Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume I.
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“They have lived very happily together.”
“Of course they have. They didn’t ‘go in,’ as the speculators say, for enormous profits; they realized very fairly, and were satisfied. I wish her handwriting had been more cared for. What’s this she says here about a subscription?”
“That ‘s supervision, – the supervision of a parent.”
“Supervision of a fiddlestick! the fellow is six feet one inch high, and seven-and-twenty years of age; he’s quite beyond supervision. Ah! brought back all his father’s gout, has he? When will people begin to admit that their own tempers have something to say to their maladies? I curse the cook who made the mulligatawny, but I forget that I ate two platefuls of it. So it’s the doctor’s daughter she objects to. I wish she saw her. I wish you saw her, Cave. You are an old frequenter of courts and drawing-rooms. I tell you you have seen nothing like this doctor’s daughter since Laura Bedingfield was presented, and that was before your day.”
“Every one has heard of the Beauty Bedingfield; but she was my mother’s contemporary.”
“Well, sir, her successors have not eclipsed her! This doctor’s daughter, as your correspondent calls her, is the only rival of her that I have ever seen. As to wit and accomplishments, Laura could not compete with Lucy Lendrick.”
“You know her, then?” asked the Colonel; and then added, “Tell me something about the family.”
“With your leave, I will finish this letter first. Ah! here we have the whole secret. Lionel Trafford is likely to be that precious prize, an eldest son. Who could have thought that the law of entail could sway a mother’s affections? ‘Contract no ties inconsistent with his station.’ This begins to be intolerable, Cave. I don’t think I can go on.”
“Yes, yes; read it through.”
“She asks you if you know any one who knows these Hendrichs or Lendrichs; tell her that you do; tell her that your friend is one of those men who have seen a good deal of life, heard more, too, than he has seen. She will understand that, and that his name is Sir Brook Fossbrooke, who, if needed, will think nothing of a journey over to Lincolnshire to afford her all the information she could wish for. Say this, Cave, and take my word for it, she will put very few more questions to you.”
“That would be to avow I had already consulted with you. No, no; I must not do that.”
“The wind-up of the epistle is charming. ‘I have certainly no reason to love Ireland.’ Poor Ireland! here is another infliction upon you. Let us hope you may never come to know that Lady Trafford cannot love you.”
“Come, come, Fossbrooke, be just, be fair; there is nothing so very unreasonable in the anxiety of a mother that her son, who will have a good name and a large estate, should not share them both with a person beneath him.”
“Why must she assume that this is the case, – why take it for granted that this girl must be beneath him? I tell you, sir, if a prince of the blood had fallen in love with her, it would be a reason to repeal the Royal Marriage Act.”
“I declare, Fossbrooke, I shall begin to suspect that your own heart has not escaped scathless,” said Cave, laughing.
The old man’s face became crimson, but not with anger. As suddenly it grew pale; and in a voice of deep agitation he said, “When an old man like myself lays his homage at her feet, it is not hard to believe how a young man might love her.”
“How did you come to make this acquaintance?” said Cave, anxious to turn the conversation into a more familiar channel.
“We chanced to fail in with her brother on the river. We found him struggling with a fish far too large for his tackle, and which at last smashed his rod and got away. He showed not alone that he was a perfect angler, but that he was a fine-tempered fellow, who accepted his defeat manfully and well; he had even a good word for his enemy, sir, and it was that which attracted me. Trafford and he, young-men-like, soon understood each other; he came into our boat, lunched with us, and asked us home with him to tea. There ‘s the whole story. As to the intimacy that followed, it was mostly my own doing. I own to you I never so much as suspected that Trafford was smitten by her; he was always with her brother, scarcely at all in her company; and when he came to tell me he was in love, I asked him how he caught the malady, for I never saw him near the infection. Once that I knew of the matter, however, I made him write home to his family.”
“It was by your advice, then, that he wrote that letter?”
“Certainly; I not only advised, I insisted on it, – I read it, too, before it was sent off. It was such a letter as, if I had been the young fellow’s father, would have made me prouder than to hear he had got the thanks of Parliament.”
