In a large room, comfortably furnished, but in which there was a
certain blending of the articles of the drawing-room with those of the
dining-room, showing unmistakably the bachelor character of the owner,
sat two young men at opposite sides of an ample fireplace. One sat, or
rather reclined, on a small leather sofa, his bandaged leg resting on a
pillow, and his pale and somewhat shrunken face evidencing the
results of pain and confinement to the house. His close-cropt head and
square-cut beard, and a certain mingled drollery and fierceness in the
eyes, proclaimed him French, and so M. Anatole Pracontal was; though it
would have been difficult to declare as much from his English, which he
spoke with singular purity and the very faintest peculiarity of accent.
Opposite him sat a tall well-built man of about thirty-four or five,
with regular and almost handsome features, marred, indeed, in expression
by the extreme closeness of the eyes, and a somewhat long upper lip,
which latter defect an incipient moustache was already concealing. The
color of his hair was, however, that shade of auburn which verges on
red, and is so commonly accompanied by a much freckled skin. This same
hair, and hands and feet almost enormous in size, were the afflictions
which imparted bitterness to a lot which many regarded as very enviable
in life; for Mr. Philip Longworth was his own master, free to go where
he pleased, and the owner of a very sufficient fortune. He had been
brought up at Oscot, and imbibed, with a very fair share of knowledge, a
large stock of that general mistrust and suspicion which is the fortune
of those entrusted to priestly teaching, and which, though he had
travelled largely and mixed freely with the world, still continued
to cling to his manner, which might be characterized by the one
word--furtive.
Longworth had only arrived that day for dinner, and the two friends were
now exchanging their experience since they had parted some eight months
before at the second cataract of the Nile.
“And so, Pracontal, you never got one of my letters?”
“Not one,--on my honor. Indeed, if it were not that I learned by a
chance meeting with a party of English tourists at Cannes that they had
met you at Cairo, I 'd have begun to suspect you had taken a plunge into
the Nile, or into Mohammedom, for which latter you were showing some
disposition, you remember, when we parted.”
“True enough; and if one was sure never to turn westward again,
there are many things in favor of the turban. It is the most sublime
conception of egotism possible to imagine.”
“Egotism is a mistake, _mon cher_,” said the other; “a man's own heart,
make it as comfortable as he may, is too small an apartment to live in.
I do not say this in any grand benevolent spirit. There 's no humbug of
philanthropy in the opinion.”
“Of that I 'm fully assured,” said Longworth, with a gravity which made
the other laugh.
“No,” continued he, still laughing. “I want a larger field, a wider
hunting-ground for my diversion than my own nature.”
“A disciple, in fact, of your great model, Louis Napoleon. You incline
to annexations. By the way, how fares it with your new projects? Have
you seen the lawyer I gave you the letter to?”
“Yes. I stayed eight days in town to confer with him. I heard from him
this very day.”
“Well, what says he?”
“His letter is a very savage one. He is angry with me for having come
here at all; and particularly angry because I have broken my leg, and
can't come away.”
“What does he think of your case, however?”
“He thinks it manageable. He says--as of course I knew he would
say--that it demands most cautious treatment and great acuteness. There
are blanks, historical blanks, to be filled up; links to connect, and
such like, which will demand some time and some money. I have told him
I have an inexhaustible supply of the one, but for the other I am
occasionally slightly pinched.”
“It promises well, however?”
“Most hopefully. And when once I have proved myself--not always so easy
as it seems--the son of my father, I am to go over and see him again in
consultation.”
“Kelson is a man of station and character, and if he undertakes your
cause it is in itself a strong guarantee of its goodness.”
“Why, these men take all that is offered them. They no more refuse a
bad suit than a doctor rejects a hopeless patient.”
“And so will a doctor, if he happen to be an honest man,” said
Longworth, half peevishly. “Just as he would also refuse to treat one
who would persist in following his own caprices in defiance of all
advice.”
