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The Disowned — Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton · English · Gutenberg #7639 · 1,016,035 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Disowned — Complete

Author: Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton


        
Release date: November 23, 2004 [eBook #7639]
                Most recently updated: August 28, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7639

Credits: Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger


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Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger





THE DISOWNED

by Edward Bulwer Lytton




CHAPTER I.

     I’ll tell you a story if you please to attend. G. KNIGHT:
     Limbo.

It was the evening of a soft, warm day in the May of 17--. The sun had
already set, and the twilight was gathering slowly over the large, still
masses of wood which lay on either side of one of those green lanes
so peculiar to England. Here and there, the outline of the trees
irregularly shrunk back from the road, leaving broad patches of waste
land covered with fern and the yellow blossoms of the dwarf furze, and
at more distant intervals thick clusters of rushes, from which came the
small hum of gnats,--those “evening revellers” alternately rising and
sinking in the customary manner of their unknown sports,--till, as
the shadows grew darker and darker, their thin and airy shapes were no
longer distinguishable, and no solitary token of life or motion broke
the voiceless monotony of the surrounding woods.

The first sound which invaded the silence came from the light, quick
footsteps of a person whose youth betrayed itself in its elastic and
unmeasured tread, and in the gay, free carol which broke out by fits and
starts upon the gentle stillness of the evening.

There was something rather indicative of poetical taste than musical
science in the selection of this vesper hymn, which always commenced
with,--

  “‘T is merry, ‘t is merry, in good green wood,”

and never proceeded a syllable further than the end of the second
line,--

  “when birds are about and singing;”

from the last word of which, after a brief pause, it invariably started
forth into joyous “iteration.”

Presently a heavier, yet still more rapid, step than that of the
youth was heard behind; and, as it overtook the latter, a loud, clear,
good-humoured voice gave the salutation of the evening. The tone in
which this courtesy was returned was frank, distinct, and peculiarly
harmonious.

“Good evening, my friend. How far is it to W----? I hope I am not out of
the direct road?”

“To W----, sir?” said the man, touching his hat, as he perceived,
in spite of the dusk, something in the air and voice of his new
acquaintance which called for a greater degree of respect than he was
at first disposed to accord to a pedestrian traveller,--“to W----, sir?
why, you will not surely go there to-night? it is more than eight miles
distant, and the roads none of the best.”

“Now, a curse on all rogues!” quoth the youth, with a serious sort of
vivacity. “Why, the miller at the foot of the hill assured me I should
be at my journey’s end in less than an hour.”

“He may have said right, sir,” returned the man, “yet you will not reach
W---- in twice that time.”

“How do you mean?” said the younger stranger.

“Why, that you may for once force a miller to speak truth in spite of
himself, and make a public-house, about three miles hence, the end of
your day’s journey.”

“Thank you for the hint,” said the youth. “Does the house you speak of
lie on the road-side?”

“No, sir: the lane branches off about two miles hence, and you must then
turn to the right; but till then our way is the same, and if you would
not prefer your own company to mine we can trudge on together.”

“With all my heart,” rejoined the younger stranger; “and not the less
willingly from the brisk pace you walk. I thought I had few equals
in pedestrianism; but it should not be for a small wager that I would
undertake to keep up with you.”

“Perhaps, sir,” said the man, laughing, “I’ll have had in the course
of my life a better usage and a longer experience of my heels than you
have.”

Somewhat startled by a speech of so equivocal a meaning, the youth,
for the first time, turned round to examine, as well as the increasing
darkness would permit, the size and appearance of his companion. He was
not perhaps too well satisfied with his survey. His fellow pedestrian
was about six feet high, and of a corresponding girth of limb and frame,
which would have made him fearful odds in any encounter where bodily
strength was the best means of conquest. Notwithstanding the mildness
of the weather, he was closely buttoned in a rough great-coat, which was
well calculated to give all due effect to the athletic proportions of
the wearer.

There was a pause of some moments.

“This is but a wild, savage sort of scene for England, sir, in this
day of new-fashioned ploughs and farming improvements,” said the tall
stranger, looking round at the ragged wastes and grim woods, which lay
steeped in the shade beside and before them.

“True,” answered the youth; “and in a few years agricultural innovation
will scarcely leave, even in these wastes, a single furze-blossom for
the bee or a tuft of green-sward for the grasshopper; but, however
unpleasant the change may be for us foot-travellers, we must not repine
at what they tell us is so sure a witness of the prosperity of the
country.”

“They tell us! who tell us?” exclaimed the stranger, with great
vivacity. “Is it the puny and spiritless artisan, or the debased and
crippled slave of the counter and the till, or the sallow speculator
on morals, who would mete us out our liberty, our happiness, our very
feelings by the yard and inch and fraction? No, no, let them follow
what the books and precepts of their own wisdom teach them; let them
cultivate more highly the lands they have already parcelled out by dikes
and fences, and leave, though at scanty intervals, some green patches of
unpolluted land for the poor man’s beast and the free man’s foot.”

“You are an enthusiast on this subject,” said the younger traveller, not
a little surprised at the tone and words of the last speech; “and if I
were not just about to commence the world with a firm persuasion that
enthusiasm on any matter is a great obstacle to success, I could be as
warm though not so eloquent as yourself.”

“Ah, sir,” said the stranger, sinking into a more natural and careless
tone, “I have a better right than I imagine you can claim to repine or
even to inveigh against the boundaries which are, day by day and hour
by hour, encroaching upon what I have learned to look upon as my own
territory. You were, just before I joined you, singing an old song; I
honour you for your taste: and no offence, sir, but a sort of fellowship
in feeling made me take the liberty to accost you. I am no very great
scholar in other things; but I owe my present circumstances of life
solely to my fondness for those old songs and quaint madrigals. And
I believe no person can better apply to himself Will Shakspeare’s
invitation,--

  ‘Under the greenwood tree
   Who loves to lie with me,
   And tune his merry note
   Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
   Come hither, come hither, come hither,
   Here shall he see
   No enemy
   But winter and rough weather.’”

Relieved from his former fear, but with increased curiosity at this
quotation, which was half said, half sung, in a tone which seemed to
evince a hearty relish for the sense of the words, the youth replied,--

“Truly, I did not expect to meet among the travellers of this wild
country with so well-stored a memory. And, indeed, I should have
imagined that the only persons to whom your verses could exactly have
applied were those honourable vagrants from the Nile whom in vulgar
language we term gypsies.”

“Precisely so, sir,” answered the tall stranger, indifferently;
“precisely so. It is to that ancient body that I belong.”

“The devil you do!” quoth the youth, in unsophisticated surprise; “the
progress of education is indeed astonishing!”

“Why,” answered the stranger, laughing, “to tell you the truth, sir,
I am a gypsy by inclination, not birth. The illustrious Bamfylde Moore
Carew is not the only example of one of gentle blood and honourable
education whom the fleshpots of Egypt have seduced.”

“I congratulate myself,” quoth the youth, in a tone that might have
been in jest, “upon becoming acquainted with a character at once so
respectable and so novel; and, to return your quotation in the way of
a compliment, I cry out with the most fashionable author of Elizabeth’s
days,--

  ‘O for a bowl of fat Canary,
   Rich Palermo, sparkling Sherry,’

in order to drink to our better acquaintance.”

“Thank you, sir,--thank you,” cried the strange gypsy, seemingly
delighted with the spirit with which his young acquaintance appeared to
enter into his character, and his quotation from a class of authors at
that time much less known and appreciated than at present; “and if you
have seen already enough of the world to take up with ale when neither
Canary, Palermo, nor Sherry are forthcoming, I will promise, at least,
to pledge you in large draughts of that homely beverage. What say you
to passing a night with us? our tents are yet more at hand than the
public-house of which I spoke to you.” The young man hesitated a moment,
then replied,--

“I will answer you frankly, my friend, even though I may find cause to
repent my confidence. I have a few guineas about me, which, though not
a large sum, are my all. Now, however ancient and honourable your
fraternity may be, they labour under a sad confusion, I fear, in their
ideas of meum and tuum.”

“Faith, sir, I believe you are right; and were you some years older, I
think you would not have favoured me with the same disclosure you have
done now; but you may be quite easy on that score. If you were made of
gold, the rascals would not filch off the corner of your garment as long
as you were under my protection. Does this assurance satisfy you?”

“Perfectly,” said the youth; “and now how far are we from your
encampment? I assure you I am all eagerness to be among a set of which I
have witnessed such a specimen.”

“Nay, nay,” returned the gypsy, “you must not judge of all my brethren
by me: I confess that they are but a rough tribe. However, I love them
dearly; and am only the more inclined to think them honest to each
other, because they are rogues to all the rest of the world.”

By this time our travellers had advanced nearly two miles since they had
commenced companionship; and at a turn in the lane, about three hundred
yards farther on, they caught a glimpse of a distant fire burning
brightly through the dim trees. They quickened their pace, and striking
a little out of their path into a common, soon approached two tents,
the Arab homes of the vagrant and singular people with whom the gypsy
claimed brotherhood and alliance.




CHAPTER II.

   Here we securely live and eat
   The cream of meat;
  And keep eternal fires
   By which we sit and do divine.
        HERRICK: Ode to Sir Clipseby Crew.

Around a fire which blazed and crackled beneath the large seething-pot,
that seemed an emblem of the mystery and a promise of the good cheer
which are the supposed characteristics of the gypsy race, were grouped
seven or eight persons, upon whose swarthy and strong countenances the
irregular and fitful flame cast a picturesque and not unbecoming glow.
All of these, with the exception of an old crone who was tending the
pot, and a little boy who was feeding the fire with sundry fragments of
stolen wood, started to their feet upon the entrance of the stranger.

“What ho! my bob cuffins,” cried the gypsy guide, “I have brought you a
gentry cove, to whom you will show all proper respect: and hark ye, my
maunders, if ye dare beg, borrow, or steal a single croker,--ay, but a
bawbee of him, I’ll--but ye know me.” The gypsy stopped abruptly, and
turned an eye, in which menace vainly struggled with good-humour, upon
each of his brethren, as they submissively bowed to him and his protege,
and poured forth a profusion of promises, to which their admonitor did
not even condescend to listen. He threw off his great-coat, doubled
it down by the best place near the fire, and made the youth forthwith
possess himself of the seat it afforded. He then lifted the cover of the
mysterious caldron. “Well, Mort,” cried he to the old woman, as he bent
wistfully down, “what have we here?”

“Two ducks, three chickens, and a rabbit, with some potatoes,” growled
the old hag, who claimed the usual privilege of her culinary office, to
be as ill-tempered as she pleased.

“Good!” said the gypsy; “and now, Mim, my cull, go to the other tent,
and ask its inhabitants, in my name, to come here and sup; bid them
bring their caldron to eke out ours: I’ll find the lush.”

With these words (which Mim, a short, swarthy member of the gang, with a
countenance too astute to be pleasing, instantly started forth to obey)
the gypsy stretched himself at full length by the youth’s side, and
began reminding him, with some jocularity and at some length, of his
promise to drink to their better acquaintance.

Something there was in the scene, the fire, the caldron, the intent
figure and withered countenance of the old woman, the grouping of the
other forms, the rude but not unpicturesque tent, the dark still woods
on either side, with the deep and cloudless skies above, as the stars
broke forth one by one upon the silent air, which (to use the orthodox
phrase of the novelist) would not have been wholly unworthy the bold
pencil of Salvator himself.

The youth eyed, with that involuntary respect which personal advantages
always command, the large yet symmetrical proportions of his wild
companion; nor was the face which belonged to that frame much less
deserving of attention. Though not handsome, it was both shrewd and
prepossessing in its expression; the forehead was prominent, the brows
overhung the eyes, which were large, dark, and, unlike those of the
tribe in general, rather calm than brilliant; the complexion, though
sun-burnt, was not swarthy, and the face was carefully and cleanly
shaved, so as to give all due advantage of contrast to the brown
luxuriant locks which fell rather in flakes than curls, on either side
of the healthful and manly cheeks. In age, he was about thirty-five,
and, though his air and mien were assuredly not lofty nor aristocratic,
yet they were strikingly above the bearing of his vagabond companions:
those companions were in all respects of the ordinary race of gypsies;
the cunning and flashing eye, the raven locks, the dazzling teeth, the
bronzed colour, and the low, slight, active form, were as strongly their
distinguishing characteristics as the tokens of all their tribe.

But to these, the appearance of the youth presented a striking and
beautiful contrast.

He had only just passed the stage of boyhood, perhaps he might have
seen eighteen summers, probably not so many. He had, in imitation of his
companion, and perhaps from mistaken courtesy to his new society, doffed
his hat; and the attitude which he had chosen fully developed the noble
and intellectual turn of his head and throat. His hair, as yet preserved
from the disfiguring fashions of the day, was of a deep auburn, which
was rapidly becoming of a more chestnut hue, and curled in short close
curls from the nape of the neck to the commencement of a forehead
singularly white and high. His brows finely and lightly pencilled, and
his long lashes of the darkest dye, gave a deeper and perhaps softer
shade than they otherwise would have worn to eyes quick and observant
in their expression and of a light hazel in their colour. His cheek
was very fair, and the red light of the fire cast an artificial tint of
increased glow upon a complexion that had naturally rather bloom than
colour; while a dark riding frock set off in their full beauty the fine
outline of his chest and the slender symmetry of his frame.

But it was neither his features nor his form, eminently handsome as they
were, which gave the principal charm to the young stranger’s appearance:
it was the strikingly bold, buoyant, frank, and almost joyous expression
which presided over all. There seemed to dwell the first glow and life
of youth, undimmed by a single fear and unbaffled in a single hope.
There were the elastic spring, the inexhaustible wealth of energies
which defied in their exulting pride the heaviness of sorrow and the
harassments of time. It was a face that, while it filled you with some
melancholy foreboding of the changes and chances which must, in the
inevitable course of fate, cloud the openness of the unwrinkled brow,
and soberize the fire of the daring and restless eye, instilled also
within you some assurance of triumph, and some omen of success,--a vague
but powerful sympathy with the adventurous and cheerful spirit which
appeared literally to speak in its expression. It was a face you might
imagine in one born under a prosperous star; and you felt, as you gazed,
a confidence in that bright countenance, which, like the shield of
the British Prince, [Prince Arthur.--See “The Faerie Queene.”] seemed
possessed with a spell to charm into impotence the evil spirits who
menaced its possessor.

“Well, sir,” said his friend, the gypsy, who had in his turn been
surveying with admiration the sinewy and agile frame of his young guest,
“well, sir, how fares your appetite? Old Dame Bingo will be mortally
offended if you do not do ample justice to her good cheer.”

“If so,” answered our traveller, who, young as he was, had learnt
already the grand secret of making in every situation a female friend,
“if so, I shall be likely to offend her still more.”

“And how, my pretty master?” said the old crone with an iron smile.

“Why, I shall be bold enough to reconcile matters with a kiss, Mrs.
Bingo,” answered the youth.

“Ha! Ha!” shouted the tall gypsy; “it is many a long day since my old
Mort slapped a gallant’s face for such an affront. But here come our
messmates. Good evening, my mumpers; make your bows to this gentleman
who has come to bowse with us to-night. ‘Gad, we’ll show him that old
ale’s none the worse for keeping company with the moon’s darlings. Come,
sit down, sit down. Where’s the cloth, ye ill-mannered loons, and the
knives and platters? Have we no holiday customs for strangers, think
ye? Mim, my cove, off to my caravan; bring out the knives, and all other
rattletraps; and harkye, my cuffin, this small key opens the inner hole,
where you will find two barrels; bring one of them. I’ll warrant it of
the best, for the brewer himself drank some of the same sort but two
hours before I nimm’d them. Come, stump, my cull, make yourself wings.
Ho, Dame Bingo, is not that pot of thine seething yet? Ah, my young
gentleman, you commence betimes; so much the better; if love’s a
summer’s day, we all know how early a summer morning begins,” added
the jovial Egyptian in a lower voice (feeling perhaps that he was only
understood by himself), as he gazed complacently on the youth, who, with
that happy facility of making himself everywhere at home so uncommon
to his countrymen, was already paying compliments suited to their
understanding to two fair daughters of the tribe who had entered with
the new-comers. Yet had he too much craft or delicacy, call it which you
will, to continue his addresses to that limit where ridicule or jealousy
from the male part of the assemblage might commence; on the contrary, he
soon turned to the men, and addressed them with a familiarity so frank
and so suited to their taste that he grew no less rapidly in their
favour than he had already done in that of the women, and when the
contents of the two caldrons were at length set upon the coarse but
clean cloth which in honour of his arrival covered the sod, it was in
the midst of a loud and universal peal of laughter which some broad
witticism of the young stranger had produced that the party sat down to
their repast.

Bright were the eyes and sleek the tresses of the damsel who placed
herself by the side of the stranger, and many were the alluring glances
and insinuated compliments which replied to his open admiration
and profuse flattery; but still there was nothing exclusive in his
attentions; perhaps an ignorance of the customs of his entertainers, and
a consequent discreet fear of offending them, restrained him; or perhaps
he found ample food for occupation in the plentiful dainties which his
host heaped before him.

“Now tell me,” said the gypsy chief (for chief he appeared to be), “if
we lead not a merrier life than you dreamt of? or would you have us
change our coarse fare and our simple tents, our vigorous limbs and
free hearts, for the meagre board, the monotonous chamber, the diseased
frame, and the toiling, careful, and withered spirit of some miserable
mechanic?”

“Change!” cried the youth, with an earnestness which, if affected, was
an exquisite counterfeit, “by Heaven, I would change with you myself.”

“Bravo, my fine cove!” cried the host, and all the gang echoed their
sympathy with his applause.

The youth continued: “Meat, and that plentiful; ale, and that strong;
women, and those pretty ones: what can man desire more?”

“Ay,” cried the host, “and all for nothing,--no, not even a tax; who
else in this kingdom can say that? Come, Mim, push round the ale.”

And the ale was pushed round, and if coarse the merriment, loud at least
was the laugh that rang ever and anon from the old tent; and though, at
moments, something in the guest’s eye and lip might have seemed, to
a very shrewd observer, a little wandering and absent, yet, upon the
whole, he was almost as much at ease as the rest, and if he was not
quite as talkative he was to the full as noisy.

By degrees, as the hour grew later and the barrel less heavy, the
conversation changed into one universal clatter. Some told their feats
in beggary; others, their achievements in theft; not a viand they had
fed on but had its appropriate legend; even the old rabbit, which had
been as tough as old rabbit can well be, had not been honestly taken
from his burrow; no less a person than Mim himself had purloined it from
a widow’s footman who was carrying it to an old maid from her nephew the
Squire.

“Silence,” cried the host, who loved talking as well as the rest, and
who for the last ten minutes had been vainly endeavouring to obtain
attention. “Silence! my maunders, it’s late, and we shall have the queer
cuffins [magistrates] upon us if we keep it up much longer. What, ho,
Mim, are you still gabbling at the foot of the table when your betters
are talking? As sure as my name’s King Cole, I’ll choke you with your
own rabbit skin, if you don’t hush your prating cheat,--nay, never look
so abashed: if you will make a noise, come forward, and sing us a gypsy
song. You see, my young sir,” turning to his guest, “that we are not
without our pretensions to the fine arts.”

At this order, Mim started forth, and taking his station at the right
hand of the soi-disant King Cole, began the following song, the chorus
of which was chanted in full diapason by the whole group, with the
additional force of emphasis that knives, feet, and fists could
bestow:--

  THE GYPSY’S SONG.

  The king to his hall, and the steed to his stall,
   And the cit to his bilking board;
  But we are not bound to an acre of ground,
   For our home is the houseless sward.
  We sow not, nor toil; yet we glean from the soil
   As much as its reapers do;
  And wherever we rove, we feed on the cove
   Who gibes at the mumping crew.
      CHORUS.--So the king to his hall, etc.

  We care not a straw for the limbs of the law,
   Nor a fig for the cuffin queer;
  While Hodge and his neighbour shall lavish and labour,
   Our tent is as sure of its cheer.
      CHORUS.--So the king to his hall, etc.

  The worst have an awe of the harman’s [constable] claw,
   And the best will avoid the trap; [bailiff]
  But our wealth is as free of the bailiff’s see
   As our necks of the twisting crap. [gallows]
      CHORUS.--So the king to his hall, etc.

  They say it is sweet to win the meat
   For the which one has sorely wrought;
  But I never could find that we lacked the mind
   For the food that has cost us nought!
      CHRUS.--So the king to his hall, etc.

  And when we have ceased from our fearless feast
   Why, our jigger [door] will need no bars;
  Our sentry shall be on the owlet’s tree,
   And our lamps the glorious stars.

           CHORUS.
  So the king to his hall, and the steed to his stall,
   And the cit to his bilking board;
  But we are not bound to an acre of ground,
   For our home is the houseless sward.

