Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume I Part 10

"Which makes the matter worse. Who is to give way? Who is to _ceder le pas?_"

"I am not so sure I should have advised that letter. I am inclined to think I would have counselled more time, more consideration. Fathers and mothers are prudently averse to these loves at first sight, and they are merciless in dealing with what they deem a mere pa.s.sing sentiment."

"Better that than suffer him to engage the girl's affections, and then learn that he must either desert her or marry her against the feeling of his family. Let us have a stroll in the garden. I have made you one confidence; I will now make you another."

They lit their cigars, and strolled out into a long alley fenced on one side by a tall dense hedge of laurels, and flanked on the other by a low wall, over which the view took in the wide reach of the river and the distant mountains of Scariff and Meelick.

"Was not that where we picnicked yesterday?" asked Sir Brook, pointing to an island in the distance.

"No; you cannot see Holy Island from this."

Sir Brook smoked on for some minutes without a word; at last, with a sort of abruptness, he said, "She was so like her, not only in face and figure, but her manner; the very tone of her voice was like; and then that half-caressing, half-timid way she has in conversation, and, more than all, the sly quietness with which she caps you when you fancy that the smart success is all your own."

"Of whom are you speaking?"

"Of another Lucy," said Sir Brook, with a deep melancholy. "Heaven grant that the resemblance follow them not in their lives as in their features! It was that likeness, however, which first attracted me towards Miss Lendrick. The first moment I saw her it overcame me; as I grew to know her better, it almost confused me, and made me jumble in your hearing things of long ago with the present. Time and s.p.a.ce were both forgotten, and I found my mind straying away to scenes in the Himalaya with those I shall never see more. It was thus that, one day carried away by this delusion, I chanced to call her Lucy, and she laughingly begged me not to retract it, but so to call her always." For some minutes he was silent, and then resumed: "I don't know if you ever heard of a Colonel Frank Dillon, who served on Napier's staff in Scinde.

Fiery Frank was his nickname among his comrades, but it only applied to him on the field of battle, and with an enemy in front. Then he was indeed fiery,--the excitement rose to almost madness, and led him to acts of almost incredible daring. At Meanee he was nearly cut to pieces, and as he lay wounded, and to all appearance dying, he received a lance-wound through the chest that the surgeon declared must prove fatal. He lived, however, for eight months after,--he lived long enough to reach the Himalayas, where his daughter, an only child, joined him from England. On her way out she became acquainted with a young officer, who was coming out as aide-de-camp to the Governor-General. They were constantly thrown together on the journey, and his attentions to her soon showed the sentiments he had conceived for her. In fact, very soon after Lucy had joined her father, Captain Sewell appeared 'in the Hills'

to make a formal demand of her in marriage.

"I was there at the time, and I remember well poor Dillon's expression of disappointment after the first meeting with him. His daughter's enthusiastic description of his looks, his manner, his abilities, his qualities generally, had perhaps prepared him for too much. Indeed, Lucy's own intense admiration for the soldierlike character of her father's features a.s.sisted the mistake; for, as Dillon said, 'There must be a dash of the _sabreur_ in the fellow that will win Lucy.' I came into Dillon's room immediately after the first interview. The instant I caught his eye I read what was going on in his brain. 'Sit down here, Brook,' cried he, 'sit in my chair here;' and he arose painfully as he spoke. 'I'll show you the man.' With this he hobbled over to a table where his cap lay, and, placing it rakishly on one side of his head, he stuck his eyegla.s.s in one eye, and, with a hand in his trousers-pocket, lounged forward towards where I sat, saying, 'How d' ye do, Colonel?

Wound doing better, I hope. The breezy climate up here soon set you up.'

'Familiar enough this, sir,' cried Dillon, in his own stern voice; 'but without time to breathe, as it were,--before almost I had exchanged a greeting with him,--he entered upon the object of his journey. I scarcely heard a word he said; I knew its purport,--I could mark the theme,--but no more. It was not the fellow himself that filled my mind; my whole thoughts were upon my daughter, and I went on repeating to myself, "Good heavens! is this Lucy's choice? Am I in a trance? Is it this contemptible cur (for he was a cur, sir) that has won the affections of my darling, high-hearted, generous girl? Is the romantic spirit that I have so loved to see in her to bear no better fruit than this? Does the fellow realize to her mind the hero that fills men's thoughts?" I was so overcome, so excited, so confused, Brook, that I begged him to leave me for a while, that one of my attacks of pain was coming on, and that I should not be able to converse farther He said something about trying one of his cheroots,--some impertinence or other, I forget what; but he left me, and I, who never knew a touch of girlish weakness in my life, who when a child had no mood of softness in my nature,--I felt the tears trickling along my cheeks, and my eyes dimmed with them.' My poor friend," continued Fossbrooke, "could not go on; his emotions mastered him, and he sat with his head buried between his hands and in silence. At last he said, 'She 'll not give him up, Brook; I have spoken to her,--she actually loves him. Good heavens!' he cried, 'how little do we know about our children's hearts! how far astray are we as to the natures that have grown up beside us, imbibing, as we thought, our hopes, our wishes, and our prejudices! We awake some day to discover that some other influence has crept in to undo our teachings, and that the fidelity on which we would have staked our lives has changed allegiance.'

