Charles Lever - The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

“Have I your permission to look at these?” said he to Julia, as he opened a book of drawings in water-colors.

“Of course, my Lord. They are mere sketches taken in the neighorhood here, and, as you will see, very hurriedly done.” \

“And have you such coast scenery as this?” asked he, in some astonishment, while he held up a rocky headland of several hundred feet, out of the caves at whose base a tumultuous sea was tumbling.

“I could show you finer and bolder bits than even that.”

“Do you hear, my Lord?” said Marion, in a low tone, only audible to himself. “The fair Julia is offering to be your guide. I ‘m afraid it is growing late. One does forget time at this cottage. It was only the last day I came here I got scolded for being late at dinner.”

And now ensued one of those little bustling scenes of shawling and embracing with which young ladies separate. They talked together, and laughed, and kissed, and answered half-uttered sentences, and even seemed after parting to have something more to say; they were by turns sad, and playful, and saucy – all of these moods being duly accompanied by graceful action, and a chance display of a hand or foot, as it might be, and then they parted.

“Well, my Lord,” said Marion, as they ascended the steep path that led homewards, “what do you say now? Is Julia as cold and impassive as you pronounced her, or are you ungrateful enough to ignore fascinations all displayed and developed for your own especial captivation?”

“It was very pretty coquetry, all of it,” said he, smiling. “Her eyelashes are even longer than I thought them.”

“I saw that you remarked them, and she was gracious enough to remain looking at the drawing sufficiently long to allow you full time for the enjoyment.”

The steep and rugged paths were quite as much as Lord Culduff could manage without talking, and he toiled along after her in silence, till they gained the beach.

“At last a bit of even ground,” exclaimed he, with a sigh.

“You’ll think nothing of the hill, my Lord, when you’ve come it three or four times,” said she, with a malicious twinkle of the eye.

“Which is precisely what I have no intention of doing.”

“What! not cultivate the acquaintance so auspiciously opened?”

“Not at this price,” said he, looking at his splashed boots.

“And that excursion, that ramble, or whatever be the name for it, you were to take together?”

“It is a bliss, I am afraid, I must deny myself.”

“You are wrong, my Lord, – very wrong. My brothers at least assure me that Julia is charming en tête-à-tête . Indeed, Augustus says one does not know her at all till you have passed an hour or two in such confidential intimacy. He says ‘she comes out’ – whatever that may be – wonderfully.”

“Oh, she comes out, does she?” said he, caressing his whiskers.

“That was his phrase for it. I take it to mean that she ventures to talk with a freedom more common on the Continent than in these islands. Is that coming out, my Lord?”

“Well, I half suspect it is,” said he, smiling faintly.

“And I suppose men like that?”

“I ‘m afraid, my dear Miss Bramleigh,” said he, with a mock air of deploring – “I ‘m afraid that in these degenerate days men are very prone to like whatever gives them least trouble in everything, and if a woman will condescend to talk to us on our own topics, and treat them pretty much in our own way, we like it, simply because it diminishes the distance between us, and saves us that uphill clamber we are obliged to take when you insist upon our scrambling up to the high level you live in.”

“It is somewhat of an ignoble confession you have made there,” said she, haughtily.

“I know it – I feel it – I deplore it,” said he, affectedly.

“If men will, out of mere indolence – no matter,” said she, biting her lip. “I ‘ll not say what I was going to say.”

“Pray do. I beseech you finish what you have so well begun.”

“Were I to do so, my Lord,” said she, gravely, “it might finish more than that. It might at least go some way towards finishing our acquaintanceship. I ‘m sorely afraid you ‘d not have forgiven me had you heard me out.”

“I ‘d never have forgiven myself, if I were the cause of it.”

For some time they walked along in silence, and now the great house came into view – its windows all glowing and glittering in the blaze of a setting sun, while a faint breeze lazily moved the heavy folds of the enormous flag that floated over the high tower.

“I call that a very princely place,” said he, stopping to admire it.

“What a caprice to have built it in such a spot,” said she. “The country people were not far wrong when they called it Bishop’s Folly.”

“They gave it that name, did they?”

“Yes, my Lord. It is one of the ways in which humble folk reconcile themselves to lowly fortune; they ridicule their betters.” And now she gave a little low laugh to herself, as if some unuttered notion had just amused her.

“What made you smile?” asked he.

“A very absurd fancy struck me.”

“Let me hear it. Why not let me share in its oddity?”

“It might not amuse you as much as it amused me.”

“I am the only one who can decide that point.”

“Then I ‘m not so certain it might not annoy you.”

“I can assure you on that head,” said he, gallantly.

“Well, then, you shall hear it. The caprice of a great divine has, so to say, registered itself yonder, and will live, so long as stone and mortar endure, as Bishop’s Folly; and I was thinking how strange it would be if another caprice just as unaccountable were to give a name to a less pretentious edifice, and a certain charming cottage be known to posterity as the Viscount’s Folly. You’re not angry with me, are you?”

“I’d be very angry indeed with you, with myself, and with the whole world, if I thought such a casualty a possibility.”

“I assure you, when I said it I did n’t believe it, my Lord,” said she, looking at him with much graciousness; “and, indeed, I would never have uttered the impertinence if you had not forced me. There, there goes the first bell; we shall have short time to dress.” And, with a very meaning smile and a familiar gesture of her hand, she tripped up the steps and disappeared.

“I think I ‘m all right in that quarter,” was his lordship’s reflection as he mounted the stairs to his room.

It was not very willingly that Mr. Cutbill left the drawing-room, where he had been performing a violoncello accompaniment to one of the young ladies in the execution of something very Mendelssohnian and profoundly puzzling to the uninitiated in harmonics. After the peerage he loved counterpoint; and it was really hard to tear himself away from passages of almost piercing shrillness, or those still more suggestive moanings of a double bass, to talk stock and share-list with Colonel Bramleigh in the library. Resisting all the assurances that “papa wouldn’t mind it, that any other time would do quite as well,” and such like, he went up to his room for his books and papers, and then repaired to his rendezvous.

“I ‘m sorry to take you away from the drawing-room, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, as he entered; “but I am half expecting a summons to town, and could not exactly be sure of an opportunity to talk over this matter on which Lord Culduff is very urgent to have my opinion.”

“It is not easy, I confess, to tear oneself away from such society. Your daughters are charming musicians, Colonel. Miss Bramleigh’s style is as brilliant as Meyer’s; and Miss Eleanor has a delicacy of touch I have never heard surpassed.”