CHAPTER X. LENDRICK RECOUNTS HIS VISIT TO TOWN
The vicar having some business to transact in Limerick, agreed to go that far with Sir Brook and Trafford, and accompanied them to the railroad to see them off.
A down train from Dublin arrived as they were waiting, and a passenger, descending, hastily hurried after the vicar, and seized his hand. The vicar, in evident delight, forgot his other friends for a moment, and became deeply interested in the new-comer. “We must say good-bye, doctor,” said Fossbrooke; “here comes our train.”
“A thousand pardons, my dear Sir Brook. The unlooked-for arrival of my friend here – but I believe you don’t know him. Lendrick, come here, I want to present you to Sir Brook Fossbrooke. Captain Trafford, Dr. Lendrick.”
“I hope these gentlemen are not departing,” said Lendrick, with the constraint of a bashful man.
“It is our misfortune to do so,” said Sir Brook; “but I have passed too many happy hours in this neighborhood not to come back to it as soon as I can.”
“I hope we shall see you. I hope I may have an opportunity of thanking you, Sir Brook.”
“Dublin! Dublin! Dublin! get in, gentlemen: first class, this way, sir,” screamed a guard, amidst a thundering rumble, a scream, and a hiss. All other words were drowned, and with a cordial shake-hands the new friends parted.
“Is the younger man his son?” asked Lendrick; “I did not catch the name?”
“No; he’s Trafford, a son of Sir Hugh Trafford, – a Lincolnshire man, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know. It was of the other I was thinking. I felt it so strange to see a man of whom when a boy I used to hear so much. I have an old print somewhere of two over-dressed ‘Bloods,’ as they were called in those days, with immense whiskers, styled ‘Fossy and Fussy,’ meaning Sir Brook and the Baron Geramb, a German friend and follower of the Prince.”
“I suspect a good deal changed since that day, in person as well as purse,” said the vicar, sadly.
“Indeed! I heard of his having inherited some immense fortune.”
“So he did, and squandered every shilling of it.”
“And the chicks are well, you tell me?” said Lendrick, whose voice softened as he talked of home and his children.
“Could n’t be better. We had a little picnic on Holy Island yesterday, and only wanted yourself to have been perfectly happy. Lucy was for refusing at first.”
“Why so?”
“Some notion she had that you would n’t like it. Some idea about not doing in your absence anything that was not usual when you are here.”
“She is such a true girl, so loyal,” said Lendrick, proudly.
“Well, I take the treason on my shoulders. I made her come. It was a delightful day, and we drank your health in as good a glass of Madeira as ever ripened in the sun. Now for your own news?”
“First let us get on the road. I am impatient to be back at home again. Have you your car here?”
“All is ready, and waiting for you at the gate.”
As they drove briskly along, Lendrick gave the vicar a detailed account of his visit to Dublin. Passing over the first days, of which the reader already has heard something, we take up the story from the day on which Lendrick learned that his father would see him.
“My mind was so full of myself, doctor,” said he, “of all the consequences which had followed from my father’s anger with me, that I had no thought of anything else till I entered the room where he was. Then, however, as I saw him propped up with pillows in a deep chair, his face pale, his eyes colorless, and his head swathed up in a bandage after leeching, my heart sickened, alike with sorrow and shame at my great selfishness.
“I had been warned by Beattie on no account to let any show of feeling or emotion escape me, to be as cool and collected as possible, and in fact, he said, to behave as though I had seen him the day before.
“‘Leave the room, Poynder,’ said he to his man, ‘and suffer no one to knock at the door – mind, not even to knock – till I ring my bell.’ He waited till the man withdrew, and then in a very gentle voice said, ‘How are you, Tom? I can’t give you my right hand, – the rebellious member has ceased to know me!’ I thought I should choke as the words met me; I don’t remember what I said, but I took my chair and sat down beside him.
