Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume II.

He read the letter from beginning to end, and then re-read it. He saw there were many allusions to which he had no clew; but there was a tone in it which there was no mistaking, and that tone was treachery. The way in which the writer deprecated all possible criticism of her life, at the outset, showed how sensitive she was to such remark, and how conscious of being open to it. Tom knew enough of life to be aware that the people who affect to brave the world are those who are past defying it. So far at least he felt he had read her truly; but he had to confess to himself that beyond this it was not easy to advance.

On the second reading, however, all appeared more clear and simple. It was the perfidious apology of a treacherous woman for a wrong which she had hoped, but had not been able, to inflict. “I see it all,” cried Tom; “her jealousy has been stimulated by discovering Trafford’s love for Lucy, and this is her revenge. It is just possible, too, she may have entangled him. There are meshes that men can scarcely keep free of. Trafford may have witnessed the hardship of her daily life – seen the indignities to which she submits – and possibly pitied her; if he has gone no further than this, there is no great mischief. What a clever creature she must be!” thought he again, – “how easy it ought to be for a woman like that to make a husband adore her; and yet these women will not be content with that. Like the cheats at cards, they don’t care to win by fair play.” He went to the door, and called out “Lucy!”

The tone of his voice sounded cheerily, and she came on the instant.

“How did you meet after this?” asked he, as she entered.

“We have not met since that. I left the Priory, and came abroad three days after I received it.”

“So then that was the secret of the zeal to come out and nurse poor brother Tom, eh?” said he, laughing.

“You know well if it was,” said she, as her eyes swam in tears.

“No, no, my poor dear Lu, I never thought so; and right glad am I to know that you are not to live in companionship with the woman who wrote that letter.”

“You think ill of her?”

“I will not tell you half how badly I think of her; but Trafford is as much wronged here as any one, or else I am but a sorry decipherer of mysterious signs.”

“Oh, Tom!” cried she, clasping his hand and looking at him as though she yearned for one gleam of hope.

“It is so that I read it; but I do not like to rely upon my own sole judgment in such a case. Will you trust me with this letter, and will you let me show it to Sir Brooke? He is wonderfully acute in tracing people’s real meaning through all the misty surroundings of expression. I will go over to Cagliari at once, and see him. If all be as I suspect, I will bring them back with me. If Sir Brook’s opinion be against mine, I will believe him to be the wiser man, and come back alone.”

“I consent to everything, Tom, if you will give me but one pledge, – you must give it seriously, solemnly.”

“I guess what you mean, Lucy; your anxious face has told the story without words. You are afraid of my hot temper. You think I will force a quarrel on Trafford, – yes, I knew what was in your thoughts. Well, on my honor I will not. This I promise you faithfully.”

She threw herself into his arms and kissed him, muttering, in a low voice, “My own dear brother,” in his ear.

“It is just as likely you may see me back again tomorrow, Lucy, and alone too. Mind that, girl! The version I have taken of this letter may turn out to be all wrong. Sir Brook may show me how and where and why I have mistaken it; and if so, Lu, I must have a pledge from you, – you know what I mean.”

“You need none, Tom,” said she, proudly; “you shall not be ashamed of your Sister.”

“That was said like yourself, and I have no fears about you now. You will be anxious – you can’t help being anxious, my poor child – about all this; but your uncertainty shall be as short as I can make it. Look out for me, at all events, with the evening breeze. I’ll try and catch the land-wind to take me up. If I fly no ensign, Lucy, I am alone; if you see the ‘Jack,’ it will mean I have company with me. Do you understand me?”

She nodded, but did not speak.

“Now, Lu, I’ll just get my traps together, and be off; that light Tramontana wind will last till daybreak, and by that time the sea-breeze will carry me along pleasantly. How I ‘d like to have you with me!”

“It is best as it is, Tom,” said she, trying to smile.

“And if all goes wrong, – I mean if all does not go right, – Lucy, I have got a plan, and I am sure Sir Brook won’t oppose it. We ‘ll just pack up, wish the lead and the cobalt and the rest of it a good-bye, and start for the Cape and join father. There’s a project after your own heart, girl.”

“Oh, Tom dearest, if we could do that!”

“Think over it till we meet again, and it will at least keep away darker thoughts.”

CHAPTER II. BY THE MINE AT LA VANNA

The mine of Lavanna, on which Sir Brook had placed all his hopes of future fortune, was distant from the town of Cagliari about eighteen miles. It was an old, a very old shaft; Livy had mentioned it, and Pliny, in one of his letters, compares people of sanguine and hopeful temperament with men who believe in the silver ore of Lavanna. There had therefore been a traditionary character of failure attached to the spot, and not impossibly this very circumstance had given it a greater value in Fossbrooke’s estimation; for he loved a tough contest with fortune, and his experiences had given him many such.

Popular opinion certainly set down the mine as a disastrous enterprise, and the list of those who had been ruined by the speculation was a long one. Nothing daunted by all he had heard, and fully convinced in his own mind that his predecessors had earned their failures by their own mistakes, Fossbrooke had purchased the property many years before, and there it had remained, like many of his other acquisitions, uncared for and unthought of, till the sudden idea had struck him that he wanted to be rich, and to be rich instantaneously.

