Its a bad wind blows nobody good, said Mrs. Bayley. Its luck for us, anyhow.
I dont perceive the luck of it either, maam, said the Captain, with increased peevishness. Chickens will be eighteenpence a couple, eggs a halfpenny apiece. I d like to know what youll pay for a codfish, such as I bought yesterday for fourpence?
Its better for them that has to sell them.
Ay, but Im talking of them that has to buy them, maam, and Im thinking how a born gentleman with a fixed income is to compete with one of these fellows that gets his gold from California at market price, and makes more out of one mornings robbery on the Stock Exchange, than a Lieutenant-General receives after thirty years service.
A sharp tap at the window-pane interrupted the discussion at this critical moment, and Mrs. Bayley perceived it was Mr. Dorose, Colonel Bramleighs valet, who had come for the letters for the great house.
Only these, Mrs. Bayley? said he, half contemptuously.
Well, indeed, sir; its a good-sized bundle after all. Theres eleven letters, and about fifteen papers and two books.
Send them all on to Brighton, Mrs. Bayley. We shall not come down here till the end of the month. Just give me the Times, however; and tearing open the cover, he turned to the City article. I hope youve nothing in Ecuadors, Mrs. Bayley; they look shaky. Im hit, too, in my Turks. I see no dividend this half. Here he leaned forward, so as to whisper in her ear, and said, Whenever you want a snug thing, Mrs. B., youre always safe with Brazilians; and with this he moved off, leaving the postmistress in a flurry of shame and confusion as to what precise character of transaction his counsel applied.
Upon my conscience, we re come to a pretty pass! exclaimed the Captain, as, buttoning his coat, he issued forth into the street; nor was his temper much improved by finding the way blocked up by a string of carts and drays, slowly proceeding towards the great house, all loaded with furniture and kitchen utensils, and the other details of a large household. A bystander remarked that four saddle-horses had passed through at daybreak, and one of the grooms had said, It was nothing to what was coming in a few days.
Two days after this, and quite unexpectedly by all, the village awoke to see a large flag waving from the flagstaff over the chief tower of Castello; and the tidings were speedily circulated that the great people had arrived. A few sceptics, determining to decide the point for themselves, set out to go up to the house; but the lodge-gate was closed and the gatekeeper answered them from behind it, saying that no visitors were to be admitted; a small incident, in its way, but, after all, it is by small incidents that men speculate on the tastes and tempers of a new dynasty.
CHAPTER II. LADY AUGUSTAS LETTER
It will save some time, both to writer and reader, while it will also serve to explain certain particulars about those we are interested in, if I give in this place a letter which was written by Lady Augusta Bramleigh, the Colonels young wife, to a married sister at Rome. It ran thus:
Hanover Square, Nov. 10, 18 .
Dearest Dorothy,
Here we are back in town, at a season, too, when we find ourselves the only people left; and if I wanted to make a long story of how it happens, there is the material; but it is precisely what I desire to avoid, and at the risk of being barely intelligible, I will be brief. We have left Earlshope, and, indeed, Herefordshire, for good. Our campaign there was a social failure, but just such a failure as I predicted it would and must be; and although, possibly, I might have liked to have been spared some of the mortifications we met with, I am too much pleased with the results to quarrel over the means.
You are already in possession of what we intended by the purchase of Earlshope how we meant to become county magnates, marry our sons and daughters to neighboring magnates, and live as though we had been rooted to the soil for centuries. I say we, my dear, because I am too good a wife to separate myself from Col. B. in all these projects; but I am fain to own that as I only saw defeat in the plan, I opposed it from the first. Here, in town, money will do anything; at least, anything that one has any right to do. There may be a set or a clique to which it will not give admission; but who wants them, who needs them?
Theres always a wonderful Van Eyck or a Memling in a Dutch town, to obtain the sight of which you have to petition the authorities, or implore the Stadtholder; but I never knew any one admit that success repaid the trouble; and the chances are that you come away from the sight fully convinced that you have seen scores of old pictures exactly like it, and that all that could be said was, it was as brown, and as dusky, and as generally disappointing, as its fellows. So it is with these small exclusive societies. It may be a great triumph of ingenuity to pick the lock; but there s nothing in the coffer to reward it. I repeat, then, with money and we had money London was open to us. All the more, too, that for some years back society has taken a speculative turn; and it is nothing derogatory to find people to go in, as it is called, for a good thing, in Turks or Brazilians, in patent fuel, or a new loan to the children of Egypt. To these, and such like, your City man and banker is esteemed a safe pilot; and you would be amused at the amount of attention Col. B. was accustomed to meet with from men who regarded themselves as immeasurably above him, and who, all question of profit apart, would have hesitated at admitting him to their acquaintance.
I tell you all these very commonplace truths, my dear Dorothy, because they may not, indeed cannot, be such truisms to you you, who live in a grand old city, with noble traditions, and the refinements that come transmitted from centuries of high habits; and I feel, as I write, how puzzled you will often be to follow me. London was, as I have twice said, our home; but for that very reason we could not be content with it. Earlshope, by ill luck, was for sale, and we bought it. I am afraid to tell you the height of our castle-building; but, as we were all engaged, the work went on briskly, every day adding at least a story to the edifice. We were to start as high sheriff, then represent the county. I am not quite clear, I think we never settled the point as to the lord-lieutenancy; but I know the exact way, and the very time, in which we demanded our peerage. How we threatened to sulk, and did sulk; how we actually sat a whole night on the back benches; and how we made our eldest son dance twice with a daughter of the Opposition, menaces that no intelligent Cabinet or conscientious Whip could for a moment misunderstand. And oh! my dear Dora, as I write these things, how forcibly I feel the prudence of that step which once we all were so ready to condemn you for having taken. You were indeed right to marry a foreigner. That an English girl should address herself to the married life of England, the first condition is she should never have left England, not even for that holiday-trip to Paris and Switzerland, which people now do, as once they were wont to do Margate. The whole game of existence is such a scramble with us: we scramble for social rank, for place, for influence, for Court favor, for patronage; and all these call for so much intrigue and plotting, that I vow to you I d as soon be a Carbonara or a Sanfedista as the wife of an aspiring middle-class Englishman.
But to return. The county would not have us we were rich, and we were City folk, and they deemed it an unpardonable pretension in us to come down amongst them. They refused our invitations, and sent us none of their own. We split with them, contested the election against them, and got beaten. We spent unheard-of moneys, and bribed everybody that had not a vote for ten miles round. With universal suffrage, which I believe we promised them, we should have been at the head of the poll; but the freeholders were to a man opposed to us.