Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume II.. Lever Charles James

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ it had remained, like many of his other acquisitions, uncared for and unthought of, till the sudden idea had struck him that he wanted to be rich, and to be rich instantaneously.

      He had coffee-plantations somewhere in Ceylon, and he had purchased largely of land in Canada; but to utilize either of these would be a work of time, whereas the mine would yield its metal bright and ready for the market. It was so much actual available money at once.

      His first care was to restore, so far as to make it habitable, a dreary old ruinous barrack of a house, which a former speculator had built to hold all his officials and dependants. A few rooms that opened on a tumble-down terrace – of which some marble urns yet remained to bear witness of former splendor – were all that Sir Brook could manage to make habitable, and even these would have seemed miserable and uncomfortable to any one less bent on “roughing it” than himself.

      Some guns and fishing-gear covered one wall of the room that served as dinner-room; and a few rude shelves on the opposite side contained such specimens of ore as were yet discovered, and the three or four books which formed their library; the space over the chimney displaying a sort of trophy of pipes of every sort and shape, from the well-browned meerschaum to the ignoble “dudeen” of Irish origin.

      These were the only attempts at decoration they had made, but it was astonishing with what pleasure the old man regarded them, and with what pride he showed the place to such as accidentally came to see him.

      “I’ll have a room yet, just arrayed in this fashion, Tom,” would he say, “when we have made our fortune, and go back to live in England. I ‘ll have a sort of snuggery a correct copy of this; all the old beams in the ceiling, and those great massive architraves round the doors, shall be exactly followed, and the massive stone mantelpiece; and it will remind us, as we sit there of a winter’s night, of the jolly evenings we have had here after a hard day’s work in the shaft. Won’t I have the laugh at you, Tom, too, as I tell you of the wry face you used to make over our prospects, the hang-dog look you ‘d give when the water was gaining on us, and our new pump got choked!”

      Tom would smile at all this, though secretly nourishing no such thoughts for the future. Indeed, he had for many a day given up all hope of making his fortune as a miner, and merely worked on with the dogged determination not to desert his friend.

      On one of the large white walls of their sitting-room Sir Brook had sketched in charcoal a picture of the mine, in all the dreariest aspect of its poverty, and two sad-looking men, Tom and himself, working at the windlass over the shaft; and at the other extremity of the space there stood a picturesque mansion, surrounded with great forest trees, under which deer were grouped, and two men – the same – were riding up the approach on mettlesome horses; the elder of the two, with outstretched arm and hand, evidently directing his companion’s attention to the rich scenes through which they passed. These were the “now” and “then” of the old man’s vision, and he believed in them, as only those believe who draw belief from their own hearts, unshaken by all without.

      It was at the close of a summer day, just in that brief moment when the last flicker of light tinges the earth at first with crimson and then with deep blue, to give way a moment later to black night, that Sir Brook sat with Colonel Cave after dinner, explaining to his visitor the fresco on the wall, and giving, so far as he might, his reasons to believe it a truthful foreshadowing of the future.

      “But you tell me,” said Cave, “that the speculation has proved the ruin of a score of fellows.”

      “So it has. Did you ever hear of the enterprise, at least of one worth the name, that had not its failures? or is success anything more in reality than the power of reasoning out how and why others have succumbed, and how to avoid the errors that have beset them? The men who embarked in this scheme were alike deficient in knowledge and in capital.”

      “Ah, indeed!” muttered Cave, who did not exactly say what his looks implied. “Are you their superior in these requirements?”

      Sir Brook was quick enough to note the expression, and hastily said, “I have not much to boast of myself in these respects, but I possess that which they never had, – that without which men accomplish nothing in life, going through the world mere desultory ramblers, and not like sturdy pilgrims, ever footing onward to the goal of their ambition. I have Faith!”

      “And young Lendrick, what says he to it?”

      “He scarcely shares my hopes, but he shows no signs of backwardness.”

      “He is not sanguine, then?”

      “Nature did not make him so, and a man can no more alter his temperament than his stature. I began life with such a capital of confidence that, though I have been an arrant spendthrift, I have still a strong store by me. The cunning fellows laugh at us and call us dupes; but let me tell you, Cave, if accounts were squared, it might turn out that even as a matter of policy incredulity has not much to boast of, and were it not so, this world would be simply intolerable.”

      “I’d like, however, to hear that your mine was not all outlay,” said Cave, bringing back the theme to its starting-point.

      “So should I,” said Fossbrooke, dryly.

      “And I ‘d like to learn that some one more conversant – more professional in these matters – ”

      “Less ignorant than myself, in a word,” said Fossbrooke, laughing. “You mean you’d like to hear a more trustworthy prophet predict as favorably; and with all that I agree heartily.”

      “There’s no one would be better pleased to be certain that the fine palace on the wall there was not a castle in Spain. I think you know that.”

      “I do, Cave, – I know it well; but bear in mind, your best runs in the hunting-field have not always been when you have killed your fox. The pursuit, when it is well sustained, with its fair share of perils met, dared, and overcome, – this is success. Whatever keeps a man’s heart up and his courage high to the end, is no mean thing. I own to you I hope to win, and I don’t know that there is any such failure possible as would quench this hope.”

      “Just what Trafford said of you when he came back from that fishing-excursion,” cried Cave, as though carried away by a sudden burst of thought.

      “What a good fellow he is! Shall we have him up here to-night?”

      “No; some of our men have been getting into scrapes at Cagliari, and I have been obliged to ask him to stay there and keep things in order.”

      “Is his quarrel with his family final, or is there still an opening to reconciliation?”

      “I ‘m afraid not. Some old preference of his mother’s for the youngest son has helped on the difference; and then certain stories she brought back from Ireland of Lionel’s doings there, or at least imputed doings, have, I suspect, steeled his father’s heart completely against him.”

      “I’ll stake my life on it there is nothing dishonorable to attach to him. What do they allege?”

      “I have but a garbled version of the story, for from Trafford himself I have heard nothing; but I know, for I have seen the bills, he has lost largely at play to a very dangerous creditor, who also accuses him of designs on his wife; and the worst of this is that the latter suspicion originated with Lady Trafford.”

      “I could have sworn it. It was a woman’s quarrel, and she would sacrifice her own son for vengeance. I ‘ll be able to pay her a very refined compliment when I next see her, Cave, and tell her that she is not in the least altered from the day I first met her. And has Lionel СКАЧАТЬ