"He talked to me long in this strain, and I saw that the effects of this blow to all his hopes had made themselves deeply felt on his chance of recovery. It only needed a great shock to depress him to make his case hopeless. Within two months after his daughter's arrival he was no more.

"I became Lucy's guardian. Poor Dillon gave me the entire control over her future fortune, and left me to occupy towards her the place he had himself held. I believe that next to her father I held the best place in her affections,--of such affections, I mean, as are accorded to a parent. I was her G.o.dfather, and from her earliest infancy she had learned to love me. The reserve--it was positive coldness--with which Dillon had always treated Sewell had caused a certain distance, for the first time in their lives, between the father and daughter. She thought, naturally enough, that her father was unjust; that, unaccustomed to the new tone of manners which had grown up amongst young men,--their greater ease, their less rigid observance of ceremonial, their more liberal self-indulgence,--he was unfairly severe upon her lover. She was annoyed, too, that Sewells attempts to conciliate the old man should have turned out such complete failures. But none of these prejudices extended to me, and she counted much on the good understanding that she expected to find grow up between us.

"If I could have prevented the marriage, I would. I learned many things of the man that I disliked. There is no worse sign of a man than to be at the same time a man of pleasure and friendless. These he was,--he was foremost in every plan of amus.e.m.e.nt and dissipation, and yet none liked him. Vain fellows get quizzed for their vanity, and selfish men laughed at for their selfishness, and close men for their avarice; but there is a combination of vanity, egotism, small craftiness, and self-preservation in certain fellows that is totally repugnant to all companions.h.i.+p. Their lives are a series of petty successes, not owing to any superior ability or greater boldness of daring, but to a studious outlook for small opportunities. They are ever alive to know the 'right man,' to be invited to the 'right house,' to say the 'right thing.'

Never linked with whatever is in disgrace or misfortune, they are always found backing the winning horse, if not riding him.

"Such men as these, so long as the world goes well with them, and events turn out fortunately, are regarded simply as sharp, shrewd fellows, with a keen eye to their own interests. When, however, the weight of any misfortune comes, when the time arrives that they have to bear up against the hard pressure of life, these fellows come forth in their true colors, swindlers and cheats.

"Such was he. Finding that I was determined to settle the small fortune her father had left her inalienably on herself, he defeated me by a private marriage. He then launched out into a life of extravagance to which their means bore no proportion. I was a rich man in those days, and knew nothing better to do with my money than a.s.sist the daughter of my oldest friend. The gallant Captain did not balk my good intentions.

He first accepted, he then borrowed, and last of all he forged my name.

I paid the bills and saved him, not for his sake, I need not tell you, but for hers, who threw herself at my feet, and implored me not to see them ruined. Even this act of hers he turned to profit. He wrote to me to say that he knew his wife had been to my house, that he had long nurtured suspicions against me,--I that was many years older than her own father,--that for the future he desired all acquaintance should cease between us, and that I should not again cross his threshold.

"By what persuasions or by what menaces he led his wife to the step, I do not know; but she pa.s.sed me when we met without a recognition. This was the hardest blow of all. I tried to write her a letter; but after a score of attempts I gave it up, and left the place.

"I never saw her for eight years. I wish I had not seen her then. I am an old, hardened man of the world, one whom life has taught all its lessons to in the sternest fas.h.i.+on. I have been so baffled and beaten, and thrown back by all my attempts to think well of the world, that nothing short of a dogged resolution not to desert my colors has rescued me from a cold misanthropy; and yet, till I saw, I did not believe there was a new pang of misery my heart had not tasted. What? it is incredible,--surely that is not she who once was Lucy Dillon,--that bold-faced woman with l.u.s.trous eyes and rouged cheeks,--brilliant, indeed, and beautiful, but not the beauty that is allied to the thought of virtue,--whose every look is a wile, whose every action is entanglement. She was leaning on a great man's arm, and in the smile she gave him told me how she knew to purchase such distinctions. He noticed me, and shook my hand as I pa.s.sed. I heard him tell her who I was; and I heard her say that I had been a hanger-on, a sort of dependant of her father's, but she never liked me! I tried to laugh, but the pain was too deep. I came away, and saw her no more."

