The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly Part 79

"I can have no other objection to make to that, save the unnecessary loss of time I have incurred in listening to the matter."

"That time so precious to the nation you serve!" said she, sneeringly.

"Your Ladyship admirably expresses my meaning."

"Then, my Lord, I make you the only amends in my power; I take my leave of you."

"Your Ladyship's politeness is never at fault," said he, rising to open the door for her.

"Has Temple told you that the box on the lower tier is now free--the box I spoke of?"

"He has; but our stay here is now uncertain. It may be days; it may be hours--"

"And why was not I told? I have been giving orders to tradespeople--accepting invitations--making engagements, and what not. Am I to be treated like the wife of a subaltern in a marching regiment--to hold myself ready to start when the route comes?"

"How I could envy that subaltern," said he, with an inimitable mixture of raillery and deference.

She darted on him a look of indignant anger, and swept out of the room.

Lord Culduff rang his bell, and told the servant to beg Mr. Temple Bramleigh would have the kindness to step down to him.

"Write to Filangieri, Temple," said he, "and say that I desire to have access to the prisoner Rogers. We know nothing of his escape, and the demand will embarra.s.s--There, don't start objections, my dear boy; I never play a card without thinking what the enemy will do after he scores the trick."

And with this profound encomium on himself he dismissed the secretary, and proceeded to read the morning papers.

CHAPTER LIII. A RAINY NIGHT AT SEA.

The absurd demand preferred by Lady Augusta in her letter to Marion was a step taken without any authority from Pra-contal, and actually without his knowledge. On the discovery of the adhering pages of the journal, and their long consideration of the singular memorandum that they found within, Pracontal carried away the book to Longworth to show him the pa.s.sage and ask what importance he might attach to its contents.

Longworth was certainly struck by the minute particularity with which an exact place was indicated. There was a rough pen sketch of the Flora, and a spot marked by a cross at the base of the pedestal, with the words, "Here will be found the books." Lower down on the same page was written, "These volumes, which I did not obtain without difficulty, and which were too c.u.mbrous to carry away, I have deposited in this safe place, and the time may come when they will be of value.--G. L."

"Now," said Longworth, after some minutes of deep thought, "Lami was a man engaged in every imaginable conspiracy. There was not a state in Europe, apparently, where he was not, to some extent, compromised. These books he refers to may be the records of some secret society, and he may have stored them there as a security against the lukewarmness or the treachery of men whose fate might be imperilled by certain doc.u.ments.

Looking to the character of Lami, his intense devotion to these schemes, and his crafty nature and the Italian forethought which seems always to have marked whatever he did, I half incline to this impression. Then, on the other hand, you remember, Pracontal, when we went over to Portshandon to inquire about the registry books, we heard that they had all been stolen or destroyed by the rebels in '98?"

"Yes. I remember that well. I had not attached any importance to the fact; but I remember how much Kelson was disconcerted and put out by the intelligence, and how he continually repeated, 'This is no accident; this is no accident.'"

"It would be a rare piece of fortune if they were the church books, and that they contained a formal registry of the marriage."

"But who doubts it?"

"Say rather, my dear friend, why should any one believe it? Just think for one moment who Montague Bramleigh was, what was his station and his fortune, and then remember the interval that separated him from the Italian painter--a man of a certain ability, doubtless. Is it the most likely thing in the world that if the young Englishman fell in love with the beautiful Italian, that he would have sacrificed his whole ambition in life to his pa.s.sion? Is it not far more probable, in fact, that no marriage whatever united them? Come, come, Pracontal, this is not, now at least, a matter to grow sulky over; you cannot be angry or indignant at my frankness, and you 'll not shoot me for this slur on your grandmother's fair reputation."

"I certainly think that with nothing better than a theory to support it, you might have spared her memory this aspersion."

"If I had imagined you could not talk of it as unconcernedly as myself, I a.s.sure you I would never have spoken about it."

"You see now, however, that you have mistaken me--that you have read me rather as one of your own people than as a Frenchman," said the other, warmly.

"I certainly see that I must not speak to you with frankness, and I shall use caution not to offend you by candor."

"This is not enough, sir," said the Frenchman, rising and staring angrily at him.

"What is not enough?" said Longworth, with a perfect composure.

"Not enough for apology, sir; not enough as _amende_ for an unwarrantable and insolent calumny."

"You are getting angry at the sound of your own voice, Pracontal. I now tell you that I never meant--never could have meant--to offend you. You came to me for a counsel which I could only give by speaking freely what was in my mind. This is surely enough for explanation."

