Kitabı oku: «The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly», sayfa 16

CHAPTER XXV. MARION’S AMBITIONS

Colonel Bramleigh’s malady took a strange form, and one which much puzzled his physicians. His feverish symptoms gradually disappeared, and to his paroxysms of passion and excitement there now succeeded a sort of dreary apathy, in which he scarcely uttered a word, nor was it easy to say whether he heard or heeded the remarks around him. This state was accompanied by a daily increasing debility, as though the powers of life were being gradually exhausted, and that, having no more to strive for or desire, he cared no more to live.

The whole interest of his existence now seemed to centre around the hour when the post arrived. He had ordered that the letter-bag should be opened in his presence, and as the letters were shown him one by one, he locked them, unopened and unread, in a despatch-box, so far strictly obedient to the dictates of the doctor, who had forbidden him all species of excitement. His family had been too long accustomed to the reserve and distance he observed towards them to feel surprised that none were in this critical hour admitted to his confidence, and that it was in presence of his valet, Dorose, the letters were sorted and separated, and such as had no bearing on matters of business sent down to be read by the family.

It was while he continued in this extraordinary state, intermediate, as it seemed, between sleeping and waking, a telegram came from Sedley to Augustus, saying, “Highly important to see your father. Could he confer with me if I go over? Reply at once.” The answer was, “Unlikely that you can see him; but come on the chance.”

Before sending off this reply, Augustus had taken the telegram up to Marion’s room, to ask her advice in the matter. “You are quite right, Gusty,” said she; “for if Sedley cannot see papa, he can certainly see Lord Culduff.”

“Lord Culduff,” cried he, in amazement “Why, what could Lord Culduff possibly know about my father’s affairs? How could he be qualified to give an opinion upon them?”

“Simply on the grounds of his great discrimination, his great acuteness, joined to a general knowledge of life, in which he has admittedly few rivals.”

“Grant all that; but here are special questions, here are matters essentially personal; and with all his Lordship’s tact and readiness, yet he is not one of us.”

“He may be, though, and very soon, too,” replied she, promptly.

“What do you mean?” asked he, in a voice of almost dismay.

“Just what I say, Augustus; and I am not aware it is a speech that need excite either the amazement or the terror I see in your face at this moment.”

“I am amazed; and if I understand you aright, I have grounds to be shocked besides.”

“Upon my word,” said she, in a voice that trembled with passion, “I have reason to congratulate myself on the score of brotherly affection. Almost the last words Jack spoke to me at parting were, ‘For God’s sake, shake off that old scamp;’ and now you – that hold a very different position amongst us – you, who will one day be the head of the family, deliberately tell me you are shocked at the prospect of my being allied to one of the first names in the peerage.”

“My dear Marion,” said he, tenderly, “it is not the name, it is not the rank I object to.”

“It is his fortune, then? I’m sure it can’t be his abilities.”

“It is neither. It is simply that the man might be your grandfather.”

“Well, sir,” said she, drawing herself up, and assuming a manner of intense hauteur, “and if I, – I conclude I am the person most to be consulted, – if I do not regard this disparity of years as an insurmountable obstacle, by what right can one of my family presume to call it such?”

“My dear sister,” said he, “can you not imagine the right of a brother to consult for your happiness?”

“Happiness is a very large word. If it were for Nelly that you were interesting yourself, I ‘ve no doubt your advice and counsel ought to have great weight; but I am not one of your love-in-a-cottage young ladies, Gusty. I am, I must own it, excessively worldly. Whatever happiness I could propose to myself in life is essentially united to a certain ambition. We have as many of the advantages of mere wealth as most people: as fine equipage, as many footmen, as good a cook, and as costly silver; and what do they do for us? They permit us simply to enter the lists with a set of people who have high-stepping horses and powdered lackeys like ourselves, but who are no more the world, no more society, than one of papa’s Indiamen is a ship of the Royal Navy. Why do I say this to you, who were at Oxford, who saw it all – ay, and felt it all – in those fresh years of youth when these are sharp sufferings? You know well – you told me your griefs at the time – that you were in a set without being ‘of it;’ that the stamp of inequality was as indelibly fixed upon you as though you were a corporal and wore coarse cloth. Now, these things are hard to bear for a man; for a woman they are intolerable. She has not the hundred and one careers in life in which individual distinction can obliterate the claims of station. She has but one stage, – the salon; but, to her, this narrow world, soft-carpeted and damask-curtained, is a very universe, and without the recognized stamp of a certain rank in it, she is absolutely nothing.”

