The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly Part 66

"Culduff likes that. If he has moments that resemble happiness they are those when he is so palpably in the wrong that they would ruin any other man than himself."

"Well, he has got one of them now, I can tell you."

"Oh, I am aware of what you diplomatic people call great emergencies, critical conjunctures, and the like; but as Lord Watermore said the other evening, 'all your falls are like those in the circus--you always come down upon sawdust.'"

"There's precious little sawdust here. It's a case will make a tremendous noise in England. When a British subject has been ironed and--"

"Am I late? I shall be in despair, my Lady, if I have kept you waiting," said Lord Culduff, entering in all the glory of red ribbon and Guelph, and with an unusually brilliant glow of youth and health in his features.

It was with a finished gallantry that he offered his arm; and his smile, as he led her to the dinner-room, was triumph itself. What a contrast to the moody discontent on _her_ face; for she did not even affect to listen to his excuses, or bestow the slightest attention on his little flatteries and compliments. During the dinner Lord Culduff alone spoke.

He was agreeable after his manner, which was certainly a very finished manner; and he gave little reminiscences of the last time he had been at Naples, and the people he had met, sketching their eccentricities and oddities most amusingly, for he was a master in those light touches of satire which deal with the ways of society, and, perhaps, to any one but his wife he would have been most entertaining and pleasant. She never deigned the very faintest recognition of what he said. She neither smiled when he was witty, nor looked shocked at his levities. Only once, when, by a direct appeal to her, silence was impossible, she said, with a marked spitefulness, "You are talking of something very long ago. I think I heard of that when I was a child." There was a glow under his Lordship's rouge as he raised his gla.s.s to his lips, and an almost tremor in his voice when he spoke again.

"I 'm afraid you don't like Naples, my Lady?"

"I detest it."

"The word is strong; let it be my care to try and induce you to recall it."

"It will be lost time, my Lord. I always hated the place, and the people, too."

"You were pleased with Rome, I think?"

"And that possibly was the reason we left it. I mean," said she, blushing with shame at the rudeness that had escaped her, "I mean that one is always torn away from the place they are content to live in. It is the inevitable destiny."

"Very pleasant claret that for hotel wine," said Lord Culduff, pa.s.sing the bottle to Temple. "The small race of travellers who frequent the Continent now rarely call for the better wines, and the consequence is that Margaux and Marcobrunner get that time to mature in the cellars which was denied to them in former times."

A complete silence now ensued. At last Lord Culduff said, "Shall we have coffee?" and offering his arm with the same courteous gallantry as before, he led Lady Culduff into the drawing-room, bowing as he relinquished her hand, as though he stood in presence of a queen. "I know you are very tolerant," said he, with a bewitching smile, "and as we shall have no visitors this evening, may I ask the favor of being permitted a cigarette--only one?"

"As many as you like. I am going to my room, my Lord." And ere he could hasten to open the door, she swept haughtily out of the room and disappeared.

"We must try and make Naples pleasant for my Lady," said Lord Culduff, as he drew his chair to the fire; but there was, somehow, a malicious twinkle in his eye, and a peculiar curl of the lip, as he spoke, that scarcely vouched for the loyalty of his words; and that Temple heard him with distrust seemed evident by his silence. "You 'd better go over to the Legation and say we have arrived. If Blagden asks when he may call, tell him at two tomorrow. Let them send over all the correspondence; and I think we shall want some one out of the chancellerie. Whom have they got? Throw your eye over the list."

Opening a small volume bound in red morocco, Temple read out, "Minister and envoy, Sir Geoffrey Blagden, K.C.B.; first secretary, Mr. Tottenham; second secretaries, Ralph Howard, the Hon. Edward Eccles, and W.

Thornton; third secretary, George Hilliard; attache, Christopher Stepney."

"I only know one of these men; indeed, I can scarcely say I know him. I knew his father, or his grandfather, perhaps. At all events, take some one who writes a full hand, with the letters very upright, and who seldom speaks, and never has a cold in his head."

"You don't care for any one in particular?" asked Temple, meekly.

"Of course not; no more than for the color of the horse in a hansom.

If Blagden hints anything about dining with him, say I don't dine out; though I serve her Majesty, I do not mean to destroy my const.i.tution, and I know what a Legation dinner means, with a Scotchman for the chief of the mission. I 'm so thankful he 's not married, or we should have his wife calling on my Lady. You can dine there if you like; indeed, perhaps, you ought. If Blagden has an opera-box, say my Lady likes the theatre. I think that's all. Stay, don't let him pump you about my going to Vienna; and drop in on me when you come back."

