Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 March 1900 — Captain Brabazon [ARTICLE]

Captain Brabazon

BY B. M. CROKER

kl

CHAPTER ll—(Continued.) Here Same laughed hysterically. and at once brought the whole Morin upon her unlucky head, and acted as a kind of Mghtnlag-conductor to Mrs. Brabazon’s /wrath. “Ypu laugh! You dare to laugh, miss! But it U only what I could expect from ''you. I believe you were in bis confidence, and knew all about it. I’m sure you encmoged him In, his abominable conduct. Wil had hc hayiv always been a heavy "trial to me. You had a letter this morning; be so good as to hand it over." "I cannot, Mrs. Brabazon,” replied Esrne, tremulously; “it—it—is private,” glancing appealingly at her stepmother. “And full of abuse of me. no doubt. Well, you may keep it,” making virtue of necessity, “and make much of it, for it 4s the last you will receive! Every other I fiud in the post bag I shall burn. Mark my words! into the fire it goes.” “Florian and Gussie,” said Esme, timidly, glancing from her brother to her slater, "are neither of you going to say anything? Won't you speak for Teddy?” she asked, piteously, “or is it to be left to me? Mrs. Brabazon, surely you cannot forget that Teddy is our brother, and will always be so as long as he lives. He Is not dead to us—at least, he is not dead to me—and I hope he will be spared for the next fifty years. I think it only right and honorable to tell you that I will never give him up, that I shall write to him and receive his letters, and meet him and speak to him whenever I get the chance! Ills being a soldier makes no whatever; he is jny brother all the same. It was not his fault he could not-pass; he did try, and be wanted so much to be a soldier.” “What do you say to this tirade, Augusta?” demanded Mrs. Brabazon, turning on Gussie with a portentous frown. ”1 think it Is all very dreadful about Ted, of course,” she stammered; “but he la my brother,” looking hard at Esme, as though endeavoring to borrow some of her spirit. “And you, Florian?” demanded Mrs. Brabazon, in an awful, hollow voice. “Oh, if you want my opinion," returned that gentleman, carefully stirring his tea, “I think Ted is a confounded ass, and has made a regular fool of himself, and all that sort of thing, and it's no end of a bore. I would pass him non' if I met him In the street,” pulling up his collar as he spoke, and feeling that he was a very important, dignified, illustrious young man. "Oh, Flo!” exclaimed his youngest sister. reproachfully. “Now, you have your brother’s opinion, Esme, the opinion of the head of the house, I hope you are satisfied," said Mrs. Brabazon, with malicious triumph. "Ypu see he is, as usual, quite of my way of thinking! If Teddy bad behaved respectfully, I know that Florian would have done something for him, and used his interest with his influential friends; he has always been such a good, generous brother."

Thus Teddy fell into disgrace with his people; his name was erased from the family roll, and written down instead in nearly everyone’s black book. Two years passed by, and during these two years there have been some little changes even at Baronsford. Esme was now nineteen, prettier than ever, but stiff and shy in general society. Gussie, on the contrary, seemed born for the social circle, was always the center of a little knot of swains on these occasions, and had played havoc with the affections of several susceptible young men. Mrs. Bra bason still frequented stately houses and stately dinner tables, and had saved a sum of money that would have made Miss Jane exclaim “most unaccountable," had she seen her banker's book. Time has not stood still with Teddy. Here is his last letter. It lies on the school room table beside Esme: “From Troop Sergeant Brown, York, to Miss E. Brabazon: “My Dear Esme —Always the culprit! you need not tell me that. I’ve written to you at least ten times in imagination; long letters, too, but 1 suppose that does not count. I have news for you, good news. You know that for a long time 1 was instructor in the riding school, and now I am promoted to be troop sergeant, which, by the way. I suppose is Greek to you, old lady; but I dare say your mind can grasp the word ‘promotion.* I am getting up the ladder at last. The colonel hinted to me the other day that it I went on as I had commenced he would be happy to recommend me for a commission; so we begin to see daylight. I hope to see you early in the autumn, before we embark for foreign service; we are next on the roster. I shall come down and lie perdue at Mother Swoffer’s; it would never do for you to be seen parading about in public with a sergeant of lancers. It will be a case of ‘meet me by moonlight alone,* but that will be better than nothing. Only fancy, Esme, I’ve, not spoken |o a lady for two years. Give my love to Gussie and Aunt Jane. Do you know that she sent me £25 lately in a very crabbed little letter? Never ■nind, she shall be proud of me yet. “Tour affectionate brother, • < “TEDDY B.” CHAPTER 111. “She hasn’t been here, has she?” panted Gussie, thrusting sn eager, red face Inside the school room door. “No,” with a gesture of relief, “I see she has not,’* now Introducing her whole person in walking costume; tossing off her hat as she subsided into the nearest chair, and altogether presenting an aspect of the wildest exdtement. “I thought I’d be the first. I ran,** putting her hand to her side. “Such news!’* “Upon my word, Giuaie,” said her sister, gasing at her with calm, dispassionatt eyes, “you only want a personal attendant, and * Jew straws in your hair, to lookA cfMDntete lunatic^*-, -J ' . “But you haven’t heard my news! You

