The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

“Our curate here,” replied Colonel Bramleigh, smiling. “An excellent fellow, and a very agreeable neighbor.”

“Our only one, by Jove!” cried Jack.

“How gallant to forget Julia!” said Nelly, tartly.

“And the fair Julia, – who is she?” asked Lord Culduff.

“L’Estrange’s sister,” replied Augustus.

“And now, my Lord,” chimed in Jack, “you know the whole neighborhood, if we don’t throw in a cross-grained old fellow, a half-pay lieutenant of the Buffs.”

“Small but select,” said Lord Culduff, quietly. “May I venture to ask you, Colonel Bramleigh, what determined you in your choice of a residence here?”

“I suppose I must confess it was mainly a money consideration. The bank held some rather heavy mortgages over this property, which they were somewhat disposed to consider as capable of great improvement, and as I was growing a little wearied of City life, I fancied I ‘d come over here and – ”

“Regenerate Ireland, eh?”

“Or, at least, live very economically,” added he, laughing.

“I may be permitted to doubt that part of the experiment,” said Lord Culduff, as his eyes ranged over the table, set forth in all the splendor that plate and glass could bestow.

“I suspect papa means a relative economy,” said Marion, “something very different from our late life in England.”

“Yes, my last three years have been very costly ones,” said Colonel Bramleigh, sighing. “I lost heavily by the sale of Earlshope, and my unfortunate election, too, was an expensive business. It will take some retrenchment to make up for all this. I tell the boys they’ll have to sell their hunters, or be satisfied, like the parson, to hunt one day a week.” The self-complacent, mock humility of this speech was all too apparent.

“I take it,” said Culduff, authoritatively, “that every gentleman” – and he laid a marked emphasis on the “gentleman” – “must at some period or the other of his life have spent more money than he ought – more than was subsequently found to be convenient.”

“I have repeatedly done so,” broke in Cutbill, “and invariably been sorry for it afterwards, inasmuch as each time one does it the difficulty increases.”

“Harder to get credit, you mean?” cried Jack, laughing.

“Just so; and one’s friends get tired of helping one. Just as they told me, there was a fellow at Blackwall used to live by drowning himself. He was regularly fished up once a week, and stomach-pumped and ‘cordialled’ and hot-blanketed, and brought round by the Humane Society’s people, till at last they came to discover the dodge, and refused to restore him any more; and now he’s reduced to earn his bread as a water-bailiff – cruel hard on a fellow of such an ingenious turn of mind.”

While the younger men laughed at Cutbill’s story, Lord Culduff gave him a reproving glance from the other end of the table, palpably intended to recall him to a more sedate and restricted conviviality.

“Are we not to accompany you?” said Lord Culduff to Marion, as she and her sister arose to retire. “Is this barbarism of sitting after dinner maintained here?”

“Only till we finish this decanter of claret, my Lord,” said Colonel Bramleigh, who caught what was not intended for his ears.

“Ask the governor to give you a cigar,” whispered Jack to Cutbill; “he has some rare Cubans.”

“Now, this is what I call regular jolly,” said Cutbill, as he drew a small spider table to his side, and furnished himself with a glass and a decanter of Madeira, “and,” added he in a whisper to Jack, “let us not be in a hurry to leave it. We only want one thing to be perfect, Colonel Bramleigh.”

“If I can only supply it, pray command me, Mr. Cutbill.”

“I want this, then,” said Cutbill, pursing up his mouth at one side, while he opened the other as if to emit the smoke of a cigar.

“Do you mean smoking?” asked Colonel Bramleigh, in a half-irritable tone.

“You have it.”

“Are you a smoker, my Lord?” asked the host, turning to Lord Culduff.

“A very moderate one. A cigarette after breakfast, and another at bed time, are about my excesses in that direction.”

“Then I’m afraid I must defraud you of the full measure of your enjoyment, Mr. Cutbill; we never smoke in the dining-room. Indeed, I myself have a strong aversion to tobacco, and though I have consented to build a smoking-room, it is as far off from me as I have been able to contrive it.”

“And what about his choice Cubans, eh?” whispered Cutbill to Jack.

“All hypocrisy. You’ll find a box of them in your dressing-room,” said Jack, in an undertone, “when you go upstairs.”

