Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume Ii Part 12

"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 a.s.surance 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 a.s.sumed 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 c.o.c.k-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.

CHAPTER IX. A SURPRISE

In a little cabin standing on the extreme point of the promontory of Howth, which its fisherman owner usually let to lodgers in the bathing-season, Sir Brook Fossbrooke had taken up his abode. The view was glorious from the window where he generally sat, and took in the whole sweep of the bay, from Killiney, with the background of the Wicklow mountains, to the very cliffs at his feet; and when the weather was favorable,--an event, I grieve to say, not of every-day occurrence,--leading him often to doubt whether in its graceful outline and varied color he did not prefer it to Cagliari, with its waving orange groves and vine-clad slopes.

He made a little water-color drawing to enclose in a letter to Lucy; and now, as he sat gazing on the scene, he saw some effect of light on the landscape which made him half disposed to destroy his sketch and begin another.

"Tell your sister, Tom," wrote he, "that if my letter to her goes without the picture I promised her, it is because the sun has just got behind a sort of tattered broken cloud, and is streaming down long slips of light over the Wicklow hills and the woods at their feet, which are driving me crazy with envy; but if I look on it any longer, I shall only lose another post, so now to my task.

"Although I remained a day in the neighborhood, I was not received at Holt. Sir Hugh was ill, and most probably never heard of my vicinity.

Lady Trafford sent me a polite--a very polite--note of regrets, &c., for not being able to ask me to the house, which she called a veritable hospital, the younger son having just returned from Madeira dangerously ill. She expressed a hope, more courteous possibly than sincere, that my stay in England would allow my returning and pa.s.sing some days there, to which I sent a civil answer and went my way. The young fellow, I hear, cannot recover, so that Lionel will be the heir after all; that is, if Sir Hugh's temper should not carry him to the extent of disinheriting his son for a stranger. I was spared my trip to Cornwall; spared it by meeting in London with a knot of mining-people, 'Craig, Pears, and Denk,' who examined our ore, and p.r.o.nounced it the finest ever brought to England. As the material for the white-lead of commerce, they say it is unrivalled; and when I told them that our supply might be called inexhaustible, they began to regard me as a sort of Croesus. I dined with them at a City club, called, I think, the Gresham, a very grand entertainment,--turtle and blackc.o.c.k in abundance, and a deal of talk,--very b.u.mptious talk of all the money we were all going to make, and how our shares, for we are to be a company, must run up within a week to eight or ten premium. They are, I doubt not, very honest fine fellows, but they are vulgar dogs, Tom, I may say it to you in confidence, and use freedoms with each other in intercourse that are scarcely pleasing. To myself personally there was no lack of courtesy, nor can I complain that there was any forgetful-ness of due respect. I could not accept their invitation to a second dinner at Greenwich, but deferred it till my return from Ireland.

"I came on here on Wednesday last, and if you ask me what I have done, my answer is, Nothing--absolutely nothing. I have been four several times at the office where Sewell presides, but always to meet the same reply, 'Not in town to-day;' and now I learn that he is hunting somewhere in Ches.h.i.+re. I am averse to going after him to the Chief Baron's house, where he resides, and am yet uncertain how to act. It is just possible he may have learned that I am in Ireland, and is keeping out of my way, though I have neglected no precaution of secrecy, have taken a humble lodging some miles from town, and have my letters addressed to the post-office to be called for. Up to this I have not met one who knows me. The Viceroy is away in England, and in broken health,--indeed, so ill that his return to Ireland is more than doubtful; and Balfour, who might have recognized me, is happily so much occupied with the 'Celts,' as the latest rebels call themselves, that he has no time to go much abroad.

"The papers which I have sent you regularly since my arrival will inform you about this absurd movement. You will also see the debate on your grandfather. He will not retire, do all that they may; and now, as a measure of insult, they have named a special commission and omitted his name.

