Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume Ii Part 7

"If you please, more sugar and no brandy; and now for the Cape."

"I 'll just hand them the coffee," said he, rising and crossing over to the others.

"Won't she let you smoke, Trafford?" said Tom, seeing the unlighted cigar in the other's fingers; "come over here, then, and escape the tyranny."

"I was just saying," cried Cave, "I wish our Government would establish a protectorate, as they call it, over these islands, and send us out here to garrison them; I call this downright paradise."

"You may smoke, Major Trafford," said Lucy, as he returned; "I am very tolerant about tobacco."

"I don't care for it--at least not now."

"You'd rather tell me about the Cape," said she, with a sly laugh.

"Well, I 'm all attention."

"There's really nothing to tell," said he, in confusion. "Your father will have told you already what a routine sort of thing life is,--always meeting the same people,--made ever more uniform by their official stations. It's always the Governor, and the Chief-Justice, and the Bishop, and the Attorney-General."

"But they have wives and daughters?"

"Yes; but official people's wives and daughters are always of the same pattern. They are only females of the species."

"So that you were terribly bored?"

"Just so,--terribly bored."

"What a boon from heaven it must have been then to have met the Sewells!" said she, with a well-put-on carelessness.

"Oh, your father mentioned the Sewells, did he?" asked Trafford, eagerly.

"I should think he did mention them! Why, they were the people he was so jealous of. He said that you were constantly with him till they came,--his companion, in fact,--and that he grieved heavily over your desertion of him."

"There was nothing like desertion; besides," added he, after a moment, "I never suspected he attached any value to my society."

"Very modest, certainly; and probably, as the Sewells did attach this value, you gave it where it was fully appreciated."

"I wish I had never met them," muttered Trafford; and though the words were mumbled beneath his breath, she heard them.

"That sounds very ungratefully," said she, with a smile, "if but one half of what we hear be true."

"What is it you have heard?"

"I 'm keeping Major Trafford from his cigar, Tom; he's too punctilious to smoke in my company, and so I shall leave him to you;" and so saying, she arose, and turned towards the cottage.

Trafford followed her on the instant, and overtook her at the porch.

"One word,--only one," cried he, eagerly. "I see how I have been misrepresented to you. I see what you must think of me; but will you only hear me?"

"I have no right to hear you," said she, coldly.

"Oh, do not say so, Lucy," cried he, trying to take her hand, but which she quickly withdrew from him. "Do not say that you withdraw from me the only interest that attaches me to life. If you knew how friendless I am, you would not leave me."

"He upon whom fortune smiles so pleasantly very seldom wants for any blandishments the world has to give; at least, I have always heard that people are invariably courteous to the prosperous."

"And do you talk of me as prosperous?"

"Why, you are my brother's type of all that is luckiest in life. Only hear Tom on the subject! Hear him talk of his friend Trafford, and you will hear of one on whom all the good fairies showered their fairest gifts."

"The fairies have grown capricious, then. Has Tom told you nothing--I mean since he came back?"

"No; nothing."

"Then let me tell it."

In very few words, and with wonderfully little emotion, Trafford told the tale of his altered fortunes. Of course he did not reveal the reasons for which he had been disinherited, but loosely implied that his conduct had displeased his father, and with his mother he had never been a favorite. "Mine," said he, "is the vulgar story that almost every family has its instance of,--the younger son, who goes into the world with the pretensions of a good house, and forgets that he himself is as poor as the neediest man in the regiment. They grew weary of my extravagance, and, indeed, they began to get weary of myself, and I am not surprised at it! and the end has come at last. They have cast me off, and, except my commission, I have now nothing in the world. I told Tom all this, and his generous reply was, 'Your poverty only draws you nearer to us.' Yes, Lucy, these were his words. Do you think that his sister could have spoken them?"

"'Before she could do so, she certainly should be satisfied on other grounds than those that touch your fortune," said Lucy, gravely.

"And it was to give her that same satisfaction I came here," cried he, eagerly. "I accepted Tom's invitation on the sole pledge that I could vindicate myself to you. I know what is laid to my charge, and I know too how hard it will be to clear myself without appearing like a c.o.xcomb." He grew crimson as he said this, and the shame that overwhelmed him was a better advocate than all his words. "But," added he, "you shall think me vain, conceited,--a puppy, if you will,--but you shall not believe me false. Will you listen to me?"

