LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

and go back to live in England. I ‘ll have a sort of snuggery a correct copy of this; all the old beams in the ceiling, and those great massive architraves round the doors, shall be exactly followed, and the massive stone mantelpiece; and it will remind us, as we sit there of a winter’s night, of the jolly evenings we have had here after a hard day’s work in the shaft. Won’t I have the laugh at you, Tom, too, as I tell you of the wry face you used to make over our prospects, the hang-dog look you ‘d give when the water was gaining on us, and our new pump got choked!”

      Tom would smile at all this, though secretly nourishing no such thoughts for the future. Indeed, he had for many a day given up all hope of making his fortune as a miner, and merely worked on with the dogged determination not to desert his friend.

      On one of the large white walls of their sitting-room Sir Brook had sketched in charcoal a picture of the mine, in all the dreariest aspect of its poverty, and two sad-looking men, Tom and himself, working at the windlass over the shaft; and at the other extremity of the space there stood a picturesque mansion, surrounded with great forest trees, under which deer were grouped, and two men – the same – were riding up the approach on mettlesome horses; the elder of the two, with outstretched arm and hand, evidently directing his companion’s attention to the rich scenes through which they passed. These were the “now” and “then” of the old man’s vision, and he believed in them, as only those believe who draw belief from their own hearts, unshaken by all without.

      It was at the close of a summer day, just in that brief moment when the last flicker of light tinges the earth at first with crimson and then with deep blue, to give way a moment later to black night, that Sir Brook sat with Colonel Cave after dinner, explaining to his visitor the fresco on the wall, and giving, so far as he might, his reasons to believe it a truthful foreshadowing of the future.

      “But you tell me,” said Cave, “that the speculation has proved the ruin of a score of fellows.”

      “So it has. Did you ever hear of the enterprise, at least of one worth the name, that had not its failures? or is success anything more in reality than the power of reasoning out how and why others have succumbed, and how to avoid the errors that have beset them? The men who embarked in this scheme were alike deficient in knowledge and in capital.”

      “Ah, indeed!” muttered Cave, who did not exactly say what his looks implied. “Are you their superior in these requirements?”

      Sir Brook was quick enough to note the expression, and hastily said, “I have not much to boast of myself in these respects, but I possess that which they never had, – that without which men accomplish nothing in life, going through the world mere desultory ramblers, and not like sturdy pilgrims, ever footing onward to the goal of their ambition. I have Faith!”

      “And young Lendrick, what says he to it?”

      “He scarcely shares my hopes, but he shows no signs of backwardness.”

      “He is not sanguine, then?”

      “Nature did not make him so, and a man can no more alter his temperament than his stature. I began life with such a capital of confidence that, though I have been an arrant spendthrift, I have still a strong store by me. The cunning fellows laugh at us and call us dupes; but let me tell you, Cave, if accounts were squared, it might turn out that even as a matter of policy incredulity has not much to boast of, and were it not so, this world would be simply intolerable.”

      “I’d like, however, to hear that your mine was not all outlay,” said Cave, bringing back the theme to its starting-point.

      “So should I,” said Fossbrooke, dryly.

      “And I ‘d like to learn that some one more conversant – more professional in these matters – ”

      “Less ignorant than myself, in a word,” said Fossbrooke, laughing. “You mean you’d like to hear a more trustworthy prophet predict as favorably; and with all that I agree heartily.”

      “There’s no one would be better pleased to be certain that the fine palace on the wall there was not a castle in Spain. I think you know that.”

      “I do, Cave, – I know it well; but bear in mind, your best runs in the hunting-field have not always been when you have killed your fox. The pursuit, when it is well sustained, with its fair share of perils met, dared, and overcome, – this is success. Whatever keeps a man’s heart up and his courage high to the end, is no mean thing. I own to you I hope to win, and I don’t know that there is any such failure possible as would quench this hope.”

      “Just what Trafford said of you when he came back from that fishing-excursion,” cried Cave, as though carried away by a sudden burst of thought.

      “What a good fellow he is! Shall we have him up here to-night?”

      “No; some of our men have been getting into scrapes at Cagliari, and I have been obliged to ask him to stay there and keep things in order.”

      “Is his quarrel with his family final, or is there still an opening to reconciliation?”

      “I ‘m afraid not. Some old preference of his mother’s for the youngest son has helped on the difference; and then certain stories she brought back from Ireland of Lionel’s doings there, or at least imputed doings, have, I suspect, steeled his father’s heart completely against him.”

      “I’ll stake my life on it there is nothing dishonorable to attach to him. What do they allege?”

      “I have but a garbled version of the story, for from Trafford himself I have heard nothing; but I know, for I have seen the bills, he has lost largely at play to a very dangerous creditor, who also accuses him of designs on his wife; and the worst of this is that the latter suspicion originated with Lady Trafford.”

      “I could have sworn it. It was a woman’s quarrel, and she would sacrifice her own son for vengeance. I ‘ll be able to pay her a very refined compliment when I next see her, Cave, and tell her that she is not in the least altered from the day I first met her. And has Lionel been passed over in the entail?”

      “So he believes, and I think with too good reason.”

      “And all because he loved a girl whose alliance would confer honor on the proudest house in the land. I think I ‘ll go over and pay Holt a visit. It is upwards of forty years since I saw Sir Hugh, and I have a notion I could bring him to reason.”

      Cave shook his head doubtingly.

      “Ay, to be sure,” sighed Fossbrooke, “it does make a precious difference whether one remonstrates at the head of a fine fortune or pleads for justice in a miner’s jacket. I was forgetting that, Cave. Indeed, I am always forgetting it. And have they made no sort of settlement on Lionel, – nothing to compensate him for the loss of his just expectations?”

      “I suspect not. He has told me nothing beyond the fact that he is to have the purchase-money for the lieutenant-colonelcy, which I was ready and willing to vacate in his favor, but which we are unable to negotiate, because he owes a heavy sum, to the payment of which this must go.”

      “Can nothing be done with his creditor? – can we not manage to secure the debt and pay the interest?”

      “This same creditor is one not easily dealt with,” said Cave, slowly.

      “A money-lender?”

      “No. He ‘s the man I just told you wanted to involve Trafford with his own wife. As dangerous a fellow as ever lived. I take shame to myself to own that, though acquainted with him for years, I never really knew his character till lately.”

      “Don’t think the worse of yourself for that, Cave. The faculty to read bad men at sight argues too much familiarity with badness. I like to hear a fellow say, ‘I never so much as suspected it.’ Is this, man’s name a secret?”

      “No. Nothing of the kind. I don’t suppose you ever met him, but he is well known in the service, – better perhaps in India than at home, – he served on Rolffe’s staff in Bengal. His name is Sewell.”

      “What! Dudley Sewell?”

      “Yes;

Скачать книгу