“Which touches me. Is not it so?” said the other, laughing. “Well,
I think I ought to have stayed quietly here, and not shown myself in
public. All the more, since it has cost me this,” and he pointed to his
leg as he spoke. “But I can't help confessing it, Philip, the sight
of those fellows in their gay scarlet, caracoling over the sward, and
popping over the walls and hedges, provoked me. It was exactly like a
challenge; so I felt it, at least. It was as though they said, 'What
if you come here to pit your claims against ours, and you are still not
gentleman enough to meet us in a fair field and face the same perils
that we do.' And this, be it remembered, to one who had served in a
cavalry regiment, and made campaigns with the Chasseurs d'Afrique. I
could n't stand it, and after the second day I mounted, and--” a motion
of his hand finished the sentence.
“All that sort of reasoning is so totally different from an
Englishman's that I am unable even to discuss it. I do not pretend to
understand the refined sensibility that resents provocations which were
never offered.”
“I know you don't, and I know your countrymen do not either. You are
such a practical people that your very policemen never interfere with a
criminal till he has fully committed himself.”
“In plain words, we do not content ourselves with inferences. But tell
me, did any of these people call to see you, or ask after you?”
“Yes, they sent the day after my disaster, and they also told the
doctor to say how happy they should be if they could be of service to
me. And a young naval commander,--his card is yonder,--came, I think,
three times, and would have come up if I had wished to receive him; but
Kelson's letter, so angry about my great indiscretion, as he called it,
made me decline the visit, and confine my acknowledgment to thanks.”
“I wonder what my old gatekeeper thought when he saw them, or their
liveries in this avenue?” said Longworth, with a peculiar bitterness in
his tone.
“Why, what should he think,--was there any feud between the families?”
“How could there be? These people have not been many months in Ireland.
What I meant was with reference to the feud that is six centuries old,
the old open ulcer, that makes all rule in this country a struggle, and
all resistance to it a patriotism. Don't you know,” asked he, almost
sternly, “that I am a Papist?” “Yes, you told me so.”
“And don't you know that my religion is not a mere barrier to
my advancement in many careers of life, but is a social
disqualification--that it is, like the trace of black blood in a
créole, a ban excluding him from intercourse with his better-born
neighbors--that I belong to a class just as much shut out from all the
relations of society as were the Jews in the fifteenth century?”
“I remember that you told me so once, but I own I never fully
comprehended it, nor understood how the question of a man's faith was
to decide his standing in this world, and that, being the equal of those
about you in birth and condition, your religion should stamp you with
inferiority.”
“But I did not tell you I was their equal,” said Longworth, with a
slow and painful distinctness. “We are _novi homines_ here; a couple of
generations back we were peasants--as poor as anything you could see
out of that window. By hard work and some good luck--of course there was
luck in it--we emerged, and got enough together to live upon, and I was
sent to a costly school, and then to college, that I might start in life
the equal of my fellows. But what avails it all? To hold a station in
life, to mix with the world, to associate with men educated and brought
up like myself, I must quit my own country and live abroad. I know, I
see, you can make nothing of this. It is out and out incomprehensible.
You made a clean sweep of these things with your great Revolution of
'93. Ours is yet to come.”
“Per Dio! I 'd not stand it,” cried the other, passionately.
“You could n't help it. You must stand it; at least, till such time
as a good many others, equally aggrieved as yourself, resolve to risk
something to change it; and this is remote enough, for there is nothing
that men--I mean educated and cultivated men--are more averse to, than
any open confession of feeling a social disqualification. I may tell it
to you here, as we sit over the fire, but I 'll not go out and proclaim
it, I promise you. These are confessions one keeps for the fireside.”
“And will not these people visit you?”
“Nothing less likely.”
“Nor you call upon them?”
“Certainly not.”
“And will you continue to live within an hour's drive of each other
without acquaintance or recognition?”
“Probably--at least we may salute when we meet.”
“Then I say the guillotine has done more for civilization than the
schoolmaster,” cried the other. “And all this because you are a Papist?”
“Just so. I belong to a faith so deeply associated with a bygone
inferiority that I am not to be permitted to emerge from it--there's the
secret of it all.”
“I 'd rebel. I 'd descend into the streets!”
“And you'd get hanged for your pains.”
A shrug of the shoulders was all the reply, and Longworth went on:--
“Some one once said, 'It was better economy in a state to teach people
not to steal than to build jails for the thieves;' and so I would say to
our rulers it would be cheaper to give us some of the things we ask for
than to enact all the expensive measures that are taken to repress us.”
