Charles James Lever

“ 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. ”

“ Malevolent old fool, that will not see how needless it is to ruin me. Can't he wait,—can't he wait? It's his own prediction that I'm a fellow who needs no enemy; my own nature will always be Nemesis enough. Who's that?—who is there?” cried he, as he heard a rustling in the copse at his side.
“It's me, your honor. I came out to get sight of your honor before I went away,” said O'Reardon, in a sort of slavish cringing tone. ”

“ Sir Brook has bought it, and made it over to papa or myself,—I don't know which, but it means the same in the sense I care for, that we are to be together again.”
“How delightful! I declare, child, my envy of you goes on increasing every minute. I never was able to captivate any man, old or young, who would buy a beautiful house and give it to me. Of all the fortunate creatures I ever heard or read of, you are the luckiest.”
“Perhaps I am. Indeed I own as much to myself when I bethink me how little I have contributed to my own good fortune.” ”

“ So long as these arrests concerned the vulgar fellows who take to rebellion for its robberies, no case can be made. With the creatures of rusty pikes and ruffian natures I have no sympathy. It matters little whether they be transported for treason or for theft. With the gentleman it is otherwise. Some speculative hope, some imaginative aspiration of serving his country, some wild dream begotten of the great Revolution of France, dashed not impossibly with some personal wrong, drives men from their ordinary course in life, and makes them felons where they meant to be philanthropists. ”

“ You yourself can step in noiselessly from time to time, and only speak if you see that he wishes it; but on no account mention anything that could awaken interest,—nothing to arouse or to excite. You saw the fearful state that letter threw him into to-night, and the paroxysm of rage with which he called for his will to erase Tom Lendrick's name. Now in all probability he will have totally forgotten the whole incident by to-morrow. ”

“ I would have told those Castle officials to come down and stand in the dock with their confederates. What, sir! will you tell me that it was just or moral, or even politic, to treat these unlettered men as though they were crafty lawyers, skilled in all the arts to evade the provisions of a statute? This policy was not unfitted towards him who boasted he could drive a coach-and-six through any Act of Parliament; but how could it apply to creatures more ready to commit themselves than even you were to entrap them? ”

“ There was so much that flattered the old Judge's vanity,—so much that addressed itself to that consciousness that his years were no barrier to his sentiments, that into all that went on in life, whatever of new that men introduced into their ways or habits, he was just as capable of entering as the youngest amongst them; and this avidity to be behind in nothing showed itself in the way he would read the sporting papers, and make himself up in the odds at Newmarket and the last news of the Cambridge Eleven. ”

“ I am there to visit Heaven knows whom; some scoundrel or other,—just as likely a Government spy as a rebel, who will publish the whole scheme to the world. At all events, I am to see and have speech of the fellow, and ascertain on what evidence he was committed to prison, and what kind of case he can make as to his innocence. He is said to be a gentleman,—the very last reason, to my thinking, for taking him up; for whenever a gentleman is found in any predicament beneath him, the presumption is that he ought to be lower still. ”

“ There are meshes that men can scarcely keep free of. Trafford may have witnessed the hardship of her daily life—seen the indignities to which she submits—and possibly pitied her; if he has gone no further than this, there is no great mischief. What a clever creature she must be!” thought he again,—“how easy it ought to be for a woman like that to make a husband adore her; and yet these women will not be content with that. Like the cheats at cards, they don't care to win by fair play.” He went to the door, and called out “Lucy!” ”

“ You are a man of the world, sir, and I need not give you any instructions how to ascertain his condition, his belongings, and his means of defence. If he be a gentleman, in the sense we use that term when applying its best attributes to it, you will be frank and outspoken, and will tell him candidly that your object is to make his case the groundwork of an attack on the Government, and the means by which all the snares that have led men to rebellion may be thoroughly exposed, and the craft of the Crown lawyer be arraigned beside the less cold-blooded cruelty of the traitor. ”

“ If there be such a thing as bliss, perfect bliss, in this world, it is where a wife has a dear friend in the house with her, who listens to all her sorrows, and helps her to manage the tyrant that inflicts them. It was a great mistake of ours not to have known this in early life. Marriage was meant to be a triangle.”
“If you go, as you speak of going, have you any objection to my addressing myself to Sir Brook for some assistance?”
“None whatever. I think it the most natural thing in life; he was your guardian, and you have a right to ask what has become of your fortune.” ”