"On one condition I will," said she, calmly.

"Name your condition. What is it?"

"My condition is this: that when I have heard you out,--heard all that you care to tell me--if it should turn out that I am not satisfied--I mean, if it appear to me a case in which I ought not to be satisfied--you will pledge your word that this conversation will be our last together."

"But, Lucy, in what spirit will you judge me? If you can approach the theme thus coldly, it gives me little hope that you will wish to acquit me."

A deep blush covered her face as she turned away her head, but made no answer.

"Be only fair, however," cried he, eagerly. "I ask for nothing more." He drew her arm within his as he spoke, and they turned towards the beach where a little sweep of the bay lay hemmed in between lofty rocks. "Here goes my last throw for fortune," said Trafford, after they had strolled along some minutes in silence. "And oh, Lucy, if you knew how I would like to prolong these minutes before, as it may be, they are lost to me forever! If you knew how I would like to give this day to happiness and hope!"

She said nothing, but walked along with her head down, her face slightly averted from him.

"I have not told you of my visit to the Priory," said he, suddenly.

"No; how came you to go there?"

"I went to see the place where you had lived, to see the garden you had tended, and the flowers you loved, Lucy. I took away this bit of jasmine from a tree that overhung a little rustic seat. It may be, for aught I know, all that may remain to me of you ere this day closes."

"My dear little garden! I was so fond of it!" she said, concealing her emotion as well as she could.

"I am such a coward," said he, angrily; "I declare I grow ashamed of myself. If any one had told me I would have skulked danger in this wise, I 'd have scouted the idea! Take this, Lucy," said he, giving her the sprig of withered jasmine; "if what I shall tell you exculpate me--if you are satisfied that I am not unworthy of your love,--you will give it back to me; if I fail--" He could not go on, and another silence of some seconds ensued.

"You know the compact now?" asked he, after a moment. She nodded a.s.sent.

For full five minutes they walked along without a word, and then Trafford, at first timidly, but by degrees more boldly, began a narrative of his visit to the Sewells' house. It is not--nor need it be--our task to follow him through a long narrative, broken, irregular, and unconnected as it was. Hampered by the difficulties which on each side beset him of disparaging those of whom he desired to say no word of blame, and of still vindicating himself from all charge of dishonor, he was often, it must be owned, entangled, and sometimes scarcely intelligible. He owned to have been led into high play against his will, and equally against his will induced to form an intimacy with Mrs. Sewell, which, beginning in a confidence, wandered away into Heaven knows what of sentimentality, and the like. Trafford talked of Lucy Lendrick and his love, and Mrs. Sewell talked of her cruel husband and her misery; and they ended by making a little stock-fund of affection, where they came in common to make their deposits and draw their cheques on fortune.

All this intercourse was the more dangerous that he never knew its danger; and though, on looking back, he was astonished to think what intimate relations subsisted between them, yet, at the time, these had not seemed in the least strange to him. To her sad complaints of neglect, ill-usage, and insult, he offered such consolations as occurred to him: nor did it seem to him that there was any peril in his path, till his mother burst forth with that atrocious charge against Mrs.

Sewell for having seduced her son, and which, so far from repelling with the indignation it might have evoked, she appeared rather to bend under, and actually seek his protection to shelter her. Weak and broken by his accident at the race, these difficulties almost overcame his reason; never was there, to his thinking, such a web of entanglement. The hospitality of the house he was enjoying outraged and violated by the outbreaks of his mother's temper; Sewell's confidence in him betrayed by the confessions he daily listened to from his wife; her sorrows and griefs all tending to a dependence on his counsels which gave him a partners.h.i.+p in her conduct. "With all these upon me," said he, "I don't think I was actually mad, but very often I felt terribly close to it.

A dozen times a day I would willingly have fought Sewell; as willingly would I have given all I ever hoped to possess in the world to enable his wife to fly his tyranny, and live apart from him. I so far resented my mother's outrageous conduct, that I left her without a good-bye."