The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly. Lever Charles James
– fifteen. I’d make it the test of a man’s patriotism to use it. I ‘d get the Viceroy to burn it, and the Chief Secretary, and the Archbishop, and Father Cullen. I ‘d heat St. Patrick’s with it, and the national schools. There could be no disguise about it; like the native whiskey, it would be known by the smell of the smoke.”
“You have drawn up some sort of prospectus?”
“Some sort of prospectus! I think I have. There’s a document there on the table might go before the House of Commons this minute; and the short and the long of it is, Bramleigh” – here he crossed his arms on the table, and dropped his voice to a tone of great confidence – “it is a good thing – a right good thing. There ‘s coal there, of one kind or other, for five-and-twenty years, perhaps more. The real, I may say, the only difficulty of the whole scheme will be to keep old Culduff from running off with all the profits. As soon as the money comes rolling in, he ‘ll set off shelling it out; he ‘s just as wasteful as he was thirty years ago.”
“That will be impossible when a company is once regularly formed.”
“I know that, – I know that; but men of his stamp say, ‘We know nothing about trade. We have n’t been bred up to office-stools and big ledgers; and when we want money, we get it how we can.’”
“We can’t prevent him selling out or mortgaging his shares. You mean, in short, that he should not be on the direction?” added he.
“That’s it, – that’s exactly it,” said Cutbill, joyously.
“Will he like that? Will he submit to it?”
“He ‘ll like whatever promises to put him most speedily into funds; he’ll submit to whatever threatens to stop the supplies. Don’t you know these men better than I do, who pass lives of absenteeism from their country; how little they care how or whence money comes, provided they get it? They neither know, nor want to know, about good or bad seasons, whether harvests are fine, or trade profitable; their one question is, ‘Can you answer my draft at thirty-one days?’”
“Ah, yes; there is too much, far too much, of what you say in the world,” said Bramleigh, sighing.
“These are not the men who want to do something for Ireland,” said the other, quizzically.
“Sir, it may save us both some time and temper if I tell you I have never been ‘chaffed.’”
“That sounds to me like a man saying, I have never been out in the rain; but as it is so, there ‘s no more to be said.”
“Nothing, sir. Positively nothing on that head.”
“Nor indeed on any other. Men in my line of life could n’t get on without it. Chaff lubricates business just the way grease oils machinery. There would be too much friction in life without chaff, Bramleigh.”
“I look upon it as directly the opposite. I regard it as I would a pebble getting amongst the wheels, and causing jar and disturbance, sir.”
“Well, then,” said Cutbill, emptying the last drop into his glass, “I take it I need not go over all the details you will find in those papers. There are plans, and specifications, and estimates, and computations, showing what we mean to do, and how; and as I really could add nothing to the report, I suppose I may wish you a good night.”
“I am very sorry, Mr. Cutbill, if my inability to be jocular should deprive me of the pleasure of your society; but there are still many points on which I desire to be informed.”
“It’s all there. If you were to bray me in a mortar you could n’t get more out of me than you ‘ll find in those papers; and whether it ‘s the heat of the room, or the wine, or the subject, but I am awfully sleepy,” and he backed this assurance with a hearty yawn.
“Well, sir, I must submit to your dictation. I will try and master these details before I go to bed, and will take some favorable moment to-morrow to talk them over.”
“That’s said like a sensible man,” said Cutbill, clapping him familiarly on the shoulder, and steadying himself the while; for as he stood up to go, he found that the wine had been stronger than he suspected. “When we see a little more of each other,” said he, in the oracular tone of a man who had drunk too much; “when we see a little more of each other, we ‘ll get on famously. You know the world, and I know the world. You have had your dealings with men, and I have had my dealings with men, and we know what’s what. Ain’t I right, Bramleigh?”
“I have no doubt there is much truth in what you say.”
“Truth, truth, it’s true as gospel! There’s only one thing, however, to be settled between us. Each must make his little concession with reci-procity – reci-procity, ain’t it?”
“Quite so; but I don’t see your meaning.”
“Here it is, then, Bramleigh; here’s what I mean. If we ‘re to march together we must start fair. No man is to have more baggage than his neighbor. If I ‘m to give up chaff, do you see, you must give up humbug. If I ‘m not to have my bit of fun, old boy, you ‘re not to come over me about doing something for Ireland, that’s all,” and with this he lounged out, banging the door after him as he went.
Mr. Cutbill, as he went to his room, had a certain vague suspicion that he had drunk more wine than was strictly necessary, and that the liquor was not impossibly stronger than he had suspected. He felt, too, in the same vague way, that there had been a passage of arms between his host and himself; but as to what it was about, and who was the victor, he had not the shadow of a conception.
Neither did his ordinary remedy of pouring the contents of his water-jug over his head aid him on this occasion.
“I’m not a bit sleepy; nonsense!” muttered he, “so I’ll go and see what they are doing in the smoking-room.”
Here he found the three young men of the house in that semi-thoughtful dreariness which is supposed to be the captivation of tobacco; as if the mass of young Englishmen needed anything to deepen the habitual gloom of their natures, or thicken the sluggish apathy that follows them into all inactivity.
“How jolly,” cried Cutbill, as he entered. “I ‘ll be shot if I believed as I came up the stairs that there was any one here. You haven’t even got brandy and seltzer.”
“If you touch that bell, they ‘ll bring it,” said Augustus, languidly.
“Some Moselle for me,” said Temple, as the servant entered.
“I’m glad you’ve come, Cutty,” cried Jack; “as old Kemp used to say, anything is better than a dead calm; even a mutiny.”
“What an infernal old hurdy-gurdy! Why haven’t you a decent piano here, if you have one at all?” said Cutbill, as he ran his hands over the keys of a discordant old instrument that actually shook on its legs as he struck the chords.
“I suspect it was mere accident brought it here,” said Augustus. “It was invalided out of the girls’ schoolroom, and sent up here to be got rid of.”
“Sing us something, Cutty,” said Jack; “it will be a real boon at this moment.”
“I’ll sing like a grove of nightingales for you, when I have wet my lips; but I am parched in the mouth, like a Cape parrot. I ‘ve had two hours of your governor below stairs. Very dry work, I promise you.”
“Did he offer you nothing to drink?” asked Jack.
“Yes, we had two bottles of very tidy claret. He called it ‘Mouton.’”
“By Jove!” said Augustus, “you must have been high in the governor’s favor to be treated to his ‘Bra Mouton.’”
“We had a round with the gloves, nevertheless,” said Cutbill, “and exchanged some ugly blows. I don’t exactly know about what or how it began, or even how it ended; but I know there was a black eye somewhere. He’s passionate, rather.”
“He has the spirit that should animate every gentleman,” said Temple.
“That’s