“You and I, Fossbrooke, are old bachelors; we are scarcely able to say what we should have done if we had had sons.”
“I am inclined to believe it would have made us better, not worse,” said Fossbrooke, gravely.
“At all events, as it was at your instigation this letter was written, I can’t well suggest your name as an impartial person in the transaction, – I mean, as one who can be referred to for advice or information.”
“Don’t do so, sir, or I shall be tempted to say more than may be prudent. Have you never noticed, Cave, the effect that a doctor’s presence produces in the society of those who usually consult him, – the reserve, – the awkwardness, – the constraint, – the apologetic tone for this or that little indiscretion, – the sitting in the draught or the extra glass of sherry? So is it, but in a far stronger degree, when an old man of the world like myself comes back amongst those he formerly lived with, – one who knew all their past history, how they succeeded here, how they failed there, – what led the great man of fashion to finish his days in a colony, and why the Court beauty married a bishop. Ah, sir, we are the physicians who have all these secrets in our keeping. It is ours to know what sorrow is covered by that smile, how that merry laugh has but smothered the sigh of a heavy heart. It is only when a man has lived to my age, with an unfailing memory too, that he knows the real hollowness of life, – all the combinations falsified, all the hopes blighted, – the clever fellows that have turned out failures, or worse than failures, – the lovely women that have made shipwreck through their beauty. It is not only, however, that he knows this, but he knows how craft and cunning have won where ability and frankness have lost, – how intrigue and trick have done better than genius and integrity. With all this knowledge, sir, in their heads, and stout hearts within them, such men as myself have their utility in life. They are a sort of walking conscience that cannot be ignored. The railroad millionnaire talks less boastfully before him who knew him as an errand-boy; the grande dame is less superciliously insolent in the presence of one who remembered her in a very different character. Take my word for it, Cave, Nestor may have been a bit of a bore amongst the young Greeks of fashion, but he had his utility too.”
“But how am I to answer this letter? What advice shall I give her?”
“Tell her frankly that you have made the inquiry she wished; that the young lady, who is as well born as her son, is without fortune, and if her personal qualities count for nothing, would be what the world would call a ‘bad match.’”
“Yes, that sounds practicable. I think that will do.”
“Tell her, also, that if she seriously desires that her son should continue in the way of that reformation he has so ardently followed for some time back, and especially so since he has made the acquaintance of this family, such a marriage as this would give her better reasons for confidence than all her most crafty devices in match-making and settlements.”
“I don’t think I can exactly tell her that,” said Caver smiling.
“Tell her, then, that if this connection be not to her liking, to withdraw her son at once from this neighborhood before this girl should come to care for him; for if she should, by heavens! he shall marry her, if every acre of the estate were to go to a cousin ten times removed!”
“Were not these people all strangers to you t’ other day, Fossbrooke?” said Cave, in something like a tone of reprehension.
“So they were. I had never so much as heard of them; but she, this girl, has a claim upon my interest, founded on a resemblance so strong that when I see her, I live back again in the long past, and find myself in converse with the dearest friends I ever had. I vow to Heaven I never knew the bitterness of want of fortune till now! I never felt how powerless and insignificant poverty can make a man till I desired to contribute to this girl’s happiness; and if I were not an old worthless wreck, – shattered and unseaworthy, – I ‘d set to work to-morrow to refit and try to make a fortune to bestow on her.”
If Cave was half disposed to banter the old man on what seemed little short of a devoted attachment, the agitation of Fossbrooke’s manner – his trembling lip, his shaking voice, his changing color – all warned him to forbear, and abstain from what might well have proved a perilous freedom.
“You will dine with us at mess, Fossbrooke, won’t you?”
“No; I shall return at once to Killaloe. I made Dr. Lendrick’s acquaintance just as I started by the train. I want to see more of him. Besides, now that I know what was the emergency that called young Trafford up here, I have nothing to detain me.”
“Shall you see him before you go?”
“Of course. I am going over to his quarters now.”
“You will not mention our conversation?”
“Certainly not.”
“I ‘d like to show you my letter before I send it off. I ‘d be glad to think it was what you recommended.”
