Читать книгу Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume II. - Lever Charles James - Страница 2

The mine of Lavanna, on which Sir Brook had placed all his hopes of future fortune, was distant from the town of Cagliari about eighteen miles. It was an old, a very old shaft; Livy had mentioned it, and Pliny, in one of his letters, compares people of sanguine and hopeful temperament with men who believe in the silver ore of Lavanna. There had therefore been a traditionary character of failure attached to the spot, and not impossibly this very circumstance had given it a greater value in Fossbrooke’s estimation; for he loved a tough contest with fortune, and his experiences had given him many such.

Popular opinion certainly set down the mine as a disastrous enterprise, and the list of those who had been ruined by the speculation was a long one. Nothing daunted by all he had heard, and fully convinced in his own mind that his predecessors had earned their failures by their own mistakes, Fossbrooke had purchased the property many years before, and there it had remained, like many of his other acquisitions, uncared for and unthought of, till the sudden idea had struck him that he wanted to be rich, and to be rich instantaneously.

He had coffee-plantations somewhere in Ceylon, and he had purchased largely of land in Canada; but to utilize either of these would be a work of time, whereas the mine would yield its metal bright and ready for the market. It was so much actual available money at once.

His first care was to restore, so far as to make it habitable, a dreary old ruinous barrack of a house, which a former speculator had built to hold all his officials and dependants. A few rooms that opened on a tumble-down terrace – of which some marble urns yet remained to bear witness of former splendor – were all that Sir Brook could manage to make habitable, and even these would have seemed miserable and uncomfortable to any one less bent on “roughing it” than himself.

Some guns and fishing-gear covered one wall of the room that served as dinner-room; and a few rude shelves on the opposite side contained such specimens of ore as were yet discovered, and the three or four books which formed their library; the space over the chimney displaying a sort of trophy of pipes of every sort and shape, from the well-browned meerschaum to the ignoble “dudeen” of Irish origin.

These were the only attempts at decoration they had made, but it was astonishing with what pleasure the old man regarded them, and with what pride he showed the place to such as accidentally came to see him.

“I’ll have a room yet, just arrayed in this fashion, Tom,” would he say, “when we have made our fortune, and go back to live in England. I ‘ll have a sort of snuggery a correct copy of this; all the old beams in the ceiling, and those great massive architraves round the doors, shall be exactly followed, and the massive stone mantelpiece; and it will remind us, as we sit there of a winter’s night, of the jolly evenings we have had here after a hard day’s work in the shaft. Won’t I have the laugh at you, Tom, too, as I tell you of the wry face you used to make over our prospects, the hang-dog look you ‘d give when the water was gaining on us, and our new pump got choked!”

Tom would smile at all this, though secretly nourishing no such thoughts for the future. Indeed, he had for many a day given up all hope of making his fortune as a miner, and merely worked on with the dogged determination not to desert his friend.

On one of the large white walls of their sitting-room Sir Brook had sketched in charcoal a picture of the mine, in all the dreariest aspect of its poverty, and two sad-looking men, Tom and himself, working at the windlass over the shaft; and at the other extremity of the space there stood a picturesque mansion, surrounded with great forest trees, under which deer were grouped, and two men – the same – were riding up the approach on mettlesome horses; the elder of the two, with outstretched arm and hand, evidently directing his companion’s attention to the rich scenes through which they passed. These were the “now” and “then” of the old man’s vision, and he believed in them, as only those believe who draw belief from their own hearts, unshaken by all without.

It was at the close of a summer day, just in that brief moment when the last flicker of light tinges the earth at first with crimson and then with deep blue, to give way a moment later to black night, that Sir Brook sat with Colonel Cave after dinner, explaining to his visitor the fresco on the wall, and giving, so far as he might, his reasons to believe it a truthful foreshadowing of the future.

“But you tell me,” said Cave, “that the speculation has proved the ruin of a score of fellows.”

“So it has. Did you ever hear of the enterprise, at least of one worth the name, that had not its failures? or is success anything more in reality than the power of reasoning out how and why others have succumbed, and how to avoid the errors that have beset them? The men who embarked in this scheme were alike deficient in knowledge and in capital.”

“Ah, indeed!” muttered Cave, who did not exactly say what his looks implied. “Are you their superior in these requirements?”

Sir Brook was quick enough to note the expression, and hastily said, “I have not much to boast of myself in these respects, but I possess that which they never had, – that without which men accomplish nothing in life, going through the world mere desultory ramblers, and not like sturdy pilgrims, ever footing onward to the goal of their ambition. I have Faith!”

