Charles Lever - Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume II.

“‘And on what pretext, by what impulse of vanity,’ said I, ‘were you prompted to enter the lists with one every way your superior in tact, in craft, and in coquetry? If she accepted your clumsy addresses, did you never suspect that there was a deeper game at issue than your pretensions?’

“‘You are all mistaken,’ said he, growing crimson with shame as he spoke. ‘I made no advances whatever. I made her certain confidences, it is true, and I asked her advice; and then, as we grew to be more intimate, we wrote to each other, and Sewell came upon my letters, and affected to think I was trying to steal his wife’s affection. She could have dispelled the suspicion at once. She could have given the key to the whole mystery, and why she did not is more than I can say. My unlucky accident just then occurred, and I only issued from my illness to hear that I had lost largely at play, and was so seriously compromised, besides, that it was a question whether he should shoot me, or sue for a divorce.’

“It was clear enough that so long as he represented the heir to the Holt property, Sewell treated him with a certain deference; but when Trafford declared to his family that he would accept no dictation, but go his own road, whatever the cost, from that moment Sewell pressed his claims, and showed little mercy in his exactions.

“‘And what’s your way out of this mess?’ asked I, ‘What do you propose to do?’

“I have written to my father, begging he will pay off this debt for me, – the last I shall ever ask him to acquit. I have requested my brother to back my petition; and I have told Sewell the steps I have taken, and promised him if they should fail that I will sell out, and acquit my debt at the price of my commission.’

“‘And at the price of your whole career in life?’

“‘Just so. If you ‘ll not employ me in the mine, I must turn navvy.’

“‘And how, under such circumstances as these, can you accept Tom Lendrick’s invitation, and go over to Maddalena?’

“‘I could not well say no when he asked me, but I determined not to go. I only saw the greater misery I should bring on myself. Cave can send me off in haste to Gibraltar or to Malta. In fact, I pass off the stage, and never turn up again during the rest of the performance. ‘”

“Poor fellow!” said Tom, with deep feeling.

“He was so manly throughout it all,” said Fossbrooke, “so straightforward and so simple. Had there been a grain of coxcomb in his nature, the fellow would have thought the woman in love with him, and made an arrant fool of himself in consequence, but his very humility saved him. I ‘m not sure, Master Tom, you ‘d have escaped so safely, eh?”

“I don’t see why you think so.”

“Now for action,” said Fossbrooke. “I must get to England at once. I shall go over to Holt, and see if I can do anything with Sir Hugh. I expect little, for when men are under the frown of fortune they plead with small influence. I shall then pass over to Ireland. With Sewell I can promise myself more success. I may be away three or four weeks. Do you think yourself strong enough to come back here and take my place till I return?”

“Quite so. I ‘ll write and tell Lucy to join me.”

“I’d wait till Saturday,” said Fossbrooke, in a low voice. “Cave says they can sail by Saturday morning, and it would be as well Lucy did not arrive till they are gone.”

“You are right,” said Tom, thoughtfully.

“It’s not his poverty I ‘m thinking of,” cried Fossbrooke. “With health and strength and vigor, a man can fight poverty. I want to learn that he is as clean-handed in this affair with the Sewells as he thinks himself. If I once were sure of that, I ‘d care little for his loss of fortune. I ‘d associate him with us in the mine, Tom. There will always be more wealth here than we can need. That new shaft promises splendidly. Such fat ore I have not seen for many a day.”

Tom’s mouth puckered, and his expression caught a strange sort of half-quizzical look, but he did not venture to speak.

“I know well,” added the old man, cautiously, “that it ‘s no good service to a young fellow to plunge him at once into ample means without making him feel the fatigues and trials of honest labor. He must be taught to believe that there is work before him, – hard work too. He must be made to suppose that it is only by persistence and industry, and steady devotion to the pursuit, that it will yield its great results.”

“I don’t suspect our success will turn his head,” said Tom, dryly.

“That ‘s the very thing I want to guard against, Tom. Don’t you see it is there all my anxiety lies?”

“Let him take a turn of our life here, and I ‘ll warrant him against the growth of an over-sanguine disposition.”

“Just so,” said Fossbrooke, too intensely immersed in his own thought either to notice the words or the accents of the other, – “just so: a hard winter up here in the snows, with all the tackle frozen, ice on the cranks, ice on the chains, ice everywhere, a dense steam from the heated air below, and a cutting sleet above, try a man’s chest smartly; and then that lead colic, of which you can tell him something. These give a zest and a difficulty that prove what a man’s nature is like.”

“They have proved mine pretty well,” said Tom, with a bitter laugh.

“And there’s nothing like it in all the world for forming a man!” cried Fossbrooke, in a voice of triumph. “Your fair-weather fellows go through life with half their natures unexplored. They know no more of the interior country of their hearts than we do of Central Africa. Beyond the fact that there is something there – something – they know nothing. A man must have conflict, struggle, peril, to feel what stuff there ‘s in him. He must be baffled, thwarted, ay, and even defeated. He must see himself amongst other men as an unlucky dog that fellows will not willingly associate with. He must, on poor rations and tattered clothing, keep up a high heart, – not always an easy thing to do; and, hardest of all, he must train himself never in all his poverty to condescend to a meanness that when his better day comes he would have to blush for.”

“If you weight poverty with all those fine responsibilities, I suspect you’ll break its back at once,” said Tom, laughing.

“Far from it. It is out of these self-same responsibilities that poverty has a backbone at all;” and the old man stood bolt upright, and threw back his head as though he were emblematizing what he had spoken of.

“Now, Tom, for business. Are you strong enough to come back here and look after the shaft?”

“Yes, I think so. I hope so.”

“I shall probably be some weeks away. I ‘ll have to go over to Holt; and I mean to run adown amongst the Cornwall fellows and show them some of our ore. I ‘ll make their mouths water when they see it.”

Tom bit off the end of his cigar, but did not speak.

“I mean to make Beattie a present of ten shares in that new shaft, too. I declare it’s like a renewal of youth to me to feel I can do this sort of thing again. I ‘ll have to write to your father to come back also. Why should he live in exile while we could all be together again in affluence and comfort?”

Tom’s eyes ranged round the bare walls and the shattered windows, and he raised his eyebrows in astonishment at the other’s illusions.

“We had a stiff ‘heat’ before we weathered the point, that’s certain, Tom,” said the old man. “There were days when the sky looked dark enough, and it needed all our pluck and all our resolution to push on; but I never lost heart, – I never wavered about our certainty of success, – did I?”

“No; that you did not. And if you had, I certainly should not have wondered at it.”