Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume I Part 46

"Is he in danger?"

"I believe so; here's what my wife says. Oh, I haven't got the letter about me, but it comes to this, I was to send down one of the best doctors by the first train, telling him it was a case of compression or concussion, which is it? And so I have despatched Beattie, your grandfather's man. I suppose there 's no better?"

"But why have you not gone back yourself? He was a friend, was he not?"

"Yes, he was what people would call a friend. I 'm like the hare in the fable, I have many friends; but if I must be confidential, I 'll tell you why I did _not_ go. I had a notion, just as likely to be wrong as right, that the Chief would take offence at his Registrar being a sporting character, and that if I were to absent myself just now, he'd find out the reason, whereas by staying here I could keep all quiet, and when Beattie came back I could square _him_."

"You could what?"

"A thousand pardons for my bit of slang; but the fact is, just as one talks French when he wants to say nothings, one takes to slang when one requires to be shifty. I meant to say, I could manage to make the doctor hold his tongue."

"Not if grandpapa were to question him."

Sewell smiled, and shook his head in dissent.

"No, no. You're quite mistaken in Dr. Beattie; and what's more, you 're quite mistaken in grandpapa too, if you imagine that he 'll think the better of you for forgetting the claims of friendship."

"There was none."

"Well, of humanity, then! It was in _your_ cause this man suffered, and it is in _your_ house he lies ill. I think you ought to be there also."

"Do you think so?"

"I 'm sure of it. You know the world a great deal better than I do, and you can tell what people will say of your absence; but I think it requires no knowledge of more than one's own nature to feel what is right and proper here."

"Indeed!" said he, reflectingly.

"Don't you agree with me?"

"Perhaps,--that is, in part. I suppose what you mean about the world is, that there will be some scandal afloat, the 'young wife' story, and all that sort of balderdash?"

"I really do not understand you."

"You don't?"

"No. Certainly not. What do you mean?"

"Possibly you did not understand me. Well, if I am to go, there 's no time to be lost. It's four o'clock already, and the last train leaves at five-forty. I will go."

"You are quite right."

"You 'll make my excuses to the Chief. You 'll tell him that my wife's message was so alarming that I could not delay my departure. Beattie will probably be back tomorrow, and bring you news of us."

"Won't you write a few lines?"

"I 'm not sure,--I 'll not promise. I'm a bad penman, but my wife will write, I 've no doubt. Say all sorts of affectionate and dutiful things to the Chief for me; tell him I went away in despair at not being able to say good-bye; he likes that style of thing, does n't he?"

"I don't think he cares much for 'that style of thing,'" said she, with a saucy smile.

"What a capital mimic you are! Do you know I am just beginning to suspect that you are, for all your quiet simplicity of manner, a deuced deep one. Am I right?"

She shook her head, but made no reply.

"Not that I 'd like you the less for it," said he, eagerly; "on the contrary, we 'd understand each other all the better; there's nothing like people talking the same language, eh?"

"I hope you'll not lose your train," said she, looking at her watch; "I am half-past four."

"A broad hint," said he, laughing; "bye-bye,--_a bientot_."

CHAPTER x.x.xV. BEATTIE'S RETURN

The old Chief sat alone in his dining-room over his wine. If somewhat fatigued by the labors of the day,--for the Court had sat late,--he showed little of exhaustion; still less was he, as his years might have excused, drowsy or heavy. He sat bolt upright in his chair, and by an occasional gesture of his hand, or motion of his head, seemed as though he were giving a.s.sent to some statement he was listening to, or making his comments on it as it proceeded.

The post had brought a letter to Lucy just as dinner was over. It bore the post-mark "Cagliari," and was in her brother's hand; and the old man, with considerate kindness, told her to go to her room and read it.

"No, my dear child," said he, as she arose to leave the room; "no! I shall not be lonely,--where there is memory there are troops of friends.

Come back and tell me your news when you have read your letter."

