A VISIT TO THE NORTH CAPE.
Having hired an open boat and a crew of three hands, I left Hammerfest at nine p.m., July 2, 1850, to visit the celebrated Nordkap. The boat was one of the peculiar Nordland build—very long, narrow, sharp, but strongly built, with both ends shaped alike, and excellently adapted either for rowing or sailing. We had a strong head-wind from northeast at starting, and rowed across the harbor to the spot where the house of the British consul, Mr. Robertson, a Scotchman, is situated, near to the little battery (fæstning) which was erected to defend the approach to Hammerfest, subsequently to the atrocious seizure of the place by two English ships during the last war. Mr. Robertson kindly lent me a number of reindeer skins to lie on at the bottom of the boat; and spreading them on the rough stones we carried for ballast, I was thus provided with an excellent bed. I have slept for a fortnight at a time on reindeer skins, and prefer them to any feather bed. Mr. Robertson warned me that I should find it bitterly cold at sea, and expressed surprise at my light clothing; but I smiled, and assured him that my hardy wandering life had habituated me to bear exposure of every kind with perfect impunity. By an ingenious contrivance of a very long tiller, the pilot steered with one hand and rowed with the other, and we speedily cleared the harbor, and crept round the coast of Qual Oe (Whale-Island), on which Hammerfest is situated. About midnight, when the sun was shining a considerable way above the horizon, the view of a solitary little rock, in the ocean ahead, bathed in a flood of crimson glory, was most impressive. We proceeded with a tolerable wind until six in the morning, when heavy squalls of wind and torrents of rain began to beat upon us, forcing us to run, about two hours afterward, into Havösund; a very narrow strait between the island of Havöe and the mainland of Finmark. As it was impossible to proceed in such a tempest, we ran the boat to a landing-place in front of the summer residence of Herr Ulich, a great magnate in Finmark. This is undoubtedly the most northern gentleman's house in the world. It is a large, handsome, wooden building, painted white, and quite equal in appearance to the better class of villas in the North. The family only reside there during the three summer months; and extensive warehouses for the trade in dried cod or stockfish, &c. are attached. My crew obtained shelter in an outbuilding, and I unhesitatingly sought the hospitality of the mansion. Herr Ulich himself was absent, being at his house at Hammerfest, but his amiable lady, and her son and two daughters, received me with a frank cordiality as great as though I were an old friend; and in a few minutes I was thoroughly at home. Here I found a highly accomplished family, surrounded with the luxuries and refinements of civilization, dwelling amid the wildest solitudes, and so near the North Cape, that it can be distinctly seen from their house in clear weather. Madame Ulich and her daughters spoke nothing but Norwegian; but the son, a very intelligent young man of about nineteen, spoke English very well. He had recently returned from a two years' residence at Archangel, where the merchants of Finmark send their sons to learn the Russian language, as it is of vital importance for their trading interests—the greater portion of the trade of Finmark being with the White-Sea districts, which supply them with meal and other necessaries in exchange for stockfish, &c. Near as they were to the North Cape, it was a singular fact that Herr Ulich and his son had only once visited it; and the former had resided ten years at Havösund—not more than twenty-five miles distant—ere that visit took place! They said that very few travelers visited the Cape; and, strange to say, the majority are French and Italians.
I declined to avail myself of the pressing offer of a bed, and spent the morning in conversation with this very interesting family. They had a handsome drawing-room, containing a grand colossal bust in bronze of Louis-Philippe, King of the French. The ex-king, about fifty-five years ago, when a wandering exile (under the assumed name of Müller) visited the North Cape. He experienced hospitality from many residents in Finmark, and he had slept in this very room; but the house itself then stood on Maas Island, a few miles further north. Many years ago, the present proprietor removed the entire structure to Havöe; and his son assured me the room itself was preserved almost exactly as it was when Louis Philippe used it, though considerable additions and improvements have been made to other parts of the house. About sixteen years ago, Paul Garnard, the president of the commission shortly afterward sent by the French government to explore Greenland and Iceland, called on Herr Ulich, and said he was instructed by the king to ask what present he would prefer from his majesty as a memorial of his visit to the North. A year afterward, the corvette of war, La Recherche, on its way to Iceland, &c. put into Havösund, and left the bust in question, as the express gift of the king. It is a grand work of art, executed in the finest style, and is intrinsically very valuable, although of course the circumstances under which it became Herr Ulich's property add inestimably to its worth in his eyes. The latter gentleman is himself a remarkable specimen of the highly-educated Norwegian. He has traveled over all Europe, and speaks, more or less, most civilized languages. On my return to Hammerfest I enjoyed the pleasure of his society, and his eager hospitality; and he favored me with an introduction for the Norwegian states minister at Stockholm. I merely mention these things to show the warm-hearted kindness which even an unintroduced, unknown traveler may experience in the far North. Herr Ulich has resided twenty-five years at Havösund; and he says he thinks that not more than six English travelers have visited the North Cape within twenty years—that is to say, by way of Hammerfest; but parties of English gentlemen occasionally proceed direct in their yachts.
