The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly Part 47

"He did n't say he was exactly a fool, but something very like it; and he told him, too, that though he might make very light of his own rights, he could not presume to barter away those of others; and, last of all, he added, what he knew would have its weight with Augustus, that, had his father lived he meant to have compromised this claim. Not that he regarded it either as well founded or formidable, but simply as a means of avoiding a very unpleasant publicity. This last intimation had its effect, and Augustus permitted Sedley to treat. Sedley at once addressed himself to Temple--Jack was not to be found--and to Lord Culduff, to learn what share they were disposed to take in such an arrangement. As Augustus offered to bind himself never to marry, and to make a will dividing the estate equally amongst his brothers and sisters, Lord Culduff and Temple quite approved of this determination, but held that they were not called upon to take any portion of the burden of the compromise.

"Augustus would seem to have been so indignant at this conduct, that he wrote to Sedley to put him at once in direct communication with the claimant. Sedley saw by the terms of the letter how much of it was dictated by pa.s.sion and offended pride, evaded the demand, and pretended that an arrangement was actually pending, and, if uninterfered with, sure to be completed. To this Augustus replied--for Nelly has sent me a copy of his very words--'Be it so. Make such a settlement as you, in your capacity of my lawyer, deem best for my interests. For my own part, I will not live in a house, nor receive the rents of an estate, my rights to which the law may possibly decide against me. Till, then, the matter be determined either way, I and my sister Eleanor, who is like-minded with me in this affair, will go where we can live at least cost, decided, as soon as may be, to have this issue determined, and Castello become the possession of him who rightfully owns it.'

"On the evening of the day he wrote this they left Castello. They only stopped a night in Dublin, and left next morning for the Continent.

Nelly's letter is dated from Ostend. She says she does not know where they are going, and is averse to anything like importuning her brother by even a question. She promises to write soon again, however, and tell me all about their plans. They are travelling without a servant, and, so far as she knows, with very little money. Poor Nelly! she bears up n.o.bly, but the terrible reverse of condition, and the privations she is hourly confronted with, are clearly preying upon her."

"What a change! Just to think of them a few months back! It was a princely household."

"Just what Nelly says. 'It is complete overthrow; and if I am not stunned by the reverse, it is because all my sympathies are engaged for poor Gusty, who is doing his best to bear up well. As for myself, I never knew how helpless I was till I tried to pack my trunk. I suppose time will soften down many things that are now somewhat hard to bear; but for the moment I am impatient and irritable; and it is only the sight of my dear brother--so calm, so manly, and so dignified in his sorrow--that obliges me to forget my selfish grief and compose myself as I ought.'"

As they thus talked, they arrived at the door of the inn, where the landlord met them, with the request that the two gentlemen who had arrived by extra-post, and who could not find horses to proceed on their journey, might be permitted to share the one sitting-room the house contained, and which was at present occupied by the L'Estranges.

"Let us sup in your room, George," whispered Julia, and pa.s.sed on into the house. L'Estrange gave orders to send the supper to his room, and told the landlord that the salon was at his guests' disposal.

About two hours later, as the curate and his sister sat at the open window, silently enjoying the delicious softness of a starry night, they were startled by the loud talking of persons so near as to seem almost in the room with them.

"English--I'll be sworn they are!" said one. "That instinctive dread of a stranger pertains only to our people. How could it have interfered with their comfort, that we sat and ate our meal in this corner?"

"The landlord says they are young, and the woman pretty. That may explain something. Your countrymen, Philip, are the most jealous race in Europe."

L'Estrange coughed here three or four times, to apprise his neighbors that they were within earshot of others.

"Listen to that cough," cried the first speaker. "That was palpably feigned. It was meant to say, 'Don't talk so loud.'"

"I always grow more indiscreet under such provocation," said the other, whose words were slightly tinged with a foreign accent.

A merry laugh burst from Julia at this speech, which the others joined in by very impulse.

"I suspect," said the first speaker, "we might as well have occupied the same room, seeing in what close proximity we stand to each other."

"I think it would be as well to go to your room, Julia," said George, in a low voice. "It is getting late, besides."

"I believe you are right, George. I will say good-night."

The last words appeared to have caught the ears of the strangers, who exclaimed together, "Good-night, goodnight;" and he with the foreign accent began to hum, in a very sweet tenor voice, "Buona sera, buona notte, buona sera;" which Julia would fain have listened to, but George hurried her away, and closed the door.

"There is the end of that episode," said the foreign voice. "Le mari jaloux has had enough of us. Your women in England are taught never to play with fire."

"I might reply that yours are all pyrotechnists," said the other, with a laugh.

The clatter of plates and the jingle of gla.s.ses, as the waiter laid the table for supper, drowned their voices, and L'Estrange dropped off asleep soon after. A hearty burst of laughter at last aroused him. It came from the adjoining room, where the strangers were still at table, though it was now nigh daybreak.

"Yes," said he of the foreign accent, "I must confess it. I never made a lucky hit in my life without the ungrateful thought of how much luckier it might have been."

"It is your Italian blood has given you that temperament."

