amount.”

“And four hundred for cigars?”

“No; that included pipes, and amber mouthpieces, and meerschaums for presents, – it rained presents!”

“And did Sir William make no remark or remonstrance about this?”

“I believe not. I rather think I heard that he liked it. They persuaded him that all these indiscretions, like his new wigs, and his rouge, and his embroidered waistcoats, made him quite juvenile, and that nothing made a man so youthful as living beyond his income.”

“It is easy enough to see how I was left in arrear; and you, dear, were you forgotten all this while and left without a shilling?”

“Oh, no; I could make as many debts as I pleased; and I pleased to make them, too, as they will discover one of these days. I never asked the price of anything, and therefore I enjoyed unlimited credit. If you remark, shopkeepers never dun the people who simply say, ‘Send that home.’ – How quickly you did your message, Richard! Have you brought an answer? Give it to me at once.”

She broke open the note with eager impatience, but it fell from her fingers as she read it, and she lay back almost fainting in her chair.

“Are you ill, dear, – are you faint?” asked Lady Len-drick.

“No; I ‘m quite well again. I was only provoked, – put out;” and she stooped and took up the letter. “I wrote to Mr. Kincaid to give me certain papers which were in his hands, and which I know Colonel Sewell would wish to have in his own keeping, and he writes me this: —

“Dear Madam, – I am sorry that it is not in my power to comply with the request of your note, inasmuch as the letters referred to were this morning handed over to Sir Brook Fossbrooke on his producing an order from Colonel Sewell to that intent. – I am, Madam, your most obedient servant,

“George Kincaid.”

“They were letters, then?”

“Yes, Lady Lendrick, they were letters,” said she, dryly, as she arose and walked to the window, to hide an agitation she could no longer subdue. After a few minutes she turned round and said, “You will let me stay here to-night?”

“Certainly, dear; of course I will.”

“But the children must be sent for, – I can’t suffer them to remain there. Will you send for them?”

“Yes; I ‘ll tell Rose to take the carriage and bring them over here.”

“This is very kind of you; I am most grateful. We shall not be a burden beyond to-morrow.”

“What do you mean to do?”

“To join my husband, as I told you awhile ago. Sir Brook Fossbrooke made that the condition of his assisting us.”

“What does he call assisting you?”

“Supporting us, – feeding, housing, clothing us; we shall have nothing but what he will give us.”

“That is very generous, indeed.”

“Yes; it is generous, – more generous than you dream of, for we did not always treat him very well; but that also is a bygone, and I ‘ll not return to it.”

“Come down and have some dinner, – it has been on the table this half-hour; it will be nigh cold by this.”

“Yes; I am quite ready. I’d like to eat, too, if I could. What a great resource it is to men in their dark hours that they can drink and smoke! I think I could do both to-day if I thought they would help me to a little insensibility.”

CHAPTER XXVII. PROJECTS

Trafford arrived from England on the evening after, and hastened off to Howth, where he found Sir Brook deeply engaged over the maps and plans of his new estate; for already the preliminaries had so far advanced that he could count upon it as his own.

“Look here, Trafford,” he cried, “and see what a noble extension we shall give to the old grounds of the Nest. The whole of this wood – eleven hundred and seventy acres – comes in, and this mountain down to that stream there is ours, as well as all these meadow-lands between the mountain and the Shannon, – one of the most picturesque estates it will be in the kingdom. If I were to have my own way, I ‘d rebuild the house. With such foliage – fine old timber much of it – there ‘s nothing would look better than one of those Venetian villas, those half-castellated buildings one sees at the foot of the mountains of Conigliano; and they are grand spacious places to live in, with wide stairs, and great corridors, and terraces everywhere. I see, however, Lendrick’s heart clings to his old cottage, and we must let him have his way.”

“What is this here?” asked Trafford, drawing out from the mass of papers the plan of a very pretty but very diminutive cottage.

“That’s to be mine. This window you see here will project over the river, and that little terrace will be carried on arches all along the river bank. I have designed everything, even to the furniture. You shall see a model cottage, Trafford; not one of those gingerbread things to be shown to strangers by ticket on Tuesdays or Saturdays, with a care-taker to be tipped, and a book to be scribbled full of vulgar praises of the proprietor, or doggerel ecstasies over some day of picnicking. But come and report yourself, – where have you been, and what have you done since I saw you?”