“And may not all these things be bought too dearly, Marion?”

“I don’t know the price I ‘d call too high for them.”

“What! Not your daily happiness? not your self-esteem! not the want of the love of one who would have your whole heart in his keeping?”

“So he may, if he can give me the rank I care for.”

“Oh, Marion! I cannot think this of you,” cried he, bitterly.

“That is to say, that you want me to deceive you with false assurances of unbought affection and the like; and you are angry because I will not play the hypocrite. Lord Culduff has made me an offer of his hand, and I have accepted it. You are aware that I am my own mistress. Whatever I possess, it is absolutely my own; and though I intend to speak with my father, and, if it may be, obtain his sanction, I will not say that his refusal would induce me to break off my engagement.”

“At all events, you are not yet this man’s wife, Marion,” said he, with more determination than he had yet shown; “and I forbid you positively to impart to Lord Culduff anything regarding this telegram.”

“I make no promises.”

“You may have no regard for the interests of your family, but possibly you will care for some of your own,” said he, fiercely. “Now, I tell you distinctly, there are very grave perils hanging over us at this moment, – perils of which I cannot measure the amount nor the consequences. I can only dimly perceive the direction from which they come; and I warn you, for your own sake, make no confidences beyond the bounds of your own family.”

“You are superbly mysterious, Gusty; and if I were impressionable on this kind of matter, I half suspect you might terrify me. Papa ought to have committed a forgery, at least, to justify your dark insinuations.”

“There is no question of a forgery; but there may be that which, in the end, will lead to a ruin as complete as any forgery.”

“I know what you mean,” said she, in a careless, easy tone. “The bank has made use of private securities and title-deeds, just as those other people did – I forget their names – a couple of years ago.”

“It is not even that; but I repeat, the consequences may be to the full as disastrous.”

“You allude to this unhappy scrape of Jack’s.”

“I do not. I was not then thinking of it.”

“Because, as to that, Lord Culduff said there never yet grew a tree where there was n’t a branch or two might be lopped off with advantage. If Jack does n’t think his station in life worth preserving, all the teaching in the world won’t persuade him to maintain it.”

“Poor Jack!” said he, bitterly.

“Yes, I say, poor Jack! too. I think it’s exactly the epithet to apply to one whose spirit is so much beneath his condition.”

“You are terribly changed, Marion. I do not know if you are aware of it?”

“I hope I am. I trust that I look at the events around me from a higher level than I have been accustomed to hitherto.”

“And is my father in a state to be consulted on a matter of this importance?” asked he, half indignantly.

“Papa has already been spoken to about it; and it is by his own desire we are both to see him this evening.”

“Am I the only one here who knew nothing of all this?”

“You should have been told formally this morning, Augustus. Lord Culduff only waited for a telegram from Mr. Cutbill, to announce to you his intentions and his – hopes.” A slight hesitation delayed the word.

“These things I can’t help,” said he, bitterly, and as if speaking to himself. “They have been done without my knowledge, and regardless of me in every way; but I do protest – strongly protest – against Lord Culduff being introduced into matters which are purely our own.”

“I never knew till now that we had family secrets,” said she, with an insolent air.

“You may learn it later on, perhaps, and without pleasure.”

“So, then, these are the grave perils you tried to terrify me with a while ago. You forget, Augustus, that I have secured my passage in another ship. Personally, at least, I am in no danger.”

“I did forget that. I did indeed forget how completely you could disassociate yourself from the troubles of your family.”

“But what is going to happen to us? They can’t shoot Jack because he called his commanding officer an ugly name. They can’t indite papa because he refused to be high-sheriff. And if the world is angry with you, Gusty, it is not certainly because you like the company of men of higher station than your own.”

He flushed at the sarcasm that her speech half revealed, and turned away to hide his irritation.

“Shall I tell you frankly, Gusty,” continued she, “that I believe nothing – absolutely nothing – of these impending calamities? There is no sword suspended over us; or if there be, it is by a good strong cord, which will last our time. There are always plenty of dark stories in the City. Shares fall, and great houses tumble; but papa told me scores of times that he never put all his eggs into one basket; and Bramleigh and Underwood will be good names for many a day to come. Shall I tell you, my dear Augustus, what I suspect to be the greatest danger that now hangs over us? And I am quite ready to admit it is a heavy one.”

