Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume I Part 61

In a little bay--rather a cleft in the sh.o.r.e than a bay--bounded by rocks and backed by a steep mountain overgrown with stunted olives, stood a small cottage,--so very small that it looked rather like a toy house than a human dwelling, a resemblance added to now as the windows lay wide open, and all the interior was a blaze of light from two lamps.

All was still and silent within; no human being was to be seen, nor was there a sign of life about the place; for it was the only dwelling on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the island, and that island was Maddalena, off Sardinia.

In a little nook among the rocks, close to the sea, sat Tom and Lucy Lendrick. They held hands, but were silent; for they had come down into the darkness to muse and ponder, and drink in the delicious tranquillity of that calm hour. Lucy had now been above a week on the island, and every day Tom made progress towards recovery. She knew exactly, and as none other knew, what amount of care and nursing he would accept of without resistance,--where companions.h.i.+p would gratify and where oppress him; she knew, besides, when to leave him to the full swing of his own wild discursive talk, and never to break in upon his moods of silent reflection.

For upwards of half an hour they had sat thus without a word, when Tom, suddenly turning round, and looking towards the cottage, said, "Is n't this the very sort of thing we used to imagine and wish for long ago, Lucy?"

"It was just what was pa.s.sing through my mind. I was thinking how often we longed to have one of the islands on Lough Derg, and to go and live there all by ourselves."

"We never dreamed of anything so luxurious as this, though. We knew nothing of limes and oranges, Lucy. We never fancied such a starry sky, or an air so loaded with perfume. I declare," cried he, with more energy, "it repays one for all the disappointment, to come and taste the luxury of such a night as this."

"And what is the disappointment you speak of, Tom?"

"I mean about our project-that blessed mine, by which we were to have ama.s.sed a fortune, and which has only yielded lead enough to shoot ourselves with."

"I never suspected that," said she, with a sigh.

"Of course you never did; nor am I in a great hurry to tell it even now.

I'd not whisper it if Sir Brook were on the same island with us. Do you know, girl, that he resents a word against the mine as if it was a stain upon his own honour. For a while I used to catch up his enthusiasm, and think if we only go on steadily, if we simply persist, we are sure to succeed in the end. But when week after week rolled over, and not a trace of a mineral appeared when the very workmen said we were toiling in vain when I felt half-ashamed to meet the jeering questions of the neighbours, and used to skulk up to the shaft by the back way,--he remarked it, and said to me one morning, 'I am afraid, Tom, it is your sense of loyalty to me that keeps you here, and not your hope of success. Be frank, and tell me if this be so.' I blundered out something about my determination to share his fate, whatever it might be, and it would have been lucky if I had stopped there; but I went on to say that I thought the mine was an arrant delusion, and that the sooner we turned our backs on it, and addressed our energies to another quarter, the better. 'You think so?' said he, looking almost fiercely at me. 'I am certain of it,' said I, decisively; for I thought the moment had come when a word of truth could do him good service. He went out without speaking, and instead of going to Lavanna, where the mine is, he went over to Cagliari, and only came home late at night. The next morning, while we were taking our coffee before 'setting out, he said to me, 'Don't strap on your knapsack to-day. I don't mean you should come down into the shaft again.' 'How so?' asked I; 'what have I said or done that could offend you?' 'Nothing, my dear boy,' said he, laying his hand on my shoulder; 'but I cannot bear you should meet this dreary life of toil without the one thing that can lighten its gloom--Hope. I have managed, therefore, to raise a small sum on the mine; for,' said he, with a sly laugh, 'there are men in Cagliari who don't take the despondent view you have taken of it; and I have written to my old friend at the Horse Guards to give you a commission, and you shall go and be a soldier.'

And leave you here, sir, all alone?' 'Far from alone, lad. I have that companion which you tell me never joined _you_. I have Hope with _me_.'

"'Then I'll stay too, sir, and try if he'll not give me his company yet.

