Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume Ii Part 39

CHAPTER XXV. THE TELEGRAM.

When Lacy reached the drawing-room, she found her father and Sir Brook deep in conversation in one of the window-recesses, and actually unaware of her entrance till she stood beside them.

"No," cried Lendrick, eagerly; "I can't follow these men in their knaveries. I don't see the drift of them, and I lose the clew to the whole machinery."

"The drift is easy enough to understand," said Foss-brooke. "A man wants to escape from his embarra.s.sments, and has little scruple as to the means."

"But the certainty of being found out--"

"There is no greater fallacy than that. Do you imagine that one-tenth of the cheats that men practise on the world are ever brought to light? Or do you fancy that all the rogues are in jail, and all the people who are abroad and free are honest men? Far from it. Many an inspector that comes to taste the prison soup and question the governor, ought to have more than an experimental course of the dietary; and many a juryman sits on the case of a creature far better and purer than himself. But here comes one will give our thoughts a pleasanter channel to run in. How well you look, Lucy! I am glad to see the sunny skies of Sardinia have n't blanched your cheeks."

"Such a scheme as Sir Brook has discovered!--such an ign.o.ble plot against my poor dear father!" said Lendrick. "Tell her--tell her the whole of it."

In a very few words Sir Brook recounted the story of Sewell's interview with Balfour, and the incident of the stolen draft of the Judge's writing bartered for money.

"It would have killed my father. The shock would have killed him," said Lendrick. "And it was this man,--this Sewell,--who possessed his entire confidence of late,--actually wielded complete influence over him. The whole time I sat with my father, he did nothing but quote him,--Sewell said so, Sewell told me, or Sewell suspected such a thing; and always with some little added comment on his keen sharp intellect, his clear views of life, and his consummate knowledge of men. It was by the picture Sewell drew of Lady Trafford that my father was led to derive his impression of her letter. Sewell taught him to detect a covert impertinence and a sneer where none was intended. I read the letter myself, and it was only objectionable on the score of its vanity.

She thought herself a very great personage writing to another great personage."

"Just so," said Fossbrooke. "It was right royal throughout. It might have begun '_Madame ma soeur_.' And as I knew something of the writer, I thought it a marvel of delicacy and discretion."

"My father, unfortunately, deemed it a piece of intolerable pretension and offensive condescension, and he burned to be well enough to reply to it."

"Which is exactly what we must not permit. If they once get to a regular interchange of letters, there is nothing they will not say to each other. No, no; my plan is the best of all. Lionel made a most favorable impression the only time Sir William saw him. Beattie shall bring him up here again as soon as the Chief can be about: the rest will follow naturally. Lucy agrees with me, I see."

How Sir Brook knew this is not so easy to say, as Lucy had turned her head away persistently all the time he was speaking, and still continued in that att.i.tude.

"It cannot be to-night, however, and possibly not tomorrow night," said Fossbrooke, musing; and though Lucy turned quickly and eagerly towards him to explain his words, he was silent for some minutes, when at length he said, "Lionel started this morning by daybreak, and for England.

It must have been a sudden thought. He left me a few lines, in pencil, which went thus,--'I take the early mail to Holyhead, but mean to be back to-morrow, or at farthest the day after. No time for more.'"

"If the s.p.a.ce were not brief that he a.s.signs for his absence, I 'd say he had certainly gone to see his father," said Lendrick.

"It's not at all unlikely that his mother may have arranged to meet him in Wales," said Sir Brook. "She is a fussy, meddlesome woman, who likes to be, or to think herself, the prime mover in everything. I remember when Hugh Trafford--a young fellow at that time--was offered a Junior Lords.h.i.+p of the Treasury, it was she who called on the Premier, Lord Dornington, to explain why he could not accept office. Nothing but great abilities or great vices enable a man to rise above the crus.h.i.+ng qualities of such a wife. Trafford had neither, and the world has always voted him a nonent.i.ty."

"There, Lucy," said Lendrick, laughing,--"there at least is one danger you must avoid in married life."

