Part 2 - Chapter 8. Mr. Bullsom Is Staggered

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_ PART II CHAPTER VIII. MR. BULLSOM IS STAGGERED

Mr. Bullsom looked up from his letters With an air of satisfaction.

"Company to dinner, Mrs. Bullsom!" he declared. "Some more of your silly old directors, I suppose," said Selina, discontentedly. "What a nuisance they are."

Mr. Bullsom frowned.

"My silly old directors, as you call 'em," he answered, "may not be exactly up to your idea of refinement, but I wouldn't call 'em names if I were you. They've made me one of the richest men in Medchester."

"A lot we get out of it," Louise grunted, discontentedly.

"You get as much as you deserve," Mr. Bullsom retorted. "Besides, you're so plaguing impatient. You don't hear your mother talk like that."

Selina whispered something under her breath which Mr. Bullsom, if he heard, chose to ignore.

"I've explained to you all before," he continued, "that up to the end of last year we've been holding the entire property--over a million pounds' worth, between five of us. Our time's come now. Now, look here--I'll listen to what you've got to say--all of you. Supposing I've made up my mind to launch out. How do you want to do it? You first, mother."

Mrs. Bullsom looked worried.

"My dear Peter," she said, "I think we're very comfortable as we are. A larger household means more care, and a man-servant about the place is a thing I could never abide. If you felt like taking sittings at Mr. Thompson's as well as our own chapel, so that we could go there when we felt we needed a change, I think I should like it sometimes. But it seems a waste of good money with Sundays only coming once in seven days."

Mr. Bullsom shook with good-humoured laughter.

"Mother, mother," he said, "we shall never smarten you up, shall we, girls? Now, what do you say, Selina?"

"I should like a country house quite ten on fifteen miles away from here, lots of horses and carriages, and a house in town for the season," Selina declared, boldly.

"And you, Louise?"

"I should like what Selina has said."

Mr. Bullsom looked a little grave.

"The house in London," he said, "you shall have, whether I buy it or only hire it for a few months at a time. If we haven't friends up there, there are always the theatres and music-halls, and lots going on. But a country house is a bit different. I thought of building a place up at Nicholson's Corner, where the trains stop. The land belongs to me, and there's room for the biggest house in Medchester."

Selina tossed her head.

"Of course," she said, "if we have to spend all our lives in this hateful suburb it doesn't much matter whether you stay here on build another house, no one will come to see us. We shall never get to know anybody."

"And supposing you go out into the country," Mr. Bullsom argued. "How do you know that you will make friends there?"

"People must call," Selina answered, "if you subscribe to the hounds, and you must get made a magistrate."

"We have lived here for a good many years," Mr. Bullsom said, "and there are very superior people living almost at our doors whom even you girls don't know to bow to."

Selina tossed her head.

"Superior, you call them, do you? A silly stuck-up lot, I think. They form themselves into little sets, and if you don't belong, they treat you as though you had small-pox."

"The men are all pleasant enough," Mr. Bullsom remarked. "I meet them in the trains and in business, and they're always glad enough to pass the time o' day."

"Oh, the men are all right," Selina answered. "It's easy enough to know them. Mr. Wensome trod on my dress the other day, and apologized as though he'd torn it off my back, and the next day he gave me his seat in the car. I always acknowledge him, and he's glad enough to come and talk, but if his wife's with him, she looks straight ahead as though every one else in the car were mummies."

Mr. Bullsom cut the end of a cigar thoughtfully, and motioned Louise to get him a light.

"You see, your mother and I are getting on in life," he said, "and it's a great thing to ask us to settle down in a place where there's no slipping off down to the club in the evening, and no chance of a friend dropping in for a chat. We've got to an age when we need some one to talk to. I ain't going to say that a big house in the country isn't a nice thing to have, and the gardens and that would be first-class. But it's a big move, and it ain't to be decided about all in a hurry."

"Why, father, there's the shooting," Selina exclaimed. "You're fond of that, and men will go anywhere for really good shooting, and make their wives go, too. If you could get a place with plenty of it, and a fox-covert or two on the estate, I'm perfectly certain we should be all right."

Mr. Bullsom looked still a little doubtful.

"That's all very well," he said, "but I don't want to bribe people into my house with shooting and good cooking, and nursing their blooming foxes. That ain't my idea of making friends."

"It's only breaking the ice-just at first," Selina argued. "Afterwards I'm sure you'd find them friendly enough."

"I tell you what I shall do," Mr. Bullsom said, deliberately; "I shall consult the friend I've got coming to dinner to-night."

Selina smiled contemptuously.

"Pshaw!" she exclaimed. "What do any of them know about such things?"

"You don't know who it is," Mr. Bullsom replied, mysteriously.

The girls turned towards him almost simultaneously.

"Is it Mr. Brooks?"

Mr. Bullsom nodded. Selina flushed with pleasure and tried to look unconscious.

"Only the day before yesterday," Mr. Bullsom said, "as chairman of the committee, I had the pleasure of forwarding to Brooks a formal invitation to become the parliamentary candidate for the borough. He writes to me by return to say that he will be here this afternoon, as he wishes to see me personally."

"I must say he hasn't lost much time," Louise remarked, smiling across at Selina.

Mr. Bullsom grunted.

"I don't see how he could do much less," he said. "After all, though every one admits that he's a clever young chap and uncommonly conscientious, he's not well known generally, and he hasn't the position in the town or anywhere which people generally look for in a parliamentary candidate. I may tell you, girls, and you, mother, that he was selected solely on my unqualified support and my casting vote."

"I hope," Mrs. Bullsom said, "that he will be properly grateful."

"I'm sure it's very good of you, pa," Selina declared, affably. She liked the idea of Brooks owing so much to her father.