Rude as was this lawless stave, the spirit with which it was sung atoned
to the young stranger for its obscurity and quaintness; as for his host,
that curious personage took a lusty and prominent part in the chorus;
nor did the old woods refuse their share of the burden, but sent back a
merry echo to the chief’s deep voice and the harsher notes of his jovial
brethren.

When the glee had ceased, King Cole rose, the whole band followed
his example, the cloth was cleared in a trice, the barrel--oh! what a
falling off was there!--was rolled into a corner of the tent, and the
crew to whom the awning belonged began to settle themselves to rest;
while those who owned the other encampment marched forth, with King Cole
at their head. Leaning with no light weight upon his guest’s arm, the
lover of ancient minstrelsy poured into the youth’s ear a strain of
eulogy, rather eloquent than coherent, upon the scene they had just
witnessed.

“What,” cried his majesty in an enthusiastic tone, “what can be so truly
regal as our state? Can any man control us? Are we not above all laws?
Are we not the most despotic of kings? Nay, more than the kings of
earth, are we not the kings of Fairyland itself? Do we not realize the
golden dreams of the old rhymers, luxurious dogs that they were? Who
would not cry out,--

    ‘Blest silent groves! Oh, may ye be
     Forever Mirth’s best nursery!
      May pure Contents
      Forever pitch their tents
  Upon these downs, these meads, these rocks, these mountains.’”

Uttering this notable extract from the thrice-honoured Sir Henry Wotton,
King Cole turned abruptly from the common, entered the wood which
skirted it, and, only attended by his guest and his minister Mim, came
suddenly, by an unexpected and picturesque opening in the trees, upon
one of those itinerant vehicles termed caravans, he ascended the few
steps which led to the entrance, opened the door, and was instantly in
the arms of a pretty and young woman. On seeing our hero (for such we
fear the youth is likely to become), she drew back with a blush not
often found upon regal cheeks.

“Pooh,” said King Cole, half tauntingly, half fondly, “pooh, Lucy,
blushes are garden flowers, and ought never to be found wild in the
woods:” then changing his tone, he said, “come, put some fresh straw
in the corner, this stranger honours our palace to-night; Mim, unload
thyself of our royal treasures; watch without and vanish from within!”

Depositing on his majesty’s floor the appurtenances of the regal
supper-table, Mim made his respectful adieus and disappeared; meanwhile
the queen scattered some fresh straw over a mattress in the narrow
chamber, and, laying over all a sheet of singularly snowy hue, made
her guest some apology for the badness of his lodging; this King Cole
interrupted by a most elaborately noisy yawn and a declaration of
extreme sleepiness. “Now, Lucy, let us leave the gentleman to what he
will like better than soft words even from a queen. Good night, sir, we
shall be stirring at daybreak;” and with this farewell King Cole took
the lady’s arm, and retired with her into an inner compartment of the
caravan.

Left to himself, our hero looked round with surprise at the exceeding
neatness which reigned over the whole apartment. But what chiefly
engrossed the attention of one to whose early habits books had always
been treasures were several volumes, ranged in comely shelves, fenced
with wirework, on either side of the fireplace. “Courage,” thought
he, as he stretched himself on his humble couch, “my adventures have
commenced well: a gypsy tent, to be sure, is nothing very new; but a
gypsy who quotes poetry, and enjoys a modest wife, speaks better than
books do for the improvement of the world!”




CHAPTER III.

  Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
  Than that of painted pomp?--As You Like It.

The sun broke cheerfully through the small lattice of the caravan, as
the youth opened his eyes and saw the good-humoured countenance of his
gypsy host bending over him complacently.

“You slept so soundly, sir, that I did not like to disturb you; but my
good wife only waits your rising to have all ready for breakfast.”

“It were a thousand pities,” cried the guest, leaping from his bed,
“that so pretty a face should look cross on my account, so I will not
keep her waiting an instant.”

The gypsy smiled, as he answered, “I require no professional help from
the devil, sir, to foretell your fortune.”

“No!--and what is it?”

“Honour, reputation, success: all that are ever won by a soft tongue, if
it be backed by a bold heart.”

Bright and keen was the flash which shot over the countenance of the one
for whom this prediction was made, as he listened to it with a fondness
for which his reason rebuked him.

He turned aside with a sigh, which did not escape the gypsy, and bathed
his face in the water which the provident hand of the good woman had set
out for his lavations.

“Well,” said his host, when the youth had finished his brief toilet,
“suppose we breathe the fresh air, while Lucy smooths your bed and
prepares the breakfast?”

“With all my heart,” replied the youth, and they descended the steps
which led into the wood. It was a beautiful, fresh morning; the air was
like a draught from a Spirit’s fountain, and filled the heart with new
youth and the blood with a rapturous delight; the leaves--the green,
green leaves of spring--were quivering on the trees, among which the
happy birds fluttered and breathed the gladness of their souls in song.
While the dewdrops that--

       “strewed
  A baptism o’er the flowers”--

gave back in their million mirrors the reflected smiles of the cloudless
and rejoicing sun.

“Nature,” said the gypsy, “has bestowed on her children a gorgeous
present in such a morning.”

“True,” said the youth; “and you, of us two, perhaps only deserve it; as
for me, when I think of the long road of dust, heat, and toil, that lies
before me, I could almost wish to stop here and ask an admission into
the gypsy’s tents.”

“You could not do a wiser thing!” said the gypsy, gravely.

“But fate leaves me no choice,” continued the youth, as seriously as
if he were in earnest; “and I must quit you immediately after I have a
second time tasted of your hospitable fare.”

“If it must be so,” answered the gypsy, “I will see you, at least, a
mile or two on your road.” The youth thanked him for a promise which his
curiosity made acceptable, and they turned once more to the caravan.

The meal, however obtained, met with as much honour as it could possibly
have received from the farmer from whom its materials were borrowed.

It was not without complacency that the worthy pair beheld the notice
their guest lavished upon a fair, curly-headed boy of about three years
old, the sole child and idol of the gypsy potentates. But they did not
perceive, when the youth rose to depart, that he slipped into the folds
of the child’s dress a ring of some value, the only one he possessed.

“And now,” said he, after having thanked his entertainers for their
hospitality, “I must say good-by to your flock, and set out upon my
day’s journey.”

Lucy, despite her bashfulness, shook hands with her handsome guest;
and the latter, accompanied by the gypsy chief, strolled down to the
encampments.

Open and free was his parting farewell to the inmates of the two tents,
and liberal was the hand which showered upon all--especially on the
damsel who had been his Thais of the evening feast--the silver coins
which made no inconsiderable portion of his present property.

It was amidst the oracular wishes and favourable predictions of the
whole crew that he recommenced his journey with the gypsy chief.

When the tents were fairly out of sight, and not till then, King Cole
broke the silence which had as yet subsisted between them.

“I suppose, my young gentleman, that you expect to meet some of your
friends or relations at W----? I know not what they will say when they
hear where you have spent the night.”

“Indeed!” said the youth; “whoever hears my adventures, relation or not,
will be delighted with my description; but in sober earnest, I expect to
find no one at W---- more my friend than a surly innkeeper, unless it be
his dog.”

“Why, they surely do not suffer a stripling of your youth and evident
quality to wander alone!” cried King Cole, in undisguised surprise.

The young traveller made no prompt answer, but bent down as if to pluck
a wild-flower which grew by the road-side: after a pause, he said,--

“Nay, Master Cole, you must not set me the example of playing the
inquisitor, or you cannot guess how troublesome I shall be. To tell you
the truth, I am dying with curiosity to know something more about you
than you may be disposed to tell me: you have already confessed that,
however boon companions your gypsies may be, it is not among gypsies
that you were born and bred.”

King Cole laughed: perhaps he was not ill pleased by the curiosity of
his guest, nor by the opportunity it afforded him of being his own hero.

“My story, sir,” said he, “would be soon told, if you thought it worth
the hearing, nor does it contain anything which should prevent my
telling it.”

“If so,” quoth the youth, “I shall conceive your satisfying my request a
still greater favour than those you have already bestowed upon me.”

The gypsy relaxed his pace into an indolent saunter, as he commenced:--

“The first scene that I remember was similar to that which you witnessed
last night. The savage tent, and the green moor; the fagot blaze; the
eternal pot, with its hissing note of preparation; the old dame who
tended it, and the ragged urchins who learned from its contents the
first reward of theft and the earliest temptation to it,--all these
are blended into agreeable confusion as the primal impressions of my
childhood. The woman who nurtured me as my mother was rather capricious
than kind, and my infancy passed away, like that of more favoured scions
of fortune, in alternate chastisement and caresses. In good truth,
Kinching Meg had the shrillest voice and the heaviest hand of the whole
crew; and I cannot complain of injustice, since she treated me no worse
than the rest. Notwithstanding the irregularity of my education, I grew
up strong and healthy, and my reputed mother had taught me so much fear
for herself that she left me none for anything else; accordingly, I
became bold, reckless, and adventurous, and at the age of thirteen
was as thorough a reprobate as the tribe could desire. At that time
a singular change befell me: we (that is, my mother and myself) were
begging not many miles hence at the door of a rich man’s house in which
the mistress lay on her death-bed. That mistress was my real mother,
from whom Meg had stolen me in the first year of existence. Whether it
was through the fear of conscience or the hope of reward, no sooner had
Meg learnt the dangerous state of my poor mother, the constant grief,
which they said had been the sole though slow cause of her disease, and
the large sums which had been repeatedly offered for my recovery; no
sooner, I say, did Meg ascertain all these particulars than she fought
her way up to the sick-chamber, fell on her knees before the bed, owned
her crime, and produced myself. Various little proofs of time, place,
circumstance; the clothing I had worn when stolen, and which was still
preserved, joined to the striking likeness I bore to both my parents,
especially to my father, silenced all doubt and incredulity: I was
welcomed home with a joy which it is in vain to describe. My return
seemed to recall my mother from the grave; she lingered on for many
months longer than her physicians thought it possible, and when she died
her last words commended me to my father’s protection.”

“My surviving parent needed no such request. He lavished upon me all
that superfluity of fondness and food of which those good people who are
resolved to spoil their children are so prodigal. He could not bear the
idea of sending me to school; accordingly he took a tutor for me,--a
simple-hearted, gentle, kind man, who possessed a vast store of
learning rather curious than useful. He was a tolerable, and at least an
enthusiastic antiquarian, a more than tolerable poetaster; and he had a
prodigious budget full of old ballads and songs, which he loved
better to teach and I to learn, than all the ‘Latin, Greek, geography,
astronomy, and the use of the globes,’ which my poor father had so
sedulously bargained for.”

“Accordingly, I became exceedingly well-informed in all the ‘precious
conceits’ and ‘golden garlands’ of our British ancients, and continued
exceedingly ignorant of everything else, save and except a few of
the most fashionable novels of the day, and the contents of six lying
volumes of voyages and travels, which flattered both my appetite for the
wonderful and my love of the adventurous. My studies, such as they were,
were not by any means suited to curb or direct the vagrant tastes my
childhood had acquired: on the contrary, the old poets, with their
luxurious description of the ‘green wood’ and the forest life; the
fashionable novelists, with their spirited accounts of the wanderings
of some fortunate rogue, and the ingenious travellers, with their wild
fables, so dear to the imagination of every boy, only fomented within
me a strong though secret regret at my change of life, and a restless
disgust to the tame home and bounded roamings to which I was condemned.
When I was about seventeen, my father sold his property (which he had
become possessed of in right of my mother), and transferred the purchase
money to the security of the Funds. Shortly afterwards he died; the bulk
of his fortune became mine; the remainder was settled upon a sister,
many years older than myself, whom, in consequence of her marriage and
residence in a remote part of Wales, I had never yet seen.”

“Now, then, I was perfectly free and unfettered; my guardian lived in
Scotland, and left me entirely to the guidance of my tutor, who was both
too simple and too indolent to resist my inclinations. I went to London,
became acquainted with a set of most royal scamps, frequented the
theatres and the taverns, the various resorts which constitute the
gayeties of a blood just above the middle class, and was one of the
noisiest and wildest ‘blades’ that ever heard the ‘chimes by midnight’
and the magistrate’s lecture for matins. I was a sort of leader among
the jolly dogs I consorted with.”

“My earlier education gave a raciness and nature to my delineations of
‘life’ which delighted them. But somehow or other I grew wearied of this
sort of existence. About a year after I was of age my fortune was more
than three parts spent; I fell ill with drinking and grew dull with
remorse: need I add that my comrades left me to myself? A fit of
the spleen, especially if accompanied with duns, makes one wofully
misanthropic; so, when I recovered from my illness, I set out on a tour
through Great Britain and France,--alone, and principally on foot. Oh,
the rapture of shaking off the half friends and cold formalities of
society and finding oneself all unfettered, with no companion but
Nature, no guide but youth, and no flatterer but hope!”

“Well, my young friend, I travelled for two years, and saw even in that
short time enough of this busy world to weary and disgust me with
its ordinary customs. I was not made to be polite, still less to be
ambitious. I sighed after the coarse comrades and the free tents of my
first associates; and a thousand remembrances of the gypsy wanderings,
steeped in all the green and exhilarating colours of childhood,
perpetually haunted my mind. On my return from my wanderings I found a
letter from my sister, who, having become a widow, had left Wales, and
had now fixed her residence in a well visited watering-place in the west
of England. I had never yet seen her, and her letter was a fine-ladylike
sort of epistle, with a great deal of romance and a very little sense,
written in an extremely pretty hand, and ending with a quotation from
Pope (I never could endure Pope, nor indeed any of the poets of the days
of Anne and her successors). It was a beautiful season of the year: I
had been inured to pedestrian excursions; so I set off on foot to see
my nearest surviving relative. On the way, I fell in (though on a very
different spot) with the very encampment you saw last night. By heavens,
that was a merry meeting to me! I joined, and journeyed with them for
several days: never do I remember a happier time. Then, after many years
of bondage and stiffness, and accordance with the world, I found myself
at ease, like a released bird; with what zest did I join in the rude
jokes and the knavish tricks, the stolen feasts and the roofless nights
of those careless vagabonds!”

“I left my fellow-travellers at the entrance of the town where my sister
lived. Now came the contrast. Somewhat hot, rather coarsely clad, and
covered with the dust of a long summer’s day, I was ushered into a
little drawing-room, eighteen feet by twelve, as I was afterwards
somewhat pompously informed. A flaunting carpet, green, red, and yellow,
covered the floor. A full-length picture of a thin woman, looking most
agreeably ill-tempered, stared down at me from the chimney-piece;
three stuffed birds--how emblematic of domestic life!--stood stiff
and imprisoned, even after death, in a glass cage. A fire-screen and a
bright fireplace; chairs covered with holland, to preserve them from
the atmosphere; and long mirrors, wrapped as to the frame-work in
yellow muslin, to keep off the flies,--finish the panorama of this
watering-place mansion. The door opened, silks rustled, a voice shrieked
‘My Brother!’ and a figure, a thin figure, the original of the picture
over the chimney-piece, rushed in.”

“I can well fancy her joy,” said the youth.

“You can do no such thing, begging your pardon, sir,” resumed King Cole.
“She had no joy at all: she was exceedingly surprised and disappointed.
In spite of my early adventures, I had nothing picturesque or romantic
about me at all. I was very thirsty, and I called for beer; I was very
tired, and I lay down on the sofa; I wore thick shoes and small buckles;
and my clothes were made God knows where, and were certainly put on God
knows how. My sister was miserably ashamed of me: she had not even the
manners to disguise it. In a higher rank of life than that which she
held she would have suffered far less mortification; for I fancy great
people pay but little real attention to externals. Even if a man of rank
is vulgar, it makes no difference in the orbit in which he moves: but
your ‘genteel gentlewomen’ are so terribly dependent upon what Mrs.
Tomkins will say; so very uneasy about their relations and the opinion
they are held in; and, above all, so made up of appearances and clothes;
so undone if they do not eat, drink, and talk a la mode,--that I can
fancy no shame like that of my poor sister at having found, and being
found with, a vulgar brother.”

“I saw how unwelcome I was and I did not punish myself by a long visit.
I left her house and returned towards London. On my road, I again met
with my gypsy friends: the warmth of their welcome enchanted me; you
may guess the rest. I stayed with them so long that I could not bear
to leave them; I re-entered their crew: I am one among them. Not that
I have become altogether and solely of the tribe: I still leave
them whenever the whim seizes me, and repair to the great cities and
thoroughfares of man. There I am soon driven back again to my favourite
and fresh fields, as a reed upon a wild stream is dashed back upon the
green rushes from which it has been torn. You perceive that I have many
comforts and distinctions above the rest; for, alas, sir, there is no
society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create
an aristocracy; the remnant of my fortune provides me with my
unostentatious equipage and the few luxuries it contains; it repays
secretly to the poor what my fellow-vagrants occasionally filch from
them; it allows me to curb among the crew all the grosser and heavier
offences against the law to which want might otherwise compel them;
and it serves to keep up that sway and ascendency which my superior
education and fluent spirits enabled me at first to attain. Though not
legally their king, I assume that title over the few encampments with
which I am accustomed to travel; and you perceive that I have given my
simple name both to the jocular and kingly dignity of which the old song
will often remind you. My story is done.”

“Not quite,” said his companion: “your wife? How came you by that
blessing?”

“Ah! thereby hangs a pretty and a love-sick tale, which would not
stand ill in an ancient ballad; but I will content myself with briefly
sketching it. Lucy is the daughter of a gentleman farmer: about four
years ago I fell in love with her. I wooed her clandestinely, and at
last I owned I was a gypsy: I did not add my birth nor fortune; no, I
was full of the romance of the Nut-brown Maid’s lover, and attempted
a trial of woman’s affection, which even in these days was not
disappointed. Still her father would not consent to our marriage, till
very luckily things went bad with him; corn, crops, cattle,--the deuce
was in them all; an execution was in his house, and a writ out against
his person. I settled these matters for him, and in return received a
father-in-law’s blessing, and we are now the best friends in the world.
Poor Lucy is perfectly reconciled to her caravan and her wandering
husband, and has never, I believe, once repented the day on which she
became the gypsy’s wife!”

“I thank you heartily for your history,” said the youth, who had
listened very attentively to this detail; “and though my happiness and
pursuits are centred in that world which you despise, yet I confess that
I feel a sensation very like envy at your singular choice; and I would
not dare to ask of my heart whether that choice is not happier, as it is
certainly more philosophical, than mine.”

They had now reached a part of the road where the country assumed a
totally different character; the woods and moors were no longer visible,
but a broad and somewhat bleak extent of country lay before them. Here
and there only a few solitary trees broke the uniformity of the wide
fields and scanty hedgerows, and at distant intervals the thin spires
of the scattered churches rose, like the prayers of which they were the
symbols, to mingle themselves with heaven.

The gypsy paused: “I will accompany you,” said he, “no farther; your way
lies straight onwards, and you will reach W---- before noon; farewell,
and may God watch over you!”

“Farewell!” said the youth, warmly pressing the hand which was extended
to him. “If we ever meet again, it will probably solve a curious riddle;
namely, whether you are not disgusted with the caravan and I with the
world!”

“The latter is more likely than the former,” said the gypsy, for one
stands a much greater chance of being disgusted with others than with
one’s self; so changing a little the old lines, I will wish you adieu
after my own fashion, namely, in verse,--

  ‘Go, set thy heart on winged wealth,
   Or unto honour’s towers aspire;
   But give me freedom and my health,
   And there’s the sum of my desire!’”




CHAPTER IV.

  The letter, madam; have you none for me?--The Rendezvous.
  Provide surgeons.--Lover’s Progress.

Our solitary traveller pursued his way with the light step and gay
spirits of youth and health.

“Turn gypsy, indeed!” he said, talking to himself; “there is something
better in store for me than that. Ay, I have all the world before me
where to choose--not my place of rest. No, many a long year will pass
away ere any place of rest will be my choice! I wonder whether I shall
find the letter at W----; the letter, the last letter I shall ever have
from home but it is no home to me now; and I--I, insulted, reviled,
trampled upon, without even a name--well, well, I will earn a still
fairer one than that of my forefathers. They shall be proud to own
me yet.” And with these words the speaker broke off abruptly, with a
swelling chest and a flashing eye; and as, an unknown and friendless
adventurer, he gazed on the expanded and silent country around him, he
felt like Castruccio Castrucani that he could stretch his hands to the
east and to the west and exclaim, “Oh, that my power kept pace with my
spirit, then should it grasp the corners of the earth!”

The road wound at last from the champaign country, through which it had
for some miles extended itself, into a narrow lane, girded on either
side by a dead fence. As the youth entered this lane, he was somewhat
startled by the abrupt appearance of a horseman, whose steed leaped the
hedge so close to our hero as almost to endanger his safety. The rider,
a gentleman of about five-and-twenty, pulled up, and in a tone of
great courtesy apologized for his inadvertency; the apology was readily
admitted, and the horseman rode onwards in the direction of W----.

Trifling as this incident was, the air and mien of the stranger were
sufficient to arrest irresistibly the thoughts of the young traveller;
and before they had flowed into a fresh channel he found himself in the
town and at the door of the inn to which his expedition was bound. He
entered the bar; a buxom landlady and a still more buxom daughter were
presiding over the spirits of the place.

