Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume Ii Part 11

"It is indeed, sir,--nothing more so."

"I'll expect you to begin your visits on Thursday, then. Don't come to the hall-door, but pa.s.s round by the end of the house and into the little garden. I 'll leave the gate open, and you 'll find my room easily. It opens on the garden. Be with me by eleven."

Colonel Sewell was not more than just to himself when he affirmed that he read men very quickly. As the practised cas.h.i.+er never hesitates about the genuineness of a note, but detects the forgery at a glance, this man had an instinctive appreciation of a scoundrel. Who knows if there be not some magnetic affinity between such natures, that saves them the process of thought and reason? He was right in the present case.

O'Reardon was the very man he wanted. The fellow liked the life of a spy and an informer. To track, trace, connect this with that, and seek out the missing link which gave connection to the chain, had for him the fascination of a game, and until now his qualities had never been fairly appreciated. It was with pride too that he showed his patron that his gifts could be more widely exercised than within the narrow limits of an antechamber; for he brought him the name of the man who wrote in "The Starlight" the last abusive article on the Chief Baron, and had date and place for the visit of the same man to the under-secretary, Mr.

Cholmondely Balfour. He gave him the latest news of the Curragh, and how Faunus had cut his frog in a training gallop, and that it was totally impossible he could be "placed" for his race. There were various delicate little scandals in the life of society too, which, however piquant to Sewell's ears, would have no interest for us; while of the sums lost at play, and the costly devices to raise the payments, even Sewell himself was amazed at the accuracy and extent of his information.

Mr. O'Reardon was one of a small knot of choice spirits who met every night and exchanged notes. Doubtless each had certain "reserves" which he kept strictly to himself; but otherwise they dealt very frankly and loyally with each other, well aware that it was only on such a foundation their system could be built; and the training-groom, and the butler, and the club-waiter, the office messenger, and the penny-postman became very active and potent agents in that strange drama we call life.

Now, though Mr. O'Reardon had presented himself each morning with due punctuality at the little garden, in which he was wont to make his report while Sewell smoked his morning cigar, for some days back the Colonel had not appeared. He had gone down to the country to a pigeon-match, from which he returned vexed and disappointed. He had shot badly, lost his money, lost his time, and lost his temper,--even to the extent of quarrelling with a young fellow whom he had long been speculating on "rooking," and from whom he had now parted on terms that excluded further acquaintance.

Although it was a lovely morning, and the garden looking its very brightest and best,--the birds singing sweetly on the trees, and the air balmy with the jasmine and the sweet-brier,--Sewell strolled out upon the velvety sward in anything but a mood of kindred enjoyment. His bills were flying about on all sides, renewals upon renewals swelling up to formidable sums, for which he had not made any provision. Though his residence at the Priory, and his confident a.s.surance to his creditors that the old Judge had made him his heir, obtained a certain credit for him, there were "small-minded scoundrels," as he called them, who would n't wait for their fifty per cent. In his desperation to stave off the demands he could not satisfy, he had been driven to very ruinous expedients. He sold timber off the lawn without the old Judge's knowledge, and only hesitated about forging Sir William's name through the conviction that the doc.u.ment to which he would have to append it would itself suggest suspicion of the fraud. His increasing necessities had so far impaired his temper that men began to decline to play with him. n.o.body was sure of him, and this cause augmented the difficulties of his position. Formerly his two or three hours at the club before dinner, or his evening at mess, were certain to keep him in current cash. He could hold out his handful of sovereigns, and offer to bet them in that reckless carelessness which, amongst very young men, is accepted as something akin to generosity. Now his supply was almost stopped, not to say that he found, what many have found, the rising generation endowed with an amount of acuteness that formerly none attained to without sore experiences and sharp lessons.

"Confound them," he would say, "there are curs without fluff on their chins that know the odds at Newmarket as well as John Day! What chance has a man with youngsters that understand the 'call for trumps'?"

It was thus moralizing over a world in decline that he strolled through the garden, his unlit cigar held firm between his teeth, and his hands deep sunk in his trousers' pockets. As he turned an angle of a walk, he was arrested by a very silky voice saying, "Your honor's welcome home. I hope your honor's well, and enjoyed yourself when you were away."

"Ah, O'Reardon, that you! pretty well, thank you; quite well, I believe; at least, as well as any man can be who is in want of money, and does not know where to find it."

Mr. O'Reardon grinned, as if _that_, at least, was one of the contingencies his affluent chief could never have had any experience of.

"Moses is to run after all, sir," said he, after a pause; "the bandages was all a sham,--he never broke down."

"So much the worse for me. I took the heavy odds against him on your fine information," said Sewell, savagely.

"You 'll not be hurt this time. He 'll have a tongue as big as three on the day of the race; and there will be no putting a bridle on him."