More than an hour pa.s.sed over, and he sat there heedless of time. A whole long life was pa.s.sing in review before him, not connectedly, or in due sequence of events, but in detached scenes and incidents. Now it was some stormy night in the old Irish House, when Flood and Grattan exchanged their terrific denunciations and insults,--now it was a brilliant dinner at Ponsonby's, with all the wits of the day,--now he was leading the famous Kitty O'Dwyer, the beauty of the Irish Court, to her carriage, amid such a murmur of admiration as made the progress a triumph; or, again, it was a raw morning of November, and he was driving across the park to be present at Curran's meeting with Egan.

A violent ring of the hall bell startled him, and before he could inquire the cause a servant had announced Dr. Beattie.

"I thought I might be fortunate enough to catch you before bed-hour,"

said the doctor, "and I knew you would like to hear some tidings of my mission."

"You have been to--Where have you been?" said the old Judge, embarra.s.sed between the late flood of his recollections and the sudden start of his arrival.

"To Killaloe, to see that poor fellow who had the severe fall in the hurdle-race."

"Ay--to be sure--yes. I remember all now. Give me a moment, however." He nodded his head twice or thrice, as if concurring with some statement, and then said, "Go on, sir; the Court is with you."

Beattie proceeded to detail the accident and the state of the sufferer,--of whom he p.r.o.nounced favorably,--saying that there was no fracture, nor anything worse than severe concussion. "In fact," said he, "were it an hospital case, I'd say there was very little danger."

"And do you mean to tell me, sir," said the Judge, who had followed the narrative with extreme attention, "that the man of birth and blood must succ.u.mb in any conflict more readily than the low-born?"

"It's not the individual I was thinking of, so much as his belongings here. What I fear for in the present case is what the patient must confront every day of his convalescence."

Seeing that the Judge waited for some explanation, Beattie began to relate that, as he had started from Dublin the day before, he found himself in the same carriage with the young man's mother, who had been summoned by telegraph to her son's bedside.

"I have met," said he, "in my time, nearly all sorts and conditions of people. Indeed, a doctor's life brings him into contact with more maladies of nature and temperament than diseases of material origin; but anything like this woman I never saw before. To begin: she combined within herself two qualities that seem opposed to each other,--a most lavish candor on the score of herself and her family, and an intense distrust of all the rest of mankind. She told me she was a baronet's wife; how she had married him; where they lived; what his estate was worth; how this young fellow had become, by the death of a brother, the heir to the property; and how his father, indignant at his extravagance, had disentailed the estate, to leave it to a younger son if so disposed.

She showed at times the very greatest anxiety about her son's state; but at other moments just as intense an eagerness to learn what schemes and intrigues were being formed against him,--who were the people in whose house he then was, what they were, and how he came there. To all my a.s.surances that they were persons in every respect her son's equals, she answered by a toss of the head or a saucy half-laugh. 'Irish?' asked she. 'Yes, Irish.' 'I thought so,' rejoined she; 'I told Sir Hugh I was sure of it, though he said there were English Sewells.' From this instant her distrust broke forth. All Ireland had been in a conspiracy against her family for years. She had a brother, she said it with a shiver of horror, who was cruelly beaten by an attorney in Cork for a little pa.s.sing pleasantry to the man's sister; he had kissed her, or something of the kind, in a railroad carriage; and her cousin,--poor dear Cornwall is Merivale,--it was in Ireland he found that creature that got the divorce against him two years since. She went on to say that there had been a plot against her son, in the very neighborhood where he now lay ill, only a year ago,--some intrigue to involve him in a marriage, the whole details of which she threatened me with the first time we should be alone.

"Though at some moments expressing herself in terms of real affection and anxiety about her poor son, she would suddenly break off to speculate on what might happen from his death. 'You know, doctor, there is only one more boy, and if his life lapsed, Holt and the Holt estate goes to the Carringtons.'"

"An odious woman, sir,--a most odious woman; I only wonder why you continued to travel in the same carriage with her."

"My profession teaches great tolerance," said the doctor, mildly.