Temple now led his distinguished friend into those charming pasturages where the flocks of diplomacy love to dwell, and where none other save themselves could find herbage. Nor was it amongst great political events, of peace or war, alliances or treaties, they wandered – for perhaps in these the outer world, taught as they are by newspapers, might have taken some interest and some share. No; their talk was all of personalities, of Russian princes and grandees of Spain, archduchesses and “marchesas,” whose crafts and subtleties, and pomps and vanities, make up a world like no other world, and play a drama of life – happily it may be for humanity – like no other drama that other men and women ever figured in. Now it is a strange fact – and I appeal to my readers if their experience will not corroborate mine – that when two men thoroughly versed in these themes will talk together upon them, exchanging their stories and mingling their comments, the rest of the company will be struck with a perfect silence, unable to join in the subject discussed, and half ashamed to introduce any ordinary matter into such high and distinguished society. And thus Lord Culduff and Temple went on for full an hour or more, pelting each other with little court scandals and small state intrigues, till Colonel Bramleigh fell asleep, and Cutbill, having finished his Madeira, would probably have followed his host’s example, when a servant announced tea, adding, in a whisper, that Mr. L’Estrange and his sister were in the drawing-room.

CHAPTER IX. OVER THE FIRE

In a large room, comfortably furnished, but in which there was a certain blending of the articles of the drawing-room with those of the dining-room, showing unmistakably the bachelor character of the owner, sat two young men at opposite sides of an ample fireplace. One sat, or rather reclined, on a small leather sofa, his bandaged leg resting on a pillow, and his pale and somewhat shrunken face evidencing the results of pain and confinement to the house. His close-cropt head and square-cut beard, and a certain mingled drollery and fierceness in the eyes, proclaimed him French, and so M. Anatole Pracontal was; though it would have been difficult to declare as much from his English, which he spoke with singular purity and the very faintest peculiarity of accent.

Opposite him sat a tall well-built man of about thirty-four or five, with regular and almost handsome features, marred, indeed, in expression by the extreme closeness of the eyes, and a somewhat long upper lip, which latter defect an incipient moustache was already concealing. The color of his hair was, however, that shade of auburn which verges on red, and is so commonly accompanied by a much freckled skin. This same hair, and hands and feet almost enormous in size, were the afflictions which imparted bitterness to a lot which many regarded as very enviable in life; for Mr. Philip Longworth was his own master, free to go where he pleased, and the owner of a very sufficient fortune. He had been brought up at Oscot, and imbibed, with a very fair share of knowledge, a large stock of that general mistrust and suspicion which is the fortune of those entrusted to priestly teaching, and which, though he had travelled largely and mixed freely with the world, still continued to cling to his manner, which might be characterized by the one word – furtive.

Longworth had only arrived that day for dinner, and the two friends were now exchanging their experience since they had parted some eight months before at the second cataract of the Nile.

“And so, Pracontal, you never got one of my letters?”

“Not one, – on my honor. Indeed, if it were not that I learned by a chance meeting with a party of English tourists at Cannes that they had met you at Cairo, I ‘d have begun to suspect you had taken a plunge into the Nile, or into Mohammedom, for which latter you were showing some disposition, you remember, when we parted.”

“True enough; and if one was sure never to turn westward again, there are many things in favor of the turban. It is the most sublime conception of egotism possible to imagine.”

“Egotism is a mistake, mon cher,” said the other; “a man’s own heart, make it as comfortable as he may, is too small an apartment to live in. I do not say this in any grand benevolent spirit. There ‘s no humbug of philanthropy in the opinion.”

“Of that I ‘m fully assured,” said Longworth, with a gravity which made the other laugh.

“No,” continued he, still laughing. “I want a larger field, a wider hunting-ground for my diversion than my own nature.”

“A disciple, in fact, of your great model, Louis Napoleon. You incline to annexations. By the way, how fares it with your new projects? Have you seen the lawyer I gave you the letter to?”

“Yes. I stayed eight days in town to confer with him. I heard from him this very day.”

“Well, what says he?”

“His letter is a very savage one. He is angry with me for having come here at all; and particularly angry because I have broken my leg, and can’t come away.”

“What does he think of your case, however?”

“He thinks it manageable. He says – as of course I knew he would say – that it demands most cautious treatment and great acuteness. There are blanks, historical blanks, to be filled up; links to connect, and such like, which will demand some time and some money. I have told him I have an inexhaustible supply of the one, but for the other I am occasionally slightly pinched.”

“It promises well, however?”

“Most hopefully. And when once I have proved myself – not always so easy as it seems – the son of my father, I am to go over and see him again in consultation.”