“And young Lendrick, what says he to it?”

“He scarcely shares my hopes, but he shows no signs of backwardness.”

“He is not sanguine, then?”

“Nature did not make him so, and a man can no more alter his temperament than his stature. I began life with such a capital of confidence that, though I have been an arrant spendthrift, I have still a strong store by me. The cunning fellows laugh at us and call us dupes; but let me tell you, Cave, if accounts were squared, it might turn out that even as a matter of policy incredulity has not much to boast of, and were it not so, this world would be simply intolerable.”

“I’d like, however, to hear that your mine was not all outlay,” said Cave, bringing back the theme to its starting-point.

“So should I,” said Fossbrooke, dryly.

“And I ‘d like to learn that some one more conversant – more professional in these matters – ”

“Less ignorant than myself, in a word,” said Fossbrooke, laughing. “You mean you’d like to hear a more trustworthy prophet predict as favorably; and with all that I agree heartily.”

“There’s no one would be better pleased to be certain that the fine palace on the wall there was not a castle in Spain. I think you know that.”

“I do, Cave, – I know it well; but bear in mind, your best runs in the hunting-field have not always been when you have killed your fox. The pursuit, when it is well sustained, with its fair share of perils met, dared, and overcome, – this is success. Whatever keeps a man’s heart up and his courage high to the end, is no mean thing. I own to you I hope to win, and I don’t know that there is any such failure possible as would quench this hope.”

“Just what Trafford said of you when he came back from that fishing-excursion,” cried Cave, as though carried away by a sudden burst of thought.

“What a good fellow he is! Shall we have him up here to-night?”

“No; some of our men have been getting into scrapes at Cagliari, and I have been obliged to ask him to stay there and keep things in order.”

“Is his quarrel with his family final, or is there still an opening to reconciliation?”

“I ‘m afraid not. Some old preference of his mother’s for the youngest son has helped on the difference; and then certain stories she brought back from Ireland of Lionel’s doings there, or at least imputed doings, have, I suspect, steeled his father’s heart completely against him.”

“I’ll stake my life on it there is nothing dishonorable to attach to him. What do they allege?”

“I have but a garbled version of the story, for from Trafford himself I have heard nothing; but I know, for I have seen the bills, he has lost largely at play to a very dangerous creditor, who also accuses him of designs on his wife; and the worst of this is that the latter suspicion originated with Lady Trafford.”

“I could have sworn it. It was a woman’s quarrel, and she would sacrifice her own son for vengeance. I ‘ll be able to pay her a very refined compliment when I next see her, Cave, and tell her that she is not in the least altered from the day I first met her. And has Lionel been passed over in the entail?”

“So he believes, and I think with too good reason.”

“And all because he loved a girl whose alliance would confer honor on the proudest house in the land. I think I ‘ll go over and pay Holt a visit. It is upwards of forty years since I saw Sir Hugh, and I have a notion I could bring him to reason.”

Cave shook his head doubtingly.

“Ay, to be sure,” sighed Fossbrooke, “it does make a precious difference whether one remonstrates at the head of a fine fortune or pleads for justice in a miner’s jacket. I was forgetting that, Cave. Indeed, I am always forgetting it. And have they made no sort of settlement on Lionel, – nothing to compensate him for the loss of his just expectations?”

“I suspect not. He has told me nothing beyond the fact that he is to have the purchase-money for the lieutenant-colonelcy, which I was ready and willing to vacate in his favor, but which we are unable to negotiate, because he owes a heavy sum, to the payment of which this must go.”

“Can nothing be done with his creditor? – can we not manage to secure the debt and pay the interest?”

“This same creditor is one not easily dealt with,” said Cave, slowly.

“A money-lender?”

“No. He ‘s the man I just told you wanted to involve Trafford with his own wife. As dangerous a fellow as ever lived. I take shame to myself to own that, though acquainted with him for years, I never really knew his character till lately.”

“Don’t think the worse of yourself for that, Cave. The faculty to read bad men at sight argues too much familiarity with badness. I like to hear a fellow say, ‘I never so much as suspected it.’ Is this, man’s name a secret?”

“No. Nothing of the kind. I don’t suppose you ever met him, but he is well known in the service, – better perhaps in India than at home, – he served on Rolffe’s staff in Bengal. His name is Sewell.”