At all events, I shall have _yours_; and there is nothing I know that could recompense me for the loss of it.' It was not very easy to turn him from his plan, but I insisted so heartily-for I'd have stayed on now, if it were to have entailed a whole life of poverty-that he gave in at last; and from that hour to this, not a word of other than agreement has pa.s.sed between us. For my own part, I began to work with a will, and a determination that I never felt before; and perhaps I overtaxed my strength, for I caught this fever by remaining till the heavy dews began to fall, and in this climate it is always a danger."

"And the mine, Tom--did it grow better?" "Not a bit. I verily believe we never saw ore from that day. We got upon yellow clay, and lower down upon limestone rock, and then upon water; and we are pumping away yet, and old Sir Brook is just as much interested by the decrease of the water as if he saw a silver floor beneath it. 'We've got eight inches less this morning, Tom; we are doing famously now.' I declare to you, Lucy, when I saw his fine cheery look and bright honest eye, I thought how far better this man's fancies are than the hard facts of other people; and I'd rather have his great nature than all the wealth success could bring us."

"My own dear brother!" was all she could say, as she grasped his hand, and held it with both her own.

"The worst of all is, that in the infatuation he feels about this mining project he forgets everything else. Letters come to him from agents and men of business asking for speedy answers; some occasionally come to tell that funds upon which he had reckoned to meet certain payments had been withdrawn from his banker long sinca When he reads these, he ponders a moment, and mutters, 'The old story, I suppose. It is so easy to write Brook Fossbrooke;' and then the whole seems to pa.s.s out of his mind, and he'll say, 'Come along, Tom; we must push matters a little; I'll want some coin by the end of the month.'

"When I grew so weak that I could n't go to the mine, the accounts he used to give me daily made me think we must be prospering. He would come back every night so cheery and so hopeful, and his eyes would sparkle as he 'd tell of a bright vein that they 'd just 'struck.' He owned that the men were less sanguine, but what could they know? They had no other teaching than the poor experiences of daily labor. If they saw lead or silver, they believed in it. To him, however, the signs of the coming ore were enough; and then he would open a paper full of dark earth in which a few s.h.i.+ning particles might be detected, and point them out to me as the germs of untold riches. 'These are silver, Tom, every one of them; they are oxidized, but still perfectly pure. I 've seen the natives in Ceylon was.h.i.+ng earth not richer than this;' and the poor fellow would make this hopeful tidings the reason for treating me to champagne, which in an unlucky moment the doctor said would be good for me, and which Sir Brook declared always disagreed with him. But I don't believe it, Lucy,--I don't believe it! I am certain that he suffered many a privation to give me luxuries that he would n't share. Shall I tell you the breakfast I saw him eating one morning? I had gone to his room to speak to him before he started to the mine, and, opening the door gently, I surprised him at his breakfast,--a piece of brown bread and a cup of coffee without milk was his meal, to support him till he came home at nightfall. I knew if he were aware that I had seen him that it would have given him great distress, so I crept quietly back to my bed, and lay down to think of this once pampered, flattered gentleman, and how grand the nature must be that could hold up uncomplaining and unshaken under such poverty as this. Nor is it that he ignores the past, Lucy, or strives to forget it,--far from that. He is full of memories of bygone events and people, but he talks of his own part in the grand world he once lived in as one might talk of another individual; nor is there the semblance of a regret that all this splendor has pa.s.sed away never to return. He will be here on Sunday to pay us a visit, Lucy; and though perhaps you 'll find him sadly changed in appearance, you 'll see that his fine nature is the same as ever."

"And will he persist in this project, Tom, in spite of all failure and in defiance of hope?"

"That's the very point I 'm puzzled about. If he decide to go on, so must I. I 'll not leave him, whatever come of it."

"No, no, Tom; that I know you will not do."

"His confidence of success is unshaken. It was only t' other night, as we sat at a very frugal supper, he said, 'You 'll remember all this, Tom, one of these days; and as you sip your Burgundy, you 'll tell your friends how jolly we thought ourselves over our little acid wine and an onion.' I did not dare to say what was uppermost in my thoughts, that I disbelieved in the Burgundy era."

"It would have been cruel to have done it."

