The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly. Lever Charles James
all the correspondence with plenipotentiaries.
These were not Culduffs views. His code – it is the code of all his calling – was: No country of any pretensions, no more than any gentleman of blood and family, ever became bankrupt. Pressed, hard-pushed, he would say, Yes! we all of us have had our difficulties, and to surmount them occasionally we are driven to make unprofitable bargains, but we “rub through,” and so will Greece and Spain and those other countries where they are borrowing at twelve or twenty per cent, and raise a loan each year to discharge the dividends.
Not only, then, were these two little gifted with qualities to render them companionable to each other, but from the totally different way every event and every circumstance presented itself to their minds, each grew to conceive for the other a sort of depreciatory estimate as of one who only could see a very small part of any subject, and even that colored and tinted by the hues of his own daily calling.
“So, then,” said Culduff, after listening to a somewhat lengthy explanation from Bramleigh of why and how it was that there was nothing to be done financially at the moment, – “so, then, I am to gather the plan of a company to work the mines is out of the question?”
“I would rather call it deferred than abandoned,” was the cautious reply.
“In my career what we postpone we generally prohibit. And what other course is open to us?”
“We can wait, my Lord, we can wait. Coal is not like indigo or tobacco; it is not a question of hours – whether the crop be saved or ruined. We can wait.”
“Very true, sir; but I cannot wait. There are some urgent calls upon me just now, the men who are pressing which will not be so complaisant as to wait either.”
“I was always under the impression, my Lord, that your position as a peer, and the nature of the services that you were engaged in, were sufficient to relieve you from all the embarrassments that attach to humbler men in difficulties?”
“They don’t arrest, but they dun us, sir; and they dun with an insistence and an amount of menace, too, that middle-class people can form no conception of. They besiege the departments we serve under with their vulgar complaints, and if the rumor gets abroad that one of us is about to be advanced to a governorship or an embassy, they assemble in Downing Street like a Reform demonstration. I declare to you I had to make my way through a lane of creditors from the Privy Council Office to the private entrance to F. O., my hands full of their confounded accounts – one fellow, a boot-maker, actually having pinned his bill to the skirt of my coat as I went. And the worst of these impertinences is, that they give a Minister who is indisposed towards you a handle for refusing your just claims. I have just come through such an ordeal: I have been told that my debts are to be a bar to my promotion.”
The almost tremulous horror which he gave to this last expression – as of an outrage unknown to mankind – warned Bramleigh to be silent.
“I perceive that you do not find it easy to believe this, but I pledge my word to you it is true. It is not forty-eight hours since a Secretary of State assumed to make my personal liabilities – the things which, if any things are a man’s own, are certainly so – to make these an objection to my taking a mission of importance. I believe he was sorry for his indiscretion; I have reason to suppose that it was a blunder he will not readily repeat.”
“And you obtained your appointment?” asked Bramleigh.
“Minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the court of Hochmaringen,” said Culduff, with a slow and pompous enunciation.
Bramleigh, pardonably ignorant of the geography of the important state alluded to, merely bowed in acknowledgment. “Is there much – much to do at one of these courts?” asked he, diffidently, after a pause.
“In one sense there is a great deal. In Germany the action of the greater cabinets is always to be discovered in the intrigues of the small dukedoms, just as you gather the temper of the huntsman from the way he lashes the hounds. You may, therefore, send a ‘cretin,’ if you like, to Berlin or Vienna; you want a man of tact and address at Sigmaringen or Kleinesel-stadt. They begin to see that here at home, but it took them years to arrive at it.”
Whether Bramleigh was confounded by the depth of this remark, or annoyed by the man who made it, he relapsed into a dreamy silence that soon passed into sleep, into which state the illustrious diplomatist followed, and thus was the journey made till the tall towers of Castello came into view, and they found themselves rapidly careering along with four posters towards the grand entrance. The tidings of their coming soon reached the drawing-room, and the hall was filled by the young members of the family to welcome them. “Remember,” said Bramleigh, “we have had nothing but a light luncheon since morning. Come and join us, if you like, in the dining-room, but let us have some dinner as soon as may be.”
It is not pleasant, perhaps, to be talked to while eating by persons quite unemployed by the pleasures of the table; but there is a sort of “free and easy” at such times not wholly unconducive to agreeable intercourse, and many little cares and attentions, impossible or unmeaning in the more formal habits of the table, are now graceful adjuncts to the incident. Thus was it that Marion contrived by some slight service or other to indicate to Lord Culduff that he was an honored guest; and when she filled his glass with champagne, and poured a little into her own to pledge him, the great man felt a sense of triumph that warmed the whole of that region where, anatomically, his heart was situated. While the others around were engaged in general conversation, she led him to talk of his journey to town, and what he had done there; and he told her somewhat proudly of the high mission about to be entrusted to him, not omitting to speak of the haughty tone he had used towards the Minister, and the spirit he had evinced in asserting his just claims. “We had what threatened at one time to be a stormy interview. When a man like myself has to recall the list of his services, the case may well be considered imminent. He pushed me to this, and I accepted his challenge. I told him, if I am not rich, it is because I have spent my fortune in maintaining the dignity of the high stations I have filled. The breaches in my fortune are all honorable wounds. He next objected to what I could not but admit as a more valid barrier to my claims. Can you guess it?”
She shook her head in dissent. It could not be his rank, or anything that bore upon his rank. Was it possible that official prudery had been shocked by the noble Lord’s social derelictions? Had the scandal of that old elopement survived to tarnish his fame and injure his success? and she blushed as she thought of the theme to which he invited her approach.
“I see you do divine it,” said he, smiling courteously.
“I suspect not,” said she, diffidently, and still blushing deeper.
“It would be a great boon to me – a most encouraging assurance,” said he, in a low and earnest voice, “if I could believe that your interest in me went so far as actually to read the story and anticipate the catastrophe of my life. Tell me then, I entreat you, that you know what I allude to.”
She hesitated. “Was it possible,” thought she, “that he wished me to admit that my opinion of him was not prejudiced by this ‘escapade’ of thirty years ago? Is he asking me to own that I am tolerant towards such offences?” His age, his tone generally, his essentially foreign breeding, made this very possible. Her perplexity was great, and her confusion increased with every minute.
At this critical moment there was a general move to go into the drawing-room, and as he gave her his arm, Lord Culduff drew her gently towards him, and said in his most insinuating voice, “Let me hear my fate.”
“I declare, my Lord,” said she, hesitatingly, “I don’t know what to say. Moralists and worldly people have two different measures for these things. I have no pretensions to claim a place with the former, and I rather shrink from accepting all the ideas of the latter. At all events, I would suppose that after a certain lapse of time, when years have gone over – profitably, I would hope – in fact, I mean – in short, I do not know what I mean.”
“You mean, perhaps, that it is not at my time of life men take such a step with prudence. Is that it?” asked he, trying in vain to keep down the irritation that moved him.
“Well,