Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume II.

Although it was a lovely morning, and the garden looking its very brightest and best, – the birds singing sweetly on the trees, and the air balmy with the jasmine and the sweet-brier, – Sewell strolled out upon the velvety sward in anything but a mood of kindred enjoyment. His bills were flying about on all sides, renewals upon renewals swelling up to formidable sums, for which he had not made any provision. Though his residence at the Priory, and his confident assurance to his creditors that the old Judge had made him his heir, obtained a certain credit for him, there were “small-minded scoundrels,” as he called them, who would n’t wait for their fifty per cent. In his desperation to stave off the demands he could not satisfy, he had been driven to very ruinous expedients. He sold timber off the lawn without the old Judge’s knowledge, and only hesitated about forging Sir William’s name through the conviction that the document to which he would have to append it would itself suggest suspicion of the fraud. His increasing necessities had so far impaired his temper that men began to decline to play with him. Nobody was sure of him, and this cause augmented the difficulties of his position. Formerly his two or three hours at the club before dinner, or his evening at mess, were certain to keep him in current cash. He could hold out his handful of sovereigns, and offer to bet them in that reckless carelessness which, amongst very young men, is accepted as something akin to generosity. Now his supply was almost stopped, not to say that he found, what many have found, the rising generation endowed with an amount of acuteness that formerly none attained to without sore experiences and sharp lessons.

“Confound them,” he would say, “there are curs without fluff on their chins that know the odds at Newmarket as well as John Day! What chance has a man with youngsters that understand the ‘call for trumps’?”

It was thus moralizing over a world in decline that he strolled through the garden, his unlit cigar held firm between his teeth, and his hands deep sunk in his trousers’ pockets. As he turned an angle of a walk, he was arrested by a very silky voice saying, “Your honor’s welcome home. I hope your honor’s well, and enjoyed yourself when you were away.”

“Ah, O’Reardon, that you! pretty well, thank you; quite well, I believe; at least, as well as any man can be who is in want of money, and does not know where to find it.”

Mr. O’Reardon grinned, as if that, at least, was one of the contingencies his affluent chief could never have had any experience of. “Moses is to run after all, sir,” said he, after a pause; “the bandages was all a sham, – he never broke down.”

“So much the worse for me. I took the heavy odds against him on your fine information,” said Sewell, savagely.

“You ‘ll not be hurt this time. He ‘ll have a tongue as big as three on the day of the race; and there will be no putting a bridle on him.”

“I don’t believe in that trick, O’Reardon.”

“I do, sir; and I’m laying the only ten-pound note I have on it,” said the other, calmly.

“What about Mary Draper? is she coughing still?”

“She is, sir, and won’t feed besides; but Mr. Harman is in such trouble about his wife going off with Captain Peters, that he never thinks of the mare. Any one goes into the stable that likes.”

“Confounded fool he must be! He stood heavily on that mare. When did Lady Jane bolt?”

“On Tuesday night, sir. She was here at the Priory at luncheon with Captain Peters that morning. She and Mrs. Sewell were walking more than an hour together in the back garden.”

“Did you overhear anything they said?”

“Only once, sir, for they spoke low; but one time your Lady said aloud, ‘If any one blames you, dear, it won’t be me.’ I think the other was crying when she said it.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Sewell, angrily.

“She’s gone away, at all events, sir; and Mr. Harman ‘s out of his mind about it. Cross told me this morning that he would n’t be surprised if his master cut his throat or went to live on the Continent.”

“Do you happen to know anybody would lend me a thousand pounds on no particular security, O’Reardon?”

“Not just at the minute, – perhaps if I had a day or two to think of it.”

“I could give you a week, – a fortnight if it was any use, but it is not; and you know it’s not, Master O’Reardon, as well as any man breathing.”

There was a silence of some minutes now between them; and while Sewell brooded over his hard fortune, O’Reardon seemed to be reviewing in his mind the state of the share market, and taking a sweeping view of the course of the exchanges.