“Write what you feel to be a fair statement of the case, and if by any chance an inclination to partiality crosses you, let it be in favor of the young. Take my word for it, Cave, there is a selfishness in age that needs no ally. Stand by the sons; the fathers and mothers will take care of themselves. Good-bye.”
CHAPTER XII. A GREAT MAN’S SCHOOLFELLOW
Whether it was that the Chief Baron had thrown off an attack which had long menaced him, and whose slow approaches had gradually impaired his strength and diminished his mental activity, or whether, as some of his “friends” suggested, that the old man’s tenure of life had been renewed by the impertinences of the newspapers and the insolent attacks of political foes, – an explanation not by any means far-fetched, – whatever the cause, he came out of his illness with all the signs of renewed vigor, and with a degree of mental acuteness that he had not enjoyed for many years before.
“Beattie tells me that this attack has inserted another life in my lease,” said he; “and I am glad of it. It is right that the men who speculated on my death should be reminded of the uncertainty of life by the negative proof. It is well, too, that there should be men long-lived enough to bridge over periods of mediocrity, and connect the triumphs of the past with the coming glories of the future. We are surely not destined to a perpetuity of Pendletons and Fitzgibbons?”
It was thus he discoursed to an old legal comrade, – who, less gifted and less fortunate, still wore his stuff gown, and pleaded for the outer bar, – poor old Billy Haire, the dreariest advocate, and one of the honestest fellows that ever carried his bag into court. While nearly all of his contemporaries had risen to rank and eminence, Billy toiled on through life with small success, liked by his friends, respected by the world, but the terror of attorneys, who only saw in him the type of adverse decisions and unfavorable verdicts.
For forty-odd years had he lived a life that any but himself would have deemed martyrdom, – his law laughed at, his eloquence ridiculed, his manner mimicked, jeered at by the bench, quizzed by the bar, sneered at by the newspapers, every absurd story tagged to his name, every stupid blunder fathered on him, till at last, as it were, by the mere force of years, the world came to recognize the incomparable temper that no provocation had ever been able to irritate, the grand nature that rose above all resentment, and would think better of its fellows than these moods of spiteful wit or impertinent drollery might seem to entitle them to.
The old Judge liked him; he liked his manly simplicity of character, his truthfulness, and his honesty; but perhaps more than all these, did he like his dulness. It was so pleasant to him to pelt this poor heavy man with smart epigrams and pungent sarcasms on all that was doing in the world, and see the hopeless effort he made to follow him.
Billy, too, had another use; he alone, of all the Chief Baron’s friends, could tell him what was the current gossip of the hall, – what men thought, or at least what they said of him. The genuine simplicity of Haire’s nature gave to his revelations a character so devoid of all spitefulness, – it was so evident that, in repeating, he never identified himself with his story that Lendrick would listen to words from him that, coming from another, his resentment would have repelled with indignation.
“And you tell me that the story now is, my whole attack was nothing but temper?” said the old Judge, as the two men walked slowly up and down on the grass lawn before the door.
“Not that exactly; but they say that constitutional irritability had much to say to it.”
“It was, in fact, such a seizure as, with a man like yourself, would have been a mere nothing.”
“Perhaps so.”
“I am sure of it, sir; and what more do they say?”
“All sorts of things, which, of course, they know nothing about. Some have it that you refused the peerage, others that it was not offered.”
“Ha!” said the old man, irritably, while a faint flush tinged his cheek.
“They say, too,” continued Haire, “that when the Viceroy informed you that you were not to be made a peer, you said: ‘Let the Crown look to it, then. The Revenue cases all come to my court; and so long as I sit there, they shall never have a verdict.’”
“You must have invented that yourself, Billy,” said the Judge, with a droll malice in his eye. “Come, confess it is your own. It is so like you.”
“No, on my honor,” said the other, solemnly.
“Not that I would take it ill, Haire, if you had. When a man has a turn for epigram, his friends must extend their indulgence to the humor.”
“I assure you, positively, it is not mine.”
“That is quite enough; let us talk of something else. By the way, I have a letter to show you. I put it in my pocket this morning, to let you see it; but, first of all, I must show you the writer, – here she is.” He drew forth a small miniature case, and, opening it, handed it to the other.