“What chance have I, then, of justice in such a country?” cried the
foreigner, passionately.
“Better than in any land of Europe. Indeed I will go further, and say
it is the one land in Europe where corruption is impossible on the seat
of judgment. If you make out your claim, as fully as you detailed it
to me, if evidence will sustain your allegations, your flag will as
certainly wave over that high tower yonder as that decanter stands
there.”
“Here's to _la bonne chance_,” said the other, filling a bumper and
drinking it off.
“You will need to be very prudent, very circumspect: two things which I
suspect will cost you some trouble,” said Longworth. “The very name you
will have to go by will be a difficulty. To call yourself Bramleigh
will be an open declaration of war; to write yourself Pracontal is an
admission that you have no claim to the other appellation.”
“It was my mother's name. She was of a Provençal family, and the
Pracontals were people of good blood.”
“But your father was always called Bramleigh?”
“My father, _mon cher_, had fifty aliases; he was Louis Lagrange
under the Empire, Victor Cassagnac at the Restoration, Carlo Salvi when
sentenced to the galleys at Naples, Niccolo Baldassare when he shot the
Austrian colonel at Capua, and I believe when he was last heard of, the
captain of a slaver, he was called, for shortness' sake, 'Brutto,' for
he was not personally attractive.”
“Then when and where was he known as Bramieigh?”
“Whenever he wrote to England. Whenever he asked for money, which, on
the whole, was pretty often, he was Montagu Bramieigh.”
“To whom were these letters addressed?”
“To his father, Montagu Bramieigh, Portland Place, London. I have it
all in my note-book.”
“And these appeals were responded to?”
“Not so satisfactorily as one might wish. The replies were flat
refusals to give money, and rather unpleasant menaces as to police
measures if the insistence were continued.
“You have some of these letters?”
“The lawyer has, I think, four of them. The last contained a bank order
for five hundred francs, payable to Giacomo Lami, or order.”
“Who was Lami?”
“Lami was the name of my grandmother; her father was Giacomo. He was
the old fresco-painter who came over from Rome to paint the walls
of that great house yonder, and it was his daughter that Bramleigh
married.”
“Which Bramleigh was the father of the present possessor of Castello?”
“Precisely. Montagu Bramleigh married my grandmother here in Ireland,
and when the troubles broke out, either to save her father from the laws
or to get rid of him, managed to smuggle him out of the country over to
Holland--the last supposition, and the more likely, is that he sent his
wife off with her father.”
“What evidence is there of this marriage?”
“It was registered in some parish authority; at least so old Giacomo's
journal records, for we have the journal, and without it we might never
have known of our claim; but besides that, there are two letters of
Montagu Bramleigh's to my grandmother, written when he had occasion
to leave her about ten days after their marriage, and they begin,
'My dearest wife.' and are signed, 'Your affectionate husband, M.
Bramleigh.' The lawyer has all these.”
“How did it come about that a rich London banker, as Bramleigh was,
should ally himself with the daughter of a working Italian tradesman?”
“Here's the story as conveyed by old Giacomo's notes. Bramleigh came
over here to look after the progress of the works for a great man, a
bishop and a lord marquis too, who was the owner of the place; he made
the acquaintance of Lami and his daughters: there were two; the younger
only a child, however. The eldest, Enrichetta, was very beautiful, so
beautiful indeed, that Giacomo was eternally introducing her head
into all his frescos; she was a blonde Italian, and made a most lovely
Madonna. Old Giacomo's journal mentions no less than eight altar-pieces
where she figures, not to say that she takes her place pretty frequently
in heathen society also, and if I be rightly informed, she is the centre
figure of a 'fresco' in this very house of Castello, in a small octagon
tower, the whole of which Lami painted with his own hand. Bramleigh fell
in love with this girl and married her.”
“But she was a Catholic.”
“No. Lami was originally a Waldensian, and held some sort of faith, I
don't exactly know what, that claimed affinity with the English Church;
at all events, the vicar here, a certain Robert Mathews--his name is in
the precious journal--married them, and man and wife they were.”