Lord Culduff was fast asleep in a deep arm-chair before his dressing-room fire when Temple returned. The young man looked wearied and worn out, as well he might; for the Minister had insisted on going over the whole "question" to him, far less, indeed, for his information or instruction, than to justify every step the Legation had taken, and to show the utter unfairness and ungenerosity of the Foreign Office in sending out a special mission to treat a matter which the accredited envoy was already bringing to a satisfactory conclusion.

"No, no, my dear boy, no blue-books, no correspondence. I shook my religious principles in early life by reading Gibbon, and I never was quite sure of my grammar since I studied diplomatic despatches. Just tell me the matter as you 'd tell a scandal or a railway accident."

"Where shall I begin, then?"

"Begin where _we_ come in."

"Ah, but I can't tell where that is. You know, of course, that there was a filibustering expedition which landed on the coast, and encountered the revenue guard, and overpowered them, and were in turn attacked, routed, and captured by the Royal troops."

"Ta, ta, ta! I don't want all that. Come down to the events of June--June 27 they call it."

"Well, it was on that day when the 'Ercole' was about to get under weigh, with two hundred of these fellows sentenced to the galleys for life, that a tremendous storm broke over the Bay of Naples. Since the memorable hurricane of '92 there had been nothing like it. The sea-wall of the Chiaja was washed away, and a frigate was cast on sh.o.r.e at Caserta with her bowsprit in the palace windows; all the lower town was under water, and many lives lost. But the damage at sea was greatest of all: eight fine ships were lost, the crews having, with some few exceptions, perished with them."

"Can't we imagine a great disaster--a very great disaster? I'll paint my own storm, so pray go on."

"Amongst the merchant shipping was a large American bark which rode out the gale, at anchor, for several hours; but, as the storm increased, her captain, who was on sh.o.r.e, made signal to the mate to slip his cable and run for safety to Castellamare. The mate, a young Englishman, named Rogers--"

"Samuel Rogers?"

"The same, my Lord, though it is said not to be his real name. He, either misunderstanding the signal,--or, as some say, wilfully mistaking its meaning,--took to his launch, with the eight men he had with him, and rowed over to a small despatch-boat of the Royal Navy, which was to have acted as convoy to the 'Ercole,' but whose officers were unable to get on board of her, so that she was actually under the command of a petty officer. Rogers boarded her, and proposed to the man in command to get up the steam and try to save the lives of the people who were perishing on every hand. He refused; an altercation ensued, and the English--for they were all English--overpowered them and sent them below--"

"Don't say under hatches, my dear boy, or I shall expect to see you hitching your trousers next."

Temple reddened, but went on: "They got up steam in all haste, and raised their anchor, but only at the instant that the 'Ercole'

foundered, quite close to them, and the whole sea was covered with the soldiers and the galley-slaves, who had jumped overboard, and the ship went down. Rogers made for them at once, and rescued above a hundred,--chiefly of the prisoners; but he saved also many of the crew, and the soldiers. From four o'clock till nigh seven, he continued to cruise back and forward through the bay, a.s.sisting every one who needed help, and saving life on every side. As the gale abated, yielding to the piteous entreaties of the prisoners, whom he well knew were political offenders, he landed them all near Baia, and was quietly returning to the mooring-ground whence he had taken the despatch-boat, when he was boarded by two armed boats' crews of the Royal Navy, ironed and carried off to prison."

"That will do; I know the rest. Blagden asked to have them tried in open court, and was told that the trial was over, and that they had been condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted by royal mercy to hard labor at the galleys. I knew your long story before you told it, but listened to hear what new element you might have interpolated since you saw the people at the Legation. I find you, on the whole, very correct.

How the Neapolitan Government and H. M.'s Ministers have mistaken, mystified, and slanged each other; how they have misinterpreted law and confounded national right; how they have danced a reel through all justice, and changed places with each other some half-dozen times, so that an arbiter--if there were one--would put them both out of court--I have read already in the private correspondence. Even the people in Parliament, patent bunglers as they are in foreign customs, began to ask themselves, Is Filangieri in the pay of her Majesty? and how comes it that Blagden is in the service of Naples?"

"Oh, it 's not so bad as that!"

