Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume Ii Part 23

"First acquaintance always chilled him, and his deep humility ever prevented him making those efforts in conversation which would have established his true value. Poor fellow, how little he was always understood! Well, well! I am keeping you out in the night air all this time--"

"Oh, it is perfectly delicious, doctor. It is like a night in the tropics, so balmy and so bright."

"I don't like to offer rude counsels, but my art sometimes gives a man scant choice," said he, after a brief pause. "I'd say, take your husband away, get him down to that place on the Shannon,--you have it still?

Well, get him down there; he can always amuse himself; he's fond of field-sports, and people are sure to be attentive to him in the neighborhood; and leave the old Judge to fall back into the well-worn groove of his former life. He'll soon send for Tom and his daughter, and they 'll fall into his ways, or, what 's better, _he_ will fall into _theirs_,--without either ruining his health or his fortune; plain speaking all this, Mrs. Sewell, but you asked for frankness, and told me it would not be ill taken."

"I don't think Colonel Sewell would consent to this plan."

"Would _you?_" asked he, bluntly.

"My consent would not be asked; there's no need to discuss it."

"I meant, do you sufficiently concur in it to advise it?"

"I can advise nothing. I advance nothing. I oppose nothing. I had thought, Dr. Beattie, that your visits to this house might have taught you the place I occupy, and the consideration I am held in."

This was ground the doctor would not enter upon, and he adroitly said: "I think it will be the saving of Colonel Sewell himself. Club gossip says that he loses heavily every night; and though his means may be considerable--"

"But they are not,--he has nothing,--not a s.h.i.+lling, except what this place brings in."

"All the more reason not to play; but I must not keep you out here all night. I 'll come early in the morning, and hope to find him better.

Remember how essential quiet is to him; let him not be disturbed; no talking by way of amusing him; pure rest--mind that."

"If he wishes to see my husband, or asks for him--" "I'd make some excuse; say he is out. Colonel Se well excites him; he never fully understood Sir William; and I fear, besides, that he now and then took a humoristic pleasure in those bursts of temper which it is always only too easy to provoke."

"He is very fond of my little boy,--might he go in?" "I think not. I'd say downright repose and isolation. You yourself can step in noiselessly from time to time, and only speak if you see that he wishes it; but on no account mention anything that could awaken interest,--nothing to arouse or to excite. You saw the fearful state that letter threw him into to-night, and the paroxysm of rage with which he called for his will to erase Tom Lendrick's name. Now in all probability he will have totally forgotten the whole incident by to-morrow. Good-night."

After he drove off, she still lingered about the spot where they had been talking. Whatever interest the subject might have had for her, it was not through her affections that interest worked, for she hummed an opera air, "Bianca Luna," and tried to recall some lines of Alfred de Musset's to the "timid planet," and then sat down upon the steps and gazed at the stars.

Sewell moved out into the avenue, and, whistling carelessly to announce his approach, walked up to where she was sitting. "Romantic, certainly!"

said he. "Whose carriage was that I met driving out?"

"Dr. Beattie's. He has been here to see Sir William." "Will he die this time, or is it only another false start?" "He is seriously ill. Some news he received from his son gave him a severe shock, and brought on one of his worst attacks. He has been raving since six o'clock."

"I should like to know when he has done anything else. I should like to see the man who ever heard from his lips other than the wildest, crudest nonsense. The question is, is he going to die?"

"Beattie's opinion is very unfavorable."

"Unfavorable! To whom? To _him_ or to _us?_"

"His death could scarcely be favorable to us."

"That 's as it might be. We stand to win on one or two of these twenty wills he has made; and if he should recover and live on, I don't think--indeed I 'm full sure--I couldn't bear it much longer; so that, take it either way, I'd rather he'd die."

"Beattie wishes his granddaughter were here."

"Well, send for her. Though, if he is as ill as you say, it won't be of much use."

"He has come through so many of these attacks, and has such great power of const.i.tution, the doctor still thinks he might rally."

"And so he will, I'll be sworn. There's a vitality in those people who plague and torment others that ought to get insurance offices to take them at half premium. Has he asked for _me?_"

"Only in his ravings. He rang his bell violently, and inquired if you had been at the prison, and asked what tidings you had brought him; and then he went off to say that all this Celt affair was no rebellion at all, and that he would prove it. Then he talked of quitting the Bench and putting on his stuff gown to defend these men against the Government."

"Sick or well, sane or insane, it's always the same story. His only theme is himself."