“When and how did all these facts come to your knowledge?”
“As to the when and the how, the same answer will suffice. I was
serving as sous-lieutenant of cavalry in Africa when news reached me
that the 'Astradella,' the ship in which my father sailed, was lost off
the Cape Verde islands, with all on board. I hastened off to Naples,
where a Mr. Bolton lived, who was chief owner of the vessel, to hear
what tidings had reached him of the disaster, and to learn something of
my father's affairs, for he had been, if I might employ so fine a word
for so small a function, his banker for years. Indeed, but for Bolton's
friendship and protection--how earned I never knew--my father would have
come to grief years before, for he was a thorough Italian, and always up
to the neck in conspiracies; he had been in that Bonapartist affair at
Home; was a Carbonaro and a Camorrist, and Heaven knows what besides.
And though Bolton was a man very unlikely to sympathize with these
opinions, I take it my respected parent must have been a _bon diable_
that men who knew him would not willingly see wrecked and ruined. Bolton
was most kind to myself personally. He received me with many signs of
friendship, and without troubling me with any more details of law than
were positively unavoidable, put me in possession of the little my
father had left behind him, which consisted of a few hundred francs of
savings and an old chest, with some older clothes and a mass of papers
and letters--dangerous enough, as I discovered, to have compromised
scores of people--and a strange old manuscript book, clasped and locked,
called the 'Diary of Giacomo Lami,' with matter in it for half a dozen
romances; for Giacomo, too, had the conspirator's taste, had known
Danton intimately, and was deep in the confidence of all the Irish
republicans who were affiliated with the French revolutionary party. But
besides this the book contained a quantity of original letters; and when
mention was made in the text of this or that event, the letter which
related to it, or replied to some communication about it, was appended
in the original. I made this curious volume my study for weeks, till,
in fact, I came to know far more about old Giacomo and his times than
I ever knew about my father and his epoch. There was not a country in
Europe in which he had not lived, nor, I believe, one in which he had
not involved himself in some trouble. He loved his art, but he loved
political plotting and conspiracy even more, and was ever ready to
resign his most profitable engagement for a scheme that promised to
overturn a government or unthrone a sovereign. My first thought on
reading his curious reminiscences was to make them the basis of a memoir
for publication. Of course they were fearfully indiscreet, and involved
reputations that no one had ever thought of assailing; but they were
chiefly of persons dead and gone, and it was only their memory that
could suffer. I spoke to Bolton about this. He approved of the notion,
principally as a means of helping me to a little money, which I
stood much in need of, and gave me a letter to a friend in Paris, the
well-known publisher, Lecoq, of the Rue St. Honoré.
“As I was dealing with a man of honor and high character, I had no
scruple in leaving the volume of old Giacomo's memoirs in Lecoq's hands;
and after about a week I returned to learn what he thought of it. He was
frank enough to say that no such diary had ever come before him--that
it cleared up a vast number of points hitherto doubtful and obscure,
and showed an amount of knowledge of the private life of the period
absolutely marvellous; 'but,' said he, 'it would never do to make it
public. Most of these men are now forgotten, it is true, but their
descendants remain, and live in honor amongst us. What a terrible
scandal it would be to proclaim to the world that of these people many
were illegitimate, many in the enjoyment of large fortunes to which they
had not a shadow of a title; in fact,' said he, 'it would be to hurl
a live shell in the very midst of society, leaving the havoc and
destruction it might cause to blind chance. But,' added he, 'it strikes
me there is a more profitable use the volume might be put to. Have you
read the narrative of your grandmother's marriage in Ireland with
that rich Englishman?' I owned I had read it carelessly, and without
bestowing much interest on the theme. 'Go back and reread it,' said he,
'and come and talk it over with me to-morrow evening.' As I entered his
room the next night he arose ceremoniously from his chair, and said,
in a tone of well-assumed obsequiousness, 'Si je ne me trompe pas, j'ai
l'honneur de voir Monsieur Bramleigh, n'est-ce pas?' I laughed, and
replied, 'Je ne m'y oppose pas, monsieur;' and we at once launched out
into the details of the story, of which each of us had formed precisely
the same opinion.