“You have some boxes and a letter for me, I believe,” said the young
gentleman to the comely hostess.

“To you, sir!--the name, if you please?”

“To--to--to C---- L----,” said the youth; “the initials C. L., to be
left till called for.”

“Yes, sir, we have some luggage; came last night by the van; and a
letter besides, sir, to C. L. also.”

The daughter lifted her large dark eyes at the handsome stranger,
and felt a wonderful curiosity to know what the letter to C. L. could
possibly be about; meanwhile mine hostess, raising her hand to a shelf
on which stood an Indian slop-basin, the great ornament of the bar at
the Golden Fleece, brought from its cavity a well-folded and well-sealed
epistle.

“That is it,” cried the youth; “show me a private room instantly.”

“What can he want a private room for?” thought the landlady’s daughter.

“Show the gentleman to the Griffin, No. 4, John Merrylack,” said the
landlady herself.

With an impatient step the owner of the letter followed a slipshod and
marvellously unwashed waiter into No. 4,--a small square asylum for town
travellers, country yeomen, and “single gentlemen;” presenting, on the
one side, an admirable engraving of the Marquis of Granby, and on the
other an equally delightful view of the stable-yard.

Mr. C. L. flung himself on a chair (there were only four chairs in No.
4), watched the waiter out of the room, seized his letter, broke open
the seal, and read--yea, reader, you shall read it too--as follows:--

“Enclosed is the sum to which you are entitled; remember, that it is all
which you can ever claim at my hands; remember also that you have made
the choice which now nothing can persuade me to alter. Be the name you
have so long iniquitously borne henceforth and always forgotten; upon
that condition you may yet hope from my generosity the future assistance
which you must want, but which you could not ask from my affection.
Equally by my heart and my reason you are forever DISOWNED.”

The letter fell from the reader’s hands. He took up the inclosure: it
was an order payable in London for 1,000 pounds; to him it seemed like
the rental of the Indies.

“Be it so!” he said aloud, and slowly; “be it so! With this will I carve
my way: many a name in history was built upon a worse foundation!”

With these words he carefully put up the money, re-read the brief note
which enclosed it, tore the latter into pieces, and then, going towards
the aforesaid view of the stable-yard, threw open the window and
leaned out, apparently in earnest admiration of two pigs which marched
gruntingly towards him, one goat regaling himself upon a cabbage, and a
broken-winded, emaciated horse, which having just been what the hostler
called “rubbed down,” was just going to be what the hostler called
“fed.”

While engaged in this interesting survey, the clatter of hoofs was
suddenly heard upon the rough pavement, a bell rang, a dog barked, the
pigs grunted, the hostler ran out, and the stranger, whom our hero had
before met on the road, trotted into the yard.

It was evident from the obsequiousness of the attendants that the
horseman was a personage of no mean importance; and indeed there was
something singularly distinguished and highbred in his air and carriage.

“Who can that be?” said the youth, as the horseman, having dismounted,
turned towards the door of the inn: the question was readily answered,
“There goes pride and poverty!” said the hostler, “Here comes Squire
Mordaunt!” said the landlady.

At the farther end of the stable-yard, through a narrow gate, the youth
caught a glimpse of the green sward and the springing flowers of a small
garden. Wearied with the sameness of No. 4 rather than with his journey,
he sauntered towards the said gate, and, seating himself in a small
arbour within the garden, surrendered himself to reflection.

The result of this self-conference was a determination to leave the
Golden Fleece by the earliest conveyance which went to that great object
and emporium of all his plans and thoughts, London. As, full of
this resolution and buried in the dream which it conjured up, he
was returning with downcast eyes and unheeding steps through the
stable-yard, to the delights of No. 4, he was suddenly accosted by a
loud and alarmed voice,--

“For God’s sake, sir, look out, or--”

The sentence was broken off, the intended warning came too late, our
hero staggered back a few steps, and fell, stunned and motionless,
against the stable door. Unconsciously he had passed just behind the
heels of the stranger’s horse, which being by no means in good humour
with the clumsy manoeuvres of his shampooer, the hostler, had taken
advantage of the opportunity presented to him of working off his
irritability, and had consequently inflicted a severe kick upon the
right shoulder of Mr. C. L.

The stranger, honoured by the landlady with the name and title of
Squire Mordaunt, was in the yard at the moment. He hastened towards the
sufferer, who as yet was scarcely sensible, and led him into the house.
The surgeon of the village was sent for and appeared. This disciple of
Galen, commonly known by the name of Jeremiah Bossolton, was a gentleman
considerably more inclined to breadth than length. He was exactly five
feet one inch in height, but thick and solid as a milestone; a wig of
modern cut, carefully curled and powdered, gave somewhat of a modish
and therefore unseemly grace to a solemn eye; a mouth drawn down at
the corners; a nose that had something in it exceedingly consequential;
eyebrows sage and shaggy; ears large and fiery; and a chin that would
have done honour to a mandarin. Now Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton had a certain
peculiarity of speech to which I shall find it difficult to do
justice. Nature had impressed upon his mind a prodigious love of the
grandiloquent; Mr. Bossolton, therefore, disdained the exact language of
the vulgar, and built unto himself a lofty fabric of words in which his
sense managed very frequently to lose itself. Moreover, upon beginning
a sentence of peculiar dignity, Mr. Bossolton was, it must be
confessed, sometimes at a loss to conclude it in a period worthy of the
commencement; and this caprice of nature which had endowed him with
more words than thoughts (necessity is, indeed, the mother of invention)
drove him into a very ingenious method of remedying the deficiency; this
was simply the plan of repeating the sense by inverting the sentence.

“How long a period of time,” said Mr. Bossolton, “has elapsed since
this deeply-to-be-regretted and seriously-to-be-investigated accident
occurred?”

“Not many minutes,” said Mordaunt; “make no further delay, I beseech
you, but examine the arm; it is not broken, I trust?”

“In this world, Mr. Mordaunt,” said the practitioner, bowing very low,
for the person he addressed was of the most ancient lineage in the
county, “in this world, Mr. Mordaunt, even at the earliest period of
civilization, delay in matters of judgment has ever been considered of
such vital importance, and--and such important vitality, that we find
it inculcated in the proverbs of the Greeks and the sayings of the
Chaldeans as a principle of the most expedient utility, and--and--the
most useful expediency!”

“Mr. Bossolton,” said Mordaunt, in a tone of remarkable and even
artificial softness and civility, “have the kindness immediately to
examine this gentleman’s bruises.”

Mr. Bossolton looked up to the calm but haughty face of the speaker,
and without a moment’s hesitation proceeded to handle the arm, which was
already stripped for his survey.

“It frequently occurs,” said Mr. Bossolton, “in the course of my
profession, that the forcible, sudden, and vehement application of any
hard substance, like the hoof of a quadruped, to the soft, tender,
and carniferous parts of the human frame, such as the arm, occasions a
pain--a pang, I should rather say--of the intensest acuteness, and--and
of the acutest intensity.”

“Pray, Mr. Bossolton, is the bone broken?” asked Mordaunt.

By this time the patient, who had been hitherto in that languor which
extreme pain always produces at first, especially on young frames, was
sufficiently recovered to mark and reply to the kind solicitude of
the last speaker: “I thank you, sir,” said he with a smile, “for your
anxiety, but I feel that the bone is not broken; the muscles are a
little hurt, that is all.”

“Young gentleman,” said Mr. Bossolton, “you must permit me to say that
they who have all their lives been employed in the pursuit, and the
investigation, and the analysis of certain studies are in general better
acquainted with those studies than they who have neither given them any
importance of consideration--nor--nor any consideration of importance.
Establishing this as my hypothesis, I shall now proceed to--”

“Apply immediate remedies, if you please, Mr. Bossolton,” interrupted
Mr. Mordaunt, in that sweet and honeyed tone which somehow or other
always silenced even the garrulous practitioner.

Driven into taciturnity, Mr. Bossolton again inspected the arm, and
proceeded to urge the application of liniments and bandages, which he
promised to prepare with the most solicitudinous despatch and the most
despatchful solicitude.




CHAPTER V.

  Your name, Sir!
     Ha! my name, you say--my name?
  ‘T is well--my name--is--nay, I must consider.--Pedrillo.

This accident occasioned a delay of some days in the plans of the young
gentleman, for whom we trust very soon, both for our own convenience and
that of our reader, to find a fitting appellation.

Mr. Mordaunt, after seeing every attention paid to him both surgical
and hospitable, took his departure with a promise to call the next day;
leaving behind him a strong impression of curiosity and interest to
serve our hero as some mental occupation until his return. The bonny
landlady came up in a new cap, with blue ribbons, in the course of the
evening, to pay a visit of inquiry to the handsome patient, who was
removed from the Griffin, No. 4, to the Dragon, No. 8,--a room whose
merits were exactly in proportion to its number, namely, twice as great
as those of No. 4.

“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Taptape, with a courtesy, “I trust you find
yourself better.”

“At this moment I do,” said the gallant youth, with a significant air.

“Hem,” quoth the landlady.

A pause ensued. In spite of the compliment, a certain suspicion suddenly
darted across the mind of the hostess. Strong as are the prepossessions
of the sex, those of the profession are much stronger.

“Honest folk,” thought the landlady, “don’t travel with their initials
only; the last ‘Whitehall Evening’ was full of shocking accounts of
swindlers and cheats; and I gave nine pounds odd shillings for the
silver teapot John has brought him up,--as if the delft one was not good
enough for a foot traveller!”

Pursuing these ideas, Mrs. Taptape, looking bashfully down, said,--

“By the by, sir; Mr. Bossolton asked me what name he should put down in
his book for the medicines; what would you please me to say, sir?”

“Mr. who?” said the youth, elevating his eyebrows.

“Mr. Bossolton, sir, the apothecary.”

“Oh! Bossolton! very odd name that,--not near so pretty as--dear me,
what a beautiful cap that is of yours!” said the young gentleman.

“Lord, sir, do you think so? The ribbon is pretty enough; but--but, as
I was saying, what name shall I tell Mr. Bossolton to put in his book?”
 “This,” thought Mrs. Taptape, “is coming to the point.”

“Well!” said the youth, slowly, and as if in a profound reverie, “well,
Bossolton is certainly the most singular name I ever heard; he does
right to put it in a book: it is quite a curiosity! is he clever?”

“Very, sir,” said the landlady, somewhat sharply; “but it is your name,
not his, that he wishes to put into his book.”

“Mine?” said the youth, who appeared to have been seeking to gain time
in order to answer a query which most men find requires very little
deliberation, “mine, you say; my name is Linden--Clarence Linden--you
understand?”

“What a pretty name!” thought the landlady’s daughter, who was listening
at the keyhole; “but how could he admire that odious cap of Ma’s!”

“And, now, landlady, I wish you would send up my boxes; and get me a
newspaper, if you please.”

“Yes, sir,” said the landlady, and she rose to retire.

“I do not think,” said the youth to himself, “that I could have hit on a
prettier name, and so novel a one too!--Clarence Linden,--why, if I were
that pretty girl at the bar I could fall in love with the very words.
Shakspeare was quite wrong when he said,--

  ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’”

“A rose by any name would not smell as sweet; if a rose’s name was
Jeremiah Bossolton, for instance, it would not, to my nerves at least,
smell of anything but an apothecary’s shop!”

When Mordaunt called the next morning, he found Clarence much better,
and carelessly turning over various books, part of the contents of the
luggage superscribed C. L. A book of whatever description was among the
few companions for whom Mordaunt had neither fastidiousness nor reserve;
and the sympathy of taste between him and the sufferer gave rise to
a conversation less cold and commonplace than it might otherwise have
been. And when Mordaunt, after a stay of some length, rose to depart,
he pressed Linden to return his visit before he left that part of the
country; his place, he added, was only about five miles distant from
W----. Linden, greatly interested in his visitor, was not slow in
accepting the invitation, and, perhaps for the first time in his life,
Mordaunt was shaking hands with a stranger he had only known two days.




CHAPTER VI.

  While yet a child, and long before his time,
  He had perceived the presence and the power
  Of greatness.
 .....
  But eagerly he read, and read again.
 .....
     Yet still uppermost
  Nature was at his heart, as if he felt,
  Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power
  In all things that from her sweet influence
  Might seek to wean him. Therefore with her hues,
  Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms,
  He clothed the nakedness of austere truth.
                      WORDSWORTH.

Algernon Mordaunt was the last son of an old and honourable race, which
had centuries back numbered princes in its line. His parents had had
many children, but all (save Algernon, the youngest) died in their
infancy. His mother perished in giving him birth. Constitutional
infirmity and the care of mercenary nurses contributed to render
Algernon a weakly and delicate child: hence came a taste for loneliness
and a passion for study; and from these sprung, on the one hand, the
fastidiousness and reserve which render us apparently unamiable, and, on
the other, the loftiness of spirit and the kindness of heart which are
the best and earliest gifts of literature, and more than counterbalance
our deficiencies in the “minor morals” due to society by their tendency
to increase our attention to the greater ones belonging to mankind. Mr.
Mordaunt was a man of luxurious habits and gambling propensities: wedded
to London, he left the house of his ancestors to moulder into desertion
and decay; but to this home Algernon was constantly consigned during
his vacations from school; and its solitude and cheerlessness gave to
a disposition naturally melancholy and thoughtful those colours which
subsequent events were calculated to deepen, not efface.

Truth obliges us to state, despite our partiality to Mordaunt, that,
when he left his school after a residence of six years, it was with the
bitter distinction of having been the most unpopular boy in it. Why,
nobody could exactly explain, for his severest enemies could not accuse
him of ill-nature, cowardice, or avarice, and these make the three
capital offences of a school-boy; but Algernon Mordaunt had already
acquired the knowledge of himself, and could explain the cause, though
with a bitter and swelling heart. His ill health, his long residence at
home, his unfriended and almost orphan situation, his early habits of
solitude and reserve, all these, so calculated to make the spirit shrink
within itself, made him, on his entrance at school, if not unsocial,
appear so: this was the primary reason of his unpopularity; the second
was that he perceived, for he was sensitive (and consequently acute) to
the extreme, the misfortune of his manner, and in his wish to rectify
it, it became doubly unprepossessing; to reserve, it now added
embarrassment, to coldness, gloom; and the pain he felt in addressing or
being addressed by another was naturally and necessarily reciprocal, for
the effects of sympathy are nowhere so wonderful, yet so invisible, as
in the manners.

By degrees he shunned the intercourse which had for him nothing but
distress, and his volatile acquaintances were perhaps the first to set
him the example. Often in his solitary walks he stopped afar off to gaze
upon the sports which none ever solicited him to share; and as the shout
of laughter and of happy hearts came, peal after peal, upon his ear, he
turned enviously, yet not malignantly away, with tears, which not all
his pride could curb, and muttered to himself, “And these, these hate
me!”

There are two feelings common to all high or affectionate natures,--that
of extreme susceptibility to opinion and that of extreme bitterness at
its injustice. These feelings were Mordaunt’s: but the keen edge which
one blow injures, the repetition blunts; and by little and little,
Algernon became not only accustomed, but, as he persuaded himself,
indifferent, to his want of popularity; his step grew more lofty, and
his address more collected, and that which was once diffidence gradually
hardened into pride.

His residence at the University was neither without honour nor profit.
A college life was then, as now, either the most retired or the most
social of all others; we need scarcely say which it was to Mordaunt, but
his was the age when solitude is desirable, and when the closet forms
the mind better than the world. Driven upon itself, his intellect became
inquiring and its resources profound; admitted to their inmost recesses,
he revelled among the treasures of ancient lore, and in his dreams of
the Nymph and Naiad, or his researches after truth in the deep wells of
the Stagyrite or the golden fountains of Plato, he forgot the loneliness
of his lot and exhausted the hoarded enthusiasm of his soul.

But his mind, rather thoughtful than imaginative, found no idol like
“Divine Philosophy.” It delighted to plunge itself into the mazes of
metaphysical investigation; to trace the springs of the intellect; to
connect the arcana of the universe; to descend into the darkest caverns,
or to wind through the minutest mysteries of Nature, and rise, step
by step, to that arduous elevation on which Thought stands dizzy and
confused, looking beneath upon a clouded earth, and above upon an
unfathomable heaven.

Rarely wandering from his chamber, known personally to few and
intimately by none, Algernon yet left behind him at the University
the most remarkable reputation of his day. He had obtained some of the
highest of academical honours, and by that proverbial process of vulgar
minds which ever frames the magnificent from the unknown, the seclusion
in which he lived and the recondite nature of his favourite pursuits
attached to his name a still greater celebrity and interest than all the
orthodox and regular dignities he had acquired. There are few men who
do not console themselves for not being generally loved, if they can
reasonably hope that they are generally esteemed. Mordaunt had now grown
reconciled to himself and to his kind. He had opened to his interest a
world in his own breast, and it consoled him for his mortification in
the world without. But, better than this, his habits as well as studies
had strengthened the principles and confirmed the nobility of his mind.
He was not, it is true, more kind, more benevolent, more upright than
before; but those virtues now emanated from principle, not emotion:
and principle to the mind is what a free constitution is to a people;
without that principle or that free constitution, the one may be for
the moment as good, the other as happy; but we cannot tell how long the
goodness and the happiness will continue.

On leaving the University, his father sent for him to London. He stayed
there a short time, and mingled partially in its festivities; but the
pleasures of English dissipation have for a century been the same,
heartless without gayety, and dull without refinement. Nor could
Mordaunt, the most fastidious, yet warm-hearted of human beings,
reconcile either his tastes or his affections to the cold insipidities
of patrician society. His father’s habits and evident distresses
deepened his disgust to his situation; for the habits were incurable and
the distresses increasing; and nothing but a circumstance which Mordaunt
did not then understand prevented the final sale of an estate already
little better than a pompous incumbrance.

It was therefore with the half painful, half pleasurable sensation with
which we avoid contemplating a ruin we cannot prevent that Mordaunt
set out upon that Continental tour deemed then so necessary a part of
education. His father, on taking leave of him, seemed deeply affected.
“Go, my son,” said he, “may God bless you, and not punish me too
severely. I have wronged you deeply, and I cannot bear to look upon your
face.”

To these words Algernon attached a general, but they cloaked a peculiar,
meaning: in three years, he returned to England; his father had been
dead some months, and the signification of his parting address was
already deciphered,--but of this hereafter.

In his travels Mordaunt encountered an Englishman whose name I will not
yet mention: a person of great reputed wealth; a merchant, yet a man
of pleasure; a voluptuary in life, yet a saint in reputation; or, to
abstain from the antithetical analysis of a character which will not
be corporeally presented to the reader till our tale is considerably
advanced, one who drew from nature a singular combination of shrewd
but false conclusions, and a peculiar philosophy, destined hereafter to
contrast the colours and prove the practical utility of that which was
espoused by Mordaunt.

There can be no education in which the lessons of the world do not form
a share. Experience, in expanding Algernon’s powers, had ripened his
virtues. Nor had the years which had converted knowledge into wisdom
failed in imparting polish to refinement. His person had acquired a
greater grace, and his manners an easier dignity than before. His noble
and generous mind had worked its impress upon his features and his mien;
and those who could overcome the first coldness and shrinking hauteur of
his address found it required no minute examination to discover the real
expression of the eloquent eye and the kindling lip.

He had not been long returned before he found two enemies to his
tranquillity,--the one was love, the other appeared in the more
formidable guise of a claimant to his estate. Before Algernon was aware
of the nature of the latter he went to consult with his lawyer.

“If the claim be just, I shall not, of course, proceed to law,” said
Mordaunt.

“But without the estate, sir, you have nothing!”

“True,” said Algernon, calmly.

But the claim was not just, and to law he went.

In this lawsuit, however, he had one assistant in an old relation, who
had seen, indeed, but very little of him, but who compassionated his
circumstances, and above all hated his opponent. This relation was rich
and childless; and there were not wanting those who predicted that his
money would ultimately discharge the mortgages and repair the house of
the young representative of the Mordaunt honours. But the old kinsman
was obstinate, self-willed, and under the absolute dominion of patrician
pride; and it was by no means improbable that the independence of
Mordaunt’s character would soon create a disunion between them, by
clashing against the peculiarities of his relation’s temper.

It was a clear and sunny morning when Linden, tolerably recovered of his
hurt, set out upon a sober and aged pony, which after some natural pangs
of shame he had hired of his landlord, to Mordaunt Court.

Mordaunt’s house was situated in the midst of a wild and extensive park,
surrounded with woods, and interspersed with trees of the stateliest
growth, now scattered into irregular groups, now marshalled into
sweeping avenues; while, ever and anon, Linden caught glimpses of
a rapid and brawling rivulet, which in many a slight but sounding
waterfall gave a music strange and spirit-like to the thick copses and
forest glades through which it went exulting on its way. The deer lay
half concealed by the fern among which they couched, turning their
stately crests towards the stranger, but not stirring from their rest;
while from the summit of beeches which would have shamed the pavilion
of Tityrus the rooks--those monks of the feathered people--were loud in
their confused but not displeasing confabulations.