"Then let it all be forgotten at once," cried the other, warmly.

"I 'll not go that far," said Longworth, in the same calm tone as before. "You have accepted my explanation; you have recognized what one moment of justice must have convinced you of--that I had no intention to wound your feelings. There is certainly, however, no reason in the world why I should expose my own to any unnecessary injury. I have escaped a peril; I have no wish to incur another of the same sort."

"I don't think I understand you," said Pracontal, quickly. "Do you mean we should quarrel?"

"By no means."

"That we should separate, then?"

"Certainly."

The Frenchman became pale, and suddenly his face flushed till it was deep crimson, and his eyes flashed with fire. The effort to be calm was almost a strain beyond his strength; but he succeeded, and in a voice scarcely above a whisper, he said, "I am deeply in your debt. I cannot say how deeply. My lawyer, however, does know, and I will confer with him."

"This is a matter of small consequence, and does not press: besides, I beg you will not let it trouble you."

The measured coldness with which these words were spoken seemed to jar painfully on Pracontal's temper, for he s.n.a.t.c.hed his hat from the table, and with a hurried "Adieu--adieu, then," left the room. The carriages of the hotel were waiting in the courtyard to convey the travellers to the station.

"Where is the train starting for?" asked he of a waiter.

"For Civita, sir."

"Step up to my room, then, and throw my clothes into a portmanteau--enough for a few days. I shall have time to write a note, I suppose?"

"Ample, sir. You have forty minutes yet." Pracontal opened his writing-desk and wrote a few lines to Lady Augusta, to tell how a telegram had just called him away--it might be to Paris, perhaps London.

He would be back within ten days, and explain all. He wished he might have her leave to write, but he had not a moment left him to ask the permission. Should he risk the liberty? What if it might displease her?

He was every way unfortunate; nor, in all the days of a life of changes and vicissitudes, did he remember a sadder moment than this in which he wrote himself her devoted servant, A. Pracontal de Bramleigh. This done, he jumped into a carriage, and just reached the train in time to start for Civita.

There was little of exaggeration when he said he had never known greater misery and depression than he now felt. The thought of that last meeting with Longworth overwhelmed him with sorrow. When we bear in mind how slowly and gradually the edifice of friendship is built up; how many of our prejudices have often to be overcome; how much of self-education is effected in the process; the thought that all this labor of time and feeling should be cast to the winds at once for a word of pa.s.sion or a hasty expression, is humiliating to a degree. Pracontal had set great store by Long-worth's friendship for him. He had accepted great favors at his hand; but so kindly and so gracefully conferred as to double the obligations by the delicacy with which they were bestowed. And this was the man whose good feeling for him he had outraged and insulted beyond recall. "If it had been an open quarrel between us, I could have stood his fire and shown him how thoroughly I knew myself in the wrong; but his cold disdain is more than I can bear. And what was it all about? How my old comrades would laugh if they heard that I had quarrelled with my best friend. Ah, my grandmother's reputation! _Ma foi_, how much more importance one often attaches to a word than to what it represents!"

Thus angry with himself, mocking the very pretensions on which he had a.s.sumed to reprehend his friend, and actually ridiculing his own conduct, he embarked from Ma.r.s.eilles to hasten over to England, and entreat Kelson to discharge the money obligation which yet bound him to Longworth.

It was a rough night at sea, and the packet so crowded by pa.s.sengers that Pracontal was driven to pa.s.s the night on deck. In the haste of departure he had not provided himself with overcoats or rugs, and was but ill-suited to stand the severity of a night of cold cutting wind and occasional drifts of hail. To keep himself warm he walked the deck for hours, pacing rapidly to and fro: perhaps not sorry at heart that physical discomfort compelled him to dwell less on the internal griefs that preyed upon him. One solitary pa.s.senger besides himself had sought the deck, and he had rolled himself in a multiplicity of warm wrappers, and lay snugly under the shelter of the binnacle--a capacious tarpaulin cloak surmounting all his other integuments.

Pracontal's campaigning experiences had taught him that the next best thing to being well cloaked oneself is to lie near the man that is so; and thus, seeing that the traveller was fast asleep, he stretched himself under his lee, and even made free to draw a corner of the heavy tarpaulin over him.

"I say," cried the stranger, on discovering a neighbor; "I say, old fellow, you are coming it a bit too free and easy. You've stripped the covering off my legs."

"A thousand pardons," rejoined Pracontal. "I forgot to take my rugs and wraps with me; and I am shivering with cold. I have not even an overcoat."