Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume I.. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ Come and eat him to-morrow. Dare I hope that these gentlemen are disengaged, and will honor my poor parsonage? Will you favor me with your company at five o’clock, sir?”

      Sir Brook bowed, and accepted the invitation with pleasure.

      “And you, sir?”

      “Only too happy,” said Trafford.

      “Lucy, my dear, you must be one of us.”

      “Oh, I could not; it is impossible, doctor, – you know it is.”

      “I know nothing of the kind.”

      “Papa away, – not to speak of his never encouraging us to leave home,” muttered she, in a whisper.

      “I accept no excuses, Lucy; such a rare opportunity may not occur to me in a hurry. Mrs. Brennan, my housekeeper, will be so proud to see you, that I ‘m not sure she ‘ll not treat these gentlemen to her brandy peaches, – a delicacy, I feel bound to say, she has never conceded to any one less than the bishop of the diocese.”

      “Don’t ask me, doctor. I know that papa – ”

      But he broke in, saying, – “‘You know I ‘m your priest, and your conscience is mine;’ and besides, I really do want to see how the parsonage will look with a lady at the top of the table: who knows what it may lead to?”

      “Come, Lucy, that’s the nearest thing to a proposal I ‘ve heard for some time. You really must go now,” said Tom.

      “Papa will not like it,” whispered she in his ear.

      “Then he’ll have to settle the matter with me, Lucy,” said the doctor, “for it was I who overruled you.”

      “Don’t look to me, Miss Lendrick, to sustain you in your refusal,” said Sir Brook, as the young girl turned towards him. “I have the strongest interest in seeing the doctor successful.”

      If Trafford said nothing, the glance he gave her more than backed the old man’s speech, and she turned away half vexed, half pleased, puzzled how to act, and flattered at the same time by an amount of attention so new to her and so strange. Still she could not bring herself to promise she would go, and wished them all good-night at last, without a pledge.

      “Of course she will,” muttered Tom in the doctor’s ear. “She’s afraid of the governor; but I know he’ll not be displeased, – you may reckon on her.”

      CHAPTER V. THE PICNIC ON HOLY ISLAND

      From the day that Sir Brook made the acquaintance of Tom Lendrick and his sister, he determined he would “pitch his tent,” as he called it, for some time at Killaloe. They had, so to say, captivated the old man. The young fellow, by his frank, open, manly nature, his ardent love of sport in every shape, his invariable good-humor, and more than all these, by the unaffected simplicity of his character, had strongly interested him; while Lucy had made a far deeper impression by her gentleness, her refinement, an elegance in deportment that no teaching ever gives, and, along with these, a mind stored with thought and reflectiveness. Let us, however, be just to each, and own that her beauty and the marvellous fascination of her smile gave her, even in that old man’s eyes, an irresistible charm. It was a very long bygone, but he had once been in love, and the faint flicker of the memory had yet survived in his heart. It was just as likely Lucy bore no resemblance to her he had loved, but he fancied she did, – he imagined that she was her very image. That was the smile, the glance, the tone, the gesture which once had set his heart a-throbbing, and the illusion threw around her an immense fascination.

      She liked him too. Through all the strange incongruities of his character, his restless love of adventure and excitement, there ran a gentle liking for quiet pleasures. He loved scenery passionately, and with a painter’s taste for color and form; he loved poetry, which he read with a wondrous charm of voice and intonation. Nor was it without its peculiar power, this homage of an old, old man, who rendered her the attentive service of a devoted admirer.

      There is very subtle flattery in the obsequious devotion of age to youth. It is, at least, an honest worship, an unselfish offering, and in this way the object of it may well feel proud of its tribute.

      From the vicar, Dr. Mills, Fossbrooke had learned the chief events of Dr. Lendrick’s history, of his estrangement from his father, his fastidious retirement from the world, and, last of all, his narrow fortune, apparently now growing narrower, since within the last year he had withdrawn his son from the University on the score of its expense.

      A gold-medallist and a scholar, Dr. Lendrick would have eagerly coveted such honors for his son. It was, probably, the one triumph in life he would have set most store by, but Tom was one not made for collegiate successes. He had abilities, but they were not teachable qualities; he could pick up a certain amount of almost anything, – he could learn nothing. He could carry away from a chance conversation an amount of knowledge it had cost the talkers years to acquire, and yet set him down regularly to work book-fashion, and either from want of energy, or concentration, or of that strong will which masters difficulties just as a full current carries all before it – whichever of these was his defect, – he arose from his task wearied, worn, but unadvanced.

      When, therefore, his father would speak, as he sometimes did, in confidence to the vicar, in a tone of depression about Tom’s deficiencies, the honest parson would feel perfectly lost in amazement at what he meant. To his eyes Tom Lendrick was a wonder, a prodigy. There was not a theme he could not talk on, and talk well too. “It was but the other day he told the chief engineer of the Shannon Company more about the geological formation of the river-basin than all his staff knew. Ay, and what’s stranger,” added the vicar, “he understands the whole Colenso controversy better than I do myself.” It is just possible that in the last panegyric there was nothing of exaggeration or excess. “And with all that, sir, his father goes on brooding over his neglected education, and foreshadowing the worst results from his ignorance.”

      “He is a fine fellow,” said Fossbrooke, “but not to be compared with his sister.”

      “Not for mere looks, perhaps, nor for a graceful manner, and a winning address; but who would think of ranking Lucy’s abilities with her brother’s?”

      “Not I,” said Fossbrooke, boldly, “for I place hers far and away above them.”

      A sly twinkle of the parson’s eye showed to what class of advantages he ascribed the other’s preference; but he said no more, and the controversy ended.

      Every morning found Sir Brook at the “Swan’s Nest.” He was fond of gardening, and had consummate taste in laying out ground, so that many pleasant surprises had been prepared for Dr. Lendrick’s return. He drew, too, with great skill, and Lucy made considerable progress under his teaching; and as they grew more intimate, and she was not ashamed of the confession that she delighted in the Georgics of Virgil, they read whole hours together of those picturesque descriptions of rural life and its occupations, which are as true to nature at this hour as on the day they were written.

      Perhaps the old man fancied that it was he who had suggested this intense appreciation of the poet. It is just possible that the young girl believed that she had reclaimed a wild, erratic, eccentric nature, and brought him back ta the love of simple pleasures and a purer source of enjoyment. Whichever way the truth inclined, each was happy, each contented. And how fond are we all, of every age, of playing the missionary, of setting off into the savage districts of our neighbors’ natures and combating their false idols, their superstitions and strange rites! The least adventurous and the least imaginative have these little outbursts of conversion, and all are more or less propagandists.

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