As Linden approached the house, he was struck with the melancholy air
of desolation which spread over and around it: fragments of stone,
above which clomb the rank weed, insolently proclaiming the triumph of
Nature’s meanest offspring over the wrecks of art; a moat dried up; a
railing once of massive gilding, intended to fence a lofty terrace on
the right from the incursions of the deer, but which, shattered and
decayed, now seemed to ask with the satirist,--

  “To what end did our lavish ancestors
   Erect of old these stately piles of ours?”

--a chapel on the left, perfectly in ruins,--all appeared strikingly
to denote that time had outstripped fortune, and that the years, which
alike hallow and destroy, had broken the consequence, in deepening the
antiquity, of the House of Mordaunt.

The building itself agreed but too well with the tokens of decay around
it; most of the windows were shut up, and the shutters of dark oak,
richly gilt, contrasted forcibly with the shattered panes and mouldered
framing of the glass. It was a house of irregular architecture.
Originally built in the fifteenth century, it had received its last
improvement, with the most lavish expense, during the reign of Anne; and
it united the Gallic magnificence of the latter period with the strength
and grandeur of the former; it was in a great part overgrown with ivy,
and, where that insidious ornament had not reached, the signs of decay,
and even ruin, were fully visible. The sun itself, bright and cheering
as it shone over Nature, making the green sod glow like emeralds, and
the rivulet flash in its beam, like one of those streams of real light,
imagined by Swedenborg in his visions of heaven, and clothing tree and
fell, brake and hillock, with the lavish hues of infant summer,--the sun
itself only made more desolate, because more conspicuous, the venerable
fabric, which the youthful traveller frequently paused more accurately
to survey, and its laughing and sportive beams playing over chink and
crevice, seemed almost as insolent and untimeous as the mirth of the
young mocking the silent grief of some gray-headed and solitary mourner.

Clarence had now reached the porch, and the sound of the shrill bell he
touched rang with a strange note through the general stillness of the
place. A single servant appeared, and ushered Clarence through a screen
hall, hung round with relics of armour, and ornamented on the side
opposite the music gallery with a solitary picture of gigantic size, and
exhibiting the full length of the gaunt person and sable steed of that
Sir Piers de Mordaunt who had so signalized himself in the field in
which Henry of Richmond changed his coronet for a crown. Through this
hall Clarence was led to a small chamber clothed with uncouth and
tattered arras, in which, seemingly immersed in papers, he found the
owner of the domain.

“Your studies,” said Linden, after the salutations of the day, “seem to
harmonize with the venerable antiquity of your home;” and he pointed to
the crabbed characters and faded ink of the papers on the table.

“So they ought,” answered Mordaunt, with a faint smile; “for they are
called from their quiet archives in order to support my struggle for
that home. But I fear the struggle is in vain, and that the quibbles of
law will transfer into other hands a possession I am foolish enough to
value the more from my inability to maintain it.”

Something of this Clarence had before learned from the communicative
gossip of his landlady; and less desirous to satisfy his curiosity than
to lead the conversation from a topic which he felt must be so unwelcome
to Mordaunt, he expressed a wish to see the state apartments of the
house. With something of shame at the neglect they had necessarily
experienced, and something of pride at the splendour which no neglect
could efface, Mordaunt yielded to the request, and led the way up a
staircase of black oak, the walls and ceiling of which were covered with
frescoes of Italian art, to a suite of apartments in which time and dust
seemed the only tenants. Lingeringly did Clarence gaze upon the rich
velvet, the costly mirrors, the motley paintings of a hundred ancestors,
and the antique cabinets, containing, among the most hoarded relics of
the Mordaunt race, curiosities which the hereditary enthusiasm of a line
of cavaliers had treasured as the most sacred of heirlooms, and which,
even to the philosophical mind of Mordaunt, possessed a value he did not
seek too minutely to analyze. Here was the goblet from which the first
prince of Tudor had drunk after the field of Bosworth. Here the ring
with which the chivalrous Francis the First had rewarded a signal feat
of that famous Robert de Mordaunt, who, as a poor but adventurous
cadet of the house, had brought to the “first gentleman of France”
 the assistance of his sword. Here was the glove which Sir Walter had
received from the royal hand of Elizabeth, and worn in the lists upon
a crest which the lance of no antagonist in that knightly court could
abase. And here, more sacred than all, because connected with the memory
of misfortune, was a small box of silver which the last king of a fated
line had placed in the hands of the gray-headed descendant of that Sir
Walter after the battle of the Boyne, saying, “Keep this, Sir Everard
Mordaunt, for the sake of one who has purchased the luxury of gratitude
at the price of a throne!”

As Clarence glanced from these relics to the figure of Mordaunt, who
stood at a little distance leaning against the window, with arms folded
on his breast and with eyes abstractedly wandering over the noble woods
and extended park, which spread below, he could not but feel that if
birth had indeed the power of setting its seal upon the form, it was
never more conspicuous than in the broad front and lofty air of the last
descendant of the race by whose memorials he was surrounded. Touched by
the fallen fortunes of Mordaunt, and interested by the uncertainty which
the chances of law threw over his future fate, Clarence could not resist
exclaiming, with some warmth and abruptness,--

“And by what subterfuge or cavil does the present claimant of these
estates hope to dislodge their rightful possessor?”

“Why,” answered Mordaunt, “it is a long story in detail, but briefly
told in epitome. My father was a man whose habits greatly exceeded
his fortune, and a few months after his death, Mr. Vavasour, a distant
relation, produced a paper, by which it appeared that my father had,
for a certain sum of ready money, disposed of his estates to this Mr.
Vavasour, upon condition that they should not be claimed nor the treaty
divulged till after his death; the reason for this proviso seems to
have been the shame my father felt for his exchange, and his fear of the
censures of that world to which he was always devoted.”

“But how unjust to you!” said Clarence.

“Not so much so as it seems,” said Mordaunt, deprecatingly; “for I was
then but a sickly boy, and according to the physicians, and I sincerely
believe according also to my poor father’s belief, almost certain of a
premature death. In that case Vavasour would have been the nearest heir;
and this expectancy, by the by, joined to the mortgages on the property,
made the sum given ridiculously disproportioned to the value of the
estate. I must confess that the news came upon me like a thunderbolt.
I should have yielded up possession immediately, but was informed by my
lawyers that my father had no legal right to dispose of the property;
the discussion of that right forms the ground of the present lawsuit.
But,” continued Mordaunt, proudly, yet mournfully, “I am prepared for
the worst; if, indeed, I should call that the worst which can affect
neither intellect nor health nor character nor conscience.”

Clarence was silent, and Mordaunt after a brief pause once more resumed
his guidance. Their tour ended in a large library filled with books, and
this Mordaunt informed his guest was his chosen sitting-room.

An old carved table was covered with works which for the most part
possessed for the young mind of Clarence, more accustomed to imagine
than reflect, but a very feeble attraction; on looking over them, he,
however, found, half hid by a huge folio of Hobbes, and another of
Locke, a volume of Milton’s poems; this paved the way to a conversation
in which both had an equal interest, for both were enthusiastic in the
character and genius of that wonderful man, for whom “the divine and
solemn countenance of Freedom” was dearer than the light of day, and
whose solitary spell, accomplishing what the whole family of earth
once vainly began upon the plain of Shinar, has built of materials more
imperishable than “slime and brick” “a city and a tower whose summit has
reached to heaven.”

It was with mutual satisfaction that Mordaunt and his guest continued
their commune till the hour of dinner was announced to them by a bell,
which, formerly intended as an alarum, now served the peaceful purpose
of a more agreeable summons.

The same servant who had admitted Clarence ushered them through the
great hall into the dining-room, and was their solitary attendant during
their repast.

The temper of Mordaunt was essentially grave and earnest, and his
conversation almost invariably took the tone of his mind; this made
their conference turn upon less minute and commonplace topics than one
between such new acquaintances, especially of different ages, usually
does.

“You will positively go to London to-morrow, then?” said Mordaunt, as
the servant, removing the appurtenances of dinner, left them alone.

“Positively,” answered Clarence. “I go there to carve my own fortunes,
and, to say truth, I am impatient to begin.” Mordaunt looked earnestly
at the frank face of the speaker, and wondered that one so young, so
well-educated, and, from his air and manner, evidently of gentle blood,
should appear so utterly thrown upon his own resources.

“I wish you success,” said he, after a pause; “and it is a noble part
of the organization of this world that, by increasing those riches which
are beyond fortune, we do in general take the surest method of obtaining
those which are in its reach.”

Clarence looked inquiringly at Mordaunt, who, perceiving it, continued,
“I see that I should explain myself further. I will do so by using the
thoughts of a mind not the least beautiful and accomplished which this
country has produced. ‘Of all which belongs to us,’ said Bolingbroke,
‘the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others.
Whatever is best is safest; lies out of the reach of human power; can
neither be given nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work
of Nature, the world. Such is the mind of man, which contemplates
and admires the world whereof it makes the noblest part. These are
inseparably ours, and as long as we remain in one we shall enjoy the
other.’”

“Beautiful, indeed!” exclaimed Clarence, with the enthusiasm of a young
and pure heart, to which every loftier sentiment is always beautiful.

“And true as beautiful!” said Mordaunt. “Nor is this all, for the mind
can even dispense with that world ‘of which it forms a part’ if we can
create within it a world still more inaccessible to chance. But (and I
now return to and explain my former observation) the means by which we
can effect this peculiar world can be rendered equally subservient to
our advancement and prosperity in that which we share in common with
our race; for the riches which by the aid of wisdom we heap up in the
storehouses of the mind are, though not the only, the most customary
coin by which external prosperity is bought. So that the philosophy
which can alone give independence to ourselves becomes; under the name
of honesty, the best policy in commerce with our kind.”

In conversation of this nature, which the sincerity and lofty enthusiasm
of Mordaunt rendered interesting to Clarence, despite the distaste
to the serious so ordinary to youth, the hours passed on, till the
increasing evening warned Linden to depart.

“Adieu!” said he to Mordaunt. “I know not when we shall meet again,
but if we ever do, I will make it my boast, whether in prosperity or
misfortune, not to have forgotten the pleasure I have this day enjoyed!”

Returning his guest’s farewell with a warmth unusual to his manner,
Mordaunt followed him to the door and saw him depart.

Fate ordained that they should pursue in very different paths their
several destinies; nor did it afford them an opportunity of meeting
again, till years and events had severely tried the virtue of one and
materially altered the prospects of the other.

The next morning Clarence Linden was on his road to London.




CHAPTER VII.

     “Upon my word,” cries Jones, “thou art a very odd fellow,
     and I like thy humour extremely.”--FIELDING.

The rumbling and jolting vehicle which conveyed Clarence to the
metropolis stopped at the door of a tavern in Holborn. Linden was
ushered into a close coffee-room and presented with a bill of fare.
While he was deliberating between the respective merits of mutton chops
and beefsteaks, a man with a brown coat, brown breeches, and a brown
wig, walked into the room; he cast a curious glance at Clarence and then
turned to the waiter.

“A pair of slippers!”

“Yes, sir,” and the waiter disappeared.

“I suppose,” said the brown gentleman to Clarence, “I suppose, sir, you
are the gentleman just come to town?”

“You are right, sir,” said Clarence.

“Very well, very well indeed,” resumed the stranger, musingly. “I took
the liberty of looking at your boxes in the passage; I knew a lady, sir,
a relation of yours, I think.”

“Sir!” exclaimed Linden, colouring violently.

“At least I suppose, for her name was just the same as yours, only, at
least, one letter difference between them: yours is Linden I see, sir;
hers was Minden. Am I right in my conjecture that you are related to
her?”

“Sir,” answered Clarence, gravely, “notwithstanding the similarity of
our names, we are not related.”

“Very extraordinary,” replied the stranger.

“Very,” repeated Linden.

“I had the honour, sir,” said the brown gentleman, “to make Mrs. Minden
many presents of value, and I should have been very happy to have
obliged you in the same manner, had you been in any way connected with
that worthy gentlewoman.”

“You are very kind,” said Linden, “you are very kind; and since such
were your intentions, I believe I must have been connected with
Mrs. Minden. At all events, as you justly observe, there is only the
difference of a letter between our names, a discrepancy too slight, I am
sure, to alter your benevolent intentions.”

Here the waiter returned with the slippers.

The stranger slowly unbuttoned his gaiters. “Sir,” said he to Linden,
“we will renew our conversation presently.”

No sooner had the generous friend of Mrs. Minden deposited his feet in
their easy tenements than he quitted the room. “Pray,” said Linden
to the waiter, when he had ordered his simple repast, “who is that
gentleman in brown?”

“Mr. Brown,” replied the waiter.

“And who or what is Mr. Brown?” asked our hero.

Before the waiter could reply, Mr. Brown returned, with a large bandbox,
carefully enveloped in a blue handkerchief. “You come from ----, sir?”
 said Mr. Brown, quietly seating himself at the same table as Linden.

“No, sir, I do not.”

“From ----, then?”

“No, sir,--from W----.”

“W----?--ay--well. I knew a lady with a name very like W---- (the late
Lady Waddilove) extremely well. I made her some valuable presents: her
ladyship was very sensible of it.”

“I don’t doubt it, sir,” replied Clarence; “such instances of general
beneficence rarely occur!”

“I have some magnificent relics of her ladyship in this box,” returned
Mr. Brown.

“Really! then she was no less generous than yourself, I presume?”

“Yes, her ladyship was remarkably generous. About a week before she died
(the late Lady Waddilove was quite sensible of her danger), she called
me to her,--‘Brown,’ said she, ‘you are a good creature; I have had my
most valuable things from you. I am not ungrateful: I will leave you--my
maid! She is as clever as you are and as good.’ I took the hint, sir,
and married. It was an excellent bargain. My wife is a charming woman;
she entirely fitted up Mrs. Minden’s wardrobe and I furnished the house.
Mrs. Minden was greatly indebted to us.”

“Heaven help me!” thought Clarence, “the man is certainly mad.”

The waiter entered with the dinner; and Mr. Brown, who seemed to have a
delicate aversion to any conversation in the presence of the Ganymede
of the Holborn tavern, immediately ceased his communications; meanwhile,
Clarence took the opportunity to survey him more minutely than he had
hitherto done.

His new acquaintance was in age about forty-eight; in stature, rather
under the middle height; and thin, dried, withered, yet muscular withal,
like a man who, in stinting his stomach for the sake of economy, does
not the less enjoy the power of undergoing any fatigue or exertion that
an object of adequate importance may demand. We have said already that
he was attired, like twilight, “in a suit of sober brown;” and there
was a formality, a precision, and a cat-like sort of cleanliness in
his garb, which savoured strongly of the respectable coxcombry of the
counting-house. His face was lean, it is true, but not emaciated; and
his complexion, sallow and adust, harmonized well with the colours of
his clothing. An eye of the darkest hazel, sharp, shrewd, and flashing
at times, especially at the mention of the euphonious name of Lady
Waddilove,--a name frequently upon the lips of the inheritor of her
abigail,--with a fire that might be called brilliant, was of that
modest species which can seldom encounter the straightforward glance
of another; on the contrary, it seemed restlessly uneasy in any settled
place, and wandered from ceiling to floor, and corner to corner, with
an inquisitive though apparently careless glance, as if seeking for
something to admire or haply to appropriate; it also seemed to be the
especial care of Mr. Brown to veil, as far as he was able, the vivacity
of his looks beneath an expression of open and unheeding good-nature, an
expression strangely enough contrasting with the closeness and sagacity
which Nature had indelibly stamped upon features pointed, aquiline, and
impressed with a strong mixture of the Judaical physiognomy. The manner
and bearing of this gentleman partook of the same undecided character
as his countenance: they seemed to be struggling between civility and
importance; a real eagerness to make the acquaintance of the person
he addressed, and an assumed recklessness of the advantages which that
acquaintance could bestow;--it was like the behaviour of a man who is
desirous of having the best possible motives imputed to him, but is
fearful lest that desire should not be utterly fulfilled. At the first
glance you would have pledged yourself for his respectability; at the
second, you would have half suspected him to be a rogue; and, after you
had been half an hour in his company, you would confess yourself in the
obscurest doubt which was the better guess, the first or the last.

“Waiter!” said Mr. Brown, looking enviously at the viands upon which
Linden, having satisfied his curiosity, was now with all the appetite of
youth regaling himself. “Waiter!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Bring me a sandwich--and--and, waiter, see that I have plenty
of--plenty of--”

“What, sir?”

“Plenty of mustard, waiter.”

“Mustard” (and here Mr. Brown addressed himself to Clarence) “is a very
wonderful assistance to the digestion. By the by, sir, if you want any
curiously fine mustard, I can procure you some pots quite capital,--a
great favour, though,--they were smuggled from France, especially for
the use of the late Lady Waddilove.”

“Thank you,” said Linden, dryly; “I shall be very happy to accept
anything you may wish to offer me.”

Mr. Brown took a pocket-book from his pouch. “Six pots of mustard,
sir,--shall I say six?”

“As many as you please,” replied Clarence; and Mr. Brown wrote down “Six
pots of French mustard.”

“You are a very young gentleman, sir,” said Mr. Brown, “probably
intended for some profession: I don’t mean to be impertinent, but if I
can be of any assistance--”

“You can, sir,” replied Linden, “and immediately--have the kindness to
ring the bell.”

Mr. Brown, with a grave smile, did as he was desired; the waiter
re-entered, and, receiving a whispered order from Clarence, again
disappeared.

“What profession did you say, sir?” renewed Mr. Brown, artfully.

“None!” replied Linden.

“Oh, very well,--very well indeed. Then as an idle, independent
gentleman, you will of course be a bit of a beau; want some shirts,
possibly; fine cravats, too; gentlemen wear a particular pattern now;
gloves, gold, or shall I say gilt chain, watch and seals, a ring or two,
and a snuff-box?”

“Sir, you are vastly obliging,” said Clarence, in undisguised surprise.

“Not at all, I would do anything for a relation of Mrs. Minden.”

The waiter re-entered; “Sir,” said he to Linden, “your room is quite
ready.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Clarence, rising. “Mr. Brown, I have the
honour of wishing you a good evening.”

“Stay, sir--stay; you have not looked into these things belonging to the
late Lady Waddilove.”

“Another time,” said Clarence, hastily.

“To-morrow, at ten o’clock,” muttered Mr. Brown.

“I am exceedingly glad I have got rid of that fellow,” said Linden to
himself, as he stretched his limbs in his easy-chair, and drank off
the last glass of his pint of port. “If I have not already seen, I have
already guessed, enough of the world, to know that you are to look to
your pockets when a man offers you a present; they who ‘give,’ also
‘take away.’ So here I am in London, with an order for 1000 pounds in my
purse, the wisdom of Dr. Latinas in my head, and the health of eighteen
in my veins; will it not be my own fault if I do not both enjoy and make
myself--”

And then, yielding to meditations of future success, partaking strongly
of the inexperienced and sanguine temperament of the soliloquist,
Clarence passed the hours till his pillow summoned him to dreams no less
ardent and perhaps no less unreal.




CHAPTER VIII.

     “Oh, how I long to be employed!”--Every Man in his Humour.

Clarence was sitting the next morning over the very unsatisfactory
breakfast which tea made out of broomsticks, and cream out of chalk
(adulteration thrived even in 17--) afforded, when the waiter threw open
the door and announced Mr. Brown.

“Just in time, sir, you perceive,” said Mr. Brown; “I am punctuality
itself: exactly a quarter of a minute to ten. I have brought you the
pots of French mustard, and I have some very valuable articles which you
must want, besides.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Linden, not well knowing what to say; and Mr.
Brown, untying a silk handkerchief, produced three shirts, two pots
of pomatum, a tobacco canister with a German pipe, four pair of silk
stockings, two gold seals, three rings, and a stuffed parrot!

“Beautiful articles these, sir,” said Mr. Brown, with a snuffle “of
inward sweetness long drawn out,” and expressive of great admiration of
his offered treasures; “beautiful articles, sir, ar’n’t they?”

“Very, the parrot in particular,” said Clarence.

“Yes, sir,” returned Mr. Brown, “the parrot is indeed quite a jewel; it
belonged to the late Lady Waddilove; I offer it to you with considerable
regret, for--”

“Oh!” interrupted Clarence, “pray do not rob yourself of such a jewel;
it really is of no use to me.”

“I know that, sir,--I know that,” replied Mr. Brown; “but it will be of
use to your friends; it will be inestimable to any old aunt, sir, any
maiden lady living at Hackney, any curious elderly gentleman fond of a
knack-knack. I knew you would know some one to send it to as a present,
even though you should not want it yourself.”

“Bless me!” thought Linden, “was there ever such generosity? Not content
with providing for my wants, he extends his liberality even to any
possible relations I may possess!”

