Читать книгу Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas - Charles James Lever - Страница 17

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Steadily, and with all the vigor I could command, I pulled towards the light. My companion sat quietly watching the stars, and apparently following out some chain of thought to himself; at last he said, “There, boy, breathe a bit; there's no need to blow yourself; we 're all safe long since; the 'Firefly' is right ahead of us, and not far off either. Have you never heard of the yacht?”

“Never, sir.”

“Nor of its owner, Sir Dudley Broughton?”

“No, sir, I never heard the name.”

“Well, come,” cried he, laughing, “that is consolatory. I 'm not half so great a reprobate as I thought myself! I did not believe till now that there was an urchin of your stamp living who could not have furnished at least some anecdotes for a memoir of me! Well, my lad, yonder, where you see the blue light at the peak, is the 'Firefly,' and here, where I sit, is Sir Dudley Broughton. Ten minutes more will put us alongside, so, if you're not tired, pull away.”

“No, Sir Dudley,” said I, for I was well versed in the popular tact of catching up a name quickly, “I am able to row twice as far.”

“And now, Master Con,” said he, “we are going to part. Are you too young a disciple of your craft for a glass of grog; or are you a follower of that new-fangled notion of pale-faced politicians, who like bad coffee and reason better than whiskey and fun?”

“I'll take nothing to drink, Sir Dudley,” said I. “I have dined and drunk well to-day, and I'll not venture further.”

“As you please; only I say you 're wrong not to victual the ship whenever you stand in-shore. No matter; put your hand into this vest pocket—you 'll find some shillings there: take them, whatever they be. You'll row the boat back with one of my people; and all I have to say is, if you do speak of me, as no doubt you will and must, don't say anything about these smashed fingers; I suppose they'll get right one of these days, and I 'd rather there was no gossip about them.”

“I 'll never speak of it—I—”

“There, now, that's enough; no swearing, or I know you'll break your promise. Back water a little; pull the starboard oar—so; here we are alongside.”

Sir Dudley had scarce done speaking when a hoarse voice from the yacht challenged us. This was replied to by a terrific volley of imprecations on the stupidity of not sooner showing the light, amid which Sir Dudley ascended the side and stood upon the deck. “Where's Halkett?” cried he, imperiously. “Here, sir,” replied a short, thickset man, with a sailor-like shuffle in his walk. “Send one of the men back with the gig, and land that boy. Tell the fellow, too, he's not to fetch Waters aboard, if he meets him: the scoundrel went off and left me to my fate this evening; and it might have been no pleasant one, if I had not found that lad yonder.”

“We have all Sam Waters' kit on board, Sir Dudley,” said Halkett; “shall we send it ashore?”

“No. Tell him I'll leave it at Demerara for him; and he may catch the yellow fever in looking after it,” said he, laughing.

While listening to this short dialogue I had contrived to approach a light which gleamed from the cabin window, and then took the opportunity to count over my wealth, amounting, as I supposed, to some seven or eight shillings. Guess my surprise to see that the pieces were all bright yellow gold—eight shining sovereigns!

I had but that instant made the discovery, when the sailor who was to put me on shore jumped into the boat and seated himself.

“Wait one instant,” cried I. “Sir Dudley—Sir Dudley Broughton!”

“Well, what's the matter?” said he, leaning over the side.

“This money you gave me—”

“Not enough, of course! I ought to have known that,” said he, scornfully. “Give the whelp a couple of half-crowns, Halkett, and send him adrift.”

“You 're wrong, sir,” cried I, with passionate eagerness; “they are gold pieces—sovereigns.”

“The devil they are!” cried he, laughing; “the better luck yours. Why did n't you hold your tongue about it?”

“You bid me take some shillings, sir,” answered I.

“How d—d honest you must be! Do you hear that, Halkett? The fellow had scruples about taking his prize-money! Never mind, boy, I must pay for my blunder—you may keep them now.”

“I have pride, too,” cried I; “and hang me if I touch them.”

