The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly Part 33

"The list begins and ends with the Lord Culduff, I suspect."

"Not at all. It is the Bramleighs can be of use here. Lady Augusta lives at Rome; she must be, I'm sure, a person of influence there, and be well known too, and know all the English of station. It's a downright piece of good fortune for us she should be there. There, now, be of good heart, and don't look wretched. We 'll drive over to Castello to-morrow."

"They 've been very cool towards us of late."

"As much our fault as theirs, George; some, certainly, was my own."

"Oh, Vickars has heard of her. He says here, 'Is the Lady Augusta Bramleigh, who has a villa at Albano, any relative of your neighbor Colonel Bramleigh? She is very eccentric,--some say mad; but she does what she likes with every one. Try and procure a letter to her.'"

"It's all as well as settled, George. We 'll be cantering over that swelling prairie before the spring ends," said she. Quietly rising and going over to the piano, she began one of those little popular Italian ballads which they call "Stornelli,"--those light effusions of national life which blend up love and flowers and suns.h.i.+ne together so pleasantly, and seem to emblematize the people who sing them.

"Thither, oh, thither, George! as the girl sings in Goethe's ballad.

Won't it be delightful?"

"First let us see if it be possible."

And then they began one of those discussions of ways and means which, however, as we grow old in life, are tinged with all the hard and stern characters of sordid self-interest, are in our younger days blended so thoroughly with hope and trustfulness that they are amongst the most attractive of all the themes we can turn to. There were so many things to be done, and so little to do them with, that it was marvellous to hear of the cunning and ingenious devices by which poverty was to be cheated out of its meanness, and actually imagine itself picturesque.

George was not a very imaginative creature; but it was strange to see to what flights he rose as the sportive fancy of the high-spirited girl carried him away to the region of the speculative and the hopeful.

"It's just as well, after all, perhaps," said he, after some moments of thought, "that we had not invested your money in the mine."

"Of course, George, we shall want it to buy vines and orange-trees. Oh, I shall grow mad with impatience if I talk of this much longer! Do you know," said she, in a more collected and serious tone, "I have just built a little villa on the lake-side of Albano? And I'm doubting whether I 'll have my 'pergolato' of vines next to the water, or facing the mountain. I incline to the mountain."

"We mustn't dream of building," said he, gravely.

"We must dream of everything, George. It is in dreamland I am going to live. Why is this gift of fancy bestowed upon us if not to conjure up allies that will help us to fight the stern evils of life? Without imagination, hope is a poor, weary, plodding foot-traveller, painfully lagging behind us. Give him but speculation, and he soars aloft on wings and rises towards heaven."

"Do be reasonable, Julia, and let us decide what steps we shall take."

"Let me just finish my boat-house; I 'm putting an aviary on the top of it. Well, don't look so pitifully; I am not going mad. Now, then, for the practical. We are to go over to Castello to-morrow, early, I suppose?"

"Yes; I should say in the morning, before Colonel Bram-leigh goes into his study. After that he dislikes being disturbed. I mean to speak to him myself. You must address yourself to Marion."

"The forlorn hope always falls to my share," said she, poutingly.

"Why, you were the best friends in the world till a few days back!"

"You men can understand nothing of these things. You neither know the nice conditions nor the delicate reserves of young lady friends.h.i.+ps; nor have you the slightest conception of how boundless we can be in admiration of each other in the imagined consciousness of something very superior in ourselves, and which makes all our love a very generous impulse. There is so much coa.r.s.eness in male friends.h.i.+ps, that you understand none of these subtle distinctions."

"I was going to say, thank Heaven we don't."

"You are grateful for very little, George. I a.s.sure you there is a great charm in these fine affinities, and remember, you men are not necessarily always rivals. Your roads in life are so numerous and so varied, that you need not jostle. We women have but one path, and one goal at the end of it; and there is no small generosity in the kindliness we extend to each other."

They talked away late into the night of the future. Once or twice the thought flashed across Julia whether she ought not to tell of what had pa.s.sed between Lord Culduff and herself. She was not quite sure but that George ought to hear it; but then a sense of delicacy restrained her--a delicacy that extended to that old man who had made her the offer of his hand, and who would not for worlds have it known that his offer had been rejected. "No," thought she, "his secret shall be respected. As he deemed me worthy to be his wife, he shall know that so far as regards respect for his feelings he had not over-estimated me."

It was all essential, however, that her brother should not think of enlisting Lord Culduff in his cause, or asking his Lords.h.i.+p's aid or influence in any way; and when L'Estrange carelessly said, "Could not our distinguished friend and guest be of use here?" she hastened to reply, "Do not think of that, George. These men are so victimized by appeals of this sort that they either flatly refuse their a.s.sistance, or give some flippant promise of an aid they never think of according.

It would actually fret me if I thought we were to owe anything to such intervention. In fact," said she, laughingly, "it's quite an honor to be his acquaintance. It would be something very like a humiliation to have him for a friend. And now good-night. You won't believe it, perhaps; but it wants but a few minutes to two o'clock."

"People, I believe, never go to bed in Italy," said he, yawning; "or only in the day-time. So that we are in training already, Julia."