Mr. Brown now re-tied “the beautiful articles” in his handkerchief.
“Shall I leave them, sir?” said he.

“Why, really,” said Clarence, “I thought yesterday that you were in
jest; but you must be aware that I cannot accept presents from any
gentleman so much,--so much a stranger to me as you are.”

“No, sir, I am aware of that,” replied Mr. Brown; “and in order to
remove the unpleasantness of such a feeling, sir, on your part,--merely
in order to do that, I assure you with no other view, sir, in the
world,--I have just noted down the articles on this piece of paper; but
as you will perceive, at a price so low as still to make them actually
presents in everything but the name. Oh, sir, I perfectly understand
your delicacy, and would not for the world violate it.”

So saying, Mr. Brown put a paper into Linden’s hands, the substance
of which a very little more experience of the world would have enabled
Clarence to foresee; it ran thus:--

  CLARENCE LINDEN, ESQ., DR.
                     TO Mr. MORRIS BROWN.
                                l. s. d.
  To Six Pots of French Mustard.........  1 4 0
  To Three Superfine Holland Shirts, with Cambric Bosoms,
   Complete................ 4 1 0
  To Two Pots of Superior French Pomatum......  0 10 0
  To a Tobacco Canister of enamelled Tin, with a finely
   Executed Head of the Pretender; slight flaw in the same. 0 12 6
  To a German Pipe, second hand, as good as new, belonging
   to the late Lady Waddilove.......... 1 18 0
  To Four Pair of Black Silk Hose, ditto, belonging to her
   Ladyship’s Husband............. 2 8 0
  To Two Superfine Embossed Gold Watch Seals, with a
   Classical Motto and Device to each, namely, Mouse Trap,
   and “Prenez Garde,” to one, and “Who the devil can this
   be from?” [One would not have thought these ingenious
   devices had been of so ancient a date as the year 17--.]
   to the other............... 1 1 0
  To a remarkably fine Antique Ring, having the head of a
   Monkey................. 0 16 6
  A ditto, with blue stones........... 0 12 6
  A ditto, with green ditto........... 0 12 6
  A Stuffed Green Parrot, a remarkable favourite of the late
   Lady W................. 2 2 0
                               --------
   Sum Total...............  15 18 0
   Deduction for Ready Money..........  0 13 6
                               --------
                               15 4 6
   Mr. Brown’s Profits for Brokerage........ 1 10 0
                               --------
   Sum Total............... 16 14 6

  Received of Clarence Linden, Esq., this  day of  17--.

It would have been no unamusing study to watch the expression of
Clarence’s face as it lengthened over each article until he had reached
the final conclusion. He then carefully folded up the paper, restored it
to Mr. Brown, with a low bow, and said, “Excuse me, sir, I will not take
advantage of your generosity; keep your parrot and other treasures for
some more worthy person. I cannot accept of what you are pleased to term
your very valuable presents!”

“Oh, very well, very well,” said Mr. Brown, pocketing the paper, and
seeming perfectly unconcerned at the termination of his proposals;
“perhaps I can serve you in some other way?”

“In none, I thank you,” replied Linden.

“Just consider, sir!--you will want lodgings; I can find them for you
cheaper than you can yourself; or perhaps you would prefer going into a
nice, quiet, genteel family where you can have both board and lodging,
and be treated in every way as the pet child of the master?”

A thought crossed Linden’s mind. He was going to stay in town some time;
he was ignorant of its ways; he had neither friends nor relations, at
least none whom he could visit and consult; moreover, hotels, he
knew, were expensive; lodgings, though cheaper, might, if tolerably
comfortable, greatly exceed the sum prudence would allow him to expend
would not this plan proposed by Mr. Brown, of going into a “nice quiet
genteel family,” he the most advisable one he could adopt? The generous
benefactor of the late and ever-to-be-remembered Lady Waddilove
perceived his advantage, and making the most of Clarence’s hesitation,
continued,--

“I know of a charming little abode, sir, situated in the suburbs
of London, quite rus in urbe, as the scholars say; you can have a
delightful little back parlour, looking out upon the garden, and all to
yourself, I dare say.”

“And pray, Mr. Brown,” interrupted Linden, “what price do you think
would be demanded for such enviable accommodation? If you offer me them
as ‘a present,’ I shall have nothing to say to them.”

“Oh, sir,” answered Mr. Brown, “the price will be a trifle,--a mere
trifle; but I will inquire, and let you know the exact sum in the course
of the day: all they want is a respectable gentlemanlike lodger; and I
am sure so near a relation of Mrs. Minden will upon my recommendation
be received with avidity. Then you won’t have any of these valuable
articles, sir? You’ll repent it, sir; take my word for it--hem!

“Since,” replied Clarence, dryly, “your word appears of so much more
value than your articles, pardon me, if I prefer taking the former
instead of the latter.”

Mr. Brown forced a smile,--“Well, sir, very well, very well indeed. You
will not go out before two o’clock? and at that time I shall call upon
you respecting the commission you have favoured me with.”

“I will await you,” said Clarence; and he bowed Mr. Brown out of the
room.

“Now, really,” said Linden to himself, as he paced the narrow limits of
his apartment, “I do not see what better plan I can pursue; but let me
well consider what is my ultimate object. A high step in the world’s
ladder! how is this to be obtained? First, by the regular method
of professions; but what profession should I adopt? The Church is
incompatible with my object, the army and navy with my means. Next come
the irregular methods of adventure and enterprise, such as marriage with
a fortune,”--here he paused and looked at the glass,--“the speculation
of a political pamphlet, or an ode to the minister; attendance on some
dying miser of my own name, without a relation in the world; or, in
short, any other mode of making money that may decently offer itself.
Now, situated as I am, without a friend in this great city, I might as
well purchase my experience at as cheap a rate and in as brief a time
as possible, nor do I see any plan of doing so more promising than that
proposed by Mr. Brown.”

These and such like reflections, joined to the inspiriting pages of the
“Newgate Calendar” and “The Covent Garden Magazine,” two works which
Clarence dragged from their concealment under a black tea-tray, afforded
him ample occupation till the hour of two, punctual to which time Mr.
Morris Brown returned.

“Well, sir,” said Clarence, “what is your report?”

The friend of the late Lady W. wiped his brow and gave three long sighs
before he replied: “A long walk, sir--a very long walk I have had; but I
have succeeded. No thanks, sir,--no thanks,--the lady, a most charming,
delightful, amiable woman, will receive you with pleasure; you will have
the use of a back parlour (as I said) all the morning, and a beautiful
little bedroom entirely to yourself; think of that, sir. You will
have an egg for breakfast, and you will dine with the family at three
o’clock: quite fashionable hours you see, sir.”

“And the terms?” said Linden, impatiently.

“Why, sir,” replied Mr. Brown, “the lady was too genteel to talk to
me about them; you had better walk with me to her house and see if you
cannot yourself agree with her.”

“I will,” said Clarence. “Will you wait here till I have dressed?”

Mr. Brown bowed his assent.

“I might as well,” thought Clarence, as he ascended to his bedroom,
“inquire into the character of this gentleman to whose good offices I
am so rashly intrusting myself.” He rang his bell; the chambermaid
appeared, and was dismissed for the waiter. The character was soon
asked, and soon given. For our reader’s sake we will somewhat enlarge
upon it.

Mr. Morris Brown originally came into the world with the simple
appellation of Moses, a name which his father--honest man--had, as
the Minories can still testify, honourably borne before him. Scarcely,
however, had the little Moses attained the age of five, when his father,
for causes best known to himself, became a Christian. Somehow or other
there is a most potent connection between the purse and the conscience,
and accordingly the blessings of Heaven descended in golden showers upon
the proselyte. “I shall die worth a plum,” said Moses the elder (who had
taken unto himself the Christian cognomen of Brown); “I shall die worth
a plum,” repeated he, as he went one fine morning to speculate at the
Exchange. A change of news, sharp and unexpected as a change of wind,
lowered the stocks and blighted the plum. Mr. Brown was in the “Gazette”
 that week, and his wife in weeds for him the next. He left behind him,
besides the said wife, several debts and his son Moses. Beggared by the
former, our widow took a small shop in Wardour Street to support
the latter. Patient, but enterprising--cautious of risking pounds,
indefatigable in raising pence--the little Moses inherited the
propensities of his Hebrew ancestors; and though not so capable as
his immediate progenitor of making a fortune, he was at least far less
likely to lose one. In spite, however, of all the industry both of
mother and son, the gains of the shop were but scanty; to increase
them capital was required, and all Mr. Moses Brown’s capital lay in his
brain. “It is a bad foundation,” said the mother, with a sigh. “Not at
all!” said the son, and leaving the shop, he turned broker. Now a broker
is a man who makes an income out of other people’s funds,--a gleaner of
stray extravagances; and by doing the public the honour of living upon
them may fairly be termed a little sort of state minister in his way.
What with haunting sales, hawking china, selling the curiosities of one
old lady and purchasing the same for another, Mr. Brown managed to enjoy
a very comfortable existence. Great pains and small gains will at last
invert their antithesis, and make little trouble and great profit; so
that by the time Mr. Brown had attained his fortieth year, the petty
shop had become a large warehouse; and, if the worthy Moses, now
christianized into Morris, was not so sanguine as his father in the
gathering of plums, he had been at least as fortunate in the collecting
of windfalls. To say truth, the abigail of the defunct Lady Waddilove
had been no unprofitable helpmate to our broker. As ingenious as
benevolent, she was the owner of certain rooms of great resort in the
neighbourhood of St. James’s,--rooms where caps and appointments were
made better than anywhere else, and where credit was given and character
lost upon terms equally advantageous to the accommodating Mrs. Brown.

Meanwhile her husband, continuing through liking what he had begun
through necessity, slackened not his industry in augmenting his fortune;
on the contrary, small profits were but a keener incentive to large
ones,--as the glutton only sharpened by luncheon his appetite for
dinner. Still was Mr. Brown the very Alcibiades of brokers, the
universal genius, suiting every man to his humour. Business of whatever
description, from the purchase of a borough to that of a brooch, was
alike the object of Mr. Brown’s most zealous pursuit: taverns, where
country cousins put up; rustic habitations, where ancient maidens
resided; auction or barter; city or hamlet,--all were the same to that
enterprising spirit, which made out of every acquaintance--a commission!
Sagacious and acute, Mr. Brown perceived the value of eccentricity in
covering design, and found by experience that whatever can be laughed at
as odd will be gravely considered as harmless. Several of the broker’s
peculiarities were, therefore, more artificial than natural; and
many were the sly bargains which he smuggled into effect under the
comfortable cloak of singularity. No wonder, then, that the crafty
Morris grew gradually in repute as a person of infinite utility and
excellent qualifications; or that the penetrating friends of his
deceased sire bowed to the thriving itinerant, with a respect which they
denied to many in loftier professions and more general esteem.




CHAPTER IX.

     Trust me you have an exceeding fine lodging here,--very neat
     and private.--BEN JONSON.

It was a tolerably long walk to the abode of which the worthy broker
spoke in such high terms of commendation. At length, at the suburbs
towards Paddington, Mr. Brown stopped at a very small house; it stood
rather retired from its surrounding neighbours, which were of a loftier
and more pretending aspect than itself, and, in its awkward shape
and pitiful bashfulness, looked exceedingly like a school-boy finding
himself for the first time in a grown up party, and shrinking with all
possible expedition into the obscurest corner he can discover. Passing
through a sort of garden, in which a spot of grass lay in the embraces
of a stripe of gravel, Mr. Brown knocked upon a very bright knocker at a
very new door. The latter was opened, and a foot-boy appeared.

“Is Mrs. Copperas within?” asked the broker.

“Yees, sir,” said the boy.

“Show this gentleman and myself up stairs,” resumed Brown.

“Yees,” reiterated the lackey.

Up a singularly narrow staircase, into a singularly diminutive
drawing-room, Clarence and his guide were ushered. There, seated on a
little chair by a little work-table, with one foot on a little stool and
one hand on a little book, was a little--very little lady.

“This is the young gentleman,” said Mr. Brown; and Clarence bowed low,
in token of the introduction.

The lady returned the salutation with an affected bend, and said, in
a mincing and grotesquely subdued tone, “You are desirous, sir, of
entering into the bosom of my family. We possess accommodations of a
most elegant description; accustomed to the genteelest circles, enjoying
the pure breezes of the Highgate hills, and presenting to any guest we
may receive the attractions of a home rather than of a lodging, you will
find our retreat no less eligible than unique. You are, I presume, sir,
in some profession, some city avocation--or--or trade?”

“I have the misfortune,” said he, smiling, “to belong to no profession.”

The lady looked hard at the speaker, and then at the broker. With
certain people to belong to no profession is to be of no respectability.

“The most unexceptionable references will be given--and required,”
 resumed Mrs. Copperas.

“Certainly,” said Mr. Brown, “certainly, the gentleman is a relation of
Mrs. Minden, a very old customer of mine.”

“In that case,” said Mrs. Copperas, “the affair is settled;” and,
rising, she rang the bell, and ordered the foot-boy, whom she addressed
by the grandiloquent name of “De Warens” to show the gentleman the
apartments. While Clarence was occupied in surveying the luxuries of
a box at the top of the house, called a bed-chamber, which seemed just
large and just hot enough for a chrysalis, and a corresponding box
below, termed the back parlour, which would certainly not have been
large enough for the said chrysalis when turned into a butterfly,
Mr. Morris Brown, after duly, expatiating on the merits of Clarence,
proceeded to speak of the terms; these were soon settled, for Clarence
was yielding and the lady not above three times as extortionate as she
ought to have been.

Before Linden left the house, the bargain was concluded. That night
his trunks were removed to his new abode, and having with incredible
difficulty been squeezed into the bedroom, Clarence surveyed them
with the same astonishment with which the virtuoso beheld the flies in
amber,--

  “Not that the things were either rich or rare,
   He wondered how the devil they got there!”




CHAPTER X.

  Such scenes had tempered with a pensive grace
  The maiden lustre of that faultless face;
  Had hung a sad and dreamlike spell upon
  The gliding music of her silver tone,
  And shaded the soft soul which loved to lie
  In the deep pathos of that volumed eye.--O’Neill; or, The Rebel.

     The love thus kindled between them was of no common or
     calculating nature: it was vigorous and delicious, and at
     times so suddenly intense as to appear to their young hearts
     for a moment or so with almost an awful character.--
     Inesilla.

The reader will figure to himself a small chamber, in a remote wing of
a large and noble mansion. The walls were covered with sketches whose
extreme delicacy of outline and colouring betrayed the sex of the
artist; a few shelves filled with books supported vases of flowers. A
harp stood neglected at the farther end of the room, and just above
hung the slender prison of one of those golden wanderers from the Canary
Isles which bear to our colder land some of the gentlest music of their
skies and zephyrs. The window, reaching to the ground, was open,
and looked, through the clusters of jessamine and honeysuckle which
surrounded the low veranda, beyond upon thick and frequent copses of
blossoming shrubs, redolent of spring and sparkling in the sunny tears
of a May shower which had only just wept itself away. Embosomed in these
little groves lay plots of flowers, girdled with turf as green as ever
wooed the nightly dances of the fairies; and afar off, through one
artful opening, the eye caught the glittering wanderings of water, on
whose light and smiles the universal happiness of the young year seemed
reflected.

But in that chamber, heedless of all around, and cold to the joy with
which everything else, equally youthful, beautiful, and innocent, seemed
breathing and inspired, sat a very young and lovely female. Her cheek
leaned upon her hand, and large tears flowed fast and burningly over the
small and delicate fingers. The comb that had confined her tresses lay
at her feet, and the high dress which concealed her swelling breast had
been loosened, to give vent to the suffocating and indignant throbbings
which had rebelled against its cincture; all appeared to announce that
bitterness of grief when the mind, as it were, wreaks its scorn upon
the body in its contempt for external seemings, and to proclaim that the
present more subdued and softened sorrow had only succeeded to a burst
far less quiet and uncontrolled. Woe to those who eat the bread of
dependence their tears are wrung from the inmost sources of the heart.

Isabel St. Leger was the only child of a captain in the army who died
in her infancy; her mother had survived him but a few months; and to the
reluctant care and cold affections of a distant and wealthy relation
of the same name the warm-hearted and penniless orphan was consigned.
Major-General Cornelius St. Leger, whose riches had been purchased in
India at the price of his constitution, was of a temper as hot as his
curries, and he wreaked it the more unsparingly on his ward, because the
superior ill-temper of his maiden sister had prevented his giving
vent to it upon her. That sister, Miss Diana St. Leger, was a meagre
gentlewoman of about six feet high, with a loud voice and commanding
aspect. Long in awe of her brother, she rejoiced at heart to find some
one whom she had such right and reason to make in awe of herself; and
from the age of four to that of seventeen Isabel suffered every insult
and every degradation which could be inflicted upon her by the tyranny
of her two protectors. Her spirit, however, was far from being broken
by the rude shocks it received; on the contrary, her mind, gentleness
itself to the kind, rose indignantly against the unjust. It was true
that the sense of wrong did not break forth audibly; for, though
susceptible, Isabel was meek, and her pride was concealed by the outward
softness and feminacy of her temper: but she stole away from those who
had wounded her heart or trampled upon its feelings, and nourished with
secret but passionate tears the memory of the harshness or injustice she
had endured. Yet she was not vindictive: her resentment was a noble
not a debasing feeling; once, when she was yet a child, Miss Diana was
attacked with a fever of the most malignant and infectious kind; her
brother loved himself far too well to risk his safety by attending her;
the servants were too happy to wreak their hatred under the pretence
of obeying their fears; they consequently followed the example of their
master; and Miss Diana St. Leger might have gone down to her ancestors
“unwept, unhonoured, and unsung,” if Isabel had not volunteered and
enforced her attendance. Hour after hour her fairy form flitted around
the sick-chamber; or sat mute and breathless by the feverish bed; she
had neither fear for contagion nor bitterness for past oppression;
everything vanished beneath the one hope of serving, the one
gratification of feeling herself, in the wide waste of creation, not
utterly without use, as she had been hitherto without friends.

Miss St. Leger recovered. “For your recovery, in the first place,” said
the doctor, “you will thank Heaven; in the second, you will thank your
young relation;” and for several days the convalescent did overwhelm the
happy Isabel with her praises and caresses. But this change did not last
long: the chaste Diana had been too spoiled by the prosperity of many
years for the sickness of a single month to effect much good in her
disposition. Her old habits were soon resumed; and though it is probable
that her heart was in reality softened towards the poor Isabel, that
softening by no means extended to her temper. In truth, the brother and
sister were not without affection for one so beautiful and good, but
they had been torturing slaves all their lives, and their affection was,
and could be, but that of a taskmaster or a planter.

But Isabel was the only relation who ever appeared within their walls;
and among the guests with whom the luxurious mansion was crowded, she
passed no less for the heiress than the dependant; to her, therefore,
was offered the homage of many lips and hearts, and if her pride was
perpetually galled and her feelings insulted in private, her vanity (had
that equalled her pride and her feelings in its susceptibility) would
in no slight measure have recompensed her in public. Unhappily, however,
her vanity was the least prominent quality she possessed; and the
compliments of mercenary adulation were not more rejected by her heart
than despised by her understanding.

Yet did she bear within her a deep fund of buried tenderness, and a
mine of girlish and enthusiastic romance,--dangerous gifts to one so
situated, which, while they gave to her secret moments of solitude a
powerful but vague attraction, probably only prepared for her future
years the snare which might betray them into error or the delusion which
would colour them with regret.

Among those whom the ostentatious hospitality of General St. Leger
attracted to his house was one of very different character and
pretensions to the rest. Formed to be unpopular with the generality of
men, the very qualities that made him so were those which principally
fascinate the higher description of women of ancient birth, which
rendered still more displeasing the pride and coldness of his mien; of
talents peculiarly framed to attract interest as well as esteem; of
a deep and somewhat morbid melancholy, which, while it turned from
ordinary ties, inclined yearningly towards passionate affections; of
a temper where romance was only concealed from the many to become more
seductive to the few; unsocial, but benevolent; disliked, but respected;
of the austerest demeanour, but of passions the most fervid, though
the most carefully concealed,--this man united within himself all that
repels the common mass of his species, and all that irresistibly wins
and fascinates the rare and romantic few. To these qualities were added
a carriage and bearing of that high and commanding order which men
mistake for arrogance and pretension, and women overrate in proportion
to its contrast to their own. Something of mystery there was in the
commencement of the deep and eventful love which took place between this
person and Isabel, which I have never been able to learn whatever it
was, it seemed to expedite and heighten the ordinary progress of love;
and when in the dim twilight, beneath the first melancholy smile of
the earliest star, their hearts opened audibly to each other, that
confession had been made silently long since and registered in the
inmost recesses of the soul.

But their passion, which began in prosperity, was soon darkened. Whether
he took offence at the haughtiness of Isabel’s lover, or whether
he desired to retain about him an object which he could torment and
tyrannize over, no sooner did the General discover the attachment of his
young relation than he peremptorily forbade its indulgence, and assumed
so insolent and overbearing an air towards the lover that the latter
felt he could no longer repeat his visits to or even continue his
acquaintance with the nabob.