"They went so far as to accuse him of senile weakness and incapacity; but the letter which has been published with his name is one of the most terrific pieces of invective I ever read: I will try and get a copy to send you.

"I am anxious to call and see Beattie; but until I have met Sewell, and got this troublesome task off my mind, I have no heart for anything.

From chance travellers in the train, as I go up to town, I hear that the Chief Baron is living at a most expensive rate,--large dinners every week, and costly morning parties, of a style Dublin has not seen before.

They say, too, that he dresses now like a man of five-and-thirty, rides a blood horse, and is seen joining in all the festivities of the capital. Of myself, of course, I can confirm none of these stories.

There comes the rain again. It is now das.h.i.+ng like hail against the windows; and of the beautiful bay and the rocky islands, the leafy sh.o.r.e and the indented coast-line I can see nothing,--nothing but the dense downpour that, thickening at every moment, shuts out all view, so that even the spars of the little pinnace in the bay beneath are now lost to me. A few minutes ago I was ready to declare that Europe had nothing to compare with this island, and now I 'd rather take rocky Ischia, with its scraggy cliffs, sunlit and scorching, than live here watery and bloated like a slug on a garden-wall. Perhaps my temper is not improved by the reflection that I 'll have to walk to the post, about two miles off, with this letter, and then come back to my own sad company for the rest of the evening.

"I had half a mind to run down and look at the 'Nest,' but I am told I should not know it again, it has been so changed in every way. I have spared myself, therefore, the pain the sight would have given me, and kept my memory of it as I saw it on my first visit, when Lucy met me at the door. Tell her from me, that when--"

The letter broke off here, and was continued lower down the page in a more hurried hand, thus:--

"In their ardor to suppress the insurrection here, some one has denounced _me_; and my pistols and my packet of lead, and my bullet-mould, have so far confirmed suspicion against me, that I am to go forthwith before a magistrate. It is so far provoking that my name will probably figure in the newspapers, and I have no fancy to furnish a laugh to the town on such grounds. The chief of the party (there are three of them, and evidently came prepared to expect resistance) is very polite, and permits me to add these few lines to explain my abrupt conclusion. Tell Lucy I shall keep back my letter to her, and finish it to-morrow. I do not know well whether to laugh or be angry at this incident. If a mere mistake, it is of course absurd, but the warrant seems correct in every respect. The officer a.s.sures me that any respectable bail will be at once accepted by the magistrate; and I have not the courage to tell him that I do not possess a single friend or acquaintance in this city whom I could ask to be my surety.

"After all, I take it, the best way is to laugh at the incident. It was only last night, as I walked home here in the dark, I was thinking I had grown too old for adventures, and here comes one--at least it may prove so--to contradict me.

"The car to convey me to town has arrived; and with loves to dear Lu and yourself, I am, as ever, yours,

"Bk. Fossbrooke.

"It is a great relief to me--it will be also to you--to learn that the magistrate can, if he please, examine me in private."

CHAPTER X. THE CHIEF AND HIS FRIEND

A few days after the conversation just related in the chapter before the last, while the Chief Baron was undergoing the somewhat protracted process of a morning toilet,--for it needed a nice hand and a critical eye to give the curls of that wig their fitting wave, and not to "charge" those shrunken cheeks with any redundant color,--Mr. Haire was announced.

"Say I shall be down immediately,--I am in my bath," said the Chief, who had hitherto admitted his old friend at all times and seasons.

While Haire was pacing the long dinner-room with solemn steps, wondering at the change from those days when the Chief would never have thought of making him wait for an interview, Sir William, attired in a long dark-blue silk dressing-gown, and with a gold-ta.s.selled cap to match, entered the room, bringing with him a perfumed atmosphere, so loaded with bergamot that his old friend almost sneezed at it. "I hurried my dressing, Haire, when they told me you were here. It is a rare event to have a visit from you of late," said the old man, as he sat down and disposed with graceful care the folds of his rich drapery.