“‘I thought you might have been too much agitated, Tom, but otherwise I should have wished to have had your advice along with Beattie. I believe, on the whole, however, he has treated me well.’
“I assured him that none could have done more skilfully.
“The skill of the doctor with an old patient is the skill of an architect with an old wall. He must not breach it, or it will tumble to pieces.
“‘Beattie is very able, sir,’ said I.
“‘No man is able,’ replied he, quickly, ‘when the question is to repair the wastes of time and years. Draw that curtain, and let me look at you. No; stand yonder, where the light is stronger. What! is it my eyes deceive me, – is your hair white?’
“‘It has been so eight years, sir.’
“‘And I had not a gray hair till my seventy-second year, – not one. I told Beattie, t’ other day, that the race of the strong was dying out. Good heavens, how old you look! Would any one believe in seeing us that you could be my son?’
“‘I feel perhaps even more than I look it, sir.’
“‘I could swear you did. You are the very stamp of those fellows who plead guilty – “Guilty, my Lord; we throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.” I don’t know how the great judgment-seat regards these pleas, – with me they meet only scorn. Give me the man who says, “Try me, test me.” Drop that curtain, and draw the screen across the fire. Speak lower, too, my dear,’ said he, in a weak soft voice; ‘you suffer yourself to grow excited, and you excite me.’
“‘I will be more cautious, sir,’ said I.
“‘What are these drops he is giving me? They have an acrid sweet taste.’
“‘Aconite, sir; a weak solution.’
“‘They say that our laws never forgot feudalism, but I declare I believe medicine has never been able to ignore alchemy: drop me out twenty, I see that your hand does not shake. Strange thought, is it not, to feel that a little phial like that could make a new Baron of the Exchequer? You have heard, I suppose, of the attempts – the indecent attempts – to induce me to resign. You have heard what they say of my age. They quote the registry of my baptism, as though it were the date of a conviction. I have yet to learn that the years a man has devoted to his country’s service are counts in the indictment against his character. Age has been less merciful to me than to my fellows, – it has neither made me deaf to rancor nor blind to ingratitude. I told the Lord-Lieutenant so yesterday.’
“‘You saw him then, sir?’ asked I.
“‘Yes, he was gracious enough to call here; he sent his secretary to ask if I would receive a visit from him. I thought that a little more tact might have been expected from a man in his station, – it is the common gift of those in high places. I perceive,’ added he, after a pause, ‘you don’t see what I mean. It is this: royalties, or mock royalties, for they are the same in this, condescend to these visits as deathbed attentions. They come to us with their courtesies as the priest comes with his holy cruet, only when they have the assurance that we are beyond recovery. His Excellency ought to have felt that the man to whom he proposed this attention was not one to misunderstand its significance.’
“‘Did he remain long, sir?’
“‘Two hours and forty minutes. I measured it by my watch.’
“‘Was the fatigue not too much for you?’
“‘Of course it was; I fainted before he got to his carriage. He twice rose to go away, but on each occasion I had something to say that induced him to sit down again. It was the whole case of Ireland we reviewed, – that is, I did. I deployed the six millions before him, and he took the salute. Yes, sir, education, religious animosities, land-tenure, drainage, emigration, secret societies, the rebel priest and the intolerant parson, even nationality and mendicant insolence, all marched past, and he took the salute! “And now, my Lord,” said I, “it is the man who tells you these things, who has the courage to tell and the ability to display them, and it is this man for whose retirement your Ex-lency is so eager, that you have actually deigned to make him a visit, that he may carry away into the next world, perhaps, a pleasing memory of this; it is this man, I say, whom you propose to replace – and by what, my Lord, and by whom? Will a mere lawyer, will any amount of nisi prius craft or precedent, give you the qualities you need on that bench, or that you need, sadly need, at this council-board? Go back, my Lord, and tell your colleagues of the Cabinet that Providence is more merciful than a Premier, and that the same overruling hand that has sustained me through this trial will uphold me, I trust, for years to serve my country, and save it for some time longer from your blundering legislation.”