To add to these adverse circumstances, a relation of the lover, from
whom his expectations had been large, was so enraged, not only at the
insult his cousin had received, but at the very idea of his forming an
alliance with one in so dependent a situation and connected with
such new blood as Isabel St. Leger, that, with that arrogance which
relations, however distant, think themselves authorized to assume, he
enjoined his cousin, upon pain of forfeiture of favour and fortune, to
renounce all idea of so disparaging an alliance. The one thus addressed
was not of a temper patiently to submit to such threats: he answered
them with disdain; and the breach, so dangerous to his pecuniary
interest, was already begun.

So far had the history of our lover proceeded at the time in which we
have introduced Isabel to the reader, and described to him the chamber
to which, in all her troubles and humiliations, she was accustomed to
fly, as to a sad but still unviolated sanctuary of retreat.

The quiet of this asylum was first broken by a slight rustling among
the leaves; but Isabel’s back was turned towards the window, and in
the engrossment of her feelings she heard it not. The thick copse that
darkened the left side of the veranda was pierced, and a man passed
within the covered space, and stood still and silent before the window,
intently gazing upon the figure, which (though the face was turned
from him) betrayed in its proportions that beauty which in his eyes had
neither an equal nor a fault.

The figure of the stranger, though not very tall, was above the ordinary
height, and gracefully rather than robustly formed. He was dressed in
the darkest colours and the simplest fashion, which rendered yet more
striking the nobleness of his mien, as well as the clear and almost
delicate paleness of his complexion; his features were finely and
accurately formed; and had not ill health, long travel, or severe
thought deepened too much the lines of the countenance, and sharpened
its contour, the classic perfection of those features would have
rendered him undeniably and even eminently handsome. As it was, the
paleness and the somewhat worn character of his face, joined to an
expression at first glance rather haughty and repellent, made him lose
in physical what he certainly gained in intellectual beauty. His eyes
were large, deep, and melancholy, and had the hat which now hung over
his brow been removed, it would have displayed a forehead of remarkable
boldness and power.

Altogether, the face was cast in a rare and intellectual mould, and,
if wanting in those more luxuriant attractions common to the age of the
stranger, who could scarcely have attained his twenty-sixth year, it
betokened, at least, that predominance of mind over body which in some
eyes is the most requisite characteristic of masculine beauty.

With a soft and noiseless step, the stranger moved from his station
without the window, and, entering the room, stole towards the spot on
which Isabel was sitting. He leaned over her chair, and his eye rested
upon his own picture, and a letter in his own writing, over which the
tears of the young orphan flowed fast.

A moment more of agitated happiness for one, of unconscious and
continued sadness for the other,--

  “‘T is past, her lover’s at her feet.”

And what indeed “was to them the world beside, with all its changes
of time and tide”? Joy, hope, all blissful and bright sensations, lay
mingled, like meeting waters, in one sunny stream of heartfelt and
unfathomable enjoyment; but this passed away, and the remembrance of
bitterness and evil succeeded.

“Oh, Algernon!” said Isabel, in a low voice, “is this your promise?”

“Believe me,” said Mordaunt, for it was indeed he, “I have struggled
long with my feelings, but in vain; and for both our sakes, I rejoice at
the conquest they obtained. I listened only to a deceitful delusion when
I imagined I was obeying the dictates of reason. Ah, dearest, why should
we part for the sake of dubious and distant evils, when the misery of
absence is the most certain, the most unceasing evil we can endure?”

“For your sake, and therefore for mine!” interrupted Isabel, struggling
with her tears. “I am a beggar and an outcast. You must not link your
fate with mine. I could bear, Heaven knows how willingly, poverty and
all its evils for you and with you; but I cannot bring them upon you.”

“Nor will you,” said Mordaunt, passionately, as he covered the hand he
held with his burning kisses. “Have I not enough for both of us? It is
my love, not poverty, that I beseech you to share.”

“No! Algernon, you cannot deceive me; your own estate will be torn from
you by the law: if you marry me, your cousin will not assist you; I, you
know too well, can command nothing; and I shall see you, for whom in
my fond and bright dreams I have presaged everything great and exalted,
buried in an obscurity from which your talents can never rise, and
suffering the pangs of poverty and dependence and humiliation like
my own; and--and--I--should be the wretch who caused you all. Never,
Algernon, never!--I love you too--too well!”

But the effort which wrung forth the determination of the tone in which
these words were uttered was too violent to endure; and, as the full
desolation of her despair crowded fast and dark upon the orphan’s mind,
she sank back upon her chair in very sickness of soul, nor heeded, in
her unconscious misery, that her hand was yet clasped by her lover and
that her head drooped upon his bosom.

“Isabel,” he said, in a low, sweet tone, which to her ear seemed the
concentration of all earthly music,--“Isabel, look up,--my own, my
beloved,--look up and hear me. Perhaps you say truly when you tell me
that the possessions of my house shall melt away from me, and that my
relation will not offer to me the precarious bounty which, even if he
did offer, I would reject; but, dearest, are there not a thousand
paths open to me,--the law, the state, the army?--you are silent,
Isabel,--speak!”

Isabel did not reply, but the soft eyes which rested upon his told, in
their despondency, how little her reason was satisfied by the arguments
he urged.

“Besides,” he continued, “we know not yet whether the law may not decide
in my favour: at all events years may pass before the judgment is given;
those years make the prime and verdure of our lives; let us not waste
them in mourning over blighted hopes and severed hearts; let us snatch
what happiness is yet in our power, nor anticipate, while the heavens
are still bright above us, the burden of the thunder or the cloud.”

Isabel was one of the least selfish and most devoted of human beings,
yet she must be forgiven if at that moment her resolution faltered, and
the overpowering thought of being in reality his forever flashed upon
her mind. It passed from her the moment it was formed; and, rising from
a situation in which the touch of that dear hand and the breath of
those wooing lips endangered the virtue and weakened the strength of her
resolves, she withdrew herself from his grasp, and while she averted her
eyes, which dared not encounter his, she said in a low but firm voice,--

“It is in vain, Algernon; it is in vain. I can be to you nothing but a
blight or burden, nothing but a source of privation and anguish. Think
you that I will be this?--no, I will not darken your fair hopes and
impede your reasonable ambition. Go (and here her voice faltered for a
moment, but soon recovered its tone), go, Algernon, dear Algernon; and
if my foolish heart will not ask you to think of me no more, I can at
least implore you to think of me only as one who would die rather than
cost you a moment of that poverty and debasement, the bitterness of
which she has felt herself, and who for that very reason tears herself
away from you forever.”

“Stay, Isabel, stay!” cried Mordaunt, as he caught hold of her robe,
“give me but one word more, and you shall leave me. Say that if I can
create for myself a new source of independence; if I can carve out a
road where the ambition you erroneously impute to me can be gratified,
as well as the more moderate wishes our station has made natural to us
to form,--say, that if I do this, I may permit myself to hope,--say,
that when I have done it, I may claim you as my own!”

Isabel paused, and turned once more her face towards his own. Her lips
moved, and though the words died within her heart, yet Mordaunt read
well their import in the blushing cheek and the heaving bosom, and the
lips which one ray of hope and comfort was sufficient to kindle into
smiles. He gazed, and all obstacles, all difficulties, disappeared; the
gulf of time seemed passed, and he felt as if already he had earned and
won his reward.

He approached her yet nearer; one kiss on those lips, one pressure
of that thrilling hand, one long, last embrace of that shrinking and
trembling form,--and then, as the door closed upon his view, he felt
that the sunshine of Nature had passed away, and that in the midst of
the laughing and peopled earth he stood in darkness and alone.




CHAPTER XI.

 He who would know mankind must be at home with all men.
                     STEPHEN MONTAGUE.

We left Clarence safely deposited in his little lodgings. Whether
from the heat of his apartment or the restlessness a migration of beds
produces in certain constitutions, his slumbers on the first night of
his arrival were disturbed and brief. He rose early and descended to the
parlour; Mr. de Warens, the nobly appellatived foot-boy, was laying
the breakfast-cloth. From three painted shelves which constituted the
library of “Copperas Bower,” as its owners gracefully called their
habitation, Clarence took down a book very prettily bound; it was “Poems
by a Nobleman.” No sooner had he read two pages than he did exactly what
the reader would have done, and restored the volume respectfully to its
place. He then drew his chair towards the window, and wistfully eyed
sundry ancient nursery maids, who were leading their infant charges to
the “fresh fields and pastures new” of what is now the Regent’s Park.

In about an hour Mrs. Copperas descended, and mutual compliments were
exchanged; to her succeeded Mr. Copperas, who was well scolded for his
laziness: and to them, Master Adolphus Copperas, who was also chidingly
termed a naughty darling for the same offence. Now then Mrs. Copperas
prepared the tea, which she did in the approved method adopted by all
ladies to whom economy is dearer than renown, namely, the least possible
quantity of the soi-disant Chinese plant was first sprinkled by the
least possible quantity of hot water; after this mixture had become as
black and as bitter as it could possibly be without any adjunct from the
apothecary’s skill, it was suddenly drenched with a copious diffusion,
and as suddenly poured forth--weak, washy, and abominable,--into four
cups, severally appertaining unto the four partakers of the matutinal
nectar.

Then the conversation began to flow. Mrs. Copperas was a fine lady, and
a sentimentalist,--very observant of the little niceties of phrase and
manner. Mr. Copperas was a stock-jobber and a wit,--loved a good hit
in each capacity; was very round, very short, and very much like a John
Dory; and saw in the features and mind of the little Copperas the exact
representative of himself.

“Adolphus, my love,” said Mrs. Copperas, “mind what I told you, and sit
upright. Mr. Linden, will you allow me to cut you a leetle piece of this
roll?”

“Thank you,” said Clarence, “I will trouble you rather for the whole of
it.”

Conceive Mrs. Copperas’s dismay! From that moment she saw herself eaten
out of house and home; besides, as she afterwards observed to her friend
Miss Barbara York, the “vulgarity of such an amazing appetite!”

“Any commands in the city, Mr. Linden?” asked the husband; “a coach will
pass by our door in a few minutes,--must be on ‘Change in half an hour.
Come, my love, another cup of tea; make haste; I have scarcely a
moment to take my fare for the inside, before coachee takes his for the
outside. Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Linden.”

“Lord, Mr. Copperas,” said his helpmate, “how can you be so silly?
setting such an example to your son, too; never mind him, Adolphus, my
love; fie, child! a’n’t you ashamed of yourself? never put the spoon
in your cup till you have done tea: I must really send you to school to
learn manners. We have a very pretty little collection of books
here, Mr. Linden, if you would like to read an hour or two after
breakfast,--child, take your hands out of your pockets,--all the best
English classics I believe,--‘Telemachus,’ and Young’s ‘Night Thoughts,’
and ‘Joseph Andrews,’ and the ‘Spectator,’ and Pope’s Iliad, and
Creech’s Lucretius; but you will look over them yourself! This is
Liberty Hall, as well as Copperas Bower, Mr. Linden!”

“Well, my love,” said the stock-jobber, “I believe I must be off. Here
Tom,” Tom (Mr. de Warens had just entered the room with some more hot
water, to weaken still further “the poor remains of what was once”--the
tea!), “Tom, just run out and stop the coach; it will be by in five
minutes.”

“Have not I prayed and besought you, many and many a time, Mr.
Copperas,” said the lady, rebukingly, “not to call De Warens by his
Christian name? Don’t you know that all people in genteel life, who only
keep one servant, invariably call him by his surname, as if he were the
butler, you know?”

“Now, that is too good, my love,” said Copperas. “I will call poor Tom
by any surname you please, but I really can’t pass him off for a butler!
Ha--ha--ha--you must excuse me there, my love!”

“And pray, why not, Mr. Copperas? I have known many a butler bungle
more at a cork than he does; and pray tell me who did you ever see wait
better at dinner?”

“He wait at dinner, my love! it is not he who waits.”

“Who then, Mr. Copperas?”

“Why we, my love; it’s we who wait for dinner; but that’s the cook’s
fault, not his.”

“Pshaw! Mr. Copperas; Adolphus, my love, sit upright, darling.”

Here De Warens cried from the bottom of the stairs,--“Measter, the coach
be coming up.”

“There won’t be room for it to turn then,” said the facetious Mr.
Copperas, looking round the apartment as if he took the words literally.

“What coach is it, boy?”

Now that was not the age in which coaches scoured the city every half
hour, and Mr. Copperas knew the name of the coach as well as he knew his
own.

“It be the Swallow coach, sir.”

“Oh, very well: then since I have swallowed in the roll, I will now roll
in the Swallow--ha--ha--ha! Good-by, Mr. Linden.”

No sooner had the witty stock-jobber left the room than Mrs. Copperas
seemed to expand into a new existence. “My husband, sir,” said she,
apologetically, “is so odd, but he’s an excellent sterling character;
and that, you know, Mr. Linden, tells more in the bosom of a family than
all the shining qualities which captivate the imagination. I am sure,
Mr. Linden, that the moralist is right in admonishing us to prefer the
gold to the tinsel. I have now been married some years, and every year
seems happier than the last; but then, Mr. Linden, it is such a pleasure
to contemplate the growing graces of the sweet pledge of our mutual
love.--Adolphus, my dear, keep your feet still, and take your hands out
of your pockets!”

A short pause ensued.

“We see a great deal of company,” said Mrs. Copperas, pompously, “and of
the very best description. Sometimes we are favoured by the society
of the great Mr. Talbot, a gentleman of immense fortune and quite the
courtier: he is, it is true, a little eccentric in his dress: but then
he was a celebrated beau in his young days. He is our next neighbour;
you can see his house out of the window, just across the garden--there!
We have also, sometimes, our humble board graced by a very elegant
friend of mine, Miss Barbara York, a lady of very high connections, her
first cousin was a lord mayor.--Adolphus, my dear, what are you about?
Well, Mr. Linden, you will find your retreat quite undisturbed; I
must go about the household affairs; not that I do anything more
than superintend, you know, sir; but I think no lady should be above
consulting her husband’s interests; that’s what I call true old English
conjugal affection. Come, Adolphus, my dear.”

And Clarence was now alone. “I fear,” thought he, “that I shall get on
very indifferently with these people. But it will not do for me to be
misanthropical, and (as Dr. Latinas was wont to say) the great merit of
philosophy, when we cannot command circumstances, is to reconcile us to
them.”




CHAPTER XII.

 A retired beau is one of the most instructive spectacles in the world.
           STEPHEN MONTAGUE.

It was quite true that Mrs. Copperas saw a great deal of company, for
at a certain charge, upon certain days, any individual might have the
honour of sharing her family repast; and many, of various callings,
though chiefly in commercial life, met at her miscellaneous board.
Clarence must, indeed, have been difficult to please, or obtuse
of observation, if, in the variety of her guests, he had not found
something either to interest or amuse him. Heavens! what a motley
group were accustomed, twice in the week, to assemble there! the little
dining-parlour seemed a human oven; and it must be owned that Clarence
was no slight magnet of attraction to the female part of the guests.
Mrs. Copperas’s bosom friend in especial, the accomplished Miss Barbara
York, darted the most tender glances on the handsome young stranger;
but whether or not a nose remarkably prominent and long prevented the
glances from taking full effect, it is certain that Clarence seldom
repaid them with that affectionate ardour which Miss Barbara York had
ventured to anticipate. The only persons indeed for whom he felt any
sympathetic attraction were of the same sex as himself. The one was
Mr. Talbot, the old gentleman whom Mrs. Copperas had described as the
perfect courtier; the other, a young artist of the name of Warner.
Talbot, to Clarence’s great astonishment (for Mrs. Copperas’s eulogy had
prepared him for something eminently displeasing) was a man of birth,
fortune, and manners peculiarly graceful and attractive. It is true,
however, that, despite of his vicinity, and Mrs. Copperas’s urgent
solicitations, he very seldom honoured her with his company, and he
always cautiously sent over his servant in the morning to inquire the
names and number of her expected guests; nor was he ever known to
share the plenteous board of the stock-jobber’s lady whenever any
other partaker of its dainties save Clarence and the young artist were
present. The latter, the old gentleman really liked; and as for one
truly well born and well bred there is no vulgarity except in the mind,
the slender means, obscure birth, and struggling profession of Warner
were circumstances which, as they increased the merit of a gentle manner
and a fine mind, spoke rather in his favour than the reverse. Mr. Talbot
was greatly struck by Clarence Linden’s conversation and appearance;
and indeed there was in Talbot’s tastes so strong a bias to aristocratic
externals that Clarence’s air alone would have been sufficient to win
the good graces of a man who had, perhaps, more than most courtiers of
his time, cultivated the arts of manner and the secrets of address.

“You will call upon me soon?” said he to Clarence, when, after dining
one day with the Copperases and their inmate, he rose to return home.
And Clarence, delighted with the urbanity and liveliness of his new
acquaintance, readily promised that he would.

Accordingly the next day Clarence called upon Mr. Talbot. The house, as
Mrs. Copperas had before said, adjoined her own, and was only separated
from it by a garden. It was a dull mansion of brick, which had disdained
the frippery of paint and whitewashing, and had indeed been built
many years previously to the erection of the modern habitations which
surrounded it. It was, therefore, as a consequence of this priority
of birth, more sombre than the rest, and had a peculiarly forlorn and
solitary look. As Clarence approached the door, he was struck with the
size of the house; it was of very considerable extent, and in the more
favourable situations of London, would have passed for a very desirable
and spacious tenement. An old man, whose accurate precision of dress
bespoke the tastes of the master, opened the door, and after ushering
Clarence through two long, and, to his surprise, almost splendidly
furnished rooms, led him into a third, where, seated at a small
writing-table, he found Mr. Talbot. That person, one whom Clarence then
little thought would hereafter exercise no small influence over his
fate, was of a figure and countenance well worthy the notice of a
description.

His own hair, quite white, was carefully and artificially curled, and
gave a Grecian cast to features whose original delicacy, and exact
though small proportions, not even age could destroy. His eyes were
large, black, and sparkled with almost youthful vivacity; and his mouth,
which was the best feature he possessed, developed teeth white and
even as rows of ivory. Though small and somewhat too slender in the
proportions of his figure, nothing could exceed the ease and the grace
of his motions and air; and his dress, though singularly rich in
its materials, eccentric in its fashion, and from its evident study,
unseemly to his years, served nevertheless to render rather venerable
than ridiculous a mien which could almost have carried off any
absurdity, and which the fashion of the garb peculiarly became. The tout
ensemble was certainly that of a man who was still vain of his exterior,
and conscious of its effect; and it was as certainly impossible to
converse with Mr. Talbot for five minutes without merging every less
respectful impression in the magical fascination of his manner.

“I thank you, Mr. Linden,” said Talbot, rising, “for your accepting so
readily an old man’s invitation. If I have felt pleasure in discovering
that we were to be neighbours, you may judge what that pleasure is
to-day at finding you my visitor.”

Clarence, who, to do him justice, was always ready at returning a fine
speech, replied in a similar strain, and the conversation flowed on
agreeably enough. There was more than a moderate collection of books
in the room, and this circumstance led Clarence to allude to literary
subjects; these Mr. Talbot took up with avidity, and touched with a
light but graceful criticism upon many of the then modern and some of
the older writers. He seemed delighted to find himself understood and
appreciated by Clarence, and every moment of Linden’s visit served
to ripen their acquaintance into intimacy. At length they talked upon
Copperas Bower and its inmates.

“You will find your host and hostess,” said the gentleman, “certainly of
a different order from the persons with whom it is easy to see you
have associated; but, at your happy age, a year or two may be very well
thrown away upon observing the manners and customs of those whom, in
later life, you may often be called upon to conciliate or perhaps to
control. That man will never be a perfect gentleman who lives only with
gentlemen. To be a man of the world, we must view that world in every
grade and in every perspective. In short, the most practical art of
wisdom is that which extracts from things the very quality they least
appear to possess; and the actor in the world, like the actor on the
stage, should find ‘a basket-hilted sword very convenient to carry milk
in.’ [See the witty inventory of a player’s goods in the “Tatler.”] As
for me, I have survived my relations and friends. I cannot keep late
hours, nor adhere to the unhealthy customs of good society; nor do
I think that, to a man of my age and habits, any remuneration would
adequately repay the sacrifice of health or comfort. I am, therefore,
well content to sink into a hermitage in an obscure corner of this great
town, and only occasionally to revive my ‘past remembrances of higher
state,’ by admitting a few old acquaintances to drink my bachelor’s tea
and talk over the news of the day. Hence, you see, Mr. Linden, I pick
up two or three novel anecdotes of state and scandal, and maintain my
importance at Copperas Bower by retailing them second-hand. Now that
you are one of the inmates of that abode, I shall be more frequently its
guest. By the by, I will let you into a secret: know that I am somewhat
a lover of the marvellous, and like to indulge a little embellishing
exaggeration in any place where there is no chance of finding me
out. Mind, therefore, my dear Mr. Linden, that you take no ungenerous
advantage of this confession; but suffer me, now and then, to tell my
stories my own way, even when you think truth would require me to tell
them in another.”

