Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume I.. Lever Charles James
I shall begin to suspect that your own heart has not escaped scathless,” said Cave, laughing.
The old man’s face became crimson, but not with anger. As suddenly it grew pale; and in a voice of deep agitation he said, “When an old man like myself lays his homage at her feet, it is not hard to believe how a young man might love her.”
“How did you come to make this acquaintance?” said Cave, anxious to turn the conversation into a more familiar channel.
“We chanced to fail in with her brother on the river. We found him struggling with a fish far too large for his tackle, and which at last smashed his rod and got away. He showed not alone that he was a perfect angler, but that he was a fine-tempered fellow, who accepted his defeat manfully and well; he had even a good word for his enemy, sir, and it was that which attracted me. Trafford and he, young-men-like, soon understood each other; he came into our boat, lunched with us, and asked us home with him to tea. There ‘s the whole story. As to the intimacy that followed, it was mostly my own doing. I own to you I never so much as suspected that Trafford was smitten by her; he was always with her brother, scarcely at all in her company; and when he came to tell me he was in love, I asked him how he caught the malady, for I never saw him near the infection. Once that I knew of the matter, however, I made him write home to his family.”
“It was by your advice, then, that he wrote that letter?”
“Certainly; I not only advised, I insisted on it, – I read it, too, before it was sent off. It was such a letter as, if I had been the young fellow’s father, would have made me prouder than to hear he had got the thanks of Parliament.”
“You and I, Fossbrooke, are old bachelors; we are scarcely able to say what we should have done if we had had sons.”
“I am inclined to believe it would have made us better, not worse,” said Fossbrooke, gravely.
“At all events, as it was at your instigation this letter was written, I can’t well suggest your name as an impartial person in the transaction, – I mean, as one who can be referred to for advice or information.”
“Don’t do so, sir, or I shall be tempted to say more than may be prudent. Have you never noticed, Cave, the effect that a doctor’s presence produces in the society of those who usually consult him, – the reserve, – the awkwardness, – the constraint, – the apologetic tone for this or that little indiscretion, – the sitting in the draught or the extra glass of sherry? So is it, but in a far stronger degree, when an old man of the world like myself comes back amongst those he formerly lived with, – one who knew all their past history, how they succeeded here, how they failed there, – what led the great man of fashion to finish his days in a colony, and why the Court beauty married a bishop. Ah, sir, we are the physicians who have all these secrets in our keeping. It is ours to know what sorrow is covered by that smile, how that merry laugh has but smothered the sigh of a heavy heart. It is only when a man has lived to my age, with an unfailing memory too, that he knows the real hollowness of life, – all the combinations falsified, all the hopes blighted, – the clever fellows that have turned out failures, or worse than failures, – the lovely women that have made shipwreck through their beauty. It is not only, however, that he knows this, but he knows how craft and cunning have won where ability and frankness have lost, – how intrigue and trick have done better than genius and integrity. With all this knowledge, sir, in their heads, and stout hearts within them, such men as myself have their utility in life. They are a sort of walking conscience that cannot be ignored. The railroad millionnaire talks less boastfully before him who knew him as an errand-boy; the grande dame is less superciliously insolent in the presence of one who remembered her in a very different character. Take my word for it, Cave, Nestor may have been a bit of a bore amongst the young Greeks of fashion, but he had his utility too.”
“But how am I to answer this letter? What advice shall I give her?”
“Tell her frankly that you have made the inquiry she wished; that the young lady, who is as well born as her son, is without fortune, and if her personal qualities count for nothing, would be what the world would call a ‘bad match.’”
“Yes, that sounds practicable. I think that will do.”
“Tell her, also, that if she seriously desires that her son should continue in the way of that reformation he has so ardently followed for some time back, and especially so since he has made the acquaintance of this family, such a marriage as this would give her better reasons for confidence than all her most crafty devices in match-making and settlements.”
“I don’t think I can exactly tell her that,” said Caver smiling.
“Tell her, then, that if this connection be not to her liking, to withdraw her son at once from this neighborhood before this girl should come to care for him; for if she should, by heavens! he shall marry her, if every acre of the estate were to go to a cousin ten times removed!”
“Were not these people all strangers to you t’ other day, Fossbrooke?” said Cave, in something like a tone of reprehension.
“So they were. I had never so much as heard of them; but she, this girl, has a claim upon my interest, founded on a resemblance so strong that when I see her, I live back again in the long past, and find myself in converse with the dearest friends I ever had. I vow to Heaven I never knew the bitterness of want of fortune till now! I never felt how powerless and insignificant poverty can make a man till I desired to contribute to this girl’s happiness; and if I were not an old worthless wreck, – shattered and unseaworthy, – I ‘d set to work to-morrow to refit and try to make a fortune to bestow on her.”
If Cave was half disposed to banter the old man on what seemed little short of a devoted attachment, the agitation of Fossbrooke’s manner – his trembling lip, his shaking voice, his changing color – all warned him to forbear, and abstain from what might well have proved a perilous freedom.
“You will dine with us at mess, Fossbrooke, won’t you?”
“No; I shall return at once to Killaloe. I made Dr. Lendrick’s acquaintance just as I started by the train. I want to see more of him. Besides, now that I know what was the emergency that called young Trafford up here, I have nothing to detain me.”
“Shall you see him before you go?”
“Of course. I am going over to his quarters now.”
“You will not mention our conversation?”
“Certainly not.”
“I ‘d like to show you my letter before I send it off. I ‘d be glad to think it was what you recommended.”
“Write what you feel to be a fair statement of the case, and if by any chance an inclination to partiality crosses you, let it be in favor of the young. Take my word for it, Cave, there is a selfishness in age that needs no ally. Stand by the sons; the fathers and mothers will take care of themselves. Good-bye.”
CHAPTER XII. A GREAT MAN’S SCHOOLFELLOW
Whether it was that the Chief Baron had thrown off an attack which had long menaced him, and whose slow approaches had gradually impaired his strength and diminished his mental activity, or whether, as some of his “friends” suggested, that the old man’s tenure of life had been renewed by the impertinences of the newspapers and the insolent attacks of political foes, – an explanation not by any means far-fetched, – whatever the cause, he came out of his illness with all the signs of renewed vigor, and with a degree of mental acuteness that he had not enjoyed for many years before.
“Beattie tells me that this attack has inserted another life in my lease,” said he; “and I am glad of it. It is right that the men who speculated on my death should be reminded of the uncertainty of life by the negative proof. It is well, too, that there should be men long-lived enough to bridge over periods of mediocrity, and connect the triumphs of the past with the coming glories of the future. We are surely not destined to a perpetuity of Pendletons and Fitzgibbons?”
It was thus he discoursed to an old legal comrade, – who, less gifted and less fortunate, still wore his stuff gown, and pleaded for