“‘He stood up, sir, like a prisoner when under sentence; he stood up, sir, and as he bowed, I waved my adieu to him as though saying, You have heard me, and you are not to carry away from this place a hope, the faintest, that any change will come over the determination I have this day declared.
“‘He went away, and I fainted. The exertion was too long sustained, too much for me. I believe, after all,’ added he, with a smile, ‘his Excellency bore it very little better. He told the Archbishop the same evening that he’d not go through another such morning for “the garter.” Men in his station hear so little of truth that it revolts them like coarse diet. They ‘d rather abstain altogether till forced by actual hunger to touch it. When they come to me, however, it is the only fare they will find before them.’
“There was a long pause after this,” continued Lendrick. “I saw that the theme had greatly excited him, and I forbore to say a word, lest he should be led to resume it. ‘Too old for the bench!’ burst he out suddenly; ‘my Lord, there are men who are never too old, as there are those who are never too young. The oak is but a sapling when the pine is in decay. Is there that glut of intellect just now in England, are we so surfeited with ability that, to make room for the coming men, we, who have made our mark on the age, must retire into obscurity?’ He tried to rise from his seat; his face was flushed, and his eyes flashing; he evidently forgot where he was, and with whom, for he sank back with a faint sigh, and said, ‘Let us talk of it no more. Let us think of something else. Indeed, it was to talk of something else I desired to see you.’ He went on, then, to say that he wished something could be done for me. His own means were, he said, sadly crippled; he spoke bitterly, resentfully, I thought. ‘It is too long a story to enter on, and were it briefer, too disagreeable a one,’ added he. ‘I ought to be a rich man, and I am poor; I should be powerful, and I have no influence. All has gone ill with me.’ After a silence, he continued, ‘They have a place to offer you: the inspectorship, I think they call it, of hospitals at the Cape; it is worth, altogether, nigh a thousand a year, a thing not to be refused.’
“‘The offer could only be made in compliment to you, sir; and if my acceptance were to compromise your position – ’
“‘Compromise me!’ broke he in. ‘I ‘ll take care it shall not. No man need instruct me in the art of self-defence, sir. Accept at once.’
“‘I will do whatever you desire, sir,’ was my answer.
“‘Go out there yourself, alone, – at first, I mean. Let your boy continue his college career; the girl shall come to me.’
“‘I have never been separated from my children, sir,’ said I, almost trembling with anxiety.
“‘Such separations are bearable,’ added he, ‘when it is duty dictates them, not disobedience.’
“He fixed his eyes sternly on me, and I trembled as I thought that the long score of years was at last come to the reckoning. He did not dwell on the theme, however, but in a tone of much gentler meaning, went on: ‘It will be an act of mercy to let me see a loving face, to hear a tender voice. Your boy would be too rough for me.’
“‘You would like him, sir. He is thoroughly truthful and honest.’
“‘So he may, and yet be self-willed, be noisy, be over-redolent of that youth which age resents like outrage. Give me the girl, Tom; let her come here, and bestow some of those loving graces on the last hours of my life her looks show she should be rich in. For your sake she will be kind to me. Who knows what charm there may be in gentleness, even to a tiger-nature like mine? Ask her, at least, if she will make the sacrifice.’
“I knew not what to answer. If I could not endure the thought of parting from Lucy, yet it seemed equally impossible to refuse his entreaty, – old, friendless, and deserted as he was. I felt, besides, that my only hope of a real reconciliation with him lay through this road; deny him this, and it was clear he would never see me more. He said, too, it should only be for a season. I was to see how the place, the climate, suited for a residence. In a word, every possible argument to reconcile me to the project rushed to my mind, and I at last said, ‘Lucy shall decide, sir. I will set out for home at once, and you shall have her own answer.’