“Certainly,” said Clarence, laughing; “let us make an agreement: you
shall tell your stories as you please, if you will grant me the same
liberty in paying my compliments; and if I laugh aloud at the stories,
you shall promise me not to laugh aloud at the compliments.”

“It is a bond,” said Talbot; “and a very fit exchange of service it is.
It will be a problem in human nature to see who has the best of it: you
shall pay your court by flattering the people present, and I mine by
abusing those absent. Now, in spite of your youth and curling locks, I
will wager that I succeed the best; for in vanity there is so great a
mixture of envy that no compliment is like a judicious abuse: to enchant
your acquaintance, ridicule his friends.”

“Ah, sir,” said Clarence, “this opinion of yours is, I trust, a little
in the French school, where brilliancy is more studied than truth, and
where an ill opinion of our species always has the merit of passing for
profound.”

Talbot smiled, and shook his head. “My dear young friend,” said he, “it
is quite right that you, who are coming into the world, should think
well of it; and it is also quite right that I, who am going out of it,
should console myself by trying to despise it. However, let me tell you,
my young friend, that he whose opinion of mankind is not too elevated
will always be the most benevolent, because the most indulgent, to
those errors incidental to human imperfection: to place our nature in
too flattering a view is only to court disappointment, and end in
misanthropy. The man who sets out with expecting to find all his
fellow-creatures heroes of virtue will conclude by condemning them as
monsters of vice; and, on the contrary, the least exacting judge of
actions will be the most lenient. If God, in His own perfection, did not
see so many frailties in us, think you He would be so gracious to our
virtues?”

“And yet,” said Clarence, “we remark every day examples of the highest
excellence.”

“Yes,” replied Talbot, “of the highest but not of the most constant
excellence. He knows very little of the human heart who imagines we
cannot do a good action; but, alas! he knows still less of it who
supposes we can be always doing good actions. In exactly the same ratio
we see every day the greatest crimes are committed; but we find no
wretch so depraved as to be always committing crimes. Man cannot be
perfect even in guilt.”

In this manner Talbot and his young visitor conversed, till Clarence,
after a stay of unwarrantable length, rose to depart.

“Well,” said Talbot, “if we now rightly understand each other, we shall
be the best friends in the world. As we shall expect great things from
each other sometimes, we will have no scruple in exacting a heroic
sacrifice every now and then; for instance, I will ask you to punish
yourself by an occasional tete-a-tete with an ancient gentleman; and, as
we can also by the same reasoning pardon great faults in each other, if
they are not often committed, so I will forgive you, with all my heart,
whenever you refuse my invitations, if you do not refuse them often. And
now farewell till we meet again.”

It seemed singular and almost unnatural to Linden that a man like
Talbot, of birth, fortune, and great fastidiousness of taste and temper,
should have formed any sort of acquaintance, however slight and distant,
with the facetious stock-jobber and his wife; but the fact is easily
explained by a reference to the vanity which we shall see hereafter
made the ruling passion of Talbot’s nature. This vanity, which
branching forth into a thousand eccentricities, displayed itself in the
singularity of his dress, the studied yet graceful warmth of his
manner, his attention to the minutiae of life, his desire, craving and
insatiate, to receive from every one, however insignificant, his obolus
of admiration,--this vanity, once flattered by the obsequious homage it
obtained from the wonder and reverence of the Copperases, reconciled his
taste to the disgust it so frequently and necessarily conceived; and,
having in great measure resigned his former acquaintance and wholly
outlived his friends, he was contented to purchase the applause
which had become to him a necessary of life at the humble market more
immediately at his command.

There is no dilemma in which Vanity cannot find an expedient to develop
its form, no stream of circumstances in which its buoyant and light
nature will not rise to float upon the surface. And its ingenuity is as
fertile as that of the player who (his wardrobe allowing him no other
method of playing the fop) could still exhibit the prevalent passion for
distinction by wearing stockings of different colours.




CHAPTER XIII.

               Who dares
  Interpret then my life for me as ‘t were
  One of the undistinguishable many?
               COLERIDGE: Wallenstein.

The first time Clarence had observed the young artist, he had taken a
deep interest in his appearance. Pale, thin, undersized, and slightly
deformed, the sanctifying mind still shed over the humble frame a spell
more powerful than beauty. Absent in manner, melancholy in air, and
never conversing except upon subjects on which his imagination was
excited, there was yet a gentleness about him which could not fail to
conciliate and prepossess; nor did Clarence omit any opportunity
to soften his reserve, and wind himself into his more intimate
acquaintance. Warner, the only support of an aged and infirm grandmother
(who had survived her immediate children), was distantly related to Mrs.
Copperas; and that lady extended to him, with ostentatious benevolence,
her favour and support. It is true that she did not impoverish the
young Adolphus to enrich her kinsman, but she allowed him a seat at her
hospitable board, whenever it was not otherwise filled; and all that she
demanded in return was a picture of herself, another of Mr. Copperas,
a third of Master Adolphus, a fourth of the black cat, and from time to
time sundry other lesser productions of his genius, of which, through
the agency of Mr. Brown, she secretly disposed at a price that
sufficiently remunerated her for whatever havoc the slender appetite of
the young painter was able to effect.

By this arrangement, Clarence had many opportunities of gaining that
intimacy with Warner which had become to him an object; and though the
painter, constitutionally diffident and shy, was at first averse to, and
even awed by, the ease, boldness, fluent speech, and confident address
of a man much younger than himself, yet at last he could not resist the
being decoyed into familiarity; and the youthful pair gradually advanced
from companionship into friendship. There was a striking contrast
between the two: Clarence was bold and frank, Warner close and timid.
Both had superior abilities; but the abilities of Clarence were for
action, those of Warner for art: both were ambitious; but the ambition
of Clarence was that of circumstances rather than character. Compelled
to carve his own fortunes without sympathy or aid, he braced his mind to
the effort, though naturally too gay for the austerity, and too genial
for the selfishness of ambition. But the very essence of Warner’s nature
was the feverish desire of fame: it poured through his veins like lava;
it preyed as a worm upon his cheek; it corroded his natural sleep;
it blackened the colour of his thoughts; it shut out, as with an
impenetrable wall, the wholesome energies and enjoyments and objects of
living men; and, taking from him all the vividness of the present, all
the tenderness of the past, constrained his heart to dwell forever and
forever amidst the dim and shadowy chimeras of a future he was fated
never to enjoy.

But these differences of character, so far from disturbing, rather
cemented their friendship; and while Warner (notwithstanding his
advantage of age) paid involuntary deference to the stronger character
of Clarence, he, in his turn, derived that species of pleasure by which
he was most gratified, from the affectionate and unenvious interest
Clarence took in his speculations of future distinction, and the
unwearying admiration with which he would sit by his side, and watch the
colours start from the canvas, beneath the real though uncultured genius
of the youthful painter.

Hitherto, Warner had bounded his attempts to some of the lesser efforts
of the art; he had now yielded to the urgent enthusiasm of his nature,
and conceived the plan of an historical picture. Oh! what sleepless
nights, what struggles of the teeming fancy with the dense brain, what
labours of the untiring thought wearing and intense as disease itself,
did it cost the ambitious artist to work out in the stillness of his
soul, and from its confused and conflicting images, the design of this
long meditated and idolized performance! But when it was designed;
when shape upon shape grew and swelled, and glowed from the darkness of
previous thought upon the painter’s mind; when, shutting his eyes in the
very credulity of delight, the whole work arose before him, glossy with
its fresh hues, bright, completed, faultless, arrayed as it were, and
decked out for immortality,--oh! then what a full and gushing moment of
rapture broke like a released stream upon his soul! What a recompense
for wasted years, health, and hope! What a coronal to the visions and
transports of Genius: brief, it is true, but how steeped in the very
halo of a light that might well be deemed the glory of heaven!

But the vision fades, the gorgeous shapes sweep on into darkness, and,
waking from his revery, the artist sees before him only the dull walls
of his narrow chamber; the canvas stretched a blank upon its frame; the
works, maimed, crude, unfinished, of an inexperienced hand, lying idly
around; and feels himself--himself, but one moment before the creator of
a world of wonders, the master spirit of shapes glorious and majestical
beyond the shapes of men--dashed down from his momentary height, and
despoiled both of his sorcery and his throne.

It was just in such a moment that Warner, starting up, saw Linden (who
had silently entered his room) standing motionless before him.

“Oh, Linden!” said the artist, “I have had so superb a dream,--a dream
which, though I have before snatched some such vision by fits and
glimpses, I never beheld so realized, so perfect as now; and--but you
shall see, you shall judge for yourself; I will sketch out the design
for you;” and, with a piece of chalk and a rapid hand, Warner conveyed
to Linden the outline of his conception. His young friend was eager in
his praise and his predictions of renown, and Warner listened to him
with a fondness which spread over his pale cheek a richer flush than
lover ever caught from the whispers of his beloved.

“Yes,” said he, as he rose, and his sunken and small eye flashed out
with a feverish brightness, “yes, if my hand does not fail my thought,
it shall rival even--” Here the young painter stopped short, abashed at
that indiscretion of enthusiasm about to utter to another the hoarded
vanities hitherto locked in his heart of hearts as a sealed secret,
almost from himself.

“But come,” said Clarence, affectionately, “your hand is feverish and
dry, and of late you have seemed more languid than you were wont,--come,
Warner, you want exercise: it is a beautiful evening, and you shall
explain your picture still further to me as we walk.”

Accustomed to yield to Clarence, Warner mechanically and abstractedly
obeyed; they walked out into the open streets.

“Look around us,” said Warner, pausing, “look among this toiling and
busy and sordid mass of beings who claim with us the fellowship of clay.
The poor labour; the rich feast: the only distinction between them is
that of the insect and the brute; like them they fulfil the same end and
share the same oblivion; they die, a new race springs up, and the very
grass upon their graves fades not so soon as their memory. Who that is
conscious of a higher nature would not pine and fret himself away to be
confounded with these? Who would not burn and sicken and parch with
a delirious longing to divorce himself from so vile a herd? What have
their petty pleasures and their mean aims to atone for the abasement of
grinding down our spirits to their level? Is not the distinction from
their blended and common name a sufficient recompense for all that
ambition suffers or foregoes? Oh, for one brief hour (I ask no more) of
living honour, one feeling of conscious, unfearing certainty that Fame
has conquered Death! and then for this humble and impotent clay, this
drag on the spirit which it does not assist but fetter, this wretched
machine of pains and aches, and feverish throbbings, and vexed
inquietudes, why, let the worms consume it, and the grave hide--for Fame
there is no grave.”

At that moment one of those unfortunate women who earn their polluted
sustenance by becoming the hypocrites of passions abruptly accosted
them.

“Miserable wretch!” said Warner, loathingly, as he pushed her aside; but
Clarence, with a kindlier feeling, noticed that her haggard cheek was
wet with tears, and that her frame, weak and trembling, could scarcely
support itself; he, therefore, with that promptitude of charity which
gives ere it discriminates put some pecuniary assistance in her hand and
joined his comrade.

“You would not have spoken so tauntingly to the poor girl had you
remarked her distress,” said Clarence.

“And why,” said Warner, mournfully, “why be so cruel as to prolong,
even for a few hours, an existence which mercy would only seek to bring
nearer to the tomb? That unfortunate is but one of the herd, one of the
victims to pleasures which debase by their progress and ruin by their
end. Yet perhaps she is not worse than the usual followers of love,--of
love, that passion the most worshipped, yet the least divine,--selfish
and exacting,--drawing its aliment from destruction, and its very nature
from tears.”

“Nay,” said Clarence, “you confound the two loves, the Eros and the
Anteros; gods whom my good tutor was wont so sedulously to distinguish:
you surely do not inveigh thus against all love?”

“I cry you mercy,” said Warner, with something of sarcasm in his
pensiveness of tone. “We must not dispute; so I will hold my peace: but
make love all you will; what are the false smiles of a lip which a few
years can blight as an autumn leaf? what the homage of a heart as feeble
and mortal as your own? Why, I, with a few strokes of a little hair
and an idle mixture of worthless colours, will create a beauty in whose
mouth there shall be no hollowness, in whose lip there shall be no
fading; there, in your admiration, you shall have no need of flattery
and no fear of falsehood; you shall not be stung with jealousy nor
maddened with treachery; nor watch with a breaking heart over the waning
bloom, and departing health, till the grave open, and your perishable
paradise is not. No: the mimic work is mightier than the original, for
it outlasts it; your love cannot wither it, or your desertion destroy;
your very death, as the being who called it into life, only stamps it
with a holier value.”

“And so then,” said Clarence, “you would seriously relinquish, for the
mute copy of the mere features, those affections which no painting can
express?”

“Ay,” said the painter, with an energy unusual to his quiet manner, and
slightly wandering in his answer from Clarence’s remark, “ay, one serves
not two mistresses: mine is the glory of my art. Oh! what are the
cold shapes of this tame earth, where the footsteps of the gods have
vanished, and left no trace, the blemished forms, the debased brows, and
the jarring features, to the glorious and gorgeous images which I can
conjure up at my will? Away with human beauties, to him whose nights
are haunted with the forms of angels and wanderers from the stars, the
spirits of all things lovely and exalted in the universe: the universe
as it was; when to fountain, and stream, and hill, and to every tree
which the summer clothed, was allotted the vigil of a Nymph! when
through glade, and by waterfall, at glossy noontide, or under the silver
stars, the forms of Godhead and Spirit were seen to walk; when the
sculptor modelled his mighty work from the beauty and strength of
Heaven, and the poet lay in the shade to dream of the Naiad and the
Faun, and the Olympian dwellers whom he walked in rapture to behold;
and the painter, not as now, shaping from shadow and in solitude the dim
glories of his heart, caught at once his inspiration from the glow of
earth and its living wanderers, and, lo, the canvas breathed! Oh! what
are the dull realities and the abortive offspring of this altered and
humbled world--the world of meaner and dwarfish men--to him whose realms
are peopled with visions like these?”

And the artist, whose ardour, long excited and pent within, had at last
thus audibly, and to Clarence’s astonishment, burst forth, paused, as
if to recall himself from his wandering enthusiasm. Such moments of
excitement were indeed rare with him, except when utterly alone, and
even then, were almost invariably followed by that depression of spirit
by which all over-wrought susceptibility is succeeded. A change came
over his face, like that of a cloud when the sunbeam which gilded leaves
it; and, with a slight sigh and a subdued tone, he resumed,--

“So, my friend, you see what our art can do even for the humblest
professor, when I, a poor, friendless, patronless artist, can thus
indulge myself by forgetting the present. But I have not yet explained
to you the attitude of my principal figure;” and Warner proceeded once
more to detail the particulars of his intended picture. It must be
confessed that he had chosen a fine though an arduous subject: it was
the Trial of Charles the First; and as the painter, with the enthusiasm
of his profession and the eloquence peculiar to himself, dwelt upon
the various expressions of the various forms which that extraordinary
judgment-court afforded, no wonder that Clarence forgot, with the artist
himself, the disadvantages Warner had to encounter in the inexperience
of an unregulated taste and an imperfect professional education.




CHAPTER XIV.

  All manners take a tincture from our own,
  Or come discoloured through our passions shown.--POPE.

What! give up liberty, property, and, as the Gazeteer says, lie down to
be saddled with wooden shoes?--Vicar of Wakefield.

There was something in the melancholy and reflective character of Warner
resembling that of Mordaunt; had they lived in these days perhaps both
the artist and the philosopher had been poets. But (with regard to the
latter) at that time poetry was not the customary vent for deep thought
or passionate feeling. Gray, it is true, though unjustly condemned as
artificial and meretricious in his style, had infused into the scanty
works which he has bequeathed to immortality a pathos and a richness
foreign to the literature of the age; and, subsequently, Goldsmith,
in the affecting yet somewhat enervate simplicity of his verse, had
obtained for Poetry a brief respite from a school at once declamatory
and powerless, and led her forth for a “Sunshine Holiday” into the
village green and under the hawthorn shade. But, though the softer and
meeker feelings had struggled into a partial and occasional vent, those
which partook more of passion and of thought, the deep, the wild, the
fervid, were still without “the music of a voice.” For the after century
it was reserved to restore what we may be permitted to call the spirit
of our national literature; to forsake the clinquant of the French
mimickers of classic gold; to exchange a thrice-adulterated Hippocrene
for the pure well of Shakspeare and of Nature; to clothe philosophy
in the gorgeous and solemn majesty of appropriate music; and to invest
passion with a language as burning as its thought and rapid as
its impulse. At that time reflection found its natural channel in
metaphysical inquiry or political speculation; both valuable, perhaps,
but neither profound. It was a bold, and a free, and an inquisitive age,
but not one in which thought ran over its set and stationary banks, and
watered even the common flowers of verse: not one in which Lucretius
could have embodied the dreams of Epicurus; Shakspeare lavished the
mines of a superhuman wisdom upon his fairy palaces and enchanted isles;
or the Beautifier [Wordsworth] of this common earth have called forth

  “The motion of the spirit that impels
   All thinking things, all objects of all thought;”

or Disappointment and Satiety have hallowed their human griefs by a
pathos wrought from whatever is magnificent and grand and lovely in
the unknown universe; or the speculations of a great but visionary mind
[Shelley] have raised, upon subtlety and doubt, a vast and irregular
pile of verse, full of dim-lighted cells, and winding galleries, in
which what treasures lie concealed! That was an age in which poetry
took one path and contemplation another; those who were addicted to the
latter pursued it in its orthodox roads; and many, whom Nature, perhaps
intended for poets, the wizard Custom converted into speculators or
critics.

It was this which gave to Algernon’s studies their peculiar hue; while,
on the other hand, the taste for the fine arts which then universally
prevailed, directed to the creations of painting, rather than those of
poetry, more really congenial to his powers, the intense imagination and
passion for glory which marked and pervaded the character of the artist.

But as we have seen that that passion for glory made the great
characteristic difference between Clarence and Warner, so also did
that passion terminate any resemblance which Warner bore to Algernon
Mordaunt. With the former a rank and unwholesome plant, it grew up to
the exclusion of all else; with the latter, subdued and regulated, it
sheltered, not withered, the virtues by which it was surrounded. With
Warner, ambition was a passionate desire to separate himself by fame
from the herd of other men; with Mordaunt, to bind himself by charity
yet closer to his kind: with the one, it produced a disgust to his
species; with the other, a pity and a love: with the one, power was the
badge of distinction; with the other, the means to bless! But our story
lingers.

It was now the custom of Warner to spend the whole day at his work, and
wander out with Clarence, when the evening darkened, to snatch a brief
respite of exercise and air. Often, along the lighted and populous
streets, would the two young and unfriended competitors for this world’s
high places roam with the various crowd, moralizing as they went or
holding dim conjecture upon their destinies to be. And often would they
linger beneath the portico of some house where, “haunted with great
resort,” Pleasure and Pomp held their nightly revels, to listen to the
music that, through the open windows, stole over the rare exotics with
which wealth mimics the southern scents, and floated, mellowing by
distance, along the unworthy streets; and while they stood together,
silent and each feeding upon separate thoughts, the artist’s pale
lip would curl with scorn, as he heard the laugh and the sounds of a
frivolous and hollow mirth ring from the crowd within, and startle the
air from the silver spell which music had laid upon it. “These,” would
he say to Clarence, “these are the dupes of the same fever as ourselves:
like us, they strive and toil and vex their little lives for a
distinction from their race. Ambition comes to them, as to all: but they
throw for a different prize than we do; theirs is the honour of a day,
ours is immortality; yet they take the same labour and are consumed by
the same care. And, fools that they are, with their gilded names and
their gaudy trappings, they would shrink in disdain from that comparison
with us which we, with a juster fastidiousness, blush at this moment to
acknowledge.”

From these scenes they would rove on, and, both delighting in contrast,
enter some squalid and obscure quarter of the city. There, one night,
quiet observers of their kind, they paused beside a group congregated
together by some common cause of obscene merriment or unholy
fellowship--a group on which low vice had set her sordid and hideous
stamp--to gaze and draw strange humours or a motley moral from that
depth and ferment of human nature into whose sink the thousand streams
of civilization had poured their dregs and offal.

“You survey these,” said the painter, marking each with the curious eye
of his profession: “they are a base horde, it is true; but they have
their thirst of fame, their aspirations even in the abyss of crime or
the loathsomeness of famished want. Down in yon cellar, where a farthing
rushlight glimmers upon haggard cheeks, distorted with the idiotcy
of drink; there, in that foul attic, from whose casement you see the
beggar’s rags hang to dry, or rather to crumble in the reeking and
filthy air; farther on, within those walls which, black and heavy as the
hearts they hide, close our miserable prospect,--there, even there, in
the mildewed dungeon, in the felon’s cell, on the very scaffold’s self,
Ambition hugs her own hope or scowls upon her own despair. Yes! the
inmates of those walls had their perilous game of honour, their ‘hazard
of the die,’ in which vice was triumph and infamy success. We do but
share their passion, though we direct it to a better object.”