"Beattie was struck with the profound things and the witty things he said throughout all his rambling. He said that the intellect was never actually overthrown, that it only tottered."

"What rot! as if he knew anything about it! These fellows talk of a man's brain as if it was the ankle-joint. Was there any question of a will?"

"Yes. He made Beattie take a will out of his writing-desk; and he erased the name of Lendrick in every part of it. Beattie and he had some angry words together, but that was before he was raving; and I heard Sir William tell him, 'Sir, you are neither my priest nor my lawyer; and if your skill as a doctor be only on a par with your tact as a friend, my recovery is all but hopeless.'"

"That probably was one of the profound or witty things the doctor was so delighted with."

"Dr. Beattie took nothing addressed to himself in ill part."

"No; that's part of medical education. These fellows begin life as such 'cads,' they never attain to the feeling of being gentlemen."

There was not light enough for Sewell to see the scornful curl of his wife's lip at this speech; but in the little short cough by which she suppressed her temptation to reply, he noted her indignation.

"I know he's one of your especial favorites, Madam," said he, harshly; "but even _that_ gives him no immunity with me."

"I 'm sure I could never think it would."

"No; not even from being aware that one of his chief claims upon the wife was the unhandsome way he spoke of the husband."

"He seldom mentions you," said she, superciliously.

"I am not so scrupulous about him, then; I have not forgotten his conduct when that fellow got his skull cracked at the Nest. I saw it all, Madam; but I have a trick of seeing and saying nothing that might have suggested some alarm to you ere this."

"You have many tricks, but not one that alarms me," said she, coldly; "the wholesome fear of consequences will always be enough to keep you harmless."

He almost sprang at her at these words; indeed, he came so close that his hot breath brushed her face. "It is a favorite taunt of yours to sneer at my courage," said he, fiercely; "you may do it once too often."

She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously, and slowly arose from where she sat.

"Where are you going?" asked he, roughly.

"Going in."

"I have many things to say yet; I want to hear more, too, about the old man's illness."

"I have told you all I know. Good-night."

He turned away without acknowledging her salutation, and strolled into the gra.s.s. What a web of troubles he was involved in, and how hopelessly he turned from this or that expedient to extricate himself! It was but a short time before that, as a member of the committee of his Club, he had succeeded in pa.s.sing a law by which all play debts should be discharged within twenty-four hours, on penalty of the defaulter being declared excluded from the Club. He was a winner at the time; but now luck had changed: he had lost heavily, and had not the slightest prospect of being able to meet his losses. "How like my fate!" muttered he, in intense pa.s.sion,--"how like my fate! my whole life has been a game I have played against myself. And that woman, too,"--it was of his wife he spoke,--"who once helped me through many a strait, a.s.sumes now to be too pure and too virtuous to be my a.s.sociate, and stands quietly aloof to see me ruined."

A long thin streak of light crossed his path as he went; he looked up, and saw it came from between the shutters of the Chief's room. "I wonder how it fares with him!" muttered he. He pondered for some time over the old man's case, his chances of recovery, and the spirit in which convalescence would find him; and then entering the house, he slowly mounted the stairs, one by one, his heart feeling like a load almost too heavy to carry. The unbroken stillness of the house seemed to whisper caution, and he moved along the corridor with noiseless tread till he came to the door of the Judge's room. There he stooped and listened.

There were the long-drawn breathings of a heavy sleeper plainly to be heard, but they sounded stronger and fuller than the respirations of a sick man. Sewell gently turned the handle of the door and entered. The suspicion was right. The breathings were those of the hospital nurse, who, seated in a deep arm-chair, slept profoundly. Sewell stood several minutes at the door before he ventured further; at last he crept stealthily forward to the foot of the bed, and, separating the curtains cautiously, he peeped in. The old man lay with his eyes closed, and his long shrivelled arms outside the clothes. He continued to talk rapidly, and by degrees his voice grew stronger and dearer, and had all that resonance of one speaking in a large a.s.sembly. "I have now," said he, "shown the inexpediency of this course. I have pointed out where you have been impolitic; I will next explain where you are illegal. This Act was made in the 23d year of Henry VI., and although intended only to apply to cases of action personal, or indictment of trespa.s.s--What is the meaning of this interruption? Let there be silence in the Court. I will have the tribunal in which I preside respected. The public shall learn--the representatives of the press--and if there be, as I am told there are--" His voice grew weaker and weaker, and the last audible words that escaped him were "judgment for the plaintiff."