“‘Uninfluenced, sir,’ cried he, – ‘mind that. If influence were to be used, I could perhaps tell her what might decide her at once; but I would not that pity should plead for me, till she should have seen if I be worth compassion! There is but one argument I will permit in my favor, – tell her that her picture has been my pleasantest companion these three long days. There it lies, always before me. Go now, and let me hear from you as soon as may be.’ I arose, but somehow my agitation, do what I would, mastered me. It was so long since we had met! All the sorrows the long estrangement had cost me came to my mind, together with little touches of his kindness in long-past years, and I could not speak. ‘Poor Tom! poor Tom!’ said he, drawing me towards him; and he kissed me.”
As Lendrick said this, emotion overcame him, and he covered his face with his hands, and sobbed bitterly. More than a mile of road was traversed before a word passed between them. “There they are, doctor! There ‘s Tom, there’s Lucy! They are coming to meet me,” cried he. “Good-bye, doctor; you ‘ll forgive me, I know, – goodbye;” and he sprang off the car as he spoke, while the vicar, respecting the sacredness of the joy, wheeled his horse round, and drove back towards the town.
CHAPTER XI. CAVE CONSULTS SIR BROOK
A few minutes after the Adjutant had informed Colonel Cave that Lieutenant Traflford had reported himself, Sir Brook entered the Colonel’s quarters, eager to know what was the reason of the sudden recall of Traflford, and whether the regiment had been unexpectedly ordered for foreign service.
“No, no,” said Cave, in some confusion. “We have had our turn of India and the Cape; they can’t send us away again for some time. It was purely personal; it was, I may say, a private reason. You know,” added he, with a slight smile, “I am acting as a sort of guardian to Trafford just now. His family sent him over to me, as to a reformatory.”
“From everything I have seen of him, your office will be an easy one.”
“Well, I suspect that, so far as mere wildness goes, – extravagance and that sort of thing, – he has had enough of it; but there are mistakes that a young fellow may make in life – mistakes in judgment – which will damage him more irreparably than all his derelictions against morality.”
“That I deny, – totally, entirely deny. I know what you mean, – that is, I think I know what you mean; and if I guess aright, I am distinctly at issue with you on this matter.”
“Perhaps I could convince you, notwithstanding. Here’s a letter which I have no right to show you; it is marked ‘Strictly confidential and private.’ You shall read it, – nay, you must read it, – because you are exactly the man to be able to give advice on the matter. You like Traflford, and wish him well. Read that over carefully, and tell me what you would counsel.”
Fossbrooke took out his spectacles, and, having seated himself comfortably, with his back to the light, began in leisurely fashion to peruse the letter. “It’s his mother who writes,” said he, turning to the signature, – “one of the most worldly women I ever met. She was a Lascelles. Don’t you know how she married Trafford?”
“I don’t remember, if I ever heard.”
“It was her sister that Trafford wanted to marry, but she was ambitious to be a peeress; and as Bradbrook was in love with her, she told Sir Hugh, ‘I have got a sister so like me nobody can distinguish between us. She ‘d make an excellent wife for you. She rides far better than me, and she is n’t half so extravagant. I ‘ll send for her.’ She did so, and the whole thing was settled in a week.”
“They have lived very happily together.”
“Of course they have. They didn’t ‘go in,’ as the speculators say, for enormous profits; they realized very fairly, and were satisfied. I wish her handwriting had been more cared for. What’s this she says here about a subscription?”
“That ‘s supervision, – the supervision of a parent.”
“Supervision of a fiddlestick! the fellow is six feet one inch high, and seven-and-twenty years of age; he’s quite beyond supervision. Ah! brought back all his father’s gout, has he? When will people begin to admit that their own tempers have something to say to their maladies? I curse the cook who made the mulligatawny, but I forget that I ate two platefuls of it. So it’s the doctor’s daughter she objects to. I wish she saw her. I wish you saw her, Cave. You are an old frequenter of courts and drawing-rooms. I tell you you have seen nothing like this doctor’s daughter since Laura Bedingfield was presented, and that was before your day.”