"There's no young man," Mr. Bullsom said, "whom I like so much or think so much of as Mr. Brooks. If I'd a son like that I'd be a proud man. And as we're here all alone, just the family, as it were, I'll go on to say this," Mr. Bullsom continued, his right thumb finding its way to the armhole of his waistcoat. "I'm going to drop a hint at the first opportunity I get, quite casually, that whichever of you girls gets married first gets a cheque from me for one hundred thousand pounds."

Even Selina was staggered. Mrs. Bullsom was positively frightened.

"Mr. Bullsom!" she said. "Peter, you ain't got as much as that? Don't tell me!"

"I am worth to-day," Mr. Bullsom said, solemnly, "at least five hundred thousand pounds."

"Peter," Mrs. Bullsom gasped, "has it been come by honest?"

Mr. Bullsom smiled in a superior way.

"I made it," he answered, "by locking up forty thousand, more than half of what I was worth, for five years. But I knew what I was about, and so did the others. Mason made nearly as much as I did."

Selina looked at her father with a new respect. He rose and brushed the ashes of his cigar from his waistcoat.

"Now I'm off," he declared. "Brooks and I will be back about seven, and I shall try and get him to sleep here. Fix yourselves up quiet and ladylike, you girls. Good-bye, mother."

* * * * *

"We have about an hour before dinner," Mr. Bullsom remarked, sinking into his most comfortable chair and lighting a cigar. "Just time for a comfortable chat. You'll smoke, Brooks, won't you?"

Brooks excused himself, and remained standing upon the hearthrug, his elbow upon the mantelpiece. He hated this explanation he had to make. However, it was no good in beating about the bush.

"I am going to surprise you very much, Mr. Bullsom," he began.

Mr. Bullsom took the cigar from his mouth and looked up with wide-open eyes. He had been preparing graciously to wave away a torrent of thanks.

"I am going to surprise you very much," Brooks repeated. "I cannot accept this magnificent offer of yours. I cannot express my gratitude sufficiently to you, or to the committee. Nothing would have made me happier than to have been able to accept it. But I am absolutely powerless."

"You don't funk it?" Mr. Bullsom asked.

"Not I. The fact is, there are circumstances connected with myself which make it inadvisable for me to seek any public position at present."

Mr. Bullsom's first sensations of astonishment were augmented into stupefaction. He was scarcely capable of speech. He found himself wondering idly how heinous a crime a man must commit to be branded ineligible.

"To explain this to you," Brooks continued, "I am bound to tell you something which is only known to two people in the country. The Marquis of Arranmore is my father."

Mr. Bullsom dropped his cigar from between his fingers, and it lay for a moment smouldering upon the carpet. His face was a picture of blank and hopeless astonishment.

"God bless my soul!" he exclaimed, faintly. "You mean that you--you, Kingston Brooks, the lawyer, are Lord Arranmore's son?"

Brooks nodded.

"Yes! It's not a pleasant story. My father deserted my mother when I was a child, and she died in his absence. A few months ago, Lord Arranmore, in a leisurely sort of way, thought well to find me out, and after treating me as an acquaintance for some time--a sort of probationary period, I suppose--he told me the truth. That is the reason of my resigning from the firm of Morrison and Brooks almost as soon as the partnership deed was signed. I went to see Mr. Ascough and told him about your offer, and he, of course, explained the position to me."

"But,"--Mr. Bullsom paused as though striving to straighten out the matter in his own mind, "but if you are Lord Arranmore's son there is no secret about it, is there? Why do you still call yourself Mr. Brooks?"

Mr. Bullsom, whose powers of observation were not remarkably acute, looking steadily into his visitor's face, saw there some signs of a certain change which others had noticed and commented upon during the last few months--a hardening of expression and a slight contraction of the mouth. For Brooks had spent many sleepless nights pondering upon this new problem which had come into his life.

"I do not feel inclined," he said, quietly, "for many reasons, to accept the olive-branch which it has pleased my father to hold out to me after all these years. I have still some faint recollections of the close of my mother's life--hastened, I am sure, by anxiety and sorrow on his account. I remember my own bringing up, the loneliness of it. I remember many things which Lord Arranmore would like me now to forget. Then, too, my father and I are as far apart as the poles. He has not the least sympathy with my pursuits or the things which I find worth doing in life. There are other reasons which I need not trouble you with. It is sufficient that for the present I prefer to remain Mr. Brooks, and to lead my own life."

"But--you won't be offended, but I want to understand. The thing seems such a muddle to me. You've given up your practice--how do you mean to live?"

"There is an income which comes to me from the Manor of Kingston," Brooks answered, "settled on the eldest sons of the Arranmore peerage, with which my father has nothing to do. This alone is comparative wealth, and there are accumulations also."

"It don't seem natural," Mr. Bullsom said. "If you'll excuse my saying so, it don't sound like common-sense. You can live on what terms you please with your father, but you ought to let people know who you are. Great Scott," he added, with a little chuckle, "what will Julia and the girls say?

"You will understand, Mr. Bullsom," Brooks said, hastily, "that I trust you to preserve my confidence in this matter. I have told you because I wanted you to understand why I could not accept this invitation to contest the borough, also because you were one of my best friends when I was here. But you are the only person to whom I have told my secret."

Mr. Bullsom sighed. It would have been such a delightful disclosure.

"As you wish, of course," he said. "But my it don't seem possible! Lord Arranmore's son--the Marquis of Arranmore! Gee whiz!"

"Some day, of course," Brooks said, "it must come out. But I don't want it to be yet awhile. If that clock is right hadn't I better be going up-stairs?"

Mr. Bullsom nodded.

"If you'll come with me," he said, "I'll show you your room." _

Read next: Part 2: Chapter 9. Ghosts

Read previous: Part 2: Chapter 7. Brooks And His Missions

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