“Well, indeed, sir, money is tight, – mighty tight, at this time. Old M’Cabe of the lottery office wouldn’t advance three hundred to Lord Arthur St. Aubin without the family plate, and I saw the covered dishes going in myself.”

“I wish I had family plate,” sighed Sewell.

“So you will yet, please God,” said the other, piously. “His Lordship can’t live forever! But jewels is as good,” resumed he, after a slight pause.

“I have just as much of the one as the other, O’Reardon. They were a sort of scrip I never invested in.”

“It is n’t a bad thing to do, after all. I remember poor Mr. Giles Morony saying one day, ‘I dined yesterday, Tom,’ says he, ‘off one of my wife’s ear-rings, and I never ate a better dinner in my life; and with the blessing of Providence I’ll go drunk to bed off the other to-night.’”

“Was n’t he hanged afterwards for a murder?”

“No, sir, – sentenced, but never hanged. Mr. Wallace got him off on a writ of error. He was a most agreeable man. Has Mrs. Sewell any trinkets of value, sir?”

“I believe not – I don’t know – I don’t care,” said he, angrily; for the subject, as an apropos, was scarcely pleasant. “Any one at the office since I left?” asked he, with a twang of irritation still in his tone.

“That ould man I tould your honor about called three times.”

“You told me nothing of any old man.”

“I wrote it twice to your honor since I saw you, and left the letters here myself.”

“You don’t think I break open letters in such handwriting as yours, do you? Why, man, my table is covered with them. Who is the old man you speak of?”

“Well, sir, that’s more than I know yet; but I ‘ll be well acquainted with all about him before a week ends, for I knew him before and he puzzled me too.”

“What’s his business with me?”

“He would not tell. Indeed, he’s not much given to talk. He just says, ‘Is Colonel Sewell here?’ and when I answer, ‘No, sir,’ he goes on, ‘Can you tell the day or the hour when I may find him here?’ Of course I say that your honor might come at any moment, – that your time is uncertain, and such-like, – that you ‘re greatly occupied with the Chief Baron.”

“What is he like? Is he a gentleman?”

“I think he is, – at least he was once; for though his clothes is not new and his boots are patched, there’s a look about him that common people never have.”

“Is he short or tall? What is he like?” Just as Sewell had put this question they had gained the door of the little sitting-room, which lay wide open, admitting a full view of the interior. “Give me some notion of his appearance, if you can.”

“There he is, then,” cried O’Reardon, pointing to the chalk head over the chimney. “That’s himself, and as like as life.”

“What? that!” exclaimed Sewell, clutching the man’s arm, and actually shaking him in his eagerness. “Do you mean that he is the same man you see here?”

“I do indeed, sir. There’s no mistaking him. His beard’s a little longer than the picture, and he’s thinner, perhaps; but that’s the man.”

Sewell sat down on the chair nearest him, sick and faint; a cold clammy sweat broke over his face and temples, and he felt the horrible nausea of intense weakness. “Tell me,” said he at last, with a great effort to seem calm, “just the words he said, as nearly as you can recall them.”

“It was what I told your honor. ‘Is Colonel Sewell here? Is there no means of knowing when he may be found here?’ And then when I’d say, ‘What name am I to give? who is it I ‘m to say called?’ his answer would be, ‘That is no concern of yours. It is for me to leave my name or not, as it pleases me.’ I was going to remind him that he once lodged in my house at Cullen’s Wood, but I thought better of it, and said nothing.”

“Did he speak of calling again?”

“No, but he came yesterday; and whether he thought I was denying your honor or not I don’t know, but he sat down in the waiting-room and smoked a cigar there, and heard two or three come in and ask for you and get the same answer.”

Sewell groaned heavily, and covered his face with his hands.