"I knew you 'd say so, Philip; before my speech was well out, I felt the reply you 'd make me. But let me tell you that you English are not a whit more thankful to fortune than we are; but in your matter-of-fact way you accept a benefit as your just due, while we, more conscious of our deservings, always feel that no recompense fully equalled what we merited. And so it is that ever since that morning at Furnival's Inn, I keep on asking myself, Why twenty thousand? Why not forty--why not twice forty?"

"I was quite prepared for all this. I think I saw the reaction beginning as you signed the paper."

"No, there you wrong me, Philip. I wrote boldly, like a man who felt that he was making a great resolve, and could stand by it. You 'll never guess when what you have called 'the reaction' set in."

"I am curious to know when that was."

"I 'll tell you. You remember our visit to Castello. You thought it a strange caprice of mine to ask the lawyer whether, now that all was finally settled between us, I might be permitted to see the house--which, as the family had left, could be done without any unpleasantness. I believe my request amused _him_ as much as it did _you_; he thought it a strange caprice, but he saw no reason to refuse it, and I saw he smiled as he sat down to write the note to the housekeeper. I have no doubt that he thought, 'It is a gambler's whim;'

he wants to see the stake he played for, and what he might perhaps have won had he had courage to play out the game.' _You_ certainly took that view of it."

The other muttered something like a half a.s.sent, and the former speaker continued, "And you were both of you wrong. I wanted to see the finished picture of which I possessed the sketch--the beautiful Flora--whose original was my grandmother. I cannot tell you the intense longing I had to see the features that pertained to one who belonged to me; a man must be as utterly desolate as I am, to comprehend the craving I felt to have something--anything that might stand to me in place of family. It was this led me to Castello, and it was this that made me, when I crossed the threshold, indifferent to all the splendors of the place, and only occupied with one thought, one wish--to see the fresco in the Octagon Tower--poor old Giacomo's great work--the picture of his beautiful daughter. And was she not beautiful? I ask you, Philip, had Raphael himself ever such a model for sweetness of expression? Come, come. You were just as wild as myself in your enthusiasm as you stood before her; and it was only by a silly jest that you could repress the agitation you were so ashamed of."

"I remember I told you that the family had terribly degenerated since her day."

"And yet you tried to trace a likeness between us."

"You won't say that I succeeded," said he, with a laugh.

"It was then as I stood there gazing on her, thinking of her sad story, that I bethought me what an ign.o.ble part it was I played to compromise the rights that she had won, and how unworthy I was to be the descendant of the beautiful Enrichetta."

"You are about the only man I ever met who was in love with his grandmother."

"Call it how you like, her lovely face has never left me since I saw it there."

"And yet your regret implies that you are only sorry not to have made a better bargain."

"No, Philip: my regret is not to have stood out for terms that must have been refused to me; I wish I had asked for the 'impossible.' I tried to make a laughing matter of it when I began, but I cannot--I cannot. I have got the feeling that I have been selling my birthright."

"And you regret that the mess of pottage has not been bigger."

"There's the impossibility in making a friend of an Englishman! It is the sordid side of everything he will insist on turning uppermost. Had I told a Frenchman what I have told you, he would have lent me his whole heart in sympathy."

"To be sure he would. He would have accepted all that stupid sentimentality about your grandmother as refined feeling, and you 'd have been blubbering over each other this half-hour."

"If you only knew the sublime project I had. I dare not tell you of it in your miserable spirit of depreciating all that is high in feeling and n.o.ble in aspiration. You would ridicule it. Yes, _mon cher_, you would have seen nothing in my plan, save what you could turn into absurdity."

"Let me hear it. I promise you to receive the information with the most distinguished consideration."

"You could not. You could not elevate your mind even to comprehend my motives. What would you have said, if I had gone to this Mr. Bramleigh, and said, Cousin--"

"He is not your cousin, to begin with."

"No matter; one calls every undefined relation cousin. Cousin, I would have said, this house that you live in, these horses that you drive, this plate that you dine off, these spreading lawns and shady woods that lie around, are mine; I am their lawful owner; I am the true heir to them; and you are nothing--n.o.body--the son of an illegitimate--"

"I 'd say he 'd have pitched you out of the window."

"Wait a while; not so fast. Nevertheless, I would have said, Yours is the prescription and the habit. These things have pertained to you since your birth: they are part of you, and you of them. You cannot live without them, because you know no other life than where they enter and mingle; while I, poor and an adventurer, have never tasted luxury, nor had any experiences but of trouble and difficulty. Let us each keep the station to which habit and time have accustomed him. Do you live, as you have ever lived, grand seigneur as you are--rich, honored, and regarded.

I will never dispute your possession nor a.s.sail your right. I only ask that you accept me as your relation--a cousin, who has been long absent in remote lands; a traveller, an 'eccentric,' who likes a life of savagery and adventure, and who has come back, after years of exile, to see his family and be with his own. Imagine yourself for an instant to be Bramleigh, and what you would have said to this? Had I simply asked to be one of them, to call them by their Christian names, to be presented to their friends as Cousin Anatole--I ask you now--seriously, what you would have replied to such a n.o.ble appeal?"

"I don't know exactly what I should have said, but I think I can tell you what I would have done."