don’t know what I have to tell you!” returned Miss Brabazon, exultingly. “Your news,” contemptuously. “1 know the style so well! Mrs. Bell has got a new bonnet, and all Maxton is shaken to its center. You are about to inform me that Lady Louisa has had a fit, or—or—could it be that Mr. Vashon has again made you an offer of his hand and heart?” “You are getting quite hot, 1 declare! quite hot!” cried Gussie, rubbing her" handy ecstatically. “It’s a wedding in the family, but I am not to be the victim.” “No?” in an accent of surprise; “then it must be Flo?" “No, no, no,” each no louder than its predecessor. “You don't mean to say that Mrs. Brabazon—” with, a gesture of horror. “Not Mrs. Brabazon," laughing and still rubbing her hands, “though 1 would not mind it it were! I would ’give her away’ with pleasure. Try again.” “Then there’s no one left but Aunt Jane," said Esme, looking at her sister dubiously. “And pray, what do you call yourself, my dear?” impressively; “it is you—you, who are going to be married. Now, then,” folding her arms, putting out her under lip, and shaking her fringe with a gesture of decision. “I?” pausing and surveying her sister with bewildered eyes, her mouth slightly parted. After a silence of a clear sixty seconds she found speech. “Only that 1 know that you are almost a teetotaller, your whple appearance and conversation would warrant the suspicion that you had been visiting the Barley Mow!” “Barley Mow or not, you arc going to be married, Miss Esme Brabazon!” “Well, if I am, it is certainly the first I have heard of it,” ironically, “which is curious, not to say unusual. And pray who is to be the happy bridegroom? Have I the pleasure of knowing him, even by sight?” “No, you have not,” exultantly. “Yes, yes!” hurriedly, in answer to the expression of her companion’s face. “I’m quite sane and perfectly serious, although it sounds quite too unaccountable, as Aunt Jane would say; but,” clearing her throat, “you are aware that Uncle George is dead?” “Well, considering that I’ve known that fact for quite three weeks, and that 1 am at present making our mourning, your news is something astonishing,” sarcastically. “Uncle George is dead; I’m going to be married! Do try and think of something else, or is it a new game?” “Be qtiiet, Esme; you arc just as bad as Teddy. The will has been found, after a long search, in a coat pocket—of all places! and particulars have come by the afternoon post. Mr. Bell has been over to Byford and brought our letters ” “But to the point, my good girl, if there is one!” “The point is that he has left two hundred a year to Sopp and the parrot, twenty pounds to each of ua for a mourning ring—-

“And this has turned your head," broke in her sister. “How I wish he had left us the money instead!" “Do let me finish,” cried Gussie, with an angry little stamp. “1 want to be the first to tell you! I’ve kept the last as a kind of plum; listen,” gesticulating excitedly. "All his money in the funds, forty thousand pounds, goes to you and Miles Brabazon; and here is the cream of the whole thing, provided—you—marry—-each-other within six months of his decease. Now, is not that news for you? What do you call that but a wedding in the family?" she demanded triumphantly of her sister, who stood staring at her with pale, wide-eyed astonishment. “It is not true. 1 don’t believe it. It’s a joke,” she said at last, in a faint voice, gazing at Gussie with a look of horrified incredulity. “It’s quite, quite true; beautifully, delightfully truef’ returned the young lady. “Come and let us have a dance of jubilee,” humming a waltz, and seizing her stupefied sister around her waist, and beginning to whirl her about the room. “Stop, stop, stop, Gussie!” she cried, breathlessly; "are you in your right senses?” holding her fast, and gazing into her flushed face and sparkling eyes. “Are you serious? Just let me look at you!” drawing her toward the window. "Perfectly serious,” she panted, "and nearly out of my mind with joy. You will have a nice little house in town, a Victoria for the park, lots of dances and dinners, at which your elder sister, charming Miss Brabazon, will be the piece de resistance.” “Poor old gentleman! I always thought he was odd; very queer, indeed,” returned her bister, slowly. “Miles is tn Burrnqh, I believe,” said" Gussie. “I wonder what he will think of this legacy!" “Think—what every one must think,” returned Esme, decidedly, "that Uncle George was mad!” “Not a bit of it, my dear. I grant you he was odd, eccentric. Mrs. B. once wanted Aunt Jane and Flo to have him looked after and locked up, but it would have been utter nonsense. Because a man wears queer clothes and devours hot curries and Arabian and Persian love tales, it does not naturally follow that be Is a lunatic. He was perfectly well able to manage his affairs, and was very sharp about money.” “Well, it’s no business of mine,” said Esme, shrugging her shoulders; “only I’m sorry he made such a foolish will.” “Foolish will!” cried Gussie. “What do you mean? It’s a beautiful will. Don’t tell me that yon are not going to marry Miles Brabazon—not going to jump at him and the legacy.’’ ■•S Wa ‘ % J “I certainly am not. What a way you talk. Jump, indeed!” getting rather red, and stoopinf to pick up her scattered work. “I would not marry him on any account, nor he me; we are not crazy. We have not, as the say, ’Spiders in our garrets,’ like poor old uhcle George.”