"Yes, it's fully as bad as that. Such a muddled correspondence was probably never committed to print. They thought it a controversy, but the combatants never confronted each other. One appealed to humanity, the other referred to the law; one went off in heroics about gallantry, and the other answered by the galleys. People ought to be taught that diplomatists do not argue, or if they do, they are mere tyros at their trade. Diplomatists insinuate, suppose, suggest, hope, fear, and occasionally threaten; and with these they take in a tolerably wide sweep of human motives. There, go to bed now, my dear boy; you have had enough of precepts for one evening; tell Giacomo not to disturb me before noon--I shall probably write late into the night."

Temple bowed and took his leave; but scarcely had he reached the stairs than Lord Culduff laid himself in his bed and went off into a sound sleep. Whether his rest was disturbed by dreams; whether his mind went over the crushing things he had in store for the Neapolitan Minister, or the artful excuses he intended to write home; whether he composed sonorous sentences for a blue-book, or invented witty epigrams for a "private and confidential;" or whether he only dreamed of a new preparation of glycerine and otto of roses, which he had seen advertised as an "invaluable accessory to the toilet," this history does not, perhaps need not, record.

As, however, we are not about to follow the course of his diplomatic efforts in our next chapter, it is pleasant to take leave of him in his repose.

CHAPTER XLIV. THE CHURCH PATRONS

As the season drew to its close at Albano, and the period of returning to Rome approached, the church committee, following the precedent of all previous years, fell out, and held a succession of vestry-meetings for mutual abuse and recrimination. Partisanship is the badge of church patrons; and while the parson had his adherents, and the organist his supporters, there were half a dozen very warm friends who advocated the cause of the bell-ringer,--a drunken little heathen, who, because he had never crossed the threshold of a Catholic church for years, was given brevet rank as a member of the Reformed religion.

The time of auditing the church accounts is usually a sort of day of judgment on the clergyman. All the complaints that can be preferred against him are kept for that occasion. A laudable sentiment possibly prompts men to ascertain what they have got for their money; at all events, people in no wise remarkable for personal thrift show at such times a most searching spirit of inquiry, and eagerly investigate the cost of sweeping out the vestry and clearstarching the chaplain's bands.

As to the doctrine of the parson, and the value of his ministration, there were a variety of opinions. He was too high for this one, too dry for that; he was not impressive, not solemn nor dignified with some, while others deemed him deficient in that winning familiarity which is so soothing to certain sinners. Some thought his sermons too high-flown and too learned, others asked why he only preached to the children in the gallery. On one only point was there anything like unanimity: each man who withdrew his subscription did so on principle. None--not one--referred his determination to contribute no longer to any motive of economy. All declared that it was something in the celebration of the service--a doctrine inculcated in the pulpit--something the parson had said, or something he had worn--obliged them, "with infinite regret,"

to withdraw what they invariably called "their mite." In fact, one thing was clear: a more high-minded, right-judging, scrupulous body of people could not be found than the congregation, whatever might be said or thought of him whose duty it was to guide them.

Lady Augusta Bramleigh had gone off to Rome, and a small three-cornered note, highly perfumed, and most nervously written, informed the committee that she was quite ready to continue her former subscription, or more, if required; that she was charmed with the chaplain, pleased with the choir, and generally delighted with every one,--a testimony more delicately valuable from the fact that she had been but once to the church during the entire season.

Sir Marcus Cluff, after reading out the letter, took occasion to observe on the ventilation of the church, which was defective in many respects.

There was a man in King Street--he thought his name was Harmond, or something like Harmond, but it might be Fox--who had invented a self-revolving pane for church windows. It was perfectly noiseless, and the cost a mere trifle, though it required to be adjusted by one of the patentee's own people; some mistakes having occurred by blundering adaptation, by which two persons had been asphyxiated at Redhill.

The orator was here interrupted by Mrs. Trumpler, who stoutly affirmed that she had come there that day at great inconvenience, and was in no wise prepared to listen to a discourse upon draughts, or the rival merits of certain plumbers. There were higher considerations than these that might occupy them, and she wished to know if Mr. L'Estrange was prepared to maintain the harsh, and she must say the ungenerous and unscholarlike, view he had taken of the character of Judas. If so, she withdrew her subscription, but added that she would also in a pamphlet explain to the world the reasons of her retirement, as well as the other grounds of complaint she had against the chaplain.