“What is it?”

“The peril I mean is that your sister Nelly will marry the curate. Oh, you may look shocked and incredulous, and cry impossible, if you like; but we girls are very shrewd detectives over each other, and what I tell you is only short of certainty.”

“He has not a shilling in the world; nor has she, independently of my father.”

“That’s the reason. That’s the reason. These are the troths that are never broken. There is nothing aids fidelity like beggary.”

“He has neither friends nor patrons; he told me himself he has not the vaguest hope of advancement.”

“Exactly so; and just for that they will be married. Now it reminds me,” said she, aloud, “of what papa once said to me. The man who wants to build up a name and a family ought to have few children. With a large household, some one or other will make an unhappy alliance, and one deserter disgraces the army.”

“A grave consideration for Lord Culduff at this moment,” said he, with a humorous twinkle of the eye.

“We have talked it over already,” said she.

“Once for all, Marion, no confidences about what I have been talking of.” And so saying, he went his way.

CHAPTER XXVI. MR. CUTBILL ARRIVES AT CASTELLO

On the eve of that day on which the conversation in the last chapter occurred, Mr Cutbill arrived at Castello. He came full of town news. He brought with him the latest scandals of society, and the last events in politics; he could tell of what was doing in Downing Street, and what was about to be done in the City. In fact, he had the sort of budget that was sure to amuse a country audience; and yet, to his astonishment, he found none to question, none even to listen to him. Colonel Bramleigh’s illness had thrown a gloom over all. The girls relieved each other in watches beside their father, and Augustus and Temple dined together alone, as Lord Culduff’s gout still detained him in his room. It was as the dinner drew to its close that Mr. Cutbill was announced.

“It ain’t serious, I hope? I mean, they don’t think the case dangerous?” said he, as he arranged his napkin on his knee.

Augustus only shook his head in silence.

“Why, what age is he? not sixty?”

“Fifty-one – fifty-two in June.”

“That’s not old; that’s the prime of life, especially when a man has taken nothing out of himself.”

“He was always temperate, – most temperate.”

“Just so; even his own choice Mouton did n’t tempt him into the second bottle. I remember that well. I said to myself, ‘Tom Cutbill, that green seal would n’t fare so well in your keeping.’ I had such a bag of news for him. All the rogueries on ‘Change, fresh and fresh. I suppose it is quite hopeless to think of telling him now?”

“Not to be thought of.”

“How he ‘d have liked to have heard about Hewlett and Bell! They ‘re gone for close on two millions; they ‘ll not pay over sixpence in the pound, and Rinker, the Bombay fellow that went in for cotton, has caught it too! Cotton and indigo have ruined more men than famine and pestilence. I ‘d be shot, if I was a Lord of the Council, if I would n’t have a special prayer for them in the Litany. Well, Temple, and how are you, all this while?” said he, turning abruptly to the diplomatist, who sat evidently inattentive to the dialogue.

“What, sir, did you address me?” cried he, with a look of astonishment and indignation.

“I should think I did; and I never heard you were Premier Earl, or that other thing of England, that you need look so shocked at the liberty! You Foreign Office swells are very grand folk to each other; but take my word for it, the world, the real world, thinks very little of you.”

Temple arose slowly from his place, threw his napkin on the table, and turning to Augustus, said, “You ‘ll find me in the library,” and withdrew.

“That’s dignified, I take it,” said Cutbill; “but to my poor appreciation, it’s not the way to treat a guest under his father’s roof.”

“A guest has duties, Mr. Cutbill, as well as rights. My brother is not accustomed to the sort of language you address to him, nor is he at all to blame if he decline to hear more of it.”

“So that I am to gather you think he was right.”

Augustus bowed coldly.

“It just comes to what I said one day to Harding; the sailor is the only fellow in the house a man can get on with. I ‘m sorry, heartily sorry for him.”

The last words were in a tone of sincere feeling; and Augustus asked, “What do you mean by sorry? what has happened to him?”

“Have n’t you seen it in the ‘Times’ – no, you could n’t, though – it was only in this morning’s edition, and I have it somewhere. There ‘s to be a court-martial on him. He’s to be tried on board the ‘Ramsay,’ at Portsmouth, for disobedience and indiscipline, and using to his superior officer – old Colthurst – words unbecoming the dignity of the service and the character of an officer, or the dignity of an officer and the character of the service – it’s all the one gauge; but he ‘ll be broke and cashiered all the same.”

