Produced by David Widger
SIR BROOK FOSSBROOKE
Volume I.
By Charles James Lever,
With Illustrations By E. J. Wheeler
Boston:
Little, Brown, And Company.
1917.
To PHILIP ROSE, Esq.
My dear Rose,--You have often stopped me when endeavouring to express
all the gratitude I felt towards you. You cannot do so now, nor prevent
my telling aloud how much I owe-how much I esteem you. These volumes
were not without interest for me as I wrote them, but they yielded me
no such pleasure as I now feel in dedicating them to you; and, with this
assurance, believe me,
Your affectionate Friend,
CHARLES LEVER.
Spezia, October 20. 1866.
SIR BROOK FOSSBROOKE.
CHAPTER I. AFTER MESS
The mess was over, and the officers of H. M.'s --th were grouped in
little knots and parties, sipping their coffee, and discussing the
arrangements for the evening. Their quarter was that pleasant city
of Dublin, which, bating certain exorbitant demands in the matter of
field-day and guard-mounting, stands pre-eminently first in military
favor.
“Are you going to that great ball in Merrion Square?” asked one., “Not
so lucky; not invited.”
“I got a card,” cried a third; “but I 've just heard it's not to come
off. It seems that the lady's husband is a judge. He's Chief something
or other; and he has been called away.”
“Nothing of the kind, Tomkins; unless you call a summons to the next
world being called away. The man is dangerously ill. He was seized with
paralysis on the Bench yesterday, and, they say, can't recover.”
There now ensued an animated conversation as to whether, on death
vacancies, the men went up by seniority at the bar, or whether a
subaltern could at once spring up to the top of the regiment.
“Suppose,” said one, “we were to ask the Colonel's guest his opinion.
The old cove has talked pretty nigh of everything in this world during
dinner; what if we were to ask him about Barons of the Exchequer?”
“Who is he? what is he?” asked another.
“The Colonel called him Sir Brook Fossbrooke; that's all I know.”
“Colonel Cave told me,” whispered the Major, “that he was the fastest
man on town some forty years ago.”
“I think he must have kept over the wardrobe of that brilliant period,”
said another. “I never saw a really swallow-tailed coat before.”
“His ring amused _me_. It is a small smoothing-iron, with a coat-of-arms
on it. Hush! here he comes.”
The man who now joined the group was a tall, gaunt figure, with a high
narrow head, from which the hair was brushed rigidly back to fall behind
in something like an old-fashioned queue. His eyes were black, and
surmounted with massive and much-arched eyebrows; a strongly marked
mouth, stern, determined, and, except in speaking, almost cruel in
expression, and a thin-pointed projecting chin, gave an air of severity
and strong will to features which, when he conversed, displayed a look
of courteous deference, and that peculiar desire to please that we
associate with a bygone school of breeding. He was one of those men,
and very distinctive are they, with whom even the least cautious take
no liberties, nor venture upon any familiarity. The eccentricities of
determined men are very often indications of some deep spirit beneath,
and not, as in weaker natures, mere emanations of vanity or offsprings
of self-indulgence.
If he was, beyond question, a gentleman, there were also signs about him
of narrow fortune: his scrupulously white shirt was not fine, and the
seams of his well-brushed coat showed both care and wear.
He had joined the group, who were talking of the coming Derby when the
Colonel came up. “I have sent for the man we want, Fossbrooke. I'm not
a fisherman myself; but they tell me he knows every lake, river, and
rivulet in the island. He has sat down to whist, but we 'll have him
here presently.”
“On no account; don't disturb his game for me.”
“Here he comes. Trafford, I want to present you to a very old friend of
mine, Sir Brook Fossbrooke,--as enthusiastic an angler as yourself. He
has the ambition to hook an Irish salmon. I don't suppose any one can
more readily help him on the road to it.”
The young man thus addressed was a large, strongly, almost heavily built
young fellow, but with that looseness of limb and freedom that showed
activity had not been sacrificed to mere power. He had a fine, frank,
handsome face, blue-eyed and bold-looking; and as he stood to receive
the Colonel's orders, there was in his air that blending of deference
and good-humored carelessness that made up his whole nature.