“I have a long budget for you. First of all, read that;” and he handed Sir Brook Sewell’s letter.

“What! do you mean to say that you met him?”

“No; I rejoice to say I have escaped that mischance; but you shall hear everything, and in as few words as I can tell it. I have already told you of Mrs. Sewell’s visit here, and I have not a word to add to that recital. I simply would say that I pledge my honor to the strict truth of everything I have told you. You may imagine, then, with what surprise I was awoke from my sleep to read that note. My first impression was to write him a full and explicit denial of what he laid to my charge; but as I read the letter over a third and even a fourth time, I thought I saw that he had written it on some sort of compulsion, – that, in fact, he had been instigated to the step, which was one he but partly concurred in. I do not like to say more on this head.”

“You need not. Go on.”

“I then deemed that the best thing to do was to let him have his shot, after which my explanation would come more forcibly; and as I had determined not to fire at him, he would be forced to see that he could not persist in his quarrel.”

“There you mistook your man,” cried Sir Brook, fiercely.

“I don’t think so; but you shall hear. We must have crossed over in the same packet, but we never met. Stanhope, who went with me, thought he saw him on the landing-slip at Holyhead, but was not quite sure. At all events, we reached the inn at the Head, and had just sat down to luncheon, when the waiter brought in this note, asking which of us was Major Trafford. Here it is: —

“‘Pray accept my excuses for having given you a rough sea passage; but, on second thoughts, I have satisfied myself that there is no valid reason why I should try to blow your brains out, “et pour si peu de chose.” As I can say without any vanity that I am a better pistol-shot than you, I have the less hesitation in taking a step which, as a man of honor and courage, you will certainly not misconstrue. With this assurance, and the not less strong conviction that my conduct will be safely treated in any representation you make of this affair, I am your humble and faithful servant,

“‘Dudley Sewell.’

“I don’t think I was ever so grateful to any man in the world as I felt to him on reading his note, since, let the event take what turn it might, it rendered my position with the Lendricks a most perilous one. I made Stanhope drink his health, which I own he did with a very bad grace, telling me at the same time what good luck it was for me that he had been my friend on the occasion, for that any man but himself would have thought me a regular poltroon. I was too happy to care for his sarcasms, such a load had been removed from my heart, and such terrible forebodings too.

“I started almost immediately for Holt, and got there by midnight. All were in bed, and my arrival was only known when I came down to breakfast. My welcome was all I could wish for. My father was looking well, and in great spirits. The new Ministry have offered him his choice of a Lordship of the Admiralty, or something else – I forget what; and just because he has a fine independent fortune and loves his ease, he is more than inclined to take office, one of his chief reasons being ‘how useful he could be to me.’ I must own to you frankly that the prospect of all these new honors to the family rather frightened than flattered me, for I thought I saw in them the seeds of more strenuous opposition to my marriage; but I was greatly relieved when my mother – who you may remember had been all my difficulty hitherto – privately assured me that she had brought my father round to her opinion, and that he was quite satisfied – I am afraid her word was reconciled, but no matter – reconciled to the match. I could see that you must have been frightening her terribly by some menaced exposure of the family pretensions, for she said over and over again, ‘Why is Sir Brook so angry with me? Can’t you manage to put him in better temper with us? I have scarcely had courage to open his letters of late. I never got such lectures in my life.’ And what a horrid memory you seem to have! She says she ‘d be afraid to see you. At all events, you have done me good service. They agree to everything; and we are to go on a visit to Holt, – such, at least, I believe to be the object of the letter which my mother has written to Lucy.”

“All this is excellent news, and we ‘ll announce it to-night at the Priory. As for the Sewell episode, we must not speak of it. The old Judge has at last found out the character of the man to whose confidence he committed himself, but his pride will prevent his ever mentioning his name.”

“Is there any rumor afloat as to the Chief’s advancement to the Peerage?”

“None, – so far as I have heard.”

