Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume Ii Part 30

"If had it once, it has left me many a long day ago!"

"But I deny that you ever had it. You had the woman's trick of affecting to believe, and thus making out what you a.s.sumed to think, to be a pledge given by another,--a bit of female craft that you all trade on so long as you are young and good-looking?"

"And what supplies the place of this ingenious device when we are neither young nor good-looking?"

"I don't know, for the simple reason that I never much interested myself in the s.e.x after that period."

"That's a very sad thing for us. I declare I never had an idea how much we 're to be pitied before."

"You would be to be pitied if you knew how we all think of you;" and he spoke with a spiteful malignity almost demoniac.

"It's better, then, for each of us that we should not know this. The trustfulness that you sneer at does us good service, after all."

"And it was this story of the mine that induced Lendrick to come home from the Cape, wasn't it?"

"No; he only heard of the mine since he arrived here."

"I thought," rejoined he, with a sneer, "that he ought to have resigned his appointment on account of this sudden wealth, all the more because I have known that he intended to come back this many a day. And what is Fossbrooke going to do for you? Is there a diamond necklace ordered? or is it one of the brats he is going to adopt?"

"By the way, I have been robbed; some one has carried off my gold comb and some pins; they were on my dressing-table last night. Jane saw them when I went into my room."

"Now 's your time to replace the loss! It's the sort of tale old Fossbrooke always responded to."

She made no answer; and for several minutes each sat in silence. "One thing is pretty evident," said he at last, as he made figures with his cane on the ground,--"we 'll have to troop off, whether the Lendricks come here or not. The place will not be tenable once they are in the vicinity."

"I don't know."

"You don't know! Do you mean that the doctor and his daughter will stand the French cook here, and the dinners, and let the old man make a blessed fool of himself, as he has been doing for the last eight or ten months past? or do you pretend that if we were to go back to the leg-of-mutton days, and old Haire for company, that it would be worth holding on to? _I_ don't; and I tell you frankly that I intend to demand my pa.s.sports, as the Ministers say, and be off."

"But _I_ can't 'be off.' I have no such alternative!"

"The worse luck yours, or rather the worse skill; for if you had played your hand better, it would not have been thus with you. By the way, what about Trafford? I take it he 'll marry this girl now."

"I have not heard," said she, pinching her lips, and speaking with a forced composure.

"If I were you, I 'd make myself Lucy's confidante, get up the match, and go and live with them. These are the really happy _menages_. If there be such a thing as bliss, perfect bliss, in this world, it is where a wife has a dear friend in the house with her, who listens to all her sorrows, and helps her to manage the tyrant that inflicts them.

It was a great mistake of ours not to have known this in early life.

Marriage was meant to be a triangle."

"If you go, as you speak of going, have you any objection to my addressing myself to Sir Brook for some a.s.sistance?"

"None whatever. I think it the most natural thing in life; he was your guardian, and you have a right to ask what has become of your fortune."

"He might refer me to _you_ for the information."

"Very unmannerly if he should, and very ungallant, too, for an old admirer. I 'm certain if I were to be--what is the phrase?--removed, yes, removed--he 'd marry you. Talk of three-volume novels and virtue rewarded, after that."

"You have been playing to-night," said she, gravely.

"Yes."

"And lost?"

"Lost heavily."

"I thought so. Your courtesies to me have been the measure of your bad luck for many a day. I have often felt that 'four by honors' has saved me from a bad headache."

"Then there has been more sympathy between us than I ever suspected,"

said he, rising, and stretching himself; and after a moment or two added, "Must I call on this Dr. Lendrick?--will he expect me to visit him?"

"Perhaps so," said she, carelessly; "he asked after you."

"Indeed!--did he ask after Trafford too? Do you remember the day at the Governor's dinner he mistook you for Trafford's wife, and explained his mistake by the familiarity of his manner to you in the garden? It was the best bit of awkwardness I ever witnessed."

"I suppose you felt it so?"

"_I_--_I_ felt it so! I suspect not! I don't believe there was a man at table enjoyed the blunder as heartily."

"I wish--how I wish!" said she, clasping her hands together.

"Well--what?"

"I wish I could be a man for one brief half-hour!" cried she; and her voice rang with a mild but clear resonance, that made it seem louder than it really was.

"And then?" said he, mockingly.

"Oh, do not ask me more!" cried she, as she bent down and hid her face in her hands.

"I think I _will_ call on Lendrick," said he, after a moment. "It may not be exactly the sort of task a man would best like; but I opine, if he is about to give his daughter in marriage to this fellow, he ought to know more about him. Now _I_ can tell him something, and my wife can tell him more. There's no indiscretion in saying so much, is there?"

She made no reply; and after a pause he went on: "If Trafford had n't been a shabby dog, he 'd not have higgled about buying up those letters.

Cane & Kincaid offered them to him for a thousand pounds. I suspect he 'd like to have the offer repeated now, but he shall not. He believes, or affects to believe, that, for my own sake, I 'll not make a public scandal; he doesn't know his man when he thinks this. _You_, Madam, might have taught him better, eh?" Still no reply, and he continued: "There 's not a man living despises public opinion as I do. If you are rich you trample on it, if poor it tramples on _you_; but so long as a fellow braves the world, and declares that he shrinks from nothing,--evades nothing,--neither turns right nor left to avoid its judgments,--the coward world gives away and lets him pa.s.s. _I 'll_ let them see that I don't care a straw for my own life, when at the price of it I can blow up a magazine."

"No, no, no!" muttered she, in a low but clear tone.

"What do you mean by No, no?" cried he, in a voice of pa.s.sion.

"I mean that you care a great deal for your own life, and a great deal for your own personal safety; and that if your tyranny to a poor, crushed, weak woman has any bounds, it is from your fear, your abject fear, that in her desperation she might seek a protector, and find him."

"I told you once before, Madam, men don't like this sort of protectorate. The old bullying days are gone by. Modern decorum 'takes it out' in damages." She sat still and silent; and after waiting some time, he said, in a calm, unmoved voice, "These little interchanges of courtesy do no good to either of us; they haven't even the poor attraction of novelty; so, as my friend Mr. O'Reardon says, let us 'be practical.' I had hoped that the old gentleman upstairs was going to do the polite thing, and die; but it appears now he has changed his mind about it. This, to say the least of it, is very inconvenient to me. My embarra.s.sments are such that I shall be obliged to leave the country; my only difficulty is, I have no money. Are you attending? Are you listening to me?"

"Yes, I hear you," said she, in a faint whisper.

"_You_, I know, cannot help me; neither can my mother. Of course the old Judge is out of the question. As for the fellows at the Club, I am deeply in debt to many of them; and Kincaid only reminds me of his unsettled bill of costs when I ask for a loan. A blank look-out, on the whole; isn't it?"

She muttered something like a.s.sent, and he went on. "I have gone through a good many such storms before, but none fully as bad as this; because there are certain things which in a few days must come out--ugly little disclosures--one or two there will be. I inadvertently sold that beech timber to two different fellows, and took the money too."

She lifted up her face, and stared at him without speaking.