"Lucy needs no teachings of mine," said Sir Brook. "Her own instincts are worth all my experiences twice told. But who is this coming up to the door?"

"Oh, that is Mr. Haire, a dear friend of grandpapa's." And Lucy ran to meet him, returning soon after to the room, leaning on his arm.

Lendrick and Haire were very old friends, and esteemed each other sincerely; and though on the one occasion on which Sir Brook and Haire had met, Fossbrooke had been the object of the Chief's violence and pa.s.sion, his dignity and good temper had raised him highly in Haire's estimation, and made him glad to meet him again.

"You are half surprised to see me under this roof, sir," said Sir Brook, referring to their former meeting; "but there are feelings with me stronger than resentments."

"And when my poor father knows how much he is indebted to your generous kindness," broke in Lendrick, "he will be the first to ask your forgiveness."

"That he will. Of all the men I ever met, he is the readiest to redress a wrong he has done," cried Haire, warmly. "If the world only knew him as I know him! But his whole life long he has been trying to make himself appear stern and cold-hearted and pitiless, with, all the while, a nature overflowing with kindness."

"The man who has attached to himself such a friends.h.i.+p as yours," said Fossbrooke, warmly, "cannot but have good qualities."

"_My friends.h.i.+p!_" said Haire, blus.h.i.+ng deeply; "what a poor tribute to such a man as he is! Do you know, sir," and here he lowered his voice till it became a confidential whisper,--"do you know, sir, that since the great days of the country,--since the time of Burke, we have had nothing to compare with the Chief Baron. Plunkett used to wish he had his law, and Bushe envied his scholars.h.i.+p, and Lysaght often declared that a collection of Lendrick's epigrams and witty sayings would be the pleasantest reading of the day. And such is our public press, that it is for the quality in which he was least eminent they are readiest to praise him. You would n't believe it, sir. They call him a 'master of sarcastic eloquence.' Why, sir, there was a tenderness in him that would not have let him descend to sarcasm. He could rebuke, censure, condemn if you will; but his large heart had not room for a sneer."

"You well deserve all the love he bears you," said Len-drick, grasping his hand and pressing it affectionately.

"How could I deserve it? Such a man's friends.h.i.+p is above all the merits of one like me. Why, sir, it is honor and distinction before the world.

I would not barter his regard for me to have a seat beside him on the Bench. By the way," added he, cautiously, "let him not see the papers this morning. They are at it again about his retirement. They say that Lord Wilmington had actually arranged the conditions, and that the Chief had consented to everything; and now they are beaten. You have heard, I suppose, the Ministry are out?"

"No; were they Whigs?" asked Lendrick, innocently.

Haire and Fossbrooke laughed heartily at the poor doctor's indifference to party, and tried to explain to him something of the struggle between rival factions, but his mind was full of home events, and had no place for more. "Tell Haire," said he at last,--"tell Haire the story of the letter of resignation; none so fit as he to break the tale to my father."

Fossbrooke took from his pocket a piece of paper, and handed it to Haire, saying, "Do you know that handwriting?"

"To be sure I do! It is the Chief's."

"Does it seem a very formal doc.u.ment?"

Haire scanned the back of it, and then scrutinized it all over for a few seconds. "Nothing of the kind. It's the sort of thing I have seen him write scores of times. He is always throwing off these sketches. I have seen him write the preamble to a fancied Act of Parliament,--a peroration to an imaginary speech; and as to farewells to the Bar, I think I have a dozen of them,--and one, and not the worst, is in doggerel."

Though, wherever Haire's experiences were his guides, he could manage to comprehend a question fairly enough, yet where these failed him, or wherever the events introduced into the scene characters at all new or strange, he became puzzled at once, and actually lost himself while endeavoring to trace out motives for actions, not one of which had ever occurred to him to perform.

Through this inability on his part, Sir Brook was not very successful in conveying to him the details of the stolen doc.u.ment; nor could Haire be brought to see that the Government officials were the dupes of Sewell's artifice as much as, or even more than, the Chief himself.