He stared at me, without speaking, for a few minutes, and then said, in a low, flat voice, “Come on deck, lad.” I obeyed; and he took a lighted lantern from the binnacle, and held it up close to my face, and then moved it so that he made a careful examination of my whole figure.

“I 'd give a crown to know who was your father,” said he, dryly.

“Con Cregan, of Kilbeggan, sir.”

“Oh, of course, I know all that. Come, now, what say you to try a bit of life afloat? Will you stay here?”

“Will you take me, sir?” cried I, in ecstasy.

“Halkett, rig him out,” said he, shortly. “Nip the anchor with the ebb, and keep your course down channel.” With this he descended the cabin stairs and disappeared, while I, at a signal from Halkett, stepped down the ladder into the steerage. In the mean while it will not be deemed digressionary if I devote a few words to the singular character into whose society I was now thrown, inasmuch as to convey any candid narrative of my own career I must speak of those who, without influencing the main current of my life, yet certainly gave some impulse and direction to its first meanderings.

Sir Dudley Broughton was the only son of a wealthy baronet, who, not from affection or overkindness, but out of downright indolent indifference, permitted him, first as an Eton boy, and afterwards as a gentleman commoner of Christ Church, to indulge in every dissipation that suited his fancy. An unlimited indulgence, a free command of whatever money he asked for, added to a temper constitutionally headstrong and impetuous, soon developed what might have been expected from the combination. He led a life of wild insubordination at school, and was expelled from Oxford. With faculties above rather than beneath mediocrity, and a certain aptitude for acquiring the knowledge most in request in society, he had the reputation of being one who, if he had not unhappily so addicted himself to dissipation, would have made a favorable figure in the world. After trying in vain to interest himself in the pursuits of a country life, of which the sporting was the only thing he found attractive, he joined a well-known light cavalry regiment, celebrated for numbering among its officers more fast men than any other corps in the service. His father, dying about the same time, left him in possession of a large fortune, which, with all his extravagance, was but slightly encumbered. This fact, coupled with his well-known reputation, made him popular with his brother officers, most of whom, having run through nearly all they possessed, saw with pleasure a new Croesus arrive in the regiment. Such a man as Broughton was just wanted. One had a charger to get off; another wanted a purchaser for his four-in-hand drag. The senior captain was skilful at billiards; and every one played “lansquenet” and hazard.

Besides various schemes against his purse, the colonel had a still more serious one against his person. He had a daughter, a handsome, fashionable-looking girl, with all the manners of society, and a great deal of that tact only to be acquired in the very best foreign society. That she was no longer in the fresh bloom of youth, nor with a reputation quite spotless, were matters well known in the regiment; but as she was still eminently handsome, and “the Count Radchoffsky” had been recalled by the emperor from the embassy of which he was secretary, Lydia Delmar was likely, in the opinions of keen-judging parties, to make a good hit with “some young fellow who did n't know town.” Broughton was exactly the man Colonel Delmar wanted—good family, a fine fortune, and the very temper a clever woman usually contrives to rule with absolute sway.

There would be, unfortunately, no novelty in recording the steps by which such a man is ruined. He did everything that men do who are bent upon testing Fortune to the utmost. He lent large sums to his “friends;” he lost larger ones to them. When he did win, none ever paid him, except by a good-humored jest upon his credit at Coutts's. “What the devil do you want with money, Sir Dudley?” was an appeal he could never reply to. He ran horses at Ascot, and got “squeezed;” he played at “Crocky's,” and fared no better; but he was the favorite of the corps. “We could never get on without Dudley,” was a common remark; and it satisfied him that, with all his extravagance, he had made an investment in the hearts at least of his comrades. A few months longer of this “fast” career would, in all likelihood, have ruined him. He broke his leg by a fall in a steeplechase, and was thus driven, by sheer necessity, to lay up, and keep quiet for a season. Now came Colonel Delmar's opportunity; the moment the news reached Coventry, he set off with his daughter to Leamington. With the steeplechasing, hazard-playing, betting, drinking, yachting, driving Sir Dudley, there was no chance of even time for their plans; but with a sick man on the sofa, bored by his inactivity, hipped for want of his usual resources, the game was open. The Colonel's visit, too, had such an air of true kindness!