“I ‘ll tell you why I ask. There is an old maiden aunt of mine, a sister of my father, who told me, in strictest confidence, that my father had brought back from town the news that Baron Lendrick was to be created a Peer; that it was somewhat of a party move to enable the present people to prosecute the charge against the late Government of injustice towards the Judge, as well as of a very shameful intrigue to obtain his retirement. Now, if the story were true, or if my mother believed it to be true, it would perfectly account for her satisfaction with the marriage, and for my father’s ‘resignation’!”

“I had hoped her consent was given on better grounds, but it may be as you say. Since I have turned miner, Trafford,” added he, laughing, “I am always well content if I discover a grain of silver in a bushel of dross, and let us take the world in the same patient way.”

“When do you intend to go to the Priory?”

“I thought of going this evening. I meant to devote the morning to these maps and drawings, so that I might master the details before I should show them to my friends at night.”

“Couldn’t that be deferred? I mean, is there anything against your going over at once? I ‘ll own to you I am very uneasy lest some incorrect version of this affair with Sewell should get abroad. Even without any malevolence there is plenty of mischief done by mere blundering, and I would rather anticipate than follow such disclosures.”

“I perceive,” said Sir Brook, musingly, as with longing eyes he looked over the colored plans and charts which strewed the table, and had for him all the charm of a romance.

“Then,” resumed Trafford, “Lucy should have my mother’s letter. It might be that she ought to reply to it at once.”

“Yes, I perceive,” mused Sir Brook again.

“I ‘m sure, besides, it would be very politic in you to keep up the good relations you have so cleverly established with the Chief; he holds so much to every show of attention, and is so flattered by every mark of polite consideration for him.”

“And for all these good reasons,” said Sir Brook, slowly, “you would say, we should set out at once. Arriving there, let us say, for luncheon, and being begged to stay and dine, – which we certainly should, – we might remain till, not impossibly, midnight.”

Perhaps it was the pleasure of such a prospect sent the blood to Trafford’s face, for he blushed very deeply as he said, “I don’t think, sir, I have much fault to find with your arrangement.”

“And yet the real reason for the plan remains unstated,” said Fossbrooke, looking him steadfastly in the face, “so true is what the Spanish proverb says, ‘Love has more perfidies than war.’ Why not frankly say you are impatient to see your sweetheart, sir? I would to Heaven the case were my own, and I ‘d not be afraid nor ashamed to avow it; but I yield to the plea, and let us be off there at once.”

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE END OF ALL

The following paragraph appeared in the Irish, and was speedily copied into some of the English papers: “An intrigue, which involves the character of more than one individual of rank, and whose object was to compel the Chief Baron of her Majesty’s Exchequer in Ireland to resign his seat on the Bench, has at length been discovered, and, it is said, will soon be made matter of Parliamentary explanation. We hope, for the reputation of our public men, that the details which have reached us of the transaction may not be substantiated; but the matter is one which demands, and must have, the fullest and most searching inquiry.”

“So, sir,” said the old Chief to Haire, who had read this passage to him aloud as they sat at breakfast, “they would make political capital of my case, and, without any thought for me or for my feelings, convert the conduct displayed towards me into a means of attacking a fallen party. What says Sir Brook Fossbrooke to this? or how would he act were he in my place?”

“Just as you mean to act now,” said Fossbrooke, promptly.

“And how may that be, sir?”

“By refusing all assistance to such party warfare; at least, my Lord Chief Baron, it is thus that I read your character.”

“You do me justice, sir; and it is my misfortune that I have not earlier had the inestimable benefit of your friendship. I trust,” added he, haughtily, “I have too much pride to be made the mere tool of a party squabble; and, fortunately, I have the means to show this. Here, sir, is a letter I have just received from the Prime Minister. Read it, – read it aloud, Haire and my son will like to hear its contents also.”

“Downing Street, Tuesday evening.

“My dear Lord Chief Baron, – It is with much pleasure I have to communicate to you that my colleagues unanimously agree with me in the propriety of submitting your name to the Queen for the Peerage. Your long and distinguished services and your great abilities will confer honor on any station; and your high character will give additional lustre to those qualities which have marked you out for her Majesty’s choice. I am both proud and delighted, my Lord, that it has fallen to my lot to be the bearer of these tidings to you; and with every assurance of my great respect and esteem, I am, most sincerely yours,

“Ellerton.”