"He had the habit, he tells me, in his days of palmiest prosperity, of going off by himself on foot, and wandering about for weeks, roughing it amongst all sorts of people,---gypsies, miners, charcoal-burners in the German forests, and such-like. He said, without something of this sort, he would have grown to believe that all the luxuries he lived amongst were _bona fide_ necessities of life. He was afraid too, he said, they would become part of him; for his theory is, never let your belongings master your own nature."

"There is great romance in such a man."

"Ah! there you have it, Lucy; that's the key to his whole temperament; and I 'd not be surprised if he had been crossed in some early love."

"Would that account for all his capricious ways?" said she, smiling.

"My own experiences can tell me nothing; but I have a sister who could perhaps help me to an explanation. Eh, Lucy? What think you?"

She tried to laugh off the theme, but the attempt only half succeeded, and she turned away her head to hide her confusion.

Tom took her hand between his own, and patted it affectionately.

"I want no confessions, my own dear Lucy," said he, gently; "but if there is anything which, for your own happiness or for my honor, I ought to know, you will tell me of it, I am certain."

"There is nothing," said she, with a faint gasp.

"And you would tell me if there had been?"

She nodded her head, but did not trust herself to speak.

"And grandpapa, Lucy?" said he, trying to divert her thoughts from what he saw was oppressing her; "has he forgiven me yet, or does he still harp on about my presumption and self-sufficiency?"

"He is more forgiving than you think, Tom," said she, smiling.

"I am not so sure of that. He wrote me a long letter some time back,--a sort of lecture on the faults and shortcomings of my disposition, in which he clearly showed that if I had all the gifts which my own self-confidence ascribed to me, and a score more that I never dreamed of, they would go for nothing,--absolutely nothing, so long as they were allied with my unparalleled--no, he did n't call it impudence, but something very near it. He told me that men of my stamp were like the people who traded on credit, and always cut a sorry figure when their accounts came to be audited; and, perhaps to stave off the hour of my bankruptcy, he enclosed me fifty pounds."

"So like him!" said she, proudly.

"I suppose it was. Indeed, as I read his note, I thought I heard him talking it. There was an acrid flippancy about it that smacked of his very voice."

"Oh, Tom, I will not let you say that."

"I 'll think it all the same, Lucy. His letter brought him back to my mind so palpably that I thought I stood there before him on that morning when he delivered that memorable discourse on my character after luncheon."

"Did you reply to him?"

"Yes, I replied," said he, with a dry sententiousness that sounded as though he wished the subject to drop.

"Do tell me what you said. I hope you took it in good part. I am sure you could not have shown any resentment at his remarks."

"No; I rather think I showed great forbearance. I simply said, 'My dear Lord Chief Baron, I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, of which I accept everything but the enclosure.--I am, faithfully yours.'"

"And refused his gift?"

"Of course I did. The good counsel without the money, or the last without the counsel, would have beeu all very well; but coming together, in what a false position the offer placed me! I remember that same day we happened to have an unusually meagre dinner, but I drank the old man's health after it in some precious bad wine; and Sir Brook, who knew nothing about the letter, joined in the toast, and p.r.o.nounced a very pretty little eulogium on his vigor and energy; and thus ended the whole incident."

"If you only knew him better, Tom! if you knew him as I know him!"

Tom shrugged his shoulders, and merely said, "It was nicely done, though, not to tell _you_ about this. There was delicacy in _that_."

Lucy went on now to relate all his kind intentions towards Tom when the news of his illness arrived,--how he had conferred with Beattie about sending out a doctor, and how, at such a sacrifice to his own daily habits, he had agreed that she should come out to Cagliari. "And you don't know how much this cost him, Master Tom," said she, laughing; "for however little store you may lay by my company, he prizes it, and prizes it highly too, I promise you; and then there was another reason which weighed against his letting me come out here,--he has got some absurd prejudice against Sir Brook. I call it absurd, because I have tried to find out to what to trace it, and could not; but a chance expression or two that fell from Mrs. Sewell leads me to suppose the impression was derived from them."

"I don't believe he knows the Sewells. I never heard him speak of them.

I 'll ask when he comes over here. By the way, how do you like them yourself?"

"I scarcely know. I liked her at first,--that is, I thought I should like her; and I fancied, too, it was her wish that I might--but--"