“ He may be the craftiest lawyer, the wisest judge, the neatest scholar, and the best talker of his day,—these are all claims I cannot adjudicate on,—they are far and away above me. But I do pretend to know something about life and the world we live in, and I tell you that your all-accomplished Chief Baron is, in whatever relates to these, as consummate an ass as ever I met with. It is not that he is sometimes wrong; it is that he is never right. ”

“ I remember when Hugh Trafford—a young fellow at that time—was offered a Junior Lordship of the Treasury, it was she who called on the Premier, Lord Dornington, to explain why he could not accept office. Nothing but great abilities or great vices enable a man to rise above the crushing qualities of such a wife. Trafford had neither, and the world has always voted him a nonentity.”
“There, Lucy,” said Lendrick, laughing,—“there at least is one danger you must avoid in married life.”
“Lucy needs no teachings of mine,” said Sir Brook. “Her own instincts are worth all my experiences twice told. ”

“ She feels all the devotion that is offered her, and she will not be outdone in generosity. It is so fine of him, when others care for nothing but wealth and riches, to be satisfied with humble fortune, and with me! There is the summing up, and none need be more conclusive.
How long Trafford might have gone on strengthening his case, and calling up fresh evidence to his credit,—by what force of words he might still have sustained his character for fidelity,—there is no saying; but his eloquence was suddenly arrested by the sight of Cave and Tom coming to meet them. ”

“ She gives way in everything; all he says is right, all he opines is wisdom, and it's astonishing how this yielding, compliant, submissive spirit breaks him down; he pines under it, just as a man accustomed to sharp exercise would waste and decay by a life of confinement. I declare there was one week here we had got him to a degree of gentleness that was quite edifying, but my mother came and paid a visit when we were out, and when we returned there he was! violent, flaring, and vigorous as ever, wild with vanity, and mad to match himself with the first men of the day. ”

“ You have always held your libellers so cheap that you actually encourage their assaults. You, in the full vigor of your faculties, alive to the latest events, interested in all that science discovers or invention develops, persist in maintaining, both in your mode of living and your companionship, a continued reference to the past. With a wit that could keep pace with the brightest, and an imagination more alive than the youngest men can boast, you vote yourself old, and live with the old. Why, my Lord, is it any wonder that they try you on the indictment you have yourself drawn up? ”

“ Quite the reverse; he is the most indubitable scoundrel alive. I need not tell you that I have seen a great deal of life, and not always of its best or most reputable side. Well, this fellow has more bad in him, and less good, than any one I have ever met. The world has scores, thousands, of unprincipled dogs, who, when their own interests are served, are tolerably indifferent about the rest of humanity. They have even, at times, their little moods of generosity, in which they will help a fellow blackguard, and actually do things that seem good-natured. Not so Sewell. ”

“ You can't picture to yourselves this man, once at the head of a princely fortune, which he dispensed with more than princely liberality, sharing a poor miner's meal of beans and oil with pleasant humor, and drinking a toast, in wine that would set the teeth on edge, to that good time when they would have more generous fare, and as happy hearts to enjoy it. ”

“ On the same evening that Fossbrooke was dining with the Viceroy, Trafford arrived in Dublin, and set out at once for the little cottage at Howth to surprise his old friend by his sudden appearance. Tom Lendrick had given him so accurate a description of the spot that he had no difficulty in finding it. If somewhat disappointed at first on learning that Sir Brook had dined in town, and might not return till a late hour, his mind was so full of all he had to say and to do that he was not sorry to have some few hours to himself for quiet and tranquil thought. ”

“ Although it was a lovely morning, and the garden looking its very brightest and best,—the birds singing sweetly on the trees, and the air balmy with the jasmine and the sweet-brier,—Sewell strolled out upon the velvety sward in anything but a mood of kindred enjoyment. His bills were flying about on all sides, renewals upon renewals swelling up to formidable sums, for which he had not made any provision. ”

“ I will tell him, besides, that I am married to one so hopelessly lost to every sentiment and feeling, not merely of the gentleman, but of the man, that it is needless to try to help him; and that I will accept nothing for him,—not a shilling; that he may deal with you on those other matters he spoke of as he pleases; that it will be no favor shown me when he spares you. There, sir, I leave you now to compute whether a little courage would not have served you better than all your cunning. ”