"I think you must tell the story yourself, Sir Brook; I feel I shall make a sad mess of it if you leave it to me," said he, at last; "and I know, if I began to blunder, he 'd overwhelm me with questions how this was so, and why that had not been otherwise, till my mind would get into a helpless confusion, and he'd send me off in utter despair."

"I have no objection whatever, if Sir William will receive me. Indeed, Lord Wilmington charged me to make the communication in person, if permitted to do so."

"I 'll say that," said Haire, in a joyful tone, for already he saw a difficulty overcome. "I 'll say it was at his Excellency's desire you came;" and he hurried away to fulfil his mission. He came almost immediately in' radiant delight. "He is most eager to see you, Sir Brook; and, just as I said, impatient to make you every _amende_, and ask your forgiveness. He looks more like himself than I have seen him for many a day."

While Sir Brook accompanied Haire to the Judge's room, Lendrick took his daughter's arm within his own, saying, "Now for a stroll through the wood, Lucy. It has been one of my day-dreams this whole year past."

Leaving the father and daughter to commune together undisturbed, let us turn for a moment to Mrs. Sewell, who, with feverish anxiety, continued to watch from her window for the arrival of a telegraph messenger. It was already two o'clock. The mail-packet for Ireland would have reached Holyhead by ten, and there was therefore ample time to have heard what had occurred afterwards.

From the servant who had carried Sewell's letter to Traf-ford, she had learned that Trafford had set out almost immediately after receiving it; the man heard the order given to the coachman to drive to Richmond Barracks. From this she gathered he had gone to obtain the a.s.sistance of a friend. Her first fear was that Trafford, whose courage was beyond question, would have refused the meeting, standing on the ground that no just cause of quarrel existed. This he would certainly have done had he consulted Fossbrooke, who would, besides, have seen the part her own desire for vengeance played in the whole affair. It was with this view that she made Sewell insert the request that Fossbrooke might not know of the intended meeting. Her mind, therefore, was at rest on two points.

Trafford had not refused the challenge, nor had he spoken of it to Fossbrooke.

But what had taken place since? that was the question. Had they met, and with what result? If she did not dare to frame a wish how the event might come off, she held fast by the thought that, happen what might, Trafford never could marry Lucy Lendrick after such a meeting. The mere exchange of shots would place a whole hemisphere between the two families, while the very nature of the accusation would be enough to arouse the jealousy and insult the pride of such a girl as Lucy. Come, therefore, what might, the marriage is at an end.

If Sewell were to fall! She shuddered to think what the world would say of her! One judgment there would be no gainsaying. Her husband certainly believed her false, and with his life he paid for the conviction. But would she be better off if Trafford were the victim? That would depend on how Sewell behaved. She would be entirely at his mercy,--whether he determined to separate from her or not. _His_ mercy, seemed a sorry hope to cling to. Hopeless as this alternative looked, she never relented, even for an instant, as to what she had done; and the thought that Lucy should not be Trafford's wife repaid her for all and everything.

While she thus waited in all the feverish torture of suspense, her mind travelled over innumerable contingencies of the case, in every one of which her own position was one of shame and sorrow; and she knew not whether she would deem it worse to be regarded as the repentant wife, taken back by a forgiving pitying husband, or the woman thrown off and deserted! "I suppose I must accept either of those lots, and my only consolation will be my vengeance."

"How absurd!" broke she out, "are they who imagine that one only wants to be avenged on those who hate us! It is the wrongs done by people who are indifferent to us, and who in search of their own objects bestow no thought upon us,--these are the ills that cannot be forgiven. I never hated a human being--and there have been some who have earned my hate--as I hate this girl; and just as I feel the injustice of the sentiment, so does it eat deeper and deeper into my heart."

"A despatch, ma'am," said her maid, as she laid a paper on the table and withdrew. Mrs. Sewell clutched it eagerly, but her hand trembled so she could not break the envelope. To think that her whole fate lay there, within that fold of paper, so overcame her that she actually sickened with fear as she looked on it.

"Whatever is done, is done," muttered she, as she broke open the cover.

There were but two lines; they ran thus:--