Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume I.. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ acre of the estate were to go to a cousin ten times removed!”

      “Were not these people all strangers to you t’ other day, Fossbrooke?” said Cave, in something like a tone of reprehension.

      “So they were. I had never so much as heard of them; but she, this girl, has a claim upon my interest, founded on a resemblance so strong that when I see her, I live back again in the long past, and find myself in converse with the dearest friends I ever had. I vow to Heaven I never knew the bitterness of want of fortune till now! I never felt how powerless and insignificant poverty can make a man till I desired to contribute to this girl’s happiness; and if I were not an old worthless wreck, – shattered and unseaworthy, – I ‘d set to work to-morrow to refit and try to make a fortune to bestow on her.”

      If Cave was half disposed to banter the old man on what seemed little short of a devoted attachment, the agitation of Fossbrooke’s manner – his trembling lip, his shaking voice, his changing color – all warned him to forbear, and abstain from what might well have proved a perilous freedom.

      “You will dine with us at mess, Fossbrooke, won’t you?”

      “No; I shall return at once to Killaloe. I made Dr. Lendrick’s acquaintance just as I started by the train. I want to see more of him. Besides, now that I know what was the emergency that called young Trafford up here, I have nothing to detain me.”

      “Shall you see him before you go?”

      “Of course. I am going over to his quarters now.”

      “You will not mention our conversation?”

      “Certainly not.”

      “I ‘d like to show you my letter before I send it off. I ‘d be glad to think it was what you recommended.”

      “Write what you feel to be a fair statement of the case, and if by any chance an inclination to partiality crosses you, let it be in favor of the young. Take my word for it, Cave, there is a selfishness in age that needs no ally. Stand by the sons; the fathers and mothers will take care of themselves. Good-bye.”

      CHAPTER XII. A GREAT MAN’S SCHOOLFELLOW

      Whether it was that the Chief Baron had thrown off an attack which had long menaced him, and whose slow approaches had gradually impaired his strength and diminished his mental activity, or whether, as some of his “friends” suggested, that the old man’s tenure of life had been renewed by the impertinences of the newspapers and the insolent attacks of political foes, – an explanation not by any means far-fetched, – whatever the cause, he came out of his illness with all the signs of renewed vigor, and with a degree of mental acuteness that he had not enjoyed for many years before.

      “Beattie tells me that this attack has inserted another life in my lease,” said he; “and I am glad of it. It is right that the men who speculated on my death should be reminded of the uncertainty of life by the negative proof. It is well, too, that there should be men long-lived enough to bridge over periods of mediocrity, and connect the triumphs of the past with the coming glories of the future. We are surely not destined to a perpetuity of Pendletons and Fitzgibbons?”

      It was thus he discoursed to an old legal comrade, – who, less gifted and less fortunate, still wore his stuff gown, and pleaded for the outer bar, – poor old Billy Haire, the dreariest advocate, and one of the honestest fellows that ever carried his bag into court. While nearly all of his contemporaries had risen to rank and eminence, Billy toiled on through life with small success, liked by his friends, respected by the world, but the terror of attorneys, who only saw in him the type of adverse decisions and unfavorable verdicts.

      For forty-odd years had he lived a life that any but himself would have deemed martyrdom, – his law laughed at, his eloquence ridiculed, his manner mimicked, jeered at by the bench, quizzed by the bar, sneered at by the newspapers, every absurd story tagged to his name, every stupid blunder fathered on him, till at last, as it were, by the mere force of years, the world came to recognize the incomparable temper that no provocation had ever been able to irritate, the grand nature that rose above all resentment, and would think better of its fellows than these moods of spiteful wit or impertinent drollery might seem to entitle them to.

      The old Judge liked him; he liked his manly simplicity of character, his truthfulness, and his honesty; but perhaps more than all these, did he like his dulness. It was so pleasant to him to pelt this poor heavy man with smart epigrams and pungent sarcasms on all that was doing in the world, and see the hopeless effort he made to follow him.

      Billy, too, had another use; he alone, of all the Chief Baron’s friends, could tell him what was the current gossip of the hall, – what men thought, or at least what they said of him. The genuine simplicity of Haire’s nature gave to his revelations a character so devoid of all spitefulness, – it was so evident that, in repeating, he never identified himself with his story that Lendrick would listen to words from him that, coming from another, his resentment would have repelled with indignation.

      “And you tell me that the story now is, my whole attack was nothing but temper?” said the old Judge, as the two men walked slowly up and down on the grass lawn before the door.

      “Not that exactly; but they say that constitutional irritability had much to say to it.”

      “It was, in fact, such a seizure as, with a man like yourself, would have been a mere nothing.”

      “Perhaps so.”

      “I am sure of it, sir; and what more do they say?”

      “All sorts of things, which, of course, they know nothing about. Some have it that you refused the peerage, others that it was not offered.”

      “Ha!” said the old man, irritably, while a faint flush tinged his cheek.

      “They say, too,” continued Haire, “that when the Viceroy informed you that you were not to be made a peer, you said: ‘Let the Crown look to it, then. The Revenue cases all come to my court; and so long as I sit there, they shall never have a verdict.’”

      “You must have invented that yourself, Billy,” said the Judge, with a droll malice in his eye. “Come, confess it is your own. It is so like you.”

      “No, on my honor,” said the other, solemnly.

      “Not that I would take it ill, Haire, if you had. When a man has a turn for epigram, his friends must extend their indulgence to the humor.”

      “I assure you, positively, it is not mine.”

      “That is quite enough; let us talk of something else. By the way, I have a letter to show you. I put it in my pocket this morning, to let you see it; but, first of all, I must show you the writer, – here she is.” He drew forth a small miniature case, and, opening it, handed it to the other.

      “What a handsome girl! downright beautiful!”

      “My granddaughter, sir,” said the old man, proudly.

      “I declare, I never saw a lovelier face,” said Haire. “She must be a rare cheat if she be not as good as she is beautiful. What a sweet mouth!”

      “The brow is fine; there is a high intelligence about the eyes and the temples.”

      “It is the smile, that little lurking smile, that captivates me. What may her age be?”

      “Something close on twenty. СКАЧАТЬ