“What a handsome girl! downright beautiful!”
“My granddaughter, sir,” said the old man, proudly.
“I declare, I never saw a lovelier face,” said Haire. “She must be a rare cheat if she be not as good as she is beautiful. What a sweet mouth!”
“The brow is fine; there is a high intelligence about the eyes and the temples.”
“It is the smile, that little lurking smile, that captivates me. What may her age be?”
“Something close on twenty. Now for her letter. Read that.”
While Haire perused the letter, the old Judge sauntered away, looking from time to time at the miniature, and muttering some low inaudible words as he went.
“I don’t think I understand it. I am at a loss to catch what she is drifting at,” said Haire, as he finished the first side of the letter. “What is she so grateful for?”
“You think the case is one which calls for little gratitude, then. What a sarcastic mood you are in this morning, Haire!” said the Judge, with a malicious twinkle of the eye. “Still, there are young ladies in the world who would vouchsafe to bear me company in requital for being placed at the head of such a house as this.”
“I can make nothing of it,” said the other, hopelessly.
“The case is this,” said the Judge, as he drew his arm within the other’s. “Tom Lendrick has beeu offered a post of some value – some value to a man poor as he is – at the Cape. I have told him that his acceptance in no way involves me. I have told those who have offered the place that I stand aloof in the whole negotiation, – that in their advancement of my son they establish no claim upon me, I have even said I will know nothing whatever of the incident.” He paused for some minutes, and then went on: “I have told Tom, however, if his circumstances were such as to dispose him to avail himself of this offer, that – until he assured himself that the place was one to his liking, that it gave a reasonable prospect of permanence, that the climate was salubrious, and the society not distasteful – I would take his daughter to live with me.”
“He has a son, too, has n’t he?”
“He has, sir, and he fain would have induced me to take him instead of the girl; but this I would not listen to. I have not nerves for the loud speech and boisterous vitality of a young fellow of four or five and twenty. His very vigor would be a standing insult to me, and the fellow would know it. When men come to my age, they want a mild atmosphere in morals and manners, as well as in climate. My son’s physiology has not taught him this, doctor though he be.”
“I see, – I see it all now,” said Haire; “and the girl, though sorry to be separated from her father, is gratified by the thought of becoming a tie between him and you.”
“That is not in the record, sir,” said the Judge, sternly. “Keep to your brief.” He took the letter sharply from the other’s hand as he spoke. “My granddaughter has not had much experience of life; but her woman’s tact has told her that her real difficulty – her only one, perhaps – will be with Lady Lendrick. She cannot know that Lady Lendrick’s authority in this house is nothing, – less than nothing. I would never have invited her to come here, had it been otherwise.”
“Have you apprised Lady Lendrick of this arrangement?”
“No, sir; nor shall I. it shall be for you to do that ‘officiously,’ as the French say, to distinguish from what is called ‘officially.’ I mean you to call upon her and say, in the course of conversation, informally, accidentally, that Miss Lendrick’s arrival at the Priory has been deferred, or that it is fixed for such a date, – in fact, sir, whatever your own nice tact may deem the neatest mode of alluding to the topic, leaving to her the reply. You understand me?”
“I ‘m not so sure that I do.”
“So much the better; your simplicity will be more inscrutable than your subtlety, Haire. I can deal with the one – the other masters me.”
“I declare frankly I don’t like the mission. I was never, so to say, a favorite with her Ladyship.”
“Neither was I, sir,” said the other, with a peremptory loudness that was almost startling.
“Hadn’t you better intimate it by a few lines in a note? Had n’t you better say that, having seen your son during his late visit to town, and learnt his intention to accept a colonial appointment – ”
“All this would be apologetic, sir, and must not be thought of. Don’t you know, Haire, that every unnecessary affidavit is a flaw in a man’s case? Go and see her; your very awkwardness will imply a secret, and she ‘ll be so well pleased with her acuteness in discovering the mystery, she ‘ll half forget its offence.”