“I think,” said O’Reardon, with a half-hesitating, timid manner, as though it was a case where any blunder would be very awkward, “that if it was how that this man was any trouble, – I mean any sort of an inconvenience to your honor, – and that it was displeasing to your honor to have any dealings with him, I think I could find a way to make him cut his stick and leave the country; or if he would n’t do that, come to worse luck here.”

“What do you mean, – have you anything against him?” cried Sewell, with a wild eagerness.

“If I ‘m not much mistaken, I can soon have against him as much as his life ‘s worth.”

“If you could,” said Sewell, clutching both his arms, and staring him fixedly in the face, – “if you could! I mean, if you could rid me of him, now and forever, – I don’t care how, and I ‘ll not ask how, – only do it; and I ‘ll swear to you there ‘s nothing in my power to serve you I ‘ll refuse doing, – nothing!”

“What ‘s between your honor and him?” said O’Reardon, with an assurance that his present power suggested.

“How dare you ask me, sir? Do you imagine that when I take such a fellow as you into my service, I make him my confidant and my friend?”

“That’s true, sir,” said the other, whose face only grew paler under this insult, while his manner regained all its former subserviency, – “that’s true, sir. My interest about your honor made me forget myself; and I was thinking how I could be most use to you. But, as your honor says, it’s no business of mine at all.”

“None whatever,” said Sewell, sternly; for a sudden suspicion had crossed him of what such a fellow as this might become if once intrusted with the power of a secret.

“Then it’s better, your honor,” said he, with a slavish whine, “that I ‘d keep to what I ‘m fit for, – sweeping out the office, and taking the messages, and the like, and not try things that ‘s above me.”

“You ‘ll just do whatever my service requires, and whenever I find that you do it ill, do it unfaithfully, or even unwillingly, we part company, Master O’Reardon. Is that intelligible?”

“Then, sir, the sooner you fill up my place the better. I ‘ll give notice now, and your honor has fifteen days to get one that will suit him better.”

Sewell turned on him a look of savage hatred. He read, through all the assumed humility of the fellow’s manner, the determined insolence of his stand.

“Go now, and go to the devil, if you like, so that I never see your hang-dog face again; that ‘s all I bargain for.”

“Good-morning, sir; there’s the key of the office, and that’s the key of the small safe; Mr. Simmes has the other. There ‘s a little account I have, – it’s only a few shillings is coming to me. I ‘ll leave it here to-morrow; and if your honor would like me to tell the new man about the people that come after your honor – who ‘s to be let in and who ‘s not – ”

Sewell made a haughty gesture with his arm as though to say that he need not trouble himself on that head.

“Here’s them cigars your honor gave me last week. I suppose I ought to hand them back, now that I ‘m discharged and turned away.”

“You have discharged yourself, my good friend. With a civil tongue in your head, and ordinary prudence, you might have held on to your place till it was time to pension you out of it.”

“Then I crave your honor’s pardon, and you ‘ll never have to find the same fault with me again. It was just breaking my heart, it was, – the thought of leaving your honor.”

“That’s enough about it; go back to your duty. Mind your business; and take good care you never meddle with mine.”

“Has your honor any orders?” said O’Reardon, with his ordinary tone of respectful attention.

“Find out if Hughes is well enough to ride; they tell me he was worse yesterday. Don’t bother me any more about that fellow that writes the attacks on the Chief Baron. They do the thing better now in the English papers, and ask nothing for it. Look out for some one who will advance me a little money, – even a couple of hundreds; and above all, track the old fellow who called at the office; find out what he ‘s in Ireland for, and how long he stays. I intend to go to the country this evening, so that you ‘ll have to write your report, – the post-town is Killaloe.”

“And if the ould man presses me hard,” said O’Reardon, with one eye knowingly closed, “your honor’s gone over to England, and won’t be back till the cock-shooting.”

Sewell nodded, and with a gesture dismissed the fellow, half ashamed at the familiarity that not only seemed to read his thoughts, but to follow them out to their conclusions.