The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly Part 29

"I am most willing to give my a.s.sistance to any project that may rescue Lord Culduff from this unpleasant predicament. Indeed, having myself experienced some of the persecution which political hatred can carry into private life, I feel a sort of common cause with him; but I protest at the same time--distinctly protest--against anything like a pledge as regards his Lordship's views towards one of my family. I mean I give no promise."

"I see," said Cutbill, with a look of intense cunning. "You 'll do the money part. Providence will take charge of the rest. Isn't that it?"

"Mr. Cutbill, you occasionally push my patience pretty hard. What I said, I said seriously and advisedly."

"Of course. Now, then, give me a line to your banker to acknowledge my draft up to a certain limit,--say five hundred. I think five ought to do it."

"It's a smart sum, Mr. Cutbill."

"The article's cheap at the money. Well, well, I 'll not anger you.

Write me the order, and let me be off."

Bramleigh sat down at his table, and wrote off a short note to his junior partner in the bank, which he sealed and addressed; and handing it to Cutbill, said, "This will credit you to the amount you spoke of.

It will be advanced to you as a loan without interest, to be repaid within two years."

"All right; the thought of repayment will never spoil my night's rest. I only wish all my debts would give me as little trouble."

"You ought to have none, Mr. Cutbill; a man of your abilities, at the top of a great profession, and with a reputation second to none, should, if he were commonly prudent, have ample means at his disposal."

"But that's the thing I am not, Bramleigh. I 'm not one of your safe fellows. I drive my engine at speed, even where the line is shaky and the rails ill-laid. Good-bye; my respects to the ladies; tell Jack, if he 's in town within a week, to look me up at 'Limmer's.'" He emptied the sherry into a tumbler as he spoke, drank it off, and left the room.

CHAPTER XIX. A DEPARTURE.

Some days had gone over since the scene just recorded in our last chapter, and the house at Castello presented a very different aspect from its late show of movement and pleasure.

Lord Culduff, on the pretence of his presence being required at the mines, had left on the same night that Cutbill took his departure for England. On the morning after, Jack also went away. He had pa.s.sed the night writing and burning letters to Julia; for no sooner had he finished an epistle, than he found it too cruel, too unforgiving, too unfeeling, by half; and when he endeavored to moderate his just anger, he discovered signs of tenderness in his reproaches that savored of submission. It would not be quite fair to be severe on Jack's failures, trying as he was to do what has puzzled much wiser and craftier heads than his. To convey all the misery he felt at parting from her, with a just measure of reproach for her levity towards him, to mete out his love and his anger in due doses, to say enough, but never too much, and finally to let her know that, though he went off in a huff, it was to carry her image in his heart through all his wanderings, never forgetting her for a moment, whether he was carrying despatches to Cadiz or coaling at Corfu,--to do all these, I say, becomingly and well, was not an easy task, and especially for one who would rather have been sent to cut out a frigate under the guns of a fortress than indite a despatch to "my Lords of the Admiralty."

From the short sleep which followed all his abortive attempts at a letter he was awakened by his servant telling him it was time to dress and be off. Drearier moments there are not in life than those which herald in a departure of a dark morning in winter, with the rain swooping in vast sheets against the window-panes, and the cold blast whistling through the leafless trees. Never do the candles seem to throw so little light as these do now through the dreary room, all littered and disordered by the preparations for the road. What fears and misgivings beset one at such a moment! What reluctance to go, and what a positive sense of fear one feels, as though the journey were a veritable leap in the dark, and that the whole fortunes of a life were dependent on that instant of resolution!

Poor Jack tried to battle with such thoughts as these by reminding himself of his duty, and the calls of the service; he asked himself again and again if it were out of such vacillating, wavering materials, a sailor's heart should be fashioned? was this the stuff that made Nelsons or Collingwoods? And though there was but little immediate prospect of a career of distinction, his sense of duty taught him to feel that the routine life of peace was a greater trial to a man's patience than all the turmoil and bustle of active service.

"The more I cling to remain here," muttered he, as he descended the stairs, "the more certain am I that it's pure weakness and folly."

"What's that you are muttering about weakness and folly, Jack?" said Nelly, who had got up to see him off, and give him the last kiss before he departed.

"How came it you are here, Nelly? Get back to your bed, girl, or you 'll catch a terrible cold."

"No, no, Jack; I 'm well shawled and m.u.f.fled. I wanted to say good-bye once more. Tell me what it was you were saying about weakness and folly."

"I was a.s.suring myself that my reluctance to go away was nothing less than folly. I was trying to persuade myself that the best thing I could do was to be off; but I won't say I have succeeded."

"But it is, Jack; rely on it, it is. You are doing the right thing; and if I say so, it is with a heavy heart, for I shall be very lonely after you."

Pa.s.sing his arm round her waist, he walked with her up and down the great s.p.a.cious hall, their slow footsteps echoing in the silent house.