It was plain to see in him one easy to persuade, impossible to coerce;
a fellow with whom the man he liked could do anything, bat one perfectly
unmanageable if thrown into the wrong hands. He was the second son of
a very rich baronet, but made the mistake of believing he had as much
right to extravagance as his elder brother, and, having persisted in
this error during two years in the Life Guards, had been sent to do
the double penance of an infantry regiment and an Irish station; two
inflictions which, it was believed, would have sufficed to calm down the
ardor of the most impassioned spendthrift. He looked at Fossbrooke from
head to foot. It was not exactly the stamp of man he would have selected
for companionship, but he saw at once that he was distinctively a
gentleman, and then the prospect of a few days away from regimental
duty was not to be despised, and he quickly replied that both he and his
tackle were at Sir Brook's disposal. “If we could run down to Killaloe,
sir,” added he, turning to the Colonel, “we might be almost sure of some
sport.”
“Which means that you want two days' leave, Trafford.”
“No, sir, four. It will take a day at least to get over there; another
will be lost in exploring; all these late rains have sent such a fresh
into the Shannon there's no knowing where to try.”
“You see, Fossbrooke, what a casuistical companion I've given you. I 'll
wager you a five-pound note that if you come back without a rise he 'll
have an explanation that will perfectly explain it was the best thing
could have happened.”
“I am charmed to travel in such company,” said Sir Brook, bowing. “The
gentleman has already established a claim to my respect for him.”
Trafford bowed too, and looked not at all displeased at the compliment.
“Are you an early riser, sir?” asked he.
“I am anything, sir, the occasion exacts; but when I have an early start
before me, I usually sit up all night.”
“My own plan too,” cried Trafford. “And there's Aubrey quite ready to
join us. Are you a whister, Sir Brook?”
“At your service. I play all games.”
“Is he a whister?” repeated the Colonel. “Ask Harry Greville, ask Tom
Newenham, what they say of him at Grahams? Trafford, my boy, you may
possibly give him a hint about gray hackles, but I 'll be shot if you do
about the odd trick.”
“If you 'll come over to my room, Sir Brook, we 'll have a rubber, and
I 'll give orders to have my tax-cart ready for us by daybreak,” said
Trafford; and, Fossbrooke promising to be with him so soon as he had
given his servant his orders, they parted.
“And are you as equal to this sitting up all night as you used to be,
Fossbrooke?” asked the Colonel.
“I don't smoke as many cigars as formerly, and I am a little more choice
about my tobacco. I avoid mulled port, and take weak brandy-and-water;
and I believe in all other respects I 'm pretty much where I was when we
met last,--I think it was at Ceylon?”
“I wish I could say as much for myself. You are talking of thirty-four
years ago.”
“My secret against growing old is to do a little of everything. It keeps
the sympathies wider, makes a man more accessible to other men, and
keeps him from dwelling too much on himself. But tell me about my young
companion; is he one of Sir Hugh's family?”
“His second son; not unlike to be his eldest, for George has gone to
Madeira with very little prospect of recovery. This is a fine lad; a
little wild, a little careless of money, but the very soul of honor and
right-mindedness. They sent him to me as a sort of incurable, but I have
nothing but good to say of him.”
“There 'a great promise in a fellow when he can be a scamp and a man of
honor. When dissipations do not degrade and excesses do not corrupt a
man, there is a grand nature ever beneath.”
“Don't tell him that, Fossbrooke,” said the Colonel, laughing.
“I am not likely to do so,” said he, with a grim smile. “I am glad, too,
to meet his father's son; we were at Christ Church together; and now I
see he has the family good looks. 'Le beau Trafford' was a proverb in
Paris once.”
“Do you ever forget a man?” asked the Colonel, in some curiosity.
“I believe not. I forget books, places, dates occasionally, but never
people. I met an old schoolfellow t'other day at Dover whom I never saw
since we were boys. He had gone down in the world, and was acting as
one of the 'commissionnaires' they call them, who take your keys to the
Custom-house to have your luggage examined; and when he came to ask me
to employ him, I said, “'What! ain't you Jemmy Harper?' 'And who the
devil are you?' said he. 'Fossbrooke,' said I. 'Not “Wart”?' said he.
That was my school nickname, from a wart I once had on my chin. 'Ay, to
be sure,' said I, 'Wart.' I wish you saw the delight of the old dog. I
made him dine with us. Lord Brackington was with me, and enjoyed it all
immensely.”
“And what had brought him so low?”
“He was cursed, he said, with a strong constitution; all the other
fellows of his set had so timed it that when they had nothing to live on
they ceased to live; but Jemmy told us he never had such an appetite as
now; that he passed from fourteen to sixteen hours a day on the pier
in all weathers; and as to gout he firmly believed it all came of the
adulterated wines of the great wine-merchants. British gin he maintained
to be the wholesomest liquor in existence.”