Broughton had left quarters without leave; but instead of reprimands, arrests, and Heaven knows what besides, there was Colonel Delmar, the fine old fellow, shaking his finger in mock rebuke, and saying, “Ah, Dudley, my boy, I came down to give you a rare scolding; but this sad business has saved you!” And Lydia also, against whom he had ever felt a dislike—that prejudice your boisterous and noisy kind of men ever feel to clever women, whose sarcasms they know themselves exposed to—why, she was gentle good-nature and easy sisterlike kindness itself! She did not, as the phrase goes, “nurse him,” but she seldom left the room where he lay. She read aloud, selecting with a marvellous instinct the very kind of books he fancied—novels, tales of every-day life, things of whose truthfulness he could form some judgment; and sketches wherein the author's views were about on a level with his own. She would sit at the window, too, and amuse him with descriptions of the people passing in the street; such smart shrewd pictures were they of watering-place folks and habits, Dudley never tired of them! She was unsurpassed for the style with which she could dress up an anecdote or a bit of gossip; and if it verged upon the free, her French education taught her the nice perception of the narrow line that separates “libertinage” from indelicacy.

So far from feeling impatient at his confinement to a sofa, therefore, Broughton affected distrust in his renovated limb for a full fortnight after the doctor had pronounced him cured. At last he was able to drive out, and soon afterwards to take exercise on horseback, Lydia Delmar and her father occasionally accompanying him.

People will talk at Leamington, as they do at other places; and so the gossips said that the rich—for he was still so reputed in the world—the “rich” Sir Dudley Broughton was going to marry Miss Delmar.

Gossip is half-brother to that all-powerful director called “Public Opinion;” so that when Sir Dudley heard, some half-dozen times every day, what it was reputed he would do, he began to feel that he ought to do it.

Accordingly, they were married; the world—at least the Leamington section of that large body—criticising the match precisely as it struck the interests and prejudices of the class they belonged to.

Fathers and mothers agreed in thinking that Colonel Delmar was a shrewd old soldier, and had made an “excellent hit.” Young ladies pronounced Liddy—for a girl who had been out eight years—decidedly lucky. Lounging men at club doors looked knowingly at each other as they joked together in half sentences, “No affair of mine; but I did not think Broughton would have been caught so easily.” “Yes, by Jove!” cried another, with a jockey-like style of dress, “he 'd not have made so great a mistake on the 'Oaks' as to run an aged nag for a two-year old!”

“I wonder he never heard of that Russian fellow!” said a third.

“Oh, yes!” sighed out a dandy, with an affected drawl; “poor dear Liddy did indeed catch a 'Tartar '!”

Remarks such as these were the pleasant sallies the event provoked; but so it is in higher and greater things in life! At the launch of a line-of-battle ship, the veriest vagrant in Tags fancies he can predict for her defeat and shipwreck!

The Broughtons were now the great people of the London season, at least to a certain “fast” set, who loved dinners at the Clarendon, high play, and other concomitant pleasures. Her equipages were the most perfect; her diamonds the most splendid; while his dinners were as much reputed by one class, as her toilet by another.

Loans at ruinous interest; sales of property for a tithe of its value; bills renewed at a rate that would have swamped Rothschild; purchases made at prices proportionate to the risk of non-payment; reckless waste everywhere; robbing solicitors, cheating tradesmen, and dishonest servants! But why swell the list, or take trouble to show how the ruin came? If one bad leak will cause a shipwreck, how is the craft to mount the waves with every plank riven asunder?

If among the patriarchs who lend at usury, Broughton's credit was beginning to ebb, in the clubs at the West End, in the betting-ring, at Crockford's, and at Tattersall's, he was in all the splendor of his former fame. Anderson would trust him with half his stable. Howell and James would send him the epergne they had designed for a czar. And so he lived. With rocks and breakers ahead, he only “carried on” the faster and the freer.