“Every one has heard of the Beauty Bedingfield; but she was my mother’s contemporary.”
“Well, sir, her successors have not eclipsed her! This doctor’s daughter, as your correspondent calls her, is the only rival of her that I have ever seen. As to wit and accomplishments, Laura could not compete with Lucy Lendrick.”
“You know her, then?” asked the Colonel; and then added, “Tell me something about the family.”
“With your leave, I will finish this letter first. Ah! here we have the whole secret. Lionel Trafford is likely to be that precious prize, an eldest son. Who could have thought that the law of entail could sway a mother’s affections? ‘Contract no ties inconsistent with his station.’ This begins to be intolerable, Cave. I don’t think I can go on.”
“Yes, yes; read it through.”
“She asks you if you know any one who knows these Hendrichs or Lendrichs; tell her that you do; tell her that your friend is one of those men who have seen a good deal of life, heard more, too, than he has seen. She will understand that, and that his name is Sir Brook Fossbrooke, who, if needed, will think nothing of a journey over to Lincolnshire to afford her all the information she could wish for. Say this, Cave, and take my word for it, she will put very few more questions to you.”
“That would be to avow I had already consulted with you. No, no; I must not do that.”
“The wind-up of the epistle is charming. ‘I have certainly no reason to love Ireland.’ Poor Ireland! here is another infliction upon you. Let us hope you may never come to know that Lady Trafford cannot love you.”
“Come, come, Fossbrooke, be just, be fair; there is nothing so very unreasonable in the anxiety of a mother that her son, who will have a good name and a large estate, should not share them both with a person beneath him.”
“Why must she assume that this is the case, – why take it for granted that this girl must be beneath him? I tell you, sir, if a prince of the blood had fallen in love with her, it would be a reason to repeal the Royal Marriage Act.”
“I declare, Fossbrooke, I shall begin to suspect that your own heart has not escaped scathless,” said Cave, laughing.
The old man’s face became crimson, but not with anger. As suddenly it grew pale; and in a voice of deep agitation he said, “When an old man like myself lays his homage at her feet, it is not hard to believe how a young man might love her.”
“How did you come to make this acquaintance?” said Cave, anxious to turn the conversation into a more familiar channel.
“We chanced to fail in with her brother on the river. We found him struggling with a fish far too large for his tackle, and which at last smashed his rod and got away. He showed not alone that he was a perfect angler, but that he was a fine-tempered fellow, who accepted his defeat manfully and well; he had even a good word for his enemy, sir, and it was that which attracted me. Trafford and he, young-men-like, soon understood each other; he came into our boat, lunched with us, and asked us home with him to tea. There ‘s the whole story. As to the intimacy that followed, it was mostly my own doing. I own to you I never so much as suspected that Trafford was smitten by her; he was always with her brother, scarcely at all in her company; and when he came to tell me he was in love, I asked him how he caught the malady, for I never saw him near the infection. Once that I knew of the matter, however, I made him write home to his family.”
“It was by your advice, then, that he wrote that letter?”
“Certainly; I not only advised, I insisted on it, – I read it, too, before it was sent off. It was such a letter as, if I had been the young fellow’s father, would have made me prouder than to hear he had got the thanks of Parliament.”
“You and I, Fossbrooke, are old bachelors; we are scarcely able to say what we should have done if we had had sons.”
“I am inclined to believe it would have made us better, not worse,” said Fossbrooke, gravely.
“At all events, as it was at your instigation this letter was written, I can’t well suggest your name as an impartial person in the transaction, – I mean, as one who can be referred to for advice or information.”