“I wonder how fellows bear up under such reverses as that,” said the
Colonel.
“My astonishment is rather,” cried Fossbrooke, “how men can live on in
a monotony of well-being, getting fatter, older, and more unwieldy, and
with only such experiences of life as a well-fed fowl might have in a
hencoop.”
“I know that's _your_ theory,” said the other, laughing.
“Well, no man can say that I have not lived up to my convictions; and
for myself, I can aver I have thoroughly enjoyed my intercourse with the
world, and like it as well to-day as on the first morning I made my bow
to it.”
“Listen to this, young gentlemen,” said the Colonel, turning to his
officers, who now gathered around them. “Now and then I hear some of
you complaining of being bored or wearied,--sick of this, tired of that;
here's my friend, who knows the whole thing better than any of us, and
he declares that the world is the best of all possible worlds, and
that so far from familiarity with it inspiring disgust with life, his
enjoyment of it is as racy as when first he knew it.”
“It is rather hard to ask these gentlemen to take me as a guide on
trust,” said Fossbrooke; “but I have known the fathers of most of those
I see around me, and could call many of them as witnesses to character.
Major Aylmer, your father and I went up the Nile together, when people
talked of it as a journey. Captain Harris, I 'm sure I am not wrong in
saying you are the son of Godfrey Harris, of Harrisburg. Your father
was my friend on the day I wounded Lord Ecclesmore. I see four or five
others too,--so like old companions that I find it hard to believe I am
not back again in the old days when I was as young as themselves; and
yet I 'm not very certain if I would like to exchange my present quiet
enjoyment as a looker-on for all that active share I once took in life
and its pleasures.”
Something in the fact that their fathers had lived in his intimacy,
something in his manner,--a very courteous manner it was,--and something
in the bold, almost defiant bearing of the old man, vouching for great
energy and dignity together, won greatly upon the young men, and they
gathered around him. He was, however, summoned away by a message from
Trafford to say that the whist-party waited for him, and he took his
leave with a stately courtesy and withdrew.
“There goes one of the strangest fellows in Christendom,” said the
Colonel, as the other left the room. “He has already gone through three
fortunes; he dissipated the first, speculated and lost the second,
and the third he, I might say, gave away in acts of benevolence and
kindness,--leaving himself so ill off that I actually heard the other
day that some friend had asked for the place of barrack-master at
Athlone for him; but on coming over to see the place, he found a poor
fellow with a wife and five children a candidate for it; so he retired
in his favor, and is content, as you see, to go out on the world, and
take his chance with it.”
Innumerable questions pressed on the Colonel to tell more of his strange
friend; he had, however, little beyond hearsay to give them. Of his
own experiences, he could only say that when first he met him it was
at Ceylon, where he had come in a yacht like a sloop of war to hunt
elephants,--the splendor of his retinue and magnificence of his suite
giving him the air of a royal personage,--and indeed the gorgeous
profusion of his presents to the King and the chief personages of the
court went far to impress this notion. “I never met him since,” said
the Colonel, “till this morning, when he walked into my room, dusty and
travel-stained, to say, 'I just heard your name, and thought I 'd ask
you to give me my dinner to-day.' I owe him a great many,--not to say
innumerable other attentions; and his last act on leaving Trincomalee
was to present me with an Arab charger, the most perfect animal I ever
mounted. It is therefore a real pleasure to me to receive him. He is a
thoroughly fine-hearted fellow, and, with all his eccentricities, one of
the noblest natures I ever met. The only flaw in his frankness is as
to his age; nobody has ever been able to get it from him. You heard him
talk of your fathers,--he might talk of your grandfathers; and he would,
too, if we had only the opportunity to lead him on to it. I know of my
own knowledge that he lived in the Carlton House coterie, not a man of
which except himself survives, and I have heard him give imitations of
Burke, Sheridan, Gavin Hamilton, and Pitt, that none but one who had
seen them could have accomplished. And now that I have told you all
this, will one of you step over to Trafford's rooms, and whisper him
a hint to make his whist-points as low as he can; and, what is even
of more importance, to take care lest any strange story Sir Brook may
tell--and he is full of them--meet a sign of incredulity, still less
provoke any quizzing? The slightest shade of such a provocation would
render him like a madman.”
The Major volunteered to go on this mission, which indeed any of the
others would as willingly have accepted, for the old man had interested
them deeply, and they longed to hear more about him.