"If my last meeting with her had not been such as it was, Nelly," said he, falteringly; "if we had not parted in anger, I think I could go with a lighter heart."

"But don't you know Julia well enough to know that these little storms of temper pa.s.s away so rapidly that they never leave a trace behind them? She was angry, not because you found fault with her, but because she thought you had suffered yourself to be persuaded she was in the wrong."

"What do I care for these subtleties? She ought to have known that when a man loves a girl as I love her, he has a right to tell her frankly if there's anything in her manner he is dissatisfied with."

"He has no such right; and if he had, he ought to be very careful how he exercised it."

"And why so?"

"Just because fault-finding is not love-making."

"So that, no matter what he saw that he disliked or disapproved of, he ought to bear it all rather than risk the chance of his remonstrance being ill taken?"

"Not that, Jack; but he ought to take time and opportunity to make the same remonstrance. You don't go down to the girl you are in love with, and call her to account as you would summon a dockyardman or a rigger for something that was wrong with your frigate."

"Take an ill.u.s.tration from something you know better, Nelly, for I 'd do nothing of the kind; but if I saw what, in the conduct or even in the manner of the girl I was in love with, I would n't stand if she were my wife, it will be hard to convince me that I oughtn't to tell her of it."

"As I said before, Jack, the telling is a matter of time and opportunity. Of all the jealousies in the world there is none as inconsiderate as that of lovers towards the outer world. Whatever change either may wish for in the other must never come suggested from without."

"And did n't I tell her she was wrong in supposing that it was Marion made me see her coquetry?"

"That you thought Marion had no influence over your Judgment she might believe readily enough, but girls have a keener insight into each other than you are aware of, and she was annoyed--and she was right to be annoyed--that in your estimate of her there should enter anything, the very smallest, that could bespeak the sort of impression a woman might have conveyed."

"Nelly, all this is too deep for me. If Julia cared for me as I believe she had, she 'd have taken what I said in good part. Did n't I give up smoking of a morning, except one solitary cheroot after breakfast, when she asked me? Who ever saw me take a nip of brandy of a forenoon since that day she cried out, 'Shame, Jack, don't do that'? And do you think I was n't as fond of my weed and my gla.s.s of schnapps as ever she was of all those little airs and graces she puts on to make fools of men?"

"Carriage waiting, sir," said a servant, entering with a ma.s.s of cloaks and rugs on his arm.

"Confound the carriage and the journey too," muttered he, below his breath. "Look here, Nelly; if you are right, and I hope with all my heart you are, I 'll not go."

"That would be ruin, Jack; you must go."

"What do I care for the service? A good seaman--a fellow that knows how to handle a ship--need never want for employment. I 'd just as soon be a skipper as wear a pair of swabs on my shoulders and be sworn at by some crusty old rear-admiral for a stain on my quarter-deck. I'll not go, Nelly; tell Ned to take off the trunks; I'll stay where I am."

"Oh, Jack, I implore you not to wreck your whole fortune in life. It is just because Julia loves you that you are bound to show yourself worthy of her. You know how lucky you were to get this chance. You said only yesterday it was the finest station in the whole world. Don't lose it, like a dear fellow--don't do what will be the imbitter-ment of your entire life, the loss of your rank, and--the------" She stopped as she was about to add something still stronger.

"I 'll go, then, Nelly; don't cry about it; if you sob that way I 'll make a fool of myself. Pretty sight for the flunkies, to see a sailor crying, would n't it? all because he had to join his ship. I'll go, then, at once. I suppose you'll see her to-day, or to-morrow at farthest?"

"I'm not sure, Jack. Marion said something about hunting parsons, I believe, which gave George such deep pain that he wouldn't come here on Wednesday. Julia appears to be more annoyed than George, and, in fact, for the moment, we have quarantined each other."

"Isn't this too bad?" cried he, pa.s.sionately.

"Of course it is too bad; but it's only a pa.s.sing cloud; and by the time I shall write to you it will have pa.s.sed away."

Jack clasped her affectionately in his arms, kissed her twice, and sprang into the carriage, and drove away with a full heart indeed; but also with the fast a.s.surance that his dear sister would watch over his interests and not forget him.

That dark drive went over like a hideous dream. He heard the wind and the rain, the tramp of the horses' feet and the splash of the wheels along the miry road, but he never fully realized where he was or how he came there. The first bell was ringing as he drove into the station, and there was but little time to get down his luggage and secure his ticket.

He asked for a _coupe_, that he might be alone; and being known as one of the great family at Castello, the obsequious station-master hastened to install him at once. On opening the door, however, it was discovered that another traveller had already deposited a great-coat and a rug in one corner.

"Give yourself no trouble, Captain Bramleigh," said the official, in a low voice. "I 'll just say the _coupe_ is reserved, and we 'll put him into another compartment. Take these traps, Bob," cried he to a porter, "and put them into a first-cla.s.s."