Читать книгу The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly - Lever Charles James - Страница 2

It will save some time, both to writer and reader, while it will also serve to explain certain particulars about those we are interested in, if I give in this place a letter which was written by Lady Augusta Bramleigh, the Colonel’s young wife, to a married sister at Rome. It ran thus:

Hanover Square, Nov. 10, 18 – .

Dearest Dorothy, —

Here we are back in town, at a season, too, when we find ourselves the only people left; and if I wanted to make a long story of how it happens, there is the material; but it is precisely what I desire to avoid, and at the risk of being barely intelligible, I will be brief. We have left Earlshope, and, indeed, Herefordshire, for good. Our campaign there was a social failure, but just such a failure as I predicted it would and must be; and although, possibly, I might have liked to have been spared some of the mortifications we met with, I am too much pleased with the results to quarrel over the means.

You are already in possession of what we intended by the purchase of Earlshope – how we meant to become county magnates, marry our sons and daughters to neighboring magnates, and live as though we had been rooted to the soil for centuries. I say “we,” my dear, because I am too good a wife to separate myself from Col. B. in all these projects; but I am fain to own that as I only saw defeat in the plan, I opposed it from the first. Here, in town, money will do anything; at least, anything that one has any right to do. There may be a set or a clique to which it will not give admission; but who wants them, who needs them?

There’s always a wonderful Van Eyck or a Memling in a Dutch town, to obtain the sight of which you have to petition the authorities, or implore the Stadtholder; but I never knew any one admit that success repaid the trouble; and the chances are that you come away from the sight fully convinced that you have seen scores of old pictures exactly like it, and that all that could be said was, it was as brown, and as dusky, and as generally disappointing, as its fellows. So it is with these small exclusive societies. It may be a great triumph of ingenuity to pick the lock; but there ‘s nothing in the coffer to reward it. I repeat, then, with money – and we had money – London was open to us. All the more, too, that for some years back society has taken a speculative turn; and it is nothing derogatory to find people “to go in,” as it is called, for a good thing, in “Turks” or “Brazilians,” in patent fuel, or a new loan to the children of Egypt. To these, and such like, your City man and banker is esteemed a safe pilot; and you would be amused at the amount of attention Col. B. was accustomed to meet with from men who regarded themselves as immeasurably above him, and who, all question of profit apart, would have hesitated at admitting him to their acquaintance.

I tell you all these very commonplace truths, my dear Dorothy, because they may not, indeed cannot, be such truisms to you – you, who live in a grand old city, with noble traditions, and the refinements that come transmitted from centuries of high habits; and I feel, as I write, how puzzled you will often be to follow me. London was, as I have twice said, our home; but for that very reason we could not be content with it. Earlshope, by ill luck, was for sale, and we bought it. I am afraid to tell you the height of our castle-building; but, as we were all engaged, the work went on briskly, every day adding at least a story to the edifice. We were to start as high sheriff, then represent the county. I am not quite clear, I think we never settled the point as to the lord-lieutenancy; but I know the exact way, and the very time, in which we demanded our peerage. How we threatened to sulk, and did sulk; how we actually sat a whole night on the back benches; and how we made our eldest son dance twice with a daughter of the “Opposition,” – menaces that no intelligent Cabinet or conscientious “Whip” could for a moment misunderstand. And oh! my dear Dora, as I write these things, how forcibly I feel the prudence of that step which once we all were so ready to condemn you for having taken. You were indeed right to marry a foreigner. That an English girl should address herself to the married life of England, the first condition is she should never have left England, not even for that holiday-trip to Paris and Switzerland, which people now do, as once they were wont to “do Margate.” The whole game of existence is such a scramble with us: we scramble for social rank, for place, for influence, for Court favor, for patronage; and all these call for so much intrigue and plotting, that I vow to you I ‘d as soon be a Carbonara or a Sanfedista as the wife of an aspiring middle-class Englishman.

But to return. The county would not have us – we were rich, and we were City folk, and they deemed it an unpardonable pretension in us to come down amongst them. They refused our invitations, and sent us none of their own. We split with them, contested the election against them, and got beaten. We spent unheard-of moneys, and bribed everybody that had not a vote for ten miles round. With universal suffrage, which I believe we promised them, we should have been at the head of the poll; but the freeholders were to a man opposed to us.

I am told that our opponents behaved ungenerously and unjustly – perhaps they did; at all events, the end of the contest left us without a single acquaintance, and we stood alone in our glory of beaten candidateship, after three months of unheard-of fatigue, and more meanness than I care to mention. The end of all was, to shake the dust off our feet at Herefordshire, and advertise Earlshope for sale. Meanwhile we returned to town; just as shipwrecked men clamber up the first rock in sight, not feeling in their danger what desolation is before them. I take it that the generals of a beaten army talk very little over their late defeat. At all events we observed a most scrupulous reserve, and I don’t think that a word was dropped amongst us for a month that could have led a stranger to believe that we had just been beaten in an election, and hunted out of the county.

I was just beginning to feel that our lesson, a severe one, it is true, might redound to our future benefit, when our eldest-born – I call them all mine, Dora, though not one of them will say mamma to me – discovered that there was an Irish estate to be sold, with a fine house and fine grounds, and that if we could n’t be great folk in the grander kingdom, there was no saying what we might not be in the smaller one. This was too much for me. I accepted the Herefordshire expedition because it smacked of active service. I knew well we should be defeated, and I knew there would be a battle, but I could not consent to banishment. What had I done, I asked myself over and over, that I should be sent to live in Ireland?