“Ill luck would have it, that as I went back to my lodgings on that
night I should meet Bertani, and Varese, and Manini, and be persuaded to
go and sup with them. They were all suspected by the police, from their
connection with Fieschi; and on the morning after I received an order
from the Minister of War to join my regiment at Oran, and an intimation
that my character being fully known it behooved me to take care. I gave
no grounds for more stringent measures towards me. I understood the
'caution,' and, not wishing to compromise Monsieur Lecoq, who had been
so friendly in all his relations with me, I left France, without even an
opportunity of getting back my precious volume, which I never saw again
till I revisited Paris eight years after, having given in my démission
from the service. Lecoq obtained for me that small appointment I held
under Monsieur Lesseps in Egypt, and which I had given up a few weeks
before I met you on the Nile. I ought to tell you that Lecoq, for what
reason I can't tell, was not so fully pursuaded that my claim was as
direct as he had at first thought it; and indeed his advice to me was
rather to address myself seriously to some means of livelihood, or to
try and make some compromise with the Bramleighs, with whom he deemed a
mere penniless pretender would not have the smallest chance of success.
I hesitated a good deal over his counsel. There was much in it that
weighed with me, perhaps convinced me: but I was always more or less of
a gambler, and more than once have I risked a stake, which, if I
lost, would have left me penniless; and at last I resolved to say,
_Va Banque_, here goes; all or nothing. There's my story, _mon cher_,
without any digressions, even one of which, if I had permitted myself to
be led into it, would have proved twice as long.”
“The strength of a chain is the strength of its weakest link, the
engineers tell us,” said Longworth, “and it is the same with evidence. I
'd like to hear what Kelson says of the case.”
“That I can scarcely give you. His last letter to me is full of
questions which I cannot answer; but you shall read it for yourself.
Will you send upstairs for my writing-desk?”
“We 'll con that over to-morrow after breakfast, when our heads will be
clearer and brighter. Have you old Lami's journal with you?”
“No. All my papers are with Kelson. The only thing I have here is a
sketch in colored chalk of my grandmother, in her eighteenth year, as
a Flora, and, from the date, it must have been done in Ireland, when
Giacomo was working at the frescos.”
“That my father,” said Pracontal, after a pause, “counted with
certainty on this succession, all his own papers show, as well as the
care he bestowed on my early education, and the importance he attached
to my knowing and speaking English perfectly. But my father cared far
more for a conspiracy than a fortune. He was one of those men who only
seem to live when they are confronted by a great danger, and I believe
there has not been a great plot in Europe these last five-and-thirty
years without his name being in it. He was twice handed over to the
French authorities by the English Government, and there is some reason
to believe that the Bramleighs were the secret instigators of the
extradition. There was no easier way of getting rid of his claims.”
“These are disabilities which do not attach to you.”
“No, thank Heaven. I have gone no farther with these men than mere
acquaintance. I know them all, and they know me well enough to know that
I deem it the greatest disaster of my life that my father was one of
them. It is not too much to say that a small part of the energy he
bestowed on schemes of peril and ruin would have sufficed to have
vindicated his claim to wealth and fortune.”
“You told me, I think, that Kelson hinted at the possibility of some
compromise,--something which, sparing _them_ the penalty of publicity,
would still secure to _you_ an ample fortune.”
“Yes. What he said was, 'Juries are, with all their honesty of
intention, capricious things to trust to;' and that, not being rich
enough to suffer repeated defeats, an adverse verdict might be fatal to
me. I did n't like the reasoning altogether, but I was so completely
in his hands that I forbore to make any objection, and so the matter
remained.”
“I suspect he was right,” said Longworth, thoughtfully. “At the same
time, the case must be strong enough to promise victory, to sustain the
proposal of a compromise.”
“And if I can show the game in my hand why should I not claim the
stakes?”
“Because the other party may delay the settlement. They may challenge
the cards, accuse you of 'a rook,' put out the lights--anything, in
short, that shall break up the game.”
“I see,” said Pracontal, gravely; “the lawyer's notion may be better
than I thought it.”
A long silence ensued between them; then Longworth, looking at his
watch, exclaimed, “Who'd believe it? It wants only a few minutes to two
o'clock. Good-night.”