"How I hope the match may come off," said she, as she gave him her hand at parting. "I 'll go and dream over it."

CHAPTER XXII. IN THE LIBRARY AT CASTELLO.

When L'Estrange and his sister arrived at Castello, on the morning after the scene of our last chapter, it was to discover that the family had gone off early to visit the mine of Lisconnor, where they were to dine, and not return till late in the evening.

Colonel Bramleigh alone remained behind. A number of important letters which had come by that morning's post detained him; but he had pledged himself to follow the party, and join them at dinner, if he could finish his correspondence in time.

George and Julia turned away from the door, and were slowly retracing their road homeward, when a servant came running after them to say that Colonel Bramleigh begged Mr. L'Estrange would come back for a moment; that he had something of consequence to say to him.

"I'll stroll about the shrubberies, George, till you join me," said Julia. "Who knows it may not be a farewell look I may be taking of these dear old scenes."

George nodded, half mournfully, and followed the servant towards the library.

In his ordinary and every-day look, no man ever seemed a more perfect representative of worldly success and prosperity than Colonel Bramleigh.

He was personally what would be called handsome, had a high bold forehead, and large gray eyes, well set and shaded by strong full eyebrows, so regular in outline and so correctly defined as to give a half-suspicion that art had been called to the a.s.sistance of nature.

He was ruddy and fresh-looking, with an erect carriage, and that air of general confidence that seemed to declare he knew himself to be a favorite of fortune, and gloried in the distinction.

"I can do scores of things others must not venture upon," was a common saying of his. "I can trust to my luck," was almost a maxim with him.

And in reality, if the boast was somewhat vainglorious, it was not without foundation; a marvellous, almost unerring, success attended him through life. Enterprises that were menaced with ruin and bankruptcy would rally from the hour that he joined them, and schemes of fortune that men deemed half desperate would, under his guidance, grow into safe and profitable speculations. Others might equal him in intelligence, in skill, in ready resource and sudden expedient; but he had not one to rival him in luck. It is strange enough that the hard business mind, the men of realism _par excellence_, can recognize such a thing as fortune; but so it is, there are none so p.r.o.ne to believe in this quality as the people of finance. The spirit of the gambler is, in fact, the spirit of commercial enterprise, and the "odds" are as carefully calculated in the counting-house as in the betting-ring. Seen as he came into the breakfast room of a morning, with the fresh flush of exercise on his cheek, or as he appeared in the drawing-room, before dinner, with that air of ease and enjoyment that marked all his courtesy, one would have said, "There is one certainly with whom the world goes well." There were caustic, invidious people, who hinted that Bramleigh deserved but little credit for that happy equanimity and that buoyant spirit which sustained him. They said, "He has never had a reverse; wait till he be tried."

And the world had waited and waited, and to all seeming the eventful hour had not come; for there he was, a little balder, perhaps, a stray gray hair in his whiskers, and somewhat portlier in his presence, but, on the whole, pretty much what men had known him to be for fifteen or twenty years back.

Upon none did the well-to-do, blooming, and prosperous rich man produce a more powerful impression than on the young curate, who, young, vigorous, handsome as he was, could yet never sufficiently emerge from the _res angusto domi_ to feel the ease and confidence that come of affluence.

What a shock was it then to L'Estrange, as he entered the library, to see the man whom he had ever beheld as the type of till that was happy and healthful and prosperous, haggard and careworn, his hand tremulous, and his manner abrupt and uncertain, with a certain furtive dread at moments, followed by outbursts of pa.s.sionate defiance, as though he were addressing himself to others besides him who was then before him.

Though on terms of cordial intimacy with the curate, and always accustomed to call him by his name, he received him as he entered the room with a cold and formal politeness, apologized for having taken the liberty to send after and recall him, and ceremoniously requested him to be seated.

"We were sorry you and Miss L'Estrange could not join the picnic to-day," said Bramleigh; "though, to be sure, it is scarcely the season yet for such diversions."

L'Estrange felt the awkwardness of saying that they had not been invited, and muttered something not very intelligible about the uncertainty of the weather.

"I meant to have gone over myself," said Bramleigh, hurriedly; "but all these,"--and he swept his hand, as he spoke, through a ma.s.s of letters on the table,--"all these have come since morning, and I am not half through them yet. What 's that the moralist says about calling no man happy till he dies? I often think one cannot speculate upon a pleasant day till after the post-hour."

"I know very little of either the pains or pleasures of the letter-bag.

I have almost no correspondence."

"How I envy you!" cried he, fervently.

"I don't imagine that mine is a lot many would be found to envy," said L'Estrange, with a gentle smile.

"The old story, of course. 'Qui fit, Maecenas, ut Nemo'--I forget my Horace--'ut Nemo; how does it go?"

"Yes, sir. But I never said I was discontented with my lot in my life. I only remarked that I did n't think that others would envy it."

"I have it,--I have it," continued Bramleigh, following out his own train of thought,--"I have it. 'Ut Nemo, quam sibi sortem sit coutentus.' It's a matter of thirty odd years since I saw that pa.s.sage, L'Estrange, and I can't imagine what could have brought it so forcibly before me to-day."