The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly Part 14

"Well, I half suspect it is," said he, smiling faintly.

"And I suppose men like that?"

"I 'm afraid, my dear Miss Bramleigh," said he, with a mock air of deploring--"I 'm afraid that in these degenerate days men are very p.r.o.ne to like whatever gives them least trouble in everything, and if a woman will condescend to talk to us on our own topics, and treat them pretty much in our own way, we like it, simply because it diminishes the distance between us, and saves us that uphill clamber we are obliged to take when you insist upon our scrambling up to the high level you live in."

"It is somewhat of an ign.o.ble confession you have made there," said she, haughtily.

"I know it--I feel it--I deplore it," said he, affectedly.

"If men will, out of mere indolence--no matter," said she, biting her lip. "I 'll not say what I was going to say."

"Pray do. I beseech you finish what you have so well begun."

"Were I to do so, my Lord," said she, gravely, "it might finish more than that. It might at least go some way towards finishing our acquaintanceship. I 'm sorely afraid you 'd not have forgiven me had you heard me out."

"I 'd never have forgiven myself, if I were the cause of it."

For some time they walked along in silence, and now the great house came into view--its windows all glowing and glittering in the blaze of a setting sun, while a faint breeze lazily moved the heavy folds of the enormous flag that floated over the high tower.

"I call that a very princely place," said he, stopping to admire it.

"What a caprice to have built it in such a spot," said she. "The country people were not far wrong when they called it Bishop's Folly."

"They gave it that name, did they?"

"Yes, my Lord. It is one of the ways in which humble folk reconcile themselves to lowly fortune; they ridicule their betters." And now she gave a little low laugh to herself, as if some unuttered notion had just amused her.

"What made you smile?" asked he.

"A very absurd fancy struck me."

"Let me hear it. Why not let me share in its oddity?"

"It might not amuse you as much as it amused me."

"I am the only one who can decide that point."

"Then I 'm not so certain it might not annoy you."

"I can a.s.sure you on that head," said he, gallantly.

"Well, then, you shall hear it. The caprice of a great divine has, so to say, registered itself yonder, and will live, so long as stone and mortar endure, as Bishop's Folly; and I was thinking how strange it would be if another caprice just as unaccountable were to give a name to a less pretentious edifice, and a certain charming cottage be known to posterity as the Viscount's Folly. You're not angry with me, are you?"

"I'd be very angry indeed with you, with myself, and with the whole world, if I thought such a casualty a possibility."

"I a.s.sure you, when I said it I did n't believe it, my Lord," said she, looking at him with much graciousness; "and, indeed, I would never have uttered the impertinence if you had not forced me. There, there goes the first bell; we shall have short time to dress." And, with a very meaning smile and a familiar gesture of her hand, she tripped up the steps and disappeared.

"I think I 'm all right in that quarter," was his lordship's reflection as he mounted the stairs to his room.

CHAPTER XII. AN EVENING BELOW AND ABOVE STAIRS.

It was not very willingly that Mr. Cutbill left the drawing-room, where he had been performing a violoncello accompaniment to one of the young ladies in the execution of something very Mendelssohnian and profoundly puzzling to the uninitiated in harmonics. After the peerage he loved counterpoint; and it was really hard to tear himself away from pa.s.sages of almost piercing shrillness, or those still more suggestive moanings of a double ba.s.s, to talk stock and share-list with Colonel Bramleigh in the library. Resisting all the a.s.surances that "papa wouldn't mind it, that any other time would do quite as well," and such like, he went up to his room for his books and papers, and then repaired to his rendezvous.

"I 'm sorry to take you away from the drawing-room, Mr. Cutbill," said Bramleigh, as he entered; "but I am half expecting a summons to town, and could not exactly be sure of an opportunity to talk over this matter on which Lord Culduff is very urgent to have my opinion."

"It is not easy, I confess, to tear oneself away from such society. Your daughters are charming musicians, Colonel. Miss Bramleigh's style is as brilliant as Meyer's; and Miss Eleanor has a delicacy of touch I have never heard surpa.s.sed."