“At last,” cried Haire, – “at last! But I always knew that it would come.”

“And what answer have you returned?” cried Lendrick, eagerly.

“Such an answer as will gladden your heart, Tom. I have declined the proffered distinction.”

“Declined it! Great God! and why?” cried Haire.

“Because I have passed that period in which I could accommodate myself to a new station, and show the world that I was not inferior to my acquired dignity. This for my first reason; and for my second, I have a son whose humility would only be afflicted if such greatness were forced upon him. Ay, Tom, I have thought of all it would cost you, my poor fellow, and I have spared you.”

“I thank you with my whole heart,” cried Lendrick, and he pressed the old man’s hand to his lips.

“And what says Lucy?” said the Judge. “Are you shocked at this epidemic of humility amongst us, child? Or does your woman’s heart rebel against all our craven fears about a higher station?”

“I am content, sir; and I don’t think Tom, the miner, will fret that he wears a leather cap instead of a coronet.”

“I have no patience with any of you,” muttered Haire. “The world will never believe you have refused such a splendid offer. The correspondence will not get abroad.”

“I trust it will not, sir,” said the Chief. “What I have done I have done with regard to myself and my own circumstances, neither meaning to be an example nor a warning. The world has no more concern with the matter than with what we shall have for dinner to-day.”

“And yet,” said Sir Brook, with a dry ripple at the angle of his mouth, “I think it is a case where one might forgive the indiscreet friend” – here he glanced at Haire – “who incautiously gave the details to a newspaper.”

“Indiscreet or not, I’ll do it,” said Haire, resolutely.

“What, sir!” cried the Chief, with mock sternness of eye and manner, – “what, sir! if I even forbade you?”

“Ay, even so. If you told me you’d shut your door against me, and never see me here again, I ‘d do it.”

“Look at that man, Sir Brook,” said the Judge, with well-feigned indignation; “he was my schoolfellow, my chum in college, my colleague at the Bar, and my friend everywhere, and see how he turns on me in my hour of adversity!”

“If there be adversity, it is of your own making,” said Haire. “It is that you won’t accept the prize when you have won it.”

“I see it all now,” cried the Chief, laughing, “and stupid enough of me not to see it before. Haire has been a bully all his life; he is the very terror of the Hall; he has bullied sergeants and silk gowns, judges and masters in equity, and his heart is set upon bullying a peer of the realm. Now, if I will not become a lord, he loses this chance; he stands to win or lose on me. Out with it, Haire; make a clean confession, and own, have I not hit the blot?”

“Well,” said Haire, with a sigh, “I have been called sly, sarcastic, witty, and what not, but I never thought to hear that I was a bully, or could be a terror to any one.”

The comic earnestness of this speech threw them all into a roar of laughing, in which even Haire himself joined at last.

“Where is Lucy?” cried the old Judge. “I want her to testify how this man has tyrannized over me.”

“Lucy has gone into the garden to read a letter Trafford brought her.” Sir Brook did not add that Trafford had gone with her to assist in the interpretation.

“I have told Lord Ellerton,” said the Chief, referring once more to the Minister’s letter, “that I will not lend myself in any way to the attack on the late Government. The intrigue which they planned towards me could not have ever succeeded if they had not found a traitor in the garrison; but of him I will speak no more. The old Greek adage was, ‘Call no man happy till he dies.’ I would say, he is nearer happiness when he has refused some object that has been the goal of all his life, than he is ever like to be under other circumstances.”

Tom looked at his father with wistful eyes, as though he owed him gratitude for the speech.

“When it is the second horse claims the cup, Haire,” cried the old Judge, with a burst of his instinctive vanity, “it is because the first is disqualified by previous victories. And now let us talk of those whose happiness can be promoted without the intrigues of a Cabinet or a debate in the House. Sir Brook tells me that Lady Trafford has made her submission. She is at last willing to see that in an alliance with us there is no need to call condescension to her aid.”