“He will marry you fast enough, once he sees you," observed Gussie, “I don’t know anyone an pretty anywhere, though you are my own sister, and I say it, as shouldn’t. Everybody thinks you are the prettiest girl in TiWrnshire,” boastfully. “The prettiest girl in Thornshire” took not the least notice of this brilliant compliment, but begad to shake out, fold up and put away her unfortunate work, evidently incapacitated for any further industry that afternoon. CHAPTER IV. Let us now adjourn to British Burmab, and pay a visit to the other legatee, Captain Miles Brabazon. A single flight of imagination will land us In Rangoon, without undergoing forty days’ torture on the high seas. “1 only wish I had your luck, that’s all! But I always knew you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, and that Dame Fortune had her eye on you.” The speaker, a young man in polo costume, long boots and dangerous looking spurs, was sitting on a teak-wood table iu an easy, degage attitude, with his cap set on the side of his close-cropped sandy head, a polo stick in one hand. The gentleman upon whom Dame Fortune was supposed to “have, her eye”— also in polo garb—was sunk in the depths of a Bombay chair, an expression of growing dissatisfaction upon his naturally gay and good-looking countenance. He held a large blue letter in his hand, and the ground around him was littered with papers and envelopes; evidently the European mail had just come iu. The young man with the boots and spurs is Mr. Gee, the other Captain Brabazon, both oflicers in the Royal Marchers, at present luxuriating in the- climate of British Burmah. They are friends, and partners in the straggling wooden bungalow in which we find them.

“Luck, indeed,” growled Captain Brabazon, angrily, crumpling up the letter and thrusting it into his breast pocket, “I sec no luck in it; quite the other way!” “Will ye listen to him!” cried Mr. Gee. “Have you not always had enough for your modest wants?” “That’s because they were modest,” returned the other, promptly. “Have you not had the best of health, even iu this beastly climate? which is enough to undermine the constitution of a rhinoceros! Have you not had speedy promotion? Haven’t you youth?” pausing a second for breath. "Go on; don’t shirk it! Why not say beauty at once?” suggested his companion, encouragingly. “Well, I’ll even go as far as that,” generously, “though that was not what I was going to remark; but everyone knows, yourself included, that you’re a good-looking fellow, and quite one of our show men. And you have actually the cheek to sit there calmly and tell me to my face that you are not a lucky fellow, when bank on the top of all this comes a thumping legacy of forty thousand pounds. I only wish I had half your complaint, that’s all!” “I wish to goodness you had,” returned the other, sulkily. “You seem to forget, my clever and very sanguine friend, that I’ve only a half share in the booty, a half share and a better half. Sounds like a pun, eh? You have overlooked one little detail, matrimony, and that if I don’t marry this girl within six months all the coin goes to a college in Calcutta. Did you ever know such an old hunks?” Now standing up, walking to the doorway and leaning against one of the posts, “Why the mischief could he not divide the money and leave us each half?” he demanded, angrily, of his friend. “Ay, why, indeed?” rejoined Mr. Gee. “It all came of my tipping him a tenpound note.” "Your grandmother!” ejaculated Mr. Gee, with a laugh of the rudest increddulity. “Great-grandmother, if you like, but it’s a fact! When the old chap came home from India, with pots of money, he was awfully afraid of being set upon by hordes of needy relations. A bright idea struck him. He hastily retired to a shady suburb in London and set up as a pauper. In other words, sent round a begging letter for a little help, to keep hinr from want in his old age. Rather grim kind of joke, eh?” "Rather,’J returned Mr. Gee, admiringly; “and not a bad idea.” “Any old fellow who was capable of that would be capable of anything, this will inclusive," exclaimed bis nephew, emphatically. “However, to go on with my story. Mrs. Adrian Brabazon, my future stepmother-in-law, pleaded poverty; Aunt Jane made no excuse of any kind, doubtless she smelled a rat; and 1, being just then rather flush of coin, sent him a tenner, with a promise to do what 1 could; for, after all, he was my father’a brother, and I could not let the old beggar starve,” apologetically. (To be continued.)