He ceased speaking, and for some time they walked along side by side without a word. At last he broke out: "Don't believe the people who say that men are taught by anything they experience in life. Outwardly they may affect it. They may a.s.sume this or that manner. The heart cannot play the hypocrite, and no frequency of disaster diminishes the smart.

The wondrous resemblance Miss Lendrick bears to Lucy Dillon renews to my memory the bright days of her early beauty, when her poor father would call her to sit down at his feet and read to him, that he might gaze at will on her, weaving whole histories of future happiness and joy for her. 'Is it not like suns.h.i.+ne in the room to see her, Brook?' would he whisper to me. 'I only heard her voice as she pa.s.sed under my window this morning, and I forgot some dark thought that was troubling me.'

And there was no exaggeration in this. The sweet music of her tones "vibrated so softly on the ear, they soothed the sense, just as we feel soothed by the gentle ripple of a stream.

"All these times come back to me since I have been here, and I cannot tell you how the very sorrow that is a.s.sociated with them has its power over me. Every one knows with what attachment the heart will cling to some little spot in a far-away land that reminds one of a loved place at home,--how we delight to bring back old memories, and how we even like to name old names, to cheat ourselves back into the past. So it is that I feel when I see this girl. The other Lucy was once as my daughter; so, too, do I regard her, and with this comes that dreadful sorrow I have told you of, giving my interest in her an intensity unspeakable. When I saw Trafford's attention to her, the only thing I thought of was how unlike he was to him who won the other Lucy. His frank, unaffected bearing, his fine, manly trustfulness, the very opposite to the other's qualities, made me his friend at once. When I say friend, I mean well-wisher, for my friends.h.i.+p now bears no other fruit. Time was when it was otherwise."

"What is it, William?" cried the vicar, as his servant came hurriedly forward.

"There 's a gentleman in the drawing-room, sir, wants to see Sir Brook Fossbrooke."

"Have I your leave?" said the old man, bowing low. "I 'll join you here immediately."

Within a few moments he was back again. "It was Trafford. He has just got a telegram to call him to his regiment. He suspects something has gone wrong; and seeing his agitation, I offered to go back with him. We start within an hour."

CHAPTER X. LENDRICK RECOUNTS HIS VISIT TO TOWN

The vicar having some business to transact in Limerick, agreed to go that far with Sir Brook and Trafford, and accompanied them to the railroad to see them off.

A down train from Dublin arrived as they were waiting, and a pa.s.senger, descending, hastily hurried after the vicar, and seized his hand. The vicar, in evident delight, forgot his other friends for a moment, and became deeply interested in the new-comer. "We must say good-bye, doctor," said Fossbrooke; "here comes our train."

"A thousand pardons, my dear Sir Brook. The unlooked-for arrival of my friend here--but I believe you don't know him. Lendrick, come here, I want to present you to Sir Brook Fossbrooke. Captain Trafford, Dr.

Lendrick."

"I hope these gentlemen are not departing," said Lendrick, with the constraint of a bashful man.

"It is our misfortune to do so," said Sir Brook; "but I have pa.s.sed too many happy hours in this neighborhood not to come back to it as soon as I can."

"I hope we shall see you. I hope I may have an opportunity of thanking you, Sir Brook."

"Dublin! Dublin! Dublin! get in, gentlemen: first cla.s.s, this way, sir,"

screamed a guard, amidst a thundering rumble, a scream, and a hiss. All other words were drowned, and with a cordial shake-hands the new friends parted.

"Is the younger man his son?" asked Lendrick; "I did not catch the name?"

"No; he's Trafford, a son of Sir Hugh Trafford,--a Lincolns.h.i.+re man, isn't he?"

"I don't know. It was of the other I was thinking. I felt it so strange to see a man of whom when a boy I used to hear so much. I have an old print somewhere of two over-dressed 'Bloods,' as they were called in those days, with immense whiskers, styled 'Fossy and Fussy,' meaning Sir Brook and the Baron Geramb, a German friend and follower of the Prince."

"I suspect a good deal changed since that day, in person as well as purse," said the vicar, sadly.

"Indeed! I heard of his having inherited some immense fortune."

"So he did, and squandered every s.h.i.+lling of it."

"And the chicks are well, you tell me?" said Lendrick, whose voice softened as he talked of home and his children.

"Could n't be better. We had a little picnic on Holy Island yesterday, and only wanted yourself to have been perfectly happy. Lucy was for refusing at first."

"Why so?"

"Some notion she had that you would n't like it. Some idea about not doing in your absence anything that was not usual when you are here."

"She is such a true girl, so loyal," said Lendrick, proudly.

"Well, I take the treason on my shoulders. I made her come. It was a delightful day, and we drank your health in as good a gla.s.s of Madeira as ever ripened in the sun. Now for your own news?"

"First let us get on the road. I am impatient to be back at home again.