“What! Dudley Sewell?”

“Yes; that’s his name. Do you know him?”

“Do I know him!” muttered the old man, as he bent down and supported his head upon his hand.

“And do I wrong him in thinking him a dangerous fellow?” asked Cave. But Fossbrooke made no answer; indeed, he never heard the question, so absorbed was he in his own thoughts.

“What do you know of him?” asked Cave, in a louder voice.

“Everything, – everything! I know all that he has done, and scores of things he would have done if he could. By what ill-luck was it that Trafiford came to know this man?”

“They met at the Cape, and Trafford went to visit him when they came over to Ireland. I suspect – I do not know it – but I suspect that there was some flirtation in the case. She is extremely pretty, and a coquette.”

“I declare,” said Fossbrooke, as he arose and paced the room, totally unattentive to all the other said, – “I declare I begin sometimes to think that the only real activity in life is on the part of the scoundrels. Half the honest people in the world pass their lives in forming good intentions, while the rogues go straight at their work and do it. Do you think, Cave, that Trafford would tell me frankly what has passed between this man and himself?”

“I ‘m not sure. I mean, he might have some reserve on one point, and that is the very point on which his candor would be most important. There have been letters, it would seem, that Sewell has got hold of, and threatens exposure, if some enormous demand be not complied with.”

“What! Is the scoundrel so devoid of devices that he has to go back on an old exploded villany? Why, he played that game at Rangoon, and got five thousand pounds out of poor Beresford.”

“I have heard something of that.”

“Have heard of it! Who that ever served in India is not familiar with the story? What does Trafford mean by not coming up here, and telling me the whole story?”

“I ‘ll tell you what he means, Fossbrooke: he is heartily ashamed of himself; he is in love with another, and he knows that you know it; but he believes you may have heard stories to his detriment, and, tied as he is, or fancies he is, by a certain delicate reserve, he cannot go into his exculpation. There, in one word, is the reason that he is not here to-night; he asked me to put on him special duty, and save him from all the awkwardness of meeting you with a half-confidence.”

“And I, meanwhile, have written off to Tom Lendrick to come over here with his sister, or to let us go and pay them a visit at the island.”

“You never told me of this.”

“Why should I? I was using the rights I possess over you as my guests, doing for you what I deemed best for your amusement.”

“What answer have they given you?”

“None up to this; indeed, there has been scarcely time; and now, from what you tell me, I do not well know what answer I’d like to have from them.”

For several minutes neither uttered a word; at last Fossbrooke said: “Trafford was right not to meet me. It has saved him some prevarication, and me some passion. Write and tell him I said so.”

“I can scarcely do that, without avowing that I have revealed to you more than I am willing to own.”

“When you told me in whose hands he was, you told me more than all the rest. Few men can live in Dudley Sewells intimacy and come unscathed out of the companionship.”

“That would tell ill for myself, for I have been of late on terms of much intimacy with him.”

“You have n’t played with him?”

“Ay, but I have; and, what’s more, won of him,” said Cave, laughing.

“You profited little by that turn of fortune,” said Foss-brooke, sarcastically.

“You imply that he did not pay his debt; but you are wrong: he came to me the morning after we had played, and acquitted the sum lost.”

“Why, I am entangling myself in the miracles I hear! That Sewell should lose is strange enough: that he should pay his losses is simply incredible.”

“Your opinion of him would seem to be a very indifferent one.”

“Far from it, Cave. It is without any qualification whatever. I deem him the worst fellow I ever knew; nor am I aware of any greater misfortune to a young fellow entering on life than to have become his associate.”

“You astonish me! I was prepared to hear things of him that one could not justify, nor would have willingly done themselves, but not to learn that he was beyond the pale of honor.”

“It is exactly where he stands, sir, – beyond the pale of honor. I wish we had not spoken of him,” said the old man, rising, and pacing the room. “The memory of that fellow is the bitterest draught I ever put to my lips; he has dashed my mind with more unworthy doubts and mean suspicions of other men than all my experience of life has ever taught me. I declare, I believe if I had never known him my heart would have been as hopeful to-day as it was fifty years ago.”

“How came it that I never heard you speak of him?”

“Is it my wont, Cave, to talk of my disasters to my friends? You surely have known me long enough to say whether I dwell upon the reverses and disappointments of my life. It is a sorry choice of topics, perhaps, that is left to men old as myself when they must either be croakers or boasters. At all events, I have chosen the latter; and people bear with it the better because they can smile at it.”