“I thought that if he were to recall something, if he would make some explanation, which he might without any peril to honor – ”

“That’s exactly how it was; and when I heard he was in a scrape I started off to Portsmouth to see him.”

“You did?” exclaimed Augustus, looking now with a very different expression at the other.

“To be sure I did; I went down by the mail train, and stayed with him till the one-forty express started next day, and I might have saved myself the trouble.”

“You could make no impression upon him?”

“Not a bit, – as well talk to that oak sideboard there; he ‘d sit and smoke, and chat very pleasantly, too, about anything, I believe. He ‘d tell about his life up in town, and what he lost at the races, and how near he was to a good thing on the Riddlesworth; but not a word, not so much as a syllable would he say about his own hobble. It was growing late. We had had a regular bang-up breakfast – turtle steaks and a devilled lobster, and plenty of good champagne – not the sweet stuff your father gives us down here, but dry ‘mum,’ that had a flavor of Marco-brunner about it. He ‘s a rare fellow to treat a man, is Jack; and so I said, – not going about the bush, but bang into the thicket at once, – ‘What’s this stupid row you ‘ve got into with your Admiral? what’s it all about?’

“‘It’s about a service regulation, Master Cutbill,’ said he, with a stiff look on him. ‘A service regulation that you would n’t understand if you heard it.’

“‘You think,’ said I, ‘that out of culverts and cuttings, Tom Cutbill’s opinion is not worth much?’

“‘No, no, not that, Cutbill. I never said that,’ said he, laughing; ‘but you see that we sailors not only have all sorts of technicals for the parts of a ship, but we have technical meanings for even the words of common life, so that though I might call you a consummate humbug, I could n’t say as much to a Vice-Admiral without the risk of being judged by professional etiquette.’

“‘But you did n’t call him that, did you?’ said I.

“‘I ‘ll call you worse, Cutty,’ says he, laughing, ‘if you don’t take your wine.’

“‘And now, Jack,’ said I, ‘it’s on the stroke of one; I must start with the express at one-forty, and as I came down here for nothing on earth but to see if I could be of any use to you, don’t let me go away only as wise as I came; be frank and tell me all about this business, and when I go back to town it will push me hard if I can’t do something with the Somerset House fellows to pull you through.’

“‘You are a good-hearted dog, Cutty,’ says he, ‘and I thought so the first day I saw you; but my scrape, as you call it, is just one of those things you ‘d only blunder in. My fine brother Temple, or that much finer gentleman, Lord Culduff, who can split words into the thinnest of veneers, might possibly make such a confusion that it would be hard to see who was right or who was wrong in the whole affair; but you, Cutty, with your honest intentions and your vulgar good sense, would be sure to offend every one, There, don’t lose your train; don’t forget the cheroots and the punch, and some pleasant books, if they be writing any such just now.’

“‘If you want money,’ said I, – ‘I mean for the defence.’

“‘Not sixpence for the lawyers, Cutty; of that you may take your oath,’ said he, as he shook my hand. ‘I ‘d as soon think of sending the wardroom dinner overboard to the sharks.’ We parted, and the next thing I saw of him was that paragraph in the ‘Times.’”

“How misfortunes thicken around us. About a month or six weeks ago, when you came down here first, I suppose there was n’t a family in the kingdom could call itself happier.”

“You did look jolly, that I will say; but somehow – you ‘ll not take the remark ill – I saw that, as we rail-folk say, it was a capital line for ordinary regular traffic, but would be sure to break down if you had a press of business.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I mean that, so long as it was only a life of daily pleasure and enjoyment was before you, – that the gravest question of the day was what horse you ‘d ride, or whom you ‘d invite to dinner, – so long as that lasted the machine would work well, – no jar, no friction anywhere; but if once trouble – and I mean real trouble – was to come down upon you, it would find you all at sixes and sevens, – no order, no discipline anywhere, and, what ‘s worse, no union. But you know it better than I do. You see yourself that no two of you pull together; ain’t that a fact?”

Augustus shook his head mournfully, but was silent.