"I don't believe in that trick, O'Reardon."

"I do, sir; and I'm laying the only ten-pound note I have on it," said the other, calmly.

"What about Mary Draper? is she coughing still?"

"She is, sir, and won't feed besides; but Mr. Harman is in such trouble about his wife going off with Captain Peters, that he never thinks of the mare. Any one goes into the stable that likes."

"Confounded fool he must be! He stood heavily on that mare. When did Lady Jane bolt?"

"On Tuesday night, sir. She was here at the Priory at luncheon with Captain Peters that morning. She and Mrs. Sewell were walking more than an hour together in the back garden."

"Did you overhear anything they said?"

"Only once, sir, for they spoke low; but one time your Lady said aloud, 'If any one blames you, dear, it won't be me.' I think the other was crying when she said it."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Sewell, angrily.

"She's gone away, at all events, sir; and Mr. Harman 's out of his mind about it. Cross told me this morning that he would n't be surprised if his master cut his throat or went to live on the Continent."

"Do you happen to know anybody would lend me a thousand pounds on no particular security, O'Reardon?"

"Not just at the minute,--perhaps if I had a day or two to think of it."

"I could give you a week,--a fortnight if it was any use, but it is not; and you know it's not, Master O'Reardon, as well as any man breathing."

There was a silence of some minutes now between them; and while Sewell brooded over his hard fortune, O'Reardon seemed to be reviewing in his mind the state of the share market, and taking a sweeping view of the course of the exchanges.

"Well, indeed, sir, money is tight,--mighty tight, at this time. Old M'Cabe of the lottery office wouldn't advance three hundred to Lord Arthur St. Aubin without the family plate, and I saw the covered dishes going in myself."

"I wish _I_ had family plate," sighed Sewell.

"So you will yet, please G.o.d," said the other, piously. "His Lords.h.i.+p can't live forever! But jewels is as good," resumed he, after a slight pause.

"I have just as much of the one as the other, O'Reardon. They were a sort of scrip I never invested in."

"It is n't a bad thing to do, after all. I remember poor Mr. Giles Morony saying one day, 'I dined yesterday, Tom,' says he, 'off one of my wife's ear-rings, and I never ate a better dinner in my life; and with the blessing of Providence I'll go drunk to bed off the other to-night.'"

"Was n't he hanged afterwards for a murder?"

"No, sir,--sentenced, but never hanged. Mr. Wallace got him off on a writ of error. He was a most agreeable man. Has Mrs. Sewell any trinkets of value, sir?"

"I believe not--I don't know--I don't care," said he, angrily; for the subject, as an apropos, was scarcely pleasant. "Any one at the office since I left?" asked he, with a tw.a.n.g of irritation still in his tone.

"That ould man I tould your honor about called three times."

"You told me nothing of any old man."

"I wrote it twice to your honor since I saw you, and left the letters here myself."

"You don't think I break open letters in such handwriting as yours, do you? Why, man, my table is covered with them. Who is the old man you speak of?"

"Well, sir, that's more than I know yet; but I 'll be well acquainted with all about him before a week ends, for I knew him before and he puzzled me too."

"What's his business with me?"

"He would not tell. Indeed, he's not much given to talk. He just says, 'Is Colonel Sewell here?' and when I answer, 'No, sir,' he goes on, 'Can you tell the day or the hour when I may find him here?' Of course I say that your honor might come at any moment,--that your time is uncertain, and such-like,--that you 're greatly occupied with the Chief Baron."

"What is he like? Is he a gentleman?"

"I think he is,--at least he was once; for though his clothes is not new and his boots are patched, there's a look about him that common people never have."

"Is he short or tall? What is he like?" Just as Sewell had put this question they had gained the door of the little sitting-room, which lay wide open, admitting a full view of the interior. "Give me some notion of his appearance, if you can."

"There he is, then," cried O'Reardon, pointing to the chalk head over the chimney. "That's himself, and as like as life."

"What? that!" exclaimed Sewell, clutching the man's arm, and actually shaking him in his eagerness. "Do you mean that he is the same man you see here?"

"I do indeed, sir. There's no mistaking him. His beard's a little longer than the picture, and he's thinner, perhaps; but that's the man."

Sewell sat down on the chair nearest him, sick and faint; a cold clammy sweat broke over his face and temples, and he felt the horrible nausea of intense weakness. "Tell me," said he at last, with a great effort to seem calm, "just the words he said, as nearly as you can recall them."

"It was what I told your honor. 'Is Colonel Sewell here? Is there no means of knowing when he may be found here?' And then when I'd say, 'What name am I to give? who is it I 'm to say called?' his answer would be, 'That is no concern of yours. It is for me to leave my name or not, as it pleases me.' I was going to remind him that he once lodged in my house at Cullen's Wood, but I thought better of it, and said nothing."