“Don’t do so, sir, or I shall be tempted to say more than may be prudent. Have you never noticed, Cave, the effect that a doctor’s presence produces in the society of those who usually consult him, – the reserve, – the awkwardness, – the constraint, – the apologetic tone for this or that little indiscretion, – the sitting in the draught or the extra glass of sherry? So is it, but in a far stronger degree, when an old man of the world like myself comes back amongst those he formerly lived with, – one who knew all their past history, how they succeeded here, how they failed there, – what led the great man of fashion to finish his days in a colony, and why the Court beauty married a bishop. Ah, sir, we are the physicians who have all these secrets in our keeping. It is ours to know what sorrow is covered by that smile, how that merry laugh has but smothered the sigh of a heavy heart. It is only when a man has lived to my age, with an unfailing memory too, that he knows the real hollowness of life, – all the combinations falsified, all the hopes blighted, – the clever fellows that have turned out failures, or worse than failures, – the lovely women that have made shipwreck through their beauty. It is not only, however, that he knows this, but he knows how craft and cunning have won where ability and frankness have lost, – how intrigue and trick have done better than genius and integrity. With all this knowledge, sir, in their heads, and stout hearts within them, such men as myself have their utility in life. They are a sort of walking conscience that cannot be ignored. The railroad millionnaire talks less boastfully before him who knew him as an errand-boy; the grande dame is less superciliously insolent in the presence of one who remembered her in a very different character. Take my word for it, Cave, Nestor may have been a bit of a bore amongst the young Greeks of fashion, but he had his utility too.”
“But how am I to answer this letter? What advice shall I give her?”
“Tell her frankly that you have made the inquiry she wished; that the young lady, who is as well born as her son, is without fortune, and if her personal qualities count for nothing, would be what the world would call a ‘bad match.’”
“Yes, that sounds practicable. I think that will do.”
“Tell her, also, that if she seriously desires that her son should continue in the way of that reformation he has so ardently followed for some time back, and especially so since he has made the acquaintance of this family, such a marriage as this would give her better reasons for confidence than all her most crafty devices in match-making and settlements.”
“I don’t think I can exactly tell her that,” said Caver smiling.
“Tell her, then, that if this connection be not to her liking, to withdraw her son at once from this neighborhood before this girl should come to care for him; for if she should, by heavens! he shall marry her, if every acre of the estate were to go to a cousin ten times removed!”
“Were not these people all strangers to you t’ other day, Fossbrooke?” said Cave, in something like a tone of reprehension.
“So they were. I had never so much as heard of them; but she, this girl, has a claim upon my interest, founded on a resemblance so strong that when I see her, I live back again in the long past, and find myself in converse with the dearest friends I ever had. I vow to Heaven I never knew the bitterness of want of fortune till now! I never felt how powerless and insignificant poverty can make a man till I desired to contribute to this girl’s happiness; and if I were not an old worthless wreck, – shattered and unseaworthy, – I ‘d set to work to-morrow to refit and try to make a fortune to bestow on her.”
If Cave was half disposed to banter the old man on what seemed little short of a devoted attachment, the agitation of Fossbrooke’s manner – his trembling lip, his shaking voice, his changing color – all warned him to forbear, and abstain from what might well have proved a perilous freedom.
“You will dine with us at mess, Fossbrooke, won’t you?”
“No; I shall return at once to Killaloe. I made Dr. Lendrick’s acquaintance just as I started by the train. I want to see more of him. Besides, now that I know what was the emergency that called young Trafford up here, I have nothing to detain me.”
“Shall you see him before you go?”
“Of course. I am going over to his quarters now.”
“You will not mention our conversation?”
“Certainly not.”
“I ‘d like to show you my letter before I send it off. I ‘d be glad to think it was what you recommended.”
“Write what you feel to be a fair statement of the case, and if by any chance an inclination to partiality crosses you, let it be in favor of the young. Take my word for it, Cave, there is a selfishness in age that needs no ally. Stand by the sons; the fathers and mothers will take care of themselves. Good-bye.”