I tried to get up a party against the project, and failed. Augustus Bramleigh – our heir – was in its favor, indeed its chief promoter. Temple, the second son, who is a secretary of embassy, and the most insufferable of puppies, thought it a “nice place for us,” and certain to save us money; and John, – Jack they call him, – who is in the navy, thinks land to be land, besides that, he was once stationed at Cork, and thought it a paradise. If I could do little with the young men, I did less with the girls. Marion, the eldest, who deems her papa a sort of divine-right head of a family, would not discuss the scheme; and Eleanor, who goes in for nature and spontaneous feeling, replied that she was overjoyed at the thought of Ireland, and even half gave me to understand that she was only sorry it was not Africa. I was thus driven to a last resource. I sent for our old friend, Doctor Bartlet, and told him frankly that he must order me abroad to a dry warm climate, where there were few changes of temperature, and nothing depressing in the air. He did the thing to perfection; he called in Forbes to consult with him. The case was very serious, he said. The lung was not yet attacked, but the bronchial tubes were affected. Oh, how grateful I felt to my dear bronchial tubes, for they have sent me to Italy! Yes, Dolly dearest, I am off on Wednesday, and hope within a week after this reaches you to be at your side, pouring out all my sorrows, and asking for that consolation you never yet refused me. And now, to be eminently practical, can you obtain for me that beautiful little villa that overlooked the Borghese Gardens? – it was called the Villino Altieri. The old Prince Giuseppe Altieri, who used to be an adorer of mine, if he be alive may like to resume his ancient passion, and accept me for a tenant; all the more that I can afford to be liberal. Col. B. behaves well always where money enters. I shall want servants, as I only mean to take from this, Rose and my groom. You know the sort of creatures I like; but, for my sake, be particular about the cook, – I can’t eat “Romanesque,” – and if there be a stray Frenchman wandering about, secure him. Do you remember dear old Paoletti, Dolly, who used to serve up those delicious little macaroni suppers long ago in our own room? – cheating us into gourmandism by the trick of deceit! Oh, what would I give to be as young again! To be soaring up to heaven, as I listened with closed eyes to the chant in the Sistine Chapel, or ascending to another elysium of delight, as I gazed at the “noble guard” of the Pope, who, while his black charger was caracoling, and he was holding on by the mane, yet managed to dart towards me such a look of love and devotion I and you remember, Dolly, we lived “secondo piano,” at the time, and it was plucky of the man, considering how badly he rode. I yearn to go back there. I yearn for those sunsets from the Pincian, and those long rambling rides over the Campagna, leading to nothing but an everlasting dreaminess, and an intense desire that one could go on day after day in the same delicious life of unreality; for it is so, Dolly. Your Roman existence is as much a trance as anything ever was – not a sight nor sound to shock it. The swell of the organ and the odor of the incense follow you even to your pleasures, and, just as the light streams in through the painted windows with its radiance of gold and amber and rose, so does the Church tinge with its mellow lustre all that goes on within its shadow. And how sweet and soothing it all is! I don’t know, I cannot know, if it lead to heaven, but it certainly goes in that direction, so far as peace of mind is concerned. What has become of Carlo Lambruschini? Is he married? How good-looking he was, and how he sung! I never heard Mario without thinking of him. How is it that our people never have that velvety softness in their tenor voices; there is no richness, no latent depth of tone, and consequently no power of expression? Will his Eminence of the Palazzo Antinori know me again? I was only a child when he saw me last, and used to give me his “benedizione.” Be sure you bespeak for me the same condescending favor again, heretic though I be. Don’t be shocked, dearest Dora, but I mean to be half converted, that is to have a sort of serious flirtation with the Church; something that is to touch my affections, and yet not wound my principles; something that will surround me with all the fervor of the faith, and yet not ask me to sign the ordinances. I hope I can do this. I eagerly hope it, for it will supply a void in my heart which certainly neither the money article, nor the share list, nor even the details of a county contest, have sufficed to fill. Where is poor little Santa Rosa and his guitar? I want them, Dolly – I want them both. His little tinkling barcarolles were as pleasant as the drip of a fountain on a sultry night; and am I not a highly imaginative creature, who can write of a sultry night in this land of fog, east wind, gust, and gaslight? How my heart bounds to think how soon I shall leave it! How I could travesty the refrain, and cry, “Rendez-moi mon passeport, ou laissez-moi mourir.” And now, Dolly darling, I have done. Secure me the villa, engage my people. Tanti saluti to the dear cardinal, – as many loves to all who are kind enough to remember me. Send me a lascia-passare for my luggage – it is voluminous – to the care of the consul at Civita Vecchia, and tell him to look out for me by the arrival of the French boat, somewhere about the 20th or 21st; he can be useful with the custom-house creatures, and obtain me a carriage all to myself in the train.

It is always more “carino” to talk of a husband at the last line of a letter, and so I say, give dear Tino all my loves, quite apart and distinct from my other legacies of the like nature. Tell him, I am more tolerant than I used to be, – he will know my meaning, – that I make paper cigarettes just as well, and occasionally, when in high good-humor, even condescend to smoke one too. Say also, that I have a little chestnut cob, quiet enough for his riding, which shall be always at his orders; that he may dine with me every Sunday, and have one dish – I know well what it will be, I smell the garlic of it even now – of his own dictating; and if these be not enough, add that he may make love to me during the whole of Lent; and with this, believe me

Your own doting sister,

Augusta Bramleigh.

After much thought and many misgivings I deemed it advisable to offer to take one of the girls with me, leaving it open, to mark my indifference, as to which it should be. They both however refused, and, to my intense relief, declared that they did not care to come abroad; Augustus also protesting that it was a plan he could not approve of. The diplomatist alone opined that the project had anything to recommend it; but as his authority, like my own, in the family, carries little weight, we were happily outvoted. I have, therefore, the supreme satisfaction – and is it not such? – of knowing that I have done the right thing, and it has cost me nothing; like those excellent people who throw very devout looks towards heaven, without the remotest desire to be there.