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(The University of Chicago Library)
BURGO'S ROMANCE
BY
T. W. SPEIGHT
AUTHOR OF "BACK TO LIFE," "HOODWINKED," ETC.
_AUTHORIZED EDITION_
--------------------
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1894
AUTHORIZED EDITION
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. YOUNG MAN ABOUT TOWN.
II. CAPTAIN CUSDEN'S REPORT.
III. CUT ADRIFT.
IV. "OLD GARDEN."
V. A HUMBLE FRIEND.
VI. A LAST INTERVIEW.
VII. BURGO IN A NEW CHARACTER.
VIII. UNCLE AND NEPHEW.
IX. BURGO'S VIGIL.
X. A SLEEP AND AN AWAKING.
XI. A CLUE.
XII. FOUND.
XIII. HELPLESS.
XIV. IN DURANCE VILE.
XV. DACIA ROYLANCE.
XVI. DACIA EXPLAINS.
XVII. A DOOR BETWEEN.
XVIII. IN WHICH THE UNEXPECTED COMES TO PASS.
XIX. THE CAPTAIN OF THE "NAIAD."
XX. RESCUED.
XXI. A SURPRISE FOR BURGO.
XXII. A MYSTERY SOLVED.
BURGO'S ROMANCE
CHAPTER I.
A YOUNG MAN ABOUT TOWN.
A dark handsome face bent close to a fair and glowing one, a trembling
white hand clasped in a sinewy brown one, two black eyes aflame with
the light of love, two blue eyes cast down in a sweet confusion and
shaded by long brown lashes.
The scene was the conservatory at the back of Mrs. Mordaunt's London
house. It was a wilderness--that is to say, a wilderness where art
reigned supreme--of shrubs, ferns, mosses, and sweet-smelling tropical
flowers. Here and there a shaded lamp glowed with chastened radiance
through the greenery; here and there a Chinese lantern hung suspended
in mid-air like some huge transparent insect of many colours; here and
there a statue gleamed snow-white through the leafage. Some one in the
drawing-room was playing a dreamy waltz; in the breaks of the music
the low silvery plash of a hidden fountain made music of another kind.
Time and the place conspired. The dark, handsome face bent closer, the
lean brown fingers tightened their grasp, two hearts fluttered as they
had never fluttered before. Then the words which one was dying to say
and the other one dying to hear, broke forth in accents low, eager,
and impassioned:
"Clara, darling, you must know that I love you. You must know that I
have loved you ever since that day when----"
In smooth, clear accents a voice behind them broke in:
"Clara, love, I have been looking for you everywhere. I want you
particularly. Mr. Brabazon, will you kindly open that slide a few
inches? I can't think what Stevens has been about; the temperature is
perfectly unbearable."
Burgo Brabazon was brought back to mundane matters with a shock as
though a stream of ice-cold water had been poured down his back. He
dropped Miss Leslie's trembling fingers and turned in some confusion
to obey Mrs. Mordaunt's behest. Before doing so however, he contrived
to whisper the one word "To-morrow."
By the time he had arranged the slide, Mrs. Mordaunt and her niece had
disappeared. He muttered an execration under his breath, for Mr.
Brabazon was by no means an exemplary young man.
Ten minutes later he left the house without saying "Good-night" to
anybody.
As he made his way through the drawing-room he saw Miss Leslie sitting
a little apart from the general company in a recessed window. By her
side, and playing with her fan, sat young vacuous-faced Lord
Penwhistle--vacuous-faced, but enormously rich. "Ah-ha! _chère
madame_, so that's your little game, is it?" muttered Burgo to
himself.
A group of three or four men with whom he was slightly acquainted were
talking on the stairs. They became suddenly silent when they saw him
coming down, and each of them greeted him with a solemn nod as he
passed. Burgo felt vaguely uncomfortable, he hardly knew why.
A hansom took him quickly to his club, and there, over a cigarette and
a bottle of Apollinaris, he sat down to meditate.
Burgo Brabazon at this time was within a month of his twenty-sixth
birthday. He might have been a lineal descendant of Coleridge's
_Ancient Mariner_, seeing that, like him, he was "long and lank and
brown"; but his was the lankiness of perfect health, of a frame
trained to the fineness of a greyhound's, which had not an ounce of
superfluous flesh about it. He had a long oval face and clear-cut
aquiline features; he had dark, steadfast-looking eyes, with a fine
penetrative faculty about them which gave you the impression that he
was a man who would not be easily imposed upon; his hair and his small
moustache were jet black. He was seldom languid, and still more rarely
supercilious, while occasionally inclined to be cynical and
pessimistic (in which respect he was by no means singular); but those
were qualities of which he could disembarrass himself as easily as he
could of his overcoat. He dressed fastidiously, but had nothing
whatever of the latter-day "masher" about him, he was far too manly
for that. Finally, no one could have had a more frank and pleasant
smile than Burgo Brabazon, so that it was almost a pity he was not
less chary of it.