“I wish with all my heart I had never played with Sewell, and still more that I had not won of him.”

“Was it a heavy sum?”

“For a man like myself, a very heavy sum. I was led on – giving him his revenge, as it is called – till I found myself playing for a stake which, had I lost, would have cost me the selling my commission.”

Fossbrooke nodded, as though to say he had known of such, incidents in the course of his life.

“When he appeared at my quarters the next morning to settle the debt, I was so overcome with shame that I pledge you my word of honor, I believe I ‘d rather have been the loser and taken all the ruin the loss would have brought down upon me.”

“How your friend must have appreciated your difficulty!” said Fossbrooke, sarcastically.

“He was frank enough, at all events, to own that he could not share my sense of embarrassment. He jeered a little at my pretension to be an example to my young officers, as well he might. I had selected an unlucky moment to advance such a claim; and then he handed me over my innings, with all the ease and indifference in life.”

“I declare, Cave, I was expecting, to the very last moment, a different ending to your story. I waited to hear that he had handed you a bond of his wife’s guardian, which for prudential reasons should not be pressed for prompt payment.”

“Good heavens! what do you mean?” cried Cave, leaning over the table in intense eagerness. “Who could have told you this?”

“Beresford told me; he brought me the very document once to my house with my own signature annexed to it, – an admirable forgery as ever was, done. My seal, too, was there. By bad luck, however, the paper was stolen from me that very night, – taken out of a locked portfolio. And when Beresford charged the fellow with the fraud, Sewell called him out and shot him.”

Cave sat for several minutes like one stunned and overcome. He looked vacantly before him, but gave no sign of hearing or marking what was said to him. At last he arose, and, walking over to a table, unlocked his writing-desk, and took out a large packet, of which he broke the seal, and without examining the contents, handed it to Fossbrooke, saying, – “Is that like it?”

“It is the very bond itself; there’s my signature. I wish I wrote as good a hand now,” said he, laughing. “It is as I always said, Cave,” cried he, in a louder, fuller voice; “the world persists in calling this swindler a clever fellow, and there never was a greater mistake. The devices of the scoundrel are the very fewest imaginable; and he repeats his three or four tricks, with scarcely a change, throughout a life long.”

“And this is a forgery!” muttered Cave, as he bent over the document and scanned it closely.

“You shall see me prove it such. You ‘ll intrust me with it. I ‘ll promise to take better care of it this time.”

“Of course. What do you mean to do?”

“Nothing by course of law, Cave. So far I promise you, and I know it is of that you are most afraid. No, my good friend. If you never figure in a witness-box till brought there by me, you may snap your fingers for many a day at cross-examinations.”

“This cannot be made the subject of a personal altercation,” said Cave, hesitatingly.

“If you mean a challenge, certainly not; but it may be made the means of extricating Trafford from his difficulties with this man, and I can hardly see where and what these difficulties are.”

“You allude to the wife?”

“We will not speak of that, Cave,” said Fossbrooke, coloring deeply. “Mrs. Sewell has claims on my regard, that nothing her husband could do, nothing that he might become could efface. She was the daughter of the best and truest friend, and the most noble-hearted fellow I ever knew. I have long ceased to occupy any place in her affections, but I shall never cease to remember whose child she was, – how he loved her, and how, in the last words he ever spoke, he asked me to befriend her. In those days I was a rich man, and had the influence that wealth confers. I had access to great people, too, and, wanting nothing for myself, could easily be of use to others; but, where am I wandering to? I only intended to say that her name is not to be involved in any discussion those things may occasion. What are these voices I hear outside in the court? Surely that must be Tom Lendrick I hear.” He arose and flung open the window, and at the same instant a merry voice cried out, “Here we are, Sir Brook, – Trafford and myself. I met him in the Piazza at Cagliari, and carried him off with me.”

“Have you brought anything to eat with you?” asked Fossbrooke.

“That I have, – half a sheep and a turkey,” said Tom.

“Then you are thrice welcome,” said Fossbrooke, laughing; “for Cave and I are reduced to fluids. Come up at once; the fellows will take care of your horses. We ‘ll make a night of it, Cave,” said the old man, as he proceeded to cover the table with bottles. “We’ll drink success to the mine! We ‘ll drink to the day when, as lieutenant-general, you ‘ll come and pay me a visit in that great house yonder, – and here come the boys to help us.”