He had coffee-plantations somewhere in Ceylon, and he had purchased largely of land in Canada; but to utilize either of these would be a work of time, whereas the mine would yield its metal bright and ready for the market. It was so much actual available money at once.

His first care was to restore, so far as to make it habitable, a dreary old ruinous barrack of a house, which a former speculator had built to hold all his officials and dependants. A few rooms that opened on a tumble-down terrace – of which some marble urns yet remained to bear witness of former splendor – were all that Sir Brook could manage to make habitable, and even these would have seemed miserable and uncomfortable to any one less bent on “roughing it” than himself.

Some guns and fishing-gear covered one wall of the room that served as dinner-room; and a few rude shelves on the opposite side contained such specimens of ore as were yet discovered, and the three or four books which formed their library; the space over the chimney displaying a sort of trophy of pipes of every sort and shape, from the well-browned meerschaum to the ignoble “dudeen” of Irish origin.

These were the only attempts at decoration they had made, but it was astonishing with what pleasure the old man regarded them, and with what pride he showed the place to such as accidentally came to see him.

“I’ll have a room yet, just arrayed in this fashion, Tom,” would he say, “when we have made our fortune, and go back to live in England. I ‘ll have a sort of snuggery a correct copy of this; all the old beams in the ceiling, and those great massive architraves round the doors, shall be exactly followed, and the massive stone mantelpiece; and it will remind us, as we sit there of a winter’s night, of the jolly evenings we have had here after a hard day’s work in the shaft. Won’t I have the laugh at you, Tom, too, as I tell you of the wry face you used to make over our prospects, the hang-dog look you ‘d give when the water was gaining on us, and our new pump got choked!”

Tom would smile at all this, though secretly nourishing no such thoughts for the future. Indeed, he had for many a day given up all hope of making his fortune as a miner, and merely worked on with the dogged determination not to desert his friend.

On one of the large white walls of their sitting-room Sir Brook had sketched in charcoal a picture of the mine, in all the dreariest aspect of its poverty, and two sad-looking men, Tom and himself, working at the windlass over the shaft; and at the other extremity of the space there stood a picturesque mansion, surrounded with great forest trees, under which deer were grouped, and two men – the same – were riding up the approach on mettlesome horses; the elder of the two, with outstretched arm and hand, evidently directing his companion’s attention to the rich scenes through which they passed. These were the “now” and “then” of the old man’s vision, and he believed in them, as only those believe who draw belief from their own hearts, unshaken by all without.

It was at the close of a summer day, just in that brief moment when the last flicker of light tinges the earth at first with crimson and then with deep blue, to give way a moment later to black night, that Sir Brook sat with Colonel Cave after dinner, explaining to his visitor the fresco on the wall, and giving, so far as he might, his reasons to believe it a truthful foreshadowing of the future.

“But you tell me,” said Cave, “that the speculation has proved the ruin of a score of fellows.”

“So it has. Did you ever hear of the enterprise, at least of one worth the name, that had not its failures? or is success anything more in reality than the power of reasoning out how and why others have succumbed, and how to avoid the errors that have beset them? The men who embarked in this scheme were alike deficient in knowledge and in capital.”

“Ah, indeed!” muttered Cave, who did not exactly say what his looks implied. “Are you their superior in these requirements?”

Sir Brook was quick enough to note the expression, and hastily said, “I have not much to boast of myself in these respects, but I possess that which they never had, – that without which men accomplish nothing in life, going through the world mere desultory ramblers, and not like sturdy pilgrims, ever footing onward to the goal of their ambition. I have Faith!”

“And young Lendrick, what says he to it?”

“He scarcely shares my hopes, but he shows no signs of backwardness.”

“He is not sanguine, then?”

“Nature did not make him so, and a man can no more alter his temperament than his stature. I began life with such a capital of confidence that, though I have been an arrant spendthrift, I have still a strong store by me. The cunning fellows laugh at us and call us dupes; but let me tell you, Cave, if accounts were squared, it might turn out that even as a matter of policy incredulity has not much to boast of, and were it not so, this world would be simply intolerable.”

“I’d like, however, to hear that your mine was not all outlay,” said Cave, bringing back the theme to its starting-point.

“So should I,” said Fossbrooke, dryly.

“And I ‘d like to learn that some one more conversant – more professional in these matters – ”

“Less ignorant than myself, in a word,” said Fossbrooke, laughing. “You mean you’d like to hear a more trustworthy prophet predict as favorably; and with all that I agree heartily.”

“There’s no one would be better pleased to be certain that the fine palace on the wall there was not a castle in Spain. I think you know that.”

“I do, Cave, – I know it well; but bear in mind, your best runs in the hunting-field have not always been when you have killed your fox. The pursuit, when it is well sustained, with its fair share of perils met, dared, and overcome, – this is success. Whatever keeps a man’s heart up and his courage high to the end, is no mean thing. I own to you I hope to win, and I don’t know that there is any such failure possible as would quench this hope.”

“Just what Trafford said of you when he came back from that fishing-excursion,” cried Cave, as though carried away by a sudden burst of thought.