Pausing for a moment, as his thoughts flowed into a somewhat different
channel of his character, Warner continued, “We have now caught a
glimpse of the two great divisions of mankind; they who riot in palaces,
and they who make mirth hideous in rags and hovels: own that it is but
a poor survey in either. Can we be contemptible with these or loathsome
with those? Or rather have we not a nobler spark within us, which
we have but to fan into a flame that shall burn forever, when these
miserable meteors sink into the corruption from which they rise?”

“But,” observed Clarence, “these are the two extremes; the pinnacle of
civilization, too worn and bare for any more noble and vigorous fruit,
and the base upon which the cloud descends in rain and storm. Look to
the central portion of society; there the soil is more genial, and its
produce more rich.”

“Is it so, in truth?” answered Warner; “pardon me, I believe not: the
middling classes are as human as the rest. There is the region, the
heart, of Avarice,--systematized, spreading, rotting, the very fungus
and leprosy of social states; suspicion, craft, hypocrisy, servility to
the great, oppression to the low, the waxlike mimicry of courtly vices,
the hardness of flint to humble woes; thought, feeling, the faculties
and impulses of man, all ulcered into one great canker, Gain,--these
make the general character of the middling class, the unleavened mass of
that mediocrity which it has been the wisdom of the shallow to applaud.
Pah! we too are of this class, this potter’s earth, this paltry mixture
of mud and stone; but we, my friend, we will knead gold into our clay.”

“But look,” said Clarence, pointing to the group before them, “look, yon
wretched mother, whose voice an instant ago uttered the coarsest accents
of maudlin and intoxicated prostitution, is now fostering her infant,
with a fondness stamped upon her worn cheek and hollow eye, which might
shame the nice maternity of nobles; and there, too, yon wretch whom, in
the reckless effrontery of hardened abandonment, we ourselves heard a
few minutes since boast of his dexterity in theft, and openly exhibit
its token,--look, he is now, with a Samaritan’s own charity, giving the
very goods for which his miserable life was risked to that attenuated
and starving stripling! No, Warner, no! even this mass is not
unleavened. The vilest infamy is not too deep for the Seraph Virtue to
descend and illumine its abyss!”

“Out on the weak fools!” said the artist, bitterly: “it would be
something, if they could be consistent even in crime!” and, placing his
arm in Linden’s, he drew him away.

As the picture grew beneath the painter’s hand, Clarence was much struck
with the outline and expression of countenance given to the regicide
Bradshaw.

“They are but an imperfect copy of the living original from whom I have
borrowed them,” said Warner, in answer to Clarence’s remark upon the
sternness of the features. “But that original--a relation of mine, is
coming here to-day: you shall see him.”

While Warner was yet speaking, the person in question entered. His
were, indeed, the form and face worthy to be seized by the painter.
The peculiarity of his character made him affect a plainness of dress
unusual to the day, and approaching to the simplicity, but not the
neatness, of Quakerism. His hair--then, with all the better ranks, a
principal object of cultivation--was wild, dishevelled, and, in wiry
flakes of the sablest hue, rose abruptly from a forehead on which either
thought or passion had written its annals with an iron pen; the lower
part of the brow, which overhung the eye, was singularly sharp and
prominent; while the lines, or rather furrows, traced under the eyes and
nostrils, spoke somewhat of exhaustion and internal fatigue. But this
expression was contrasted and contradicted by the firmly compressed lip;
the lighted, steady, stern eye; the resolute and even stubborn front,
joined to proportions strikingly athletic and a stature of uncommon
height.

“Well, Wolfe,” said the young painter to the person we have described,
“it is indeed a kindness to give me a second sitting.”

“Tusk, boy!” answered Wolfe, “all men have their vain points, and I own
that I am not ill pleased that these rugged features should be assigned,
even in fancy, to one of the noblest of those men who judged the
mightiest cause in which a country was ever plaintiff, a tyrant
criminal, and a world witness!” While Wolfe was yet speaking his
countenance, so naturally harsh, took a yet sterner aspect, and the
artist, by a happy touch, succeeded in transferring it to the canvas.

“But, after all,” continued Wolfe, “it shames me to lend aid to an art
frivolous in itself, and almost culpable in times when Freedom wants the
head to design, and perhaps the hand to execute, far other and nobler
works than the blazoning of her past deeds upon perishable canvas.”

A momentary anger at the slight put upon his art crossed the pale brow
of the artist; but he remembered the character of the man and continued
his work in silence. “You consider then, sir, that these are times in
which liberty is attacked?” said Clarence.

“Attacked!” repeated Wolfe,--“attacked!” and then suddenly sinking his
voice into a sort of sneer, “why, since the event which this painting
is designed to commemorate, I know not if we have ever had one solitary
gleam of liberty break along the great chaos of jarring prejudice and
barbarous law which we term forsooth a glorious constitution. Liberty
attacked! no, boy; but it is a time when liberty may be gained.”

Perfectly unacquainted with the excited politics of the day, or the
growing and mighty spirit which then stirred through the minds of men,
Clarence remained silent; but his evident attention flattered the fierce
republican, and he proceeded.

“Ay,” he said slowly, and as if drinking in a deep and stern joy from
his conviction in the truth of the words he uttered,--“ay, I have
wandered over the face of the earth, and I have warmed my soul at the
fires which lay hidden under its quiet surface; I have been in the city
and the desert,--the herded and banded crimes of the Old World, and the
scattered but bold hearts which are found among the savannahs of the
New; and in either I have beheld that seed sown which, from a mustard
grain, too scanty for a bird’s beak, shall grow up to be a shelter and
a home for the whole family of man. I have looked upon the thrones of
kings, and lo, the anointed ones were in purple and festive pomp; and
I looked beneath the thrones, and I saw Want and Hunger, and despairing
Wrath gnawing the foundations away. I have stood in the streets of that
great city where Mirth seems to hold an eternal jubilee, and beheld the
noble riot while the peasant starved; and the priest built altars to
Mammon, piled from the earnings of groaning Labour and cemented with
blood and tears. But I looked farther, and saw, in the rear, chains
sharpened into swords, misery ripening into justice, and famine
darkening into revenge; and I laughed as I beheld, for I knew that the
day of the oppressed was at hand.”

Somewhat awed by the prophetic tone, though revolted by what seemed to
him the novelty and the fierceness of the sentiments of the republican,
Clarence, after a brief pause, said,--

“And what of our own country?”

Wolfe’s brow darkened. “The oppression here,” said he, “has not been
so weighty, therefore the reaction will be less strong; the parties
are more blended, therefore their separation will be more arduous; the
extortion is less strained, therefore the endurance will be more meek;
but, soon or late, the struggle must come: bloody will it be, if the
strife be even; gentle and lasting, if the people predominate.”

“And if the rulers be the strongest?” said Clarence.

“The struggle will be renewed,” replied Wolfe, doggedly.

“You still attend those oratorical meetings, cousin, I think?” said
Warner.

“I do,” said Wolfe; “and if you are not so utterly absorbed in your vain
and idle art as to be indifferent to all things nobler, you will learn
yourself to take interest in what concerns--I will not say your
country, but mankind. For you, young man” (and the republican turned to
Clarence), “I would fain hope that life has not already been diverted
from the greatest of human objects; if so, come to-morrow night to our
assembly, and learn from worthier lips than mine the precepts and the
hopes for which good men live or die.”

“I will come at all events to listen, if not to learn,” said Clarence,
eagerly, for his curiosity was excited. And the republican, having now
fulfilled the end of his visit, rose and departed.




CHAPTER XV.

  Bound to suffer persecution
  And martyrdom with resolution,
  T’oppose himself against the hate
  And vengeance of the incensed state.--Hudibras.

Born of respectable though not wealthy parents, John Wolfe was one
of those fiery and daring spirits which, previous to some mighty
revolution, Fate seems to scatter over various parts of the earth, even
those removed from the predestined explosion,--heralds of the events in
which they are fitted though not fated to be actors. The period at which
he is presented to the reader was one considerably prior to that French
Revolution so much debated and so little understood. But some such
event, though not foreseen by the common, had been already foreboded
by the more enlightened, eye; and Wolfe, from a protracted residence
in France among the most discontented of its freer spirits, had brought
hope to that burning enthusiasm which had long made the pervading
passion of his existence.

Bold to ferocity, generous in devotion to folly in self-sacrifice,
unflinching in his tenets to a degree which rendered their ardour
ineffectual to all times, because utterly inapplicable to the present,
Wolfe was one of those zealots whose very virtues have the semblance
of vice, and whose very capacities for danger become harmless from the
rashness of their excess.

It was not among the philosophers and reasoners of France that Wolfe had
drawn strength to his opinions: whatever such companions might have
done to his tenets, they would at least have moderated his actions. The
philosopher may aid or expedite a change; but never does the philosopher
in any age or of any sect countenance a crime. But of philosophers Wolfe
knew little, and probably despised them for their temperance: it was
among fanatics--ignorant, but imaginative--that he had strengthened the
love without comprehending the nature of republicanism. Like Lucian’s
painter, whose flattery portrayed the one-eyed prince in profile, he
viewed only that side of the question in which there was no defect, and
gave beauty to the whole by concealing the half. Thus, though on
his return to England herding with the common class of his reforming
brethren, Wolfe possessed many peculiarities and distinctions of
character which, in rendering him strikingly adapted to the purpose of
the novelist, must serve as a caution to the reader not to judge of the
class by the individual.

With a class of Republicans in England there was a strong tendency to
support their cause by reasoning. With Wolfe, whose mind was little
wedded to logic, all was the offspring of turbulent feelings, which, in
rejecting argument, substituted declamation for syllogism. This effected
a powerful and irreconcilable distinction between Wolfe and the better
part of his comrades; for the habits of cool reasoning, whether true or
false, are little likely to bias the mind towards those crimes to which
Wolfe’s unregulated emotions might possibly urge him, and give to the
characters to which they are a sort of common denominator something of
method and much of similarity. But the feelings--those orators which
allow no calculation and baffle the tameness of comparison--rendered
Wolfe alone, unique, eccentric in opinion or action, whether of vice or
virtue.

Private ties frequently moderate the ardour of our public enthusiasm.
Wolfe had none. His nearest relation was Warner, and it may readily
be supposed that with the pensive and contemplative artist he had very
little in common. He had never married, nor had ever seemed to wander
from his stern and sterile path, in the most transient pursuit of the
pleasures of sense. Inflexibly honest, rigidly austere,--in his moral
character his bitterest enemies could detect no flaw,--poor, even to
indigence, he had invariably refused all overtures of the government;
thrice imprisoned and heavily fined for his doctrines, no fear of a
future, no remembrance of the past punishment could ever silence his
bitter eloquence or moderate the passion of his distempered zeal;
kindly, though rude, his scanty means were ever shared by the less
honest and disinterested followers of his faith; and he had been known
for days to deprive himself of food, and for nights of shelter, for the
purpose of yielding food and shelter to another.

Such was the man doomed to forsake, through a long and wasted life,
every substantial blessing, in pursuit of a shadowy good; with the
warmest benevolence in his heart, to relinquish private affections, and
to brood even to madness over public offences; to sacrifice everything
in a generous though erring devotion for that freedom whose cause,
instead of promoting, he was calculated to retard; and, while he
believed himself the martyr of a high and uncompromising virtue, to
close his career with the greatest of human crimes.




CHAPTER XVI.

     Faith, methinks his humour is good, and his purse will buy
     good company.--The Parson’s Wedding.

When Clarence returned home, after the conversation recorded in our last
chapter, he found a note from Talbot, inviting him to meet some friends
of the latter at supper that evening. It was the first time Clarence had
been asked, and he looked forward with some curiosity and impatience to
the hour appointed in the note.

It is impossible to convey any idea of the jealous rancour felt by Mr.
and Mrs. Copperas on hearing of this distinction,--a distinction which
“the perfect courtier” had never once bestowed upon themselves.

Mrs. Copperas tossed her head, too indignant for words; and the
stock-jobber, in the bitterness of his soul, affirmed, with a meaning
air, “that he dared say, after all, that the old gentleman was not so
rich as he gave out.”

On entering Talbot’s drawing-room, Clarence found about seven or eight
people assembled; their names, in proclaiming the nature of the party,
indicated that the aim of the host was to combine aristocracy and
talent. The literary acquirements and worldly tact of Talbot, joined
to the adventitious circumstances of birth and fortune, enabled him to
effect this object, so desirable in polished society, far better than
we generally find it effected now. The conversation of these guests was
light and various. The last bon mot of Chesterfield, the last sarcasm
of Horace Walpole, Goldsmith’s “Traveller,” Shenstone’s “Pastorals,” and
the attempt of Mrs. Montagu to bring Shakspeare into fashion,--in all
these subjects the graceful wit and exquisite taste of Talbot shone
pre-eminent; and he had almost succeeded in convincing a profound critic
that Gray was a poet more likely to live than Mason, when the servant
announced supper.

That was the age of suppers! Happy age! Meal of ease and mirth; when
Wine and Night lit the lamp of Wit! Oh, what precious things were said
and looked at those banquets of the soul! There epicurism was in the
lip as well as the palate, and one had humour for a hors d’oeuvre and
repartee for an entremet. At dinner there is something too pompous, too
formal, for the true ease of Table Talk. One’s intellectual appetite,
like the physical, is coarse but dull. At dinner one is fit only for
eating; after dinner only for politics. But supper was a glorious relic
of the ancients. The bustle of the day had thoroughly wound up the
spirit, and every stroke upon the dial-plate of wit was true to the
genius of the hour. The wallet of diurnal anecdote was full, and craved
unloading. The great meal--that vulgar first love of the appetite--was
over, and one now only flattered it into coquetting with another.
The mind, disengaged and free, was no longer absorbed in a cutlet or
burdened with a joint. The gourmand carried the nicety of his physical
perception to his moral, and applauded a bon mot instead of a bonne
bouche.

Then, too, one had no necessity to keep a reserve of thought for the
after evening; supper was the final consummation, the glorious funeral
pyre of day. One could be merry till bedtime without an interregnum.
Nay, if in the ardour of convivialism one did,--I merely hint at the
possibility of such an event,--if one did exceed the narrow limits of
strict ebriety, and open the heart with a ruby key, one had nothing to
dread from the cold, or, what is worse, the warm looks of ladies in the
drawing-room; no fear that an imprudent word, in the amatory fondness
of the fermented blood, might expose one to matrimony and settlements.
There was no tame, trite medium of propriety and suppressed confidence,
no bridge from board to bed, over which a false step (and your wine-cup
is a marvellous corrupter of ambulatory rectitude) might precipitate
into an irrecoverable abyss of perilous communication or unwholesome
truth. One’s pillow became at once the legitimate and natural bourne
to “the overheated brain;” and the generous rashness of the coenatorial
reveller was not damped by untimeous caution or ignoble calculation.

But “we have changed all that now.” Sobriety has become the successor
of suppers; the great ocean of moral encroachment has not left us one
little island of refuge. Miserable supper-lovers that we are, like the
native Indians of America, a scattered and daily disappearing race, we
wander among strange customs, and behold the innovating and invading
Dinner spread gradually over the very space of time in which the majesty
of Supper once reigned undisputed and supreme!

       O, ye heavens, be kind,
  And feel, thou earth, for this afflicted race.--WORDSWORTH.

As he was sitting down to the table, Clarence’s notice was arrested by
a somewhat suspicious and unpleasing occurrence. The supper room was
on the ground floor, and, owing to the heat of the weather, one of the
windows, facing the small garden, was left open. Through this window
Clarence distinctly saw the face of a man look into the room for
one instant, with a prying and curious gaze, and then as instantly
disappear. As no one else seemed to remark this incident, and the
general attention was somewhat noisily engrossed by the subject
of conversation, Clarence thought it not worth while to mention a
circumstance for which the impertinence of any neighbouring servant or
drunken passer-by might easily account. An apprehension, however, of a
more unpleasant nature shot across him, as his eye fell upon the costly
plate which Talbot rather ostentatiously displayed, and then glanced to
the single and aged servant, who was, besides his master, the only male
inmate of the house. Nor could he help saying to Talbot, in the course
of the evening, that he wondered he was not afraid of hoarding so many
articles of value in a house at once so lonely and ill guarded.

“Ill guarded!” said Talbot, rather affronted, “why, I and my servant
always sleep here!”

To this Clarence thought it neither prudent nor well-bred to offer
further remark.




CHAPTER XVII.

  Meetings or public calls he never missed,
  To dictate often, always to assist.
 .....
  To his experience and his native sense,
  He joined a bold, imperious eloquence;
  The grave, stern look of men informed and wise,
  A full command of feature, heart and eyes,
  An awe-compelling frown, and fear-inspiring size.--CRABBE.

The next evening Clarence, mindful of Wolfe’s invitation, inquired from
Warner (who repaid the contempt of the republican for the painter’s
calling by a similar feeling for the zealot’s) the direction of the
oratorical meeting, and repaired there alone. It was the most celebrated
club (of that description) of the day, and well worth attending, as a
gratification to the curiosity, if not an improvement to the mind.

On entering, he found himself in a long room, tolerably well lighted,
and still better filled. The sleepy countenances of the audience, the
whispered conversation carried on at scattered intervals, the listless
attitudes of some, the frequent yawns of others, the eagerness with
which attention was attracted to the opening door, when it admitted some
new object of interest, the desperate resolution with which some of the
more energetic turned themselves towards the orator, and then, with a
faint shake of the head, turned themselves again hopelessly away,--were
all signs that denoted that no very eloquent declaimer was in possession
of the “house.” It was, indeed, a singularly dull, monotonous voice
which, arising from the upper end of the room, dragged itself on towards
the middle, and expired with a sighing sound before it reached the end.
The face of the speaker suited his vocal powers; it was small, mean, and
of a round stupidity, without anything even in fault that could possibly
command attention or even the excitement of disapprobation: the very
garments of the orator seemed dull and heavy, and, like the Melancholy
of Milton, had a “leaden look.” Now and then some words, more emphatic
than others,--stones breaking, as it were with a momentary splash,
the stagnation of the heavy stream,--produced from three very quiet,
unhappy-looking persons seated next to the speaker, his immediate
friends, three single isolated “hears!”

  “The force of friendship could no further go.”

At last, the orator having spoken through, suddenly stopped; the whole
meeting seemed as if a weight had been taken from it; there was a
general buzz of awakened energy, each stretched his limbs, and resettled
himself in his place,--

  “And turning to his neighbour said,
        ‘Rejoice!’”

A pause ensued, the chairman looked round, the eyes of the meeting
followed those of the president, with a universal and palpable
impatience, towards an obscure corner of the room: the pause deepened
for one moment, and then was broken; a voice cried “Wolfe!” and at that
signal the whole room shook with the name. The place which Clarence had
taken did not allow him to see the object of these cries, till he rose
from his situation, and, passing two rows of benches, stood forth in the
middle space of the room; then, from one to one went round the general
roar of applause; feet stamped, hands clapped, umbrellas set their sharp
points to the ground, and walking-sticks thumped themselves out of shape
in the universal clamour. Tall, gaunt, and erect, the speaker possessed,
even in the mere proportions of his frame, that physical power which
never fails, in a popular assembly, to gain attention to mediocrity
and to throw dignity over faults. He looked very slowly round the room,
remaining perfectly still and motionless, till the clamour of applause
had entirely subsided, and every ear, Clarence’s no less eagerly than
the rest, was strained, and thirsting to catch the first syllables of
his voice.

It was then with a low, very deep, and somewhat hoarse tone, that he
began; and it was not till he had spoken for several minutes that the
iron expression of his face altered, that the drooping hand was raised,
and that the suppressed, yet powerful, voice began to expand and vary
in its volume. He had then entered upon a new department of his subject.
The question was connected with the English constitution, and Wolfe was
now preparing to put forth, in long and blackened array, the alleged
evils of an aristocratical form of government. Then it was as if the
bile and bitterness of years were poured forth in a terrible and stormy
wrath,--then his action became vehement, and his eye flashed forth
unutterable fire: his voice, solemn, swelling, and increasing with each
tone in its height and depth, filled, as with something palpable
and perceptible, the shaking walls. The listeners,--a various and
unconnected group, bound by no tie of faith or of party, many attracted
by curiosity, many by the hope of ridicule, some abhorring the tenets
expressed, and nearly all disapproving their principles or doubting
their wisdom,--the listeners, certainly not a group previously formed
or moulded into enthusiasm, became rapt and earnest; their very breath
forsook them.

Linden had never before that night heard a public speaker; but he was
of a thoughtful and rather calculating mind, and his early habits of
decision, and the premature cultivation of his intellect, rendered
him little susceptible, in general, to the impressions of the vulgar:
nevertheless, in spite of himself, he was hurried a

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