"This is very flattering, coming from so consummate a judge as yourself."

"All the teaching in the world will not impart that sensitive organization which sends some tones into the heart like the drip, drip of water on a heated brow. Oh, dear! music is too much for me; it totally subverts all my sentiments. I 'm not fit for business after it, Colonel Bramleigh, that's the fact."

"Take a gla.s.s of that 'Bra Mouton.' You will find it good. It has been eight-and-thirty years in my cellar, and I never think of bringing it out except for a connoisseur in wine."

"Nectar,--positively nectar," said he, smacking his lips. "You are quite right not to give this to the public. They would drink it like a mere full-bodied Bordeaux. That velvety softness--that subdued strength, faintly recalling Burgundy, and that delicious bouquet, would all be clean thrown away on most people. I declare, I believe a refined palate is just as rare as a correct ear; don't you think so?"

"I'm glad you like the wine. Don't spare it. The cellar is not far off.

Now then, let us see. These papers contain Mr. Stebbing's report. I have only glanced my eye over it, but it seems like every other report. They have, I think, a stereotyped formula for these things. They all set out with their bit of geological learning; but you know, Mr. Cutbill, far better than I can tell you, you know sandstone doesn't always mean coal?"

"If it does n't, it ought to," said Cutbill, with a laugh, for the wine had made him jolly, and familiar besides.

"There are many things in this world which ought to be, but which, unhappily, are not," said Bramleigh, in a tone evidently meant to be half-reproachful. "And as I have already observed to you, mere geological formation is not sufficient. We want the mineral, sir; we want the fact."

"There you have it; there it is for you," said Cutbill, pointing to a somewhat bulky parcel in brown paper in the centre of the table.

"This is not real coal, Mr. Cutbill," said Bramleigh, as he tore open the covering, and exposed a black misshapen lump. "You would not call this real coal?"

"I 'd not call it Swansea nor Cardiff, Colonel, any more than I 'd say the claret we had after dinner to-day was 'Mouton;' but still I'd call each of them very good in their way."

"I return you my thanks, sir, in the name of my wine-merchant. But to come to the coal question--what could you do with this?"

"What could I do with it? Scores of things--if I had only enough of it.

Burn it in grates--cook with it--smelt metals with it--burn lime with it--drive engines, not locomotives, but stationaries, with it. I tell you what, Colonel Bramleigh," said he, with the air of a man who was a.s.serting what he would not suffer to be gainsaid. "It's coal quite enough to start a company on; coal within the meaning of the act, as the lawyers would say."

"You appear to have rather loose notions of joint-stock enterprises, Mr.

Cutbill," said Bramleigh, haughtily.

"I must say, Colonel, they do not invariably inspire me with sentiments of absolute veneration."

"I hope, however, you feel, sir, that in any enterprise--in any undertaking--where my name is to stand forth, either as promoter or abetter, that the world is to see in such guarantee the a.s.surance of solvency and stability."

"That is precisely what made me think of you; precisely what led me to say to Culduff, 'Bramleigh is the man to carry the scheme out.'"

Now the familiarity that spoke of Culduff thus unceremoniously in great part reconciled Bramleigh to hear his own name treated in like fashion, all the more that it was in a quotation; but still he winced under the cool impertinence of the man, and grieved to think how far his own priceless wine had contributed towards it. The Colonel therefore merely bowed his acknowledgment and was silent.

"I'll be frank with you," said Cutbill, emptying the last of the decanter into his gla.s.s as he spoke. "I 'll be frank with you. We 've got coal; whether it be much or little, there it is. As to quality, as I said before, it is n't Cardiff. It won't set the Thames on fire, any more than the n.o.ble lord that owns it; but coal it is, and it will burn as coal--and yield gas as coal--and make c.o.ke as coal, and who wants more? As to working it himself, Culduff might just as soon pretend he 'd pay the National Debt. He is over head and ears already; he has been in bondage with the children of Israel this many a day, and if he was n't a peer he could not show; but that's neither here nor there. To set the concern a-going we must either have a loan or a company. I 'm for a company."