“I like to see people jolly, because they understand each other, and are fond of each other, because they take pleasure in the same things, and feel that the success of one is the success of all. There ‘s no merit in being jolly over ten thousand a year and a house like Windsor Castle. Now, just look at what is going on, I may call it, under our noses here. Does your sister Marion care a brass farthing for Jack’s misfortunes, or does he feel a bit elated about her going to marry a viscount? Are you fretting your heart to ribbons because that fine young gent that left us a while ago is about to be sent envoy to Bogota? And that’s fact, though he don’t know it yet,” added he, in a chuckling whisper. “It’s a regular fair-weather family, and if it comes on to blow, you ‘ll see if there ‘s a storm-sail amongst you.”

“Apparently, then, you were aware of what was only divulged to me this evening?” said Augustus. “I mean the intended marriage of Lord Culduff to my sister.”

“I should say I was aware of it. I was, so to say, promoter and projector. It was I started the enterprise. It was that took me over to town. I went to square that business of old Culduff. There was a question to be asked in the House about his appointment that would have led to a debate, or what they call a conversation – about the freest kind of after-dinner talk imaginable – and they ‘d have ripped up the old reprobate’s whole life – and I assure you there are passages in it would n’t do for the ‘Methodists’ Magazine’ – so I went over to negotiate a little matter with Joel, who had, as I well knew, a small sheaf of Norton’s bills. I took Joel down to Greenwich to give him a fish-dinner, and talk the thing over, and we were right comfortable and happy over some red Hermitage, – thirty shillings a bottle, mind you, – when we heard a yell, just a yell, from the next room, and in walks – whom do you think? – Norton himself, with his napkin in his hand – he was dining with a set of fellows from the Garrick, and he swaggered in and sat down at our table. ‘What infernal robbery are you two concocting here?’ said he. ‘When the waiter told me who were the fellows at dinner together, I said, These rascals are like the witches in Macbeth, and they never meet without there ‘s mischief in the wind.’”

“The way he put it was so strong, there was something so home in it, that I burst out and told him the whole story, and that it was exactly himself, and no other, was the man we were discussing.

“‘And you thought,’ said he, ‘you thought that, if you had a hold of my acceptances, you ‘d put the screw on me and squeeze me as flat as you pleased. Oh, generation of silkworms, ain’t you soft!’ cried he, laughing. ‘Order up another bottle of this, for I want to drink your healths. You ‘ve actually made my fortune! The thing will now be first rate. The Culduff inquiry was a mere matter of public morals; but here, here is a direct attempt to coerce or influence a member of Parliament. I ‘ll have you both at the Bar of the House as sure as my name is Norton.’

“He then arose and began to rehearse the speech he ‘d make when we were arraigned, and a spicier piece of abuse I never listened to. The noise he made brought the other fellows in from the next room, and he ordered them to make a house; and one was named speaker and another black rod, and we were taken into custody and duly purged of our contempt by paying for all the wine drank by the entire company, – a trifle of five-and-thirty pounds odd. The only piece of comfort I got at all was getting into the rail to go back to town, when Norton whispered me, ‘It’s all right about Culduff. Parliament is dissolved; the House rises on Tuesday, and he ‘ll not be mentioned.’”

“But does all this bear on the question of marriage?”

“Quite naturally. Your father pulls Culduff out of the mire, and the Viscount proposes for your sister. It’s all contract business the whole world over. By the way, where is our noble friend? I suppose, all things considered, I owe him a visit.”

“You ‘ll find him in his room. He usually dines alone, and I believe Temple is the only one admitted.”

“I ‘ll send up my name,” said he, rising to ring the bell for the servant: “and I ‘ll call myself lucky if he’ll refuse to see me.”

“His Lordship will be glad to see Mr. Cutbill as soon as convenient to him,” replied the servant on his return.

“All my news for him is not so favorable as this,” whispered Cutbill, as he moved away. “They won’t touch the mine in the City. That last murder, though it was down in Tipperary, a hundred and fifty miles away from this, has frightened them all; and they say they ‘re quite ready to do something at Lagos, or the Gaboon, but nothing here. ‘You see,’ say they, ‘if they cut one or two of our people’s heads off in Africa, we get up a gun-brig, and burn the barracoons and slaughter a whole village for it, and this restores confidence; but in Ireland it always ends with a debate in the House, that shows the people to have great wrongs and great patience, and that their wild justice, as some one called it, was all right; and that sir, that does not restore confidence.’ Good-night!”