“ It is the most causeless attempt to subvert a country that ever was conceived; but there is that amount of stupidity,—of ignorance, not alone of statecraft, but of actual human nature, on the part of those who rule us, that it would have been the triumph of my life to assail and expose them. Why, sir, it was the very plebeian character of this insurrection that should have warned them against their plan of nursing and encouraging it. ”

“ The old Judge stood on the doorstep pondering over these last words of his friend long after his departure. “A good creature—a true-hearted fellow,” muttered he to himself; “but how limited in intelligence! It is the law of compensation carried out. Where nature gives integrity she often grudges intellect. The finer, subtler minds play with right and wrong till they detect their affinities.—Who are you, my good fellow? What brings you here?” cried he to a fellow who was lounging in the copse at the end of the house.
“I 'm a carman, your honor. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ It is the wrongs done by people who are indifferent to us, and who in search of their own objects bestow no thought upon us,—these are the ills that cannot be forgiven. I never hated a human being—and there have been some who have earned my hate—as I hate this girl; and just as I feel the injustice of the sentiment, so does it eat deeper and deeper into my heart.”
“A despatch, ma'am,” said her maid, as she laid a paper on the table and withdrew. Mrs. Sewell clutched it eagerly, but her hand trembled so she could not break the envelope. ”

“ To think so well of the world as to believe that all goes for the best in it, is a pleasant frame of mind to begin one's day with; to feel that though we have suffered anxiety, and all the tortures of deferred hope, it was good for us to know that everything was happening better for us than we could have planned it for ourselves, and that positively it was not so much by events we had been persecuted as by our own impatient reading of them. ”

“ In very few words, and with wonderfully little emotion, Trafford told the tale of his altered fortunes. Of course he did not reveal the reasons for which he had been disinherited, but loosely implied that his conduct had displeased his father, and with his mother he had never been a favorite. “Mine,” said he, “is the vulgar story that almost every family has its instance of,—the younger son, who goes into the world with the pretensions of a good house, and forgets that he himself is as poor as the neediest man in the regiment. ”

“ I shall have to visit Cagliari also, and relieve Tom Lendrick, who would like, I have no doubt, to take that 'three months in Paris' which young fellows call 'going over to see their friends.'”
“You are a happy fellow, Brook; perhaps the happiest I ever knew.”
“I'll sell my secret for it cheap,” said Fossbrooke, laughing. “It is, never to go grubbing for mean motives in this life; never tormenting yourself what this might mean or that other might portend, but take the world for what it seems, or what it wishes you to believe it. ”

“ Would n't it be hard for a good-tempered, easy-going fellow? And is it not more than hard for a hasty, peevish, irritable dog like myself? We know and see that we are bad company for each other, but you—I mean the world—you insist that we should go on quarrelling to the end, as if there was anything edifying in the spectacle of our mutual dislike. ”

“ I thought I was marrying an angel with sixty thousand pounds. She fancied she was getting a hero, with a peerage in the distance. Each made a 'bad book.' It is deuced hard, however,” continued he, in a fiercer strain, “if one must go on backing the horse that you know will lose, staking your money where you see you cannot win. My wife and myself awoke from our illusions years ago; but to please the world, to gratify that amiable thing called Society, we must go on still, just as if we believed all that we know and have proved to be rotten falsehoods. ”

“ I am anxious to call and see Beattie; but until I have met Sewell, and got this troublesome task off my mind, I have no heart for anything. From chance travellers in the train, as I go up to town, I hear that the Chief Baron is living at a most expensive rate,—large dinners every week, and costly morning parties, of a style Dublin has not seen before. They say, too, that he dresses now like a man of five-and-thirty, rides a blood horse, and is seen joining in all the festivities of the capital. ”

“ The chalk head, the portrait Lucy had made of Sir Brook, still hung over the fireplace. It would be a curious subject of inquiry to know why Sewell suffered it still to hold its place there. If there was a man in the world whom he thoroughly hated, it was Fossbrooke. If there was one to injure whom he would have bartered fortune and benefit to himself, it was he. ”

“ Though the speech had no direct reference to Trafford, it chanced that their eyes met as he spoke, and Trafford's face flushed to a deep crimson as he felt the application of the words.
“Come here, Tom,” said he, passing his arm within Len-drick's, and leading him off the terrace into a little copse of wild hollies at the foot of it. “Let me have one word with you.” They walked on some seconds without a word, and when Trafford spoke his voice trembled with agitation. ”