The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly. Lever Charles James
the great man, as he puffed his cigar tranquilly in front of him. “You’ve had three of these special missions already.”
“And for the simple reason that I was the one man in England who knew how to do them.”
“We don’t dispute the way you did them; we only say all the prizes in the wheel should not fall to the same man.”
“You have had my proxy for the last five years.”
“And we have acknowledged the support – acknowledged it by more than professions.”
“I can only say this, that if I had been with the other side, I ‘d have met somewhat different treatment.”
“Don’t believe it, Culduff. Every party that is in power inherits its share of obligations. We have never disowned those we owe to you.”
“And why am I refused this, then?”
“If you wanted other reasons than those I have given you, I might be able to adduce them – not willingly indeed – but under pressure, and especially in strict confidence.” “Reasons against my having the mission?”
“Reasons against your having the mission.”
“You amaze me, my Lord. I almost doubt that I have heard you aright I must, however, insist on your explaining yourself. Am I to understand that there are personal grounds of unfitness?”
The other bowed in assent.
“Have the kindness to let me know them.”
“First of all, Culduff, this is to be a family mission – the duchess is a connection of our own royal house – and a certain degree of display and consequent expense will be required. Your fortune does not admit of this.”
“Push on to the more cogent reason, my Lord,” said Culduff, stiffly.
“Here, then, is the more cogent reason. The court has not forgotten – what possibly the world may have forgotten – some of those passages in your life for which you, perhaps, have no other remorse than that they are not likely to recur; and as you have given no hostages for good behavior, in the shape of a wife, the court, I say, is sure to veto your appointment. You see it all as clearly as I do.”
“So far as I do see,” said Culduff, slowly: “the first objection is my want of fortune, the second, my want of a wife?”
“Exactly so.”
“Well, my Lord, I am able to meet each of these obstacles; my agent has just discovered coal on one of my Irish estates, and I am now in town to make arrangements on a large scale to develop the source of wealth. As to the second disability, I shall pledge myself to present the Viscountess Culduff at the next drawing-room.”
“Married already?”
“No, but I may be within a few weeks. In fact, I mean to place myself in such a position, that no one holding your office can pass me over by a pretext, or affect to ignore my claim by affirming that I labor under a disability.”
“This sounds like menace, does it not?” said the other as he threw his cigar impatiently from him.
“A mere protocol, my Lord, to denote intention.”
“Well, I’ll submit your name. I’ll go further, – I’ll support it. Don’t leave town for a day or two. Call on Beadlesworth and see Repsley; tell him what you ‘ve said to me. If you could promise it was one of his old maiden sisters that you thought of making Lady Culduff, the thing could be clenched at once. But I take it you have other views?”
“I have other views,” said he, gravely.
“I’m not indiscreet, and I shall not ask you more on that head. By the way, is n’t your leave up, or nearly up?”
“It expired on Wednesday last, and I want it renewed for two months.”
“Of course, if we send you on this mission, you ‘ll not want the leave. I had something else to say. What was it?”
“I have not the very vaguest idea.”
“Oh! I remember. It was to recommend you not to take your wife from the stage. There’s a strong prejudice in a certain quarter as to that – in fact, I may say it couldn’t be got over.”
“I may relieve you of any apprehensions on that score. Indeed, I don’t know what fact in my life should expose me to the mere suspicion.”
“Nothing, nothing – except that impulsive generosity of your disposition, which might lead you to do what other men would stop short to count the cost of.”
“It would never lead me to derogate, my Lord,” said he, proudly, as he took his hat, and bowing haughtily left the room.
“The greatest ass in the whole career, and the word is a bold one,” said the Minister, as the door closed. “Meanwhile, I must send in his name for this mission, which he is fully equal to. What a happy arrangement it is, that in an age when our flunkies aspire to be gentlemen, there are gentlemen who ask nothing better than to be flunkies!”
CHAPTER XV. WITH HIS LAWYER
Though Colonel Bramleigh’s visit to town was supposed to be in furtherance of that speculation by which Lord Culduff calculated on wealth and splendor, he had really another object, and while Culduff imagined him to be busy in the City, and deep in shares and stock lists, he was closely closeted with his lawyer, and earnestly poring over a mass of time-worn letters and documents, carefully noting down dates, docketing, and annotating, in a way that showed what importance he attached to the task before him.
“I tell you what, Sedley,” said he, as he threw his pen disdainfully from him, and lay back in his chair, “the whole of this move is a party dodge. It is part and parcel of that vile persecution with which the Tory faction pursued me during my late canvass. You remember their vulgar allusions to my father, the brewer, and their coarse jest about my frothy oratory? This attack is but the second act of the same drama.”
“I don’t think so,” mildly rejoined the other party. “Conflicts are sharp enough while the struggle lasts; but they rarely carry their bitterness beyond the day of battle.”
“That is an agent’s view of the matter,” said Bramleigh, with asperity. “The agent always persists in believing the whole thing a sham fight; but though men do talk a great deal of rot and humbug about their principles on the hustings, their personal feelings are just as real, just as acute, and occasionally just as painful, as on any occasion in their lives; and I repeat to you, the trumped-up claim of this foreigner is neither more nor less than a piece of party malignity.”
“I cannot agree with you. The correspondence we have just been looking at shows how upwards of forty years ago the same pretensions were put forward, and a man calling himself Montagu Lami Bramleigh declared he was the rightful heir to your estates.”
“A rightful heir whose claims could be always compromised by a ten-pound note was scarcely very dangerous.”
“Why make any compromise at all if the fellow was clearly an impostor?”
“For the very reason that you yourself now counsel a similar course: to avoid the scandal of a public trial. To escape all those insolent comments which a party press is certain to pass on a political opponent.”
“That could scarcely have been apprehended from the Bramleigh I speak of, who was clearly poor, illiterate, and friendless; whereas the present man has, from some source or other, funds to engage eminent counsel and retain one of the first men at the bar.”
“I protest, Sedley, you puzzle me,” said Bramleigh, with an angry sparkle in his eye. “A few moments back you treated all this pretension as a mere pretext for extorting money, and now you talk of this fellow and his claim as subjects that may one day be matter for the decision of a jury. Can you reconcile two views so diametrically opposite?”
“I think I can. It is at law as in war. The feint may be carried on to a real attack whenever the position assailed be possessed of an over-confidence or but ill defended. It might be easy enough, perhaps,