Lake nodded a seeming a.s.sent, which seemed to say, 'I have found it so.'

'Now, my dear Captain Lake, I just mention this--I put it before you--that is, because you know the county is not to be contested for nothing--and you'll want a very serious sum of money for the purpose, and possibly a pet.i.tion--and I can, one way or another, make up, with an effort, about 15,000_l._ Now it strikes me that it would be a wise thing for you--the wisest thing, perhaps, my dear Captain Lake, you ever did--to place me in the same boat with yourself.'

'I don't exactly see.'

'I'll make it quite clear.' The attorney's tall forehead had a little pink flush over it at this moment, and he was looking down a little and poking the base of Sir William de Braundon's monument with the point of his umbrella. 'I wish, Captain Lake, to be perfectly frank, and, as I said, above-board. You'll want the money, and you must make up your mind to sell Five Oaks.'

Captain Lake shifted his foot, as if he had found it on a sudden on a hot flag.

'Sell Five Oaks--that's fourteen hundred a year,' said he.

'Hardly so much, but nearly, perhaps.'

'Forty-three thousand pounds were offered for it. Old Chudworth offered that about ten years ago.'

'Of course, Captain Lake, if you are looking for a fancy price from me I must abandon the idea. I was merely supposing a dealing between friends, and in that sense I ventured to name the extreme limit to which I could go. Little more than five per cent, for my money, if I insure--and possibly to defend an action before I've been six months in possession. I think my offer will strike you as a _great_ one, considering the posture of affairs. Indeed, I apprehend, my friends will hardly think me justified in offering so much.'

The s.e.xton was walking back and forward near the door, making the best clatter he decently could, and wondering the Captain and Lawyer Larkin could find no better place to talk in than the church.

'In a moment--in a moment,' said the lawyer, signalling to him to be quiet, as loftily as if chapel, hall, and s.e.xton were his private property.

It was one of those moments into which a good deal of talk is fitted, and which seem somewhat of the longest to those who await its expiration.

The chapel was growing dark, and its stone and marble company of bygone Wylders and Brandons were losing themselves in shadow. Part of the periwig and cheek of Sir Marcus Brandon still glimmered whitish, as at a little distance did also the dim marble face and arm of the young Countess of Lydingworth, mourning these hundred and thirty years over her dead baby. Sir William Wylder, in ruff, rosettes, and full dress of James I.'s fashion, on his back, defunct, with children in cloaks kneeling at head and foot, was hardly distinguishable; and the dusky crimson and tarnished gold had gone out of view till morning. The learned Archbishop Brandon, a cadet, who filled the see of York in his day, and was the only unexceptionably G.o.dly personage of that long line, was praying, as usual, at his desk--perhaps to the saints and Virgin, for I believe he was before the Reformation--in beard and skull-cap, as was evident from the black profile of head and uplifted hands, against the dim sky seen through the chapel window. A dusky glow from the west still faintly showed Hans Holbein's proud 'Elector,' in the Brandon window, fading, with Death himself, and the dread inscription, 'Princeps induetur maerore,' into utter darkness.

The ice once broken, Jos. Larkin urged his point with all sorts of arguments, always placing the proposed transaction in the most plausible lights and att.i.tudes, and handling his subject in round and flowing sentences. This master of persuasion was not aware that Captain Lake was arguing the question for himself, on totally different grounds, and that it was fixed in his mind pretty much in these terms:--

'That old villain wants an exorbitant bribe--is he worth it?'

He knew what the lawyer thought he did _not_ know--that Five Oaks was held by the lawyers to be possibly _without_ those unfortunate limitations which affected all the rest of the estate. It was only a moot-point; but the doubt had led Mr. Jos. Larkin to the selection.

'I'll look in upon you between eight and nine in the morning, and I'll say yes or no then,' said the captain, as they parted under the old stone porch, the attorney with a graceful inclination, a sad smile, and a wave of his hand--the captain with his hands in the pockets of his loose coat, and a sidelong glance from his yellow eyes.

The sky, as he looked toward Brandon, was draped in black cloud, intensely black, meeting a black horizon--except for one little rent of deep crimson which showed westward behind those antique gables and lordly trees, like a lake of blood.

CHAPTER LVI.

THE BRANDON CONSERVATORY.

Captain Lake did look in at the Lodge in the morning, and remained an hour in conference with Mr. Jos. Larkin. I suppose everything went off pleasantly. For although Stanley Lake looked very pale and vicious as he walked down to the iron gate of the Lodge among the evergreens and ba.s.s-mats, the good attorney's countenance shone with a serene and heavenly light, so pure and bright, indeed, that I almost wonder his dazzled servants, sitting along the wall while he read and expounded that morning, did not respectfully pet.i.tion that a veil, after the manner of Moses, might be suspended over the seraphic effulgence.

Somehow his 'Times' did not interest him at breakfast; these parliamentary wrangles, commercial speculations, and foreign disputes, are they not, after all, but melancholy and dreary records of the merest worldliness; and are there not moments when they become almost insipid?

Jos. Larkin tossed the paper upon the sofa. French politics, relations with Russia, commercial treaties, party combinations, how men _can_ so wrap themselves up in these things!

And he smiled ineffable pity over the crumpled newspaper--on the poor souls in that sort of worldly limbo. In which frame of mind he took from his coat pocket a copy of Captain Lake's marriage settlement, and read over again a covenant on the captain's part that, with respect to this particular estate of Five Oaks, he would do no act, and execute no agreement, deed, or other instrument whatsoever, in any wise affecting the same, without the consent in writing of the said Dorcas Brandon; and a second covenant binding him and the trustees of the settlement against executing any deed, &c., without a similar consent; and especially directing, that in the event of alienating the estate, the said Dorcas must be made an a.s.senting party to the deed.