It is certainly unpleasant when, after much effort and inward
perturbation, a man has succeeded in screwing up his courage to ask a
certain question which has been trembling on his lips for weeks, to
find himself baulked at the very outset--to be, as it were, dragged
ignominiously back to earth when another moment would have seen him
soaring into the empyrean. It is more than unpleasant--it is
confoundedly annoying.
Till this evening Burgo had had no reason to suppose that Mrs.
Mordaunt regarded him with unfavourable eyes. His evident liking for
her niece had certainly not escaped the observation of that vigilant
matron, and if she had not openly encouraged him, she had certainly
given him no reason to suppose that any advances he might choose to
make would meet with an unfavourable reception at her hands.
Miss Leslie was no heiress; her sweet face was her only fortune. Her
father had been a country rector, and had bequeathed her an income
which just sufficed to save her from the necessity of joining the
great army of governesses. For a young lady so slenderly endowed with
the good things of this world Burgo Brabazon might be looked upon as a
very fair catch in the matrimonial fishpond--for was he not his
uncle's heir?
"It's all that confounded little Penwhistle," he muttered to himself.
"He's evidently entêté with Clara, and Mrs. M. will do her best to
hook him. But I flatter myself I'm first favourite there, and if that
is so, by Jove! no other man shall rob me of my prize. I'll call
to-morrow, and again and again, till I can get five minutes alone with
her. I never cared for any one as I care for that girl."
He was still deep in thought when some one touched him on the
shoulder. It was Tighe, a club friend, to whom he had lost a hundred
or so at cards during the course of their acquaintance.
"You have heard the news, of course?" said the latter.
"No; what is it?" asked Burgo languidly, with a half-smothered yawn.
Just then he did not care greatly about either Tighe or his news.
For reply Tighe handed him an evening paper, his thumb marking a
certain passage. The passage in question ran as under:
"At Nice, on the 12th inst., Sir Everard Clinton, Bart., to Giulia,
relict of the late Colonel Innes."
Burgo stared at the paper for some moments as if his mind were unable
to take in the announcement.
Then he gave it back to Tighe. "What an ancient idiot!" he said in his
usual impassive tone. "He'll never see his sixtieth birthday again.
But he always was eccentric." And Burgo lighted another cigarette.
But truth to tell, although he took the matter so coolly, he was much
perturbed inwardly. The two lines he had just read announced a fact
which might have the effect of altering all his prospects in life.
"I wonder whether Mrs. Mordaunt had heard the news when she carried
off Clara?" was one of the first questions he asked himself. "And
those fellows on the stairs?" Already he began to feel in some
indefinable sort of way that he was no longer quite the same Burgo
Brabazon in the eyes of the world that he had been a couple of hours
previously.
All his life he had been led to believe that he would be his uncle's
heir. The title, together with such portion of the property as was
entailed, would go to his other uncle, Denis Clinton, the baronet's
younger brother. He, Burgo, was the only son of Sir Everard's
favourite sister. Both his parents dying when he was a child, his
uncle had at once adopted him, and from that time to the present had
treated him as if he were his own son. When his education was
finished, and Burgo hinted to his uncle that the time had now arrived
for deciding upon his future profession in life, Sir Everard had only
laughed in his quiet way and put the question aside as a piece of
harmless pleasantry; and when Burgo had ventured to broach the subject
on two or three subsequent occasions, it had met with no response from
the elder man.
Burgo, who had no wish to lead an idle life, would fain have gone into
the army, but his uncle was unaccountably prejudiced against a
military career, and there had been no hope in that direction.
Thus it fell out that month after month had drifted by without
anything being finally arranged, till Burgo had gradually settled down
into the groove of a young man about town, with no more serious
employment in life than to contrive how his liberal quarterly
allowance could be made productive of the greatest amount of
enjoyment. And that he did enjoy himself there could be no reasonable
doubt. He belonged to two or three pleasant clubs; he knew no end of
nice people who were glad to see him, or professed themselves to be
so; and when the shooting season began he had the pick and choice of a
dozen country houses. In short, Burgo was one of the spoiled darlings
of Society, and he was quite aware of the fact, although how much of
the favour accorded him was due to his own merits and how much to the
reflected radiance of his uncle's prospective thousands, was one of
those problems of which it would be invidious to attempt the solution.
Of his uncle during these latter years Burgo had seen but little. The
English climate disagreed with the baronet's health, or so he averred,
and three-fourths of his time was spent abroad. He was a confirmed
numismatist and an inveterate _bric-à-brac_ hunter. He was said to
have one of the finest collections of coins in the three kingdoms, and
his house at Oaklands overflowed with curios picked up from every
country under the sun. That such a man at the mature age of
sixty-three should fall a victim to the shafts of Dan Cupid was one of
the last things which any one who was acquainted with Sir Everard
Clinton would have predicated of him.