Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume I.. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      CHAPTER II. THE SWAN’S NEST

      As the Shannon draws near Killaloe, the wild character of the mountain scenery, the dreary wastes and desolate islands which marked Lough Derg, disappear, and give way to gently sloping lawns, dotted over with well-grown timber, well-kept demesnes, spacious country-houses, and a country which, in general, almost recalls the wealth and comfort of England.

      About a mile above the town, in a little bend of the river forming a small bay, stands a small but pretty house, with a skirt of rich wood projecting at the back, while the lawn in front descends by an easy slope to the river.

      Originally a mere farmhouse, the taste of an ingenious owner СКАЧАТЬ