“Let me clearly understand what I’ ve got to do. I ‘m to tell her or to let her find out that you have been reconciled to your son Tom?”
“There is not a word of reconciliation, sir, in all your instructions. You are to limit yourself to the statement that touches my granddaughter.”
“Very well; it will be so much the easier. I’m to say, then, that you have adopted her, and placed her at the head of your house; that she is to live here in all respects as its mistress?”
He paused; and as the Judge bowed a concurrence, he went on: “Of course you will allow me to add that I was never consulted; that you did not ask my opinion, and that I never gave one?”
“You are at liberty to, say all this.”
“I would even say that I don’t exactly see how the thing will work. A very young girl, with of course a limited experience of life, will have no common difficulties in dealing with a world so new and strange, particularly without the companionship of one of her own sex.”
“I cannot promise to supply that want, but she shall see as much of you as possible.” And the words were uttered with a blended courtesy and malice, of which he was perfect master. Poor Haire, however, only saw the complimentary part, and hurriedly pledged himself to be at Miss Lendrick’s orders at all times.
“Come and let me show you how I mean to lodge her. I intend her to feel a perfect independence of me and my humors. We are to see each other from inclination, not constraint: I intend, sir that we should live on good terms; and as the Church will have nothing to say to the compact, it is possible it may succeed.
“These rooms are to be hers,” said he, opening a door which offered a vista through several handsomely furnished rooms, all looking out upon a neatly kept flower-garden. “Lady Lendrick, I believe, had long since destined them for a son and daughter-in-law of hers, who are on their way home from India. The plan will be now all the more difficult of accomplishment.”
“Which will not make my communication to her the pleasanter.”
“But redound so much the more to the credit of your adroitness, Haire, if you succeed. Come over here this evening and report progress.” And with this he nodded an easy good-bye, and strolled down the garden.
“I don’t envy Haire his brief in this case,” muttered he. “He’ll not have the ‘court with him,’ that’s certain;” and he laughed spitefully to himself as he went.
CHAPTER XIII. LAST DAYS
It may seem a hardship, but not improbably it is in its way an alleviation, that we are never involved in any of the great trials in life without having to deal with certain material embarrassments, questions of vulgar interest which concern our pockets and affect our finances.
Poor Lendrick’s was a case in point. He was about to leave his country, – to tear himself from a home he had embellished, – to separate from his children that he loved so dearly, to face a new life in a new land, friendless and alone; and with all these cares on his heart, he had creditors to satisfy, debts to insure payment of by security, and, not least of his troubles, his house to relet. Now, the value the world sets on that which is not for sale is very unlike its estimate for the same commodity when brought to market. The light claret your friend pronounced a very pleasant little wine at your own table, he would discover, when offered for purchase, to be poor, washy, and acrid. The horse you had left him, and whose performance he had encomiumized, if put up to auction, would be found spavined, or windgalled, or broken-down. Such a stern test is money, so fearfully does its coarse jingle jar upon all the music of flattery, and make discord of all compliment. To such a pitch is the process carried, that even pretty women, who as wives were objects of admiration to despairing and disappointed adorers, have become, by widowhood, very ordinary creatures, simply because they are once more “in the market.”
It is well for us that heaven itself was not in the “Price Current,” or we might have begun to think lightly of it. At all events we ‘d have higgled about the cost, and tried to get there as cheaply as might be.
From the day that the Swan’s Nest appeared in the Dublin papers “to be let furnished, for the three years of an unexpired term,” Lendrick was besieged by letters and applications. All the world apparently wanted the place, but wanted it in some way or other quite out of his power to accord. One insisted on having it unfurnished, and for a much longer period than he could give. Another desired more land, and the right of shooting over several hundred additional acres. A third would like the house and garden, but would not burden himself with the lawn, and could not see why Lendrick might not continue to hold the meadow-land, and come back from the Cape or anywhere else to mow the grass and rick it in due season.
A schoolmistress proposed he should build a dormitory for thirty young ladies, and make the flower-garden into a playground; and a miller from Limerick inquired whether he was willing to join in a suit to establish a right of water-power by diverting a stream from the Shannon through the dining-room to turn an undershot wheel.