Charles Lever - Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume II.

“I ‘ll ask you to bear this testimony to me one of these days, and to tell how I bore up at times that you yourself were not over hopeful.”

“Oh, that you may. I’ll be honest enough to own that the sanguine humor was a rare one with me.”

“And it’s your worst fault. It is better for a young fellow to be disappointed every hour of the twenty-four than to let incredulity gain on him. Believe everything that it would be well to believe, and never grow soured with fortune if the dice don’t turn up as you want them. I declare I ‘m sorry to leave this spot just now, when all looks so bright and cheery about it. You ‘re a lucky dog, Tom, to come in when the battle is won, and nothing more to do than announce the victory.” And so saying, he hurried off to prepare for the road, leaving Tom Lendrick in a state of doubt whether he should be annoyed or amused at the opinions he had heard from him.

Quick and decided in all his movements, Fossbrooke set out almost immediately after this scene with Tom, and it was only as they gathered together at breakfast that it was discovered he had gone.

“He left Bermuda in the very same fashion,” said Cave. “He had bought a coffee-plantation in the morning, and he set out the same night; and I don’t believe he ever saw his purchase after. I asked him about it, and he said he thought – he was n’t quite sure – he made it a present to Dick Molyneux on his marriage. ‘I only know,’ said he, ‘it’s not mine now.’”

As they sat over their breakfast, or smoked after it, they exchanged stories about Fossbrooke, all full of his strange eccentric ways, but all equally abounding in traits of kind-heartedness and generosity. Comparing him with other men of liberal mould, the great and essential difference seemed to be that Fossbrooke never measured his generosity. When he gave, he gave all that he had; he had no notion of aiding or assisting. His idea was to establish a man at once, – easy, affluent, and independent. He abounded in precepts of prudence, maxims of thrift, and such-like; but in practice he was recklessly lavish.

“Why ain’t there more like him?” cried Trafford, enthusiastically.

“I ‘m not sure it would be better,” said Cave. “The race of idle, cringing, do-nothing fellows is large enough already. I suspect men like Fossbrooke – at least what he was in his days of prosperity – give a large influence to the spread of dependants.”

“The fault I find with him,” said Tom, “is his credulity. He believes everything, and, what’s worse, every one. There are fellows here who persuade him this mine is to make his fortune; and if he had thousands to-morrow, he would embark them all in this speculation, the only result of which is to enrich these people, and ruin ourselves.”

“Is that your view of it?” asked Cave, in some alarm.

“Of course it is; and if you doubt it, come down with me into the gallery, as they call it, and judge for yourself.”

“But I have already joined the enterprise.”

“What! invested money in it?”

“Ay. Two thousand pounds, – a large sum for me, I promise you. It was with immense persuasion, too, I got Fossbrooke to let me have these shares. He offered me scores of other things as a free gift in preference, – salmon-fisheries in St. John’s; a saw-mill on Lake Huron; a large tract of land at the Cape; I don’t know what else: but I was firm to the copper, and would have nothing but this.”

“I went in for lead,” said Trafford, laughingly.

“ You ; and are you involved in this also?” asked Tom.

“Yes; so far as I have promised to sell out, and devote whatever remains after paying my debts to the mine.”

“Why, this beats all the infatuation I ever heard of! You have not the excuse of men at a distance, who have only read or listened to plausible reports; but you have come here, – you have been on the spot, – you have seen with your own eyes the poverty-stricken air of the whole concern, the broken machinery, the ruined scaffoldings, the mounds of worthless dross that hide the very approach to the shaft; and you have seen us, too, and where and how we live!”

“Very true,” broke in Cave; “but I have heard him talk, and I could no more resist the force of his words than I could stand in a current and not be carried down by it.”

“Exactly so,” chimed in Trafford; “he was all the more irresistible that he did not seek to persuade. Nay, he tried his utmost to put me off the project, and, as with the Colonel, he offered me dozens of other ways to push my fortune, without costing me a farthing.”

“Might not we,” said Cave, “ask how it comes that you, taking this dispiriting view of all here, still continue to embark your fortunes in its success?”

“It is just because they are my fortunes; had it been my fortune, I had been more careful. There is all the difference in life between a man’s hopes and his bank-stock. But if you ask me why I hang on here, after I have long ceased to think anything can come of it, my answer is, I do so just as I would refuse to quit the wreck, when he declared he would not leave it. It might be I should save my life by deserting him; but it would be little worth having afterwards; and I ‘d rather live with him in daily companionship, watching his manly courageous temper and his high-hearted way of dealing with difficulties, than I would go down the stream prosperously with many another; and over and over have I said to myself, If that fine nature of his can make defeat so endurable, what splendor of triumph would it not throw over a real success!”

“And this is exactly what we want to share,” said Traf-ford, smiling.

“But what do either of you know of the man, beyond the eccentricity, or the general kindliness with which he meets you? You have not seen him as I have, rising to his daily toil with a racking head and a fevered frame, without a word of complaint, or anything beyond a passing syllable of discomfort; never flinching, never yielding; as full of kind thought for others, as full of hopeful counsel, as in his best days; lightening labor with proverb and adage, and stimulating zeal with many a story. You can’t picture to yourselves this man, once at the head of a princely fortune, which he dispensed with more than princely liberality, sharing a poor miner’s meal of beans and oil with pleasant humor, and drinking a toast, in wine that would set the teeth on edge, to that good time when they would have more generous fare, and as happy hearts to enjoy it.

“Nor have you seen him, as I have, the nurse beside the sick-bed, so gentle, so thoughtful, – a very woman in tenderness; and all that after a day of labor that would have borne down the strongest and the stoutest. And who is he that takes the world in such good part, and thinks so hopefully of his fellow-men? The man of all his time who has been most betrayed, most cheated, whose trust has been most often abused, whose benefits have been oftenest paid back in ingratitude. It is possible enough he may not be the man to guide one to wealth and fortune; but to whatever condition of life he leads, of one thing I am certain, there will be no better teacher of the spirit and temper to enjoy it; there will be none who will grace any rank – the highest or the humblest – with a more manly dignity.”

“It was knowing all this of him,” said Cave, “that impelled me to associate myself with any enterprise he belonged to. I felt that if success were to be won by persistent industry and determination, his would do it, and that his noble character gave a guarantee for fair dealing better than all the parchments lawyers could engross.”

“From what I have seen of life, I ‘d not say that success attends such men as he is,” said Tom. “The world would be, perhaps, too good if it were so.”