He folded the deed, and replaced it in his pocket with a peaceful smile and closed eyes, murmuring--

'I'm much mistaken if the gray mare's the better horse in that stud.'

He laughed gently, thinking of the captain's formidable and unscrupulous nature, exhibitions of which he could not fail to remember.

'No, no, Miss Dorkie won't give us much trouble.'

He used to call her 'Miss Dorkie,' playfully to his clerks. It gave him consideration, he fancied. And now with this Five Oaks to begin with--1,400 a year--a great capability, immensely improvable, he would stake half he's worth on making it more than 2,000 within five years; and with other things at his back, an able man like him might before long look as high as she. And visions of the grand jury rose dim and splendid--an heiress and a seat for the county; perhaps he and Lake might go in together, though he'd rather be a.s.sociated with the Hon. James Cluttworth, or young Lord Griddlestone. Lake, you see, wanted weight, and, nothwithstanding his connections, was, it could not be denied, a new man in the county.

So Wylder, Lake, and Jos. Larkin had each projected for himself, pretty much the same career; and probably each saw glimmering in the horizon the golden round of a coronet. And I suppose other modest men are not always proof against similar flatteries of imagination.

Jos. Larkin had also the vicar's business and reversion to attend to. The Rev. William Wylder had a letter containing three lines from him at eight o'clock, to which he sent an answer, whereupon the solicitor despatched a special messenger, one of his clerks to Dollington, with a letter to the sheriff's deputy, from whom he received duly a reply, which necessitated a second letter with a formal undertaking, to which came another reply; whereupon he wrote to Burlington, Smith, and Co., acquainting them respectfully, in diplomatic fashion, with the att.i.tude which affairs had a.s.sumed.

With this went a private and confidential, non-official, note to Smith, desiring him to answer stiffly and press for an immediate settlement, and to charge costs fairly, as Mr. William Wylder would have ample funds to liquidate them. Smith knew what _fairly_ meant, and his entries went down accordingly. By the same post went up to the same firm a proposition--an afterthought--sanctioned by a second miniature correspondence with his client, now sailing before the wind, to guarantee them against loss consequent against staying the execution in the sheriff's hands for a fortnight, which, if they agreed to, they were further requested to send a draft of the proposed undertaking by return, at foot of which, in pencil, he wrote, 'N.B.--_Yes_.'

This arrangement necessitated his providing himself with a guarantee from the vicar; and so the little account as between the vicar and Jos.

Larkin, solicitor, and the vicar and Messrs. Burlington, Smith, and Co., solicitors, grew up and expanded with a tropical luxuriance.

About the same time--while Mr. Jos. Larkin, I mean, was thinking over Miss Dorkie's share in the deed, with a complacent sort of interest, antic.i.p.ating a struggle, but sure of victory--that beautiful young lady was walking slowly from flower to flower, in the splendid conservatory which projects southward from the house, and rears itself in glacial arches high over the short sward and flowery patterns of the outer garden of Brandon. The unspeakable sadness of wounded pride was on her beautiful features, and there was a fondness in the gesture with which she laid her fingers on these exotics and stooped over them, which gave to her solitude a sentiment of the pathetic.

From the high gla.s.s doorway, communicating with the drawing-rooms, at the far end, among towering ranks of rare and gorgeous flowers, over the encaustic tiles, and through this atmosphere of perfume, did Captain Stanley Lake, in his shooting coat, glide, smiling, toward his beautiful young wife.

She heard the door close, and looking half over her shoulder, in a low tone indicating surprise, she merely said:

'Oh!' receiving him with a proud sad look.

'Yes, Dorkie, I'm here at last. I've been for some weeks so insufferably busy,' and he laid his white hand lightly over his eyes, as if they and the brain within were alike weary.

'How charming this place is--the temple of Flora, and you the divinity!'

And he kissed her cheek.

'I'm now emanc.i.p.ated for, I hope, a week or two. I've been so stupid and inattentive. I'm sure, Dorkie, you must think me a brute. I've been shut up so in the library, and keeping such tiresome company--you've no idea; but I think you'll say it was time well spent, at least I'm sure you'll approve the result; and now that I have collected the facts, and can show you, darling, exactly what the chances are, you must consent to hear the long story, and when you have heard, give me your advice.'

Dorcas smiled, and only plucked a little flowery tendril from a plant that hung in a natural festoon above her.

'I a.s.sure you, darling, I am serious; you must not look so incredulous; and it is the more provoking, because I love you so. I think I have a right to your advice, Dorkie.'

'Why don't you ask Rachel, she's cleverer than I, and you are more in the habit of consulting her?'

'Now, Dorkie is going to talk her wicked nonsense over again, as if I had never answered it. What about Radie? I do a.s.sure you, so far from taking her advice, and thinking her an oracle, as you suppose, I believe her in some respects very little removed from a fool.'

'I think her very clever, on the contrary,' said Dorcas, enigmatically.

'Well, she is clever in some respects; she is gay, at least she used to be, before she fell into that transcendental parson's hands--I mean poor dear William Wylder; and she can be amusing, and talks very well, but she has no sense--she is utterly Quixotic--she is no more capable of advising than a child.'

'I should not have fancied that, although you say so, Stanley.' she answered carelessly, adding a geranium to her bouquet.