Fain would my new friends have delayed my departure; but, wind and tide serving, I resumed my voyage at noon, promising to call on my return. In sailing through the sound, I noticed a neat little wooden church, the most northern in Finmark. A minister preaches in it to the Fins and Laps at intervals, which depend much on the state of the weather; but I believe once a month in summer. The congregation come from a circle of immense extent. If I do not err, Mr. Robert Chambers mentions in his tour having met with the clergyman of this wild parish.
Passing Maas Oe, we sailed across an open arm of the sea, and reached the coast of Mager Oe, the island on which the North Cape is situated. Mager Oe is perhaps twenty miles long by a dozen broad, and is separated from the extreme northern mainland of Finmark by Magerösund. Although a favorable wind blew, my crew persisted in running into a harbor here, where there is a very extensive fish-curing establishment, called Gjesvohr, belonging to Messrs Agaard of Hammerfest. There are several houses, sheds, &c. and immense tiers of the split stockfish drying across horizontal poles. At this time about two hundred people were employed, and one or two of the singular three-masted White-Sea ships were in the harbor, with many Finmark fishing-boats. The water was literally black with droves of young cod, which might have been killed by dozens as they basked near the surface. My men loitered hour after hour; but as I was most anxious to visit the North Cape when the midnight sun illumined it, I induced them to proceed.
On resuming our voyage, we coasted along the shore, which was one mass of savage, precipitous rock, until the black massive Cape loomed very distinctly in the horizon. I landed at a bluff headland called Tunoes, and collected a few flowers growing in crevices in the rock. A little beyond that, in Sandbugt, a fragment of wreck was discernible, and I ordered the boat to be pulled toward it. It proved to be a portion of the keel of a large ship, about fifty feet long, and much worn. It had evidently been hauled on the reefs by some fishermen, and the fortunate salvors had placed their rude marks upon it. I mused over this fragment of wreck, which was mutely eloquent with melancholy suggestiveness. How many prayers had gone forth with the unknown ship! how many fathers, brothers, sisters, lovers, and unconscious widows and orphans, might at that moment be hoping against hope for her return! To what port did she belong? In what remote ocean had she met her doom? Perchance this keel had been borne by wind and tide from some region of thick-ribbed ice, and was the only relic to tell of the dark fate of a gallant bark and brave crew! Alas, what a thrilling history might that weed-tangled piece of wood be linked with, and what food did it supply for the wanderer's imagination!
Resuming the voyage, we came to a long promontory of solid rock, stretching far into the sea, where it tapers down to the level of the water. It is called Kniuskjœrodden; and I particularly draw attention to it for the following reason: at Hammerfest the consul favored me with an inspection of the charts recently published by the Norwegian government, from express surveys by scientific officers of their navy. The instant I cast my eye over the one containing Mager Oe, I perceived that Kniuskjœrodden was set down further north than the North Cape itself! The consul said that such was the actual fact, though he will not consent to its disputing the legitimacy of the ancient fame which the Cape worthily enjoys; since it is merely a low, narrow projection, of altogether insignificant character. I walked to its extremity, and narrowly escaped being washed by the roaring breakers into the deep transparent sea.
Rounding Kniuskjœrodden, the North Cape burst in all its sunlit grandeur on my delighted view. It was now a dead calm, and my vikings pulled very slowly across the grand bay of Kniusvœrig, to afford me an opportunity of sketching the object, which is one enormous mass of solid rock, upward of a thousand feet in elevation. I can compare it to nothing more fitly than the keep of a castle of a tremendous size; for it very gently tapers upward from the base, and presents a surface marvelously resembling time-worn masonry. The front approaches the perpendicular, and so does much of the western side also. The color of this mighty rock is a dark, shining, speckled gray, relieved by dazzling masses of snow lying in the gigantic fissures, which seem to have been riven by some dread convulsion. The impression I felt as the boat glided beneath its shadow was one of thrilling awe; for its magnificent stern proportions—its colossal magnitude—its position as the lonely, unchanging sentinel of nature, which for countless ages has stood forth as the termination of the European continent, frowning defiance to the maddening fury of the mystic Arctic Queen—all combine to invest it with associations and attributes of overpowering majesty. My ideas of its sublimity were more than realized; and as I landed on its base, in the blaze of the midnight sun, I felt an emotion of proud joy, that my long-feasted hope of gazing upon it at such an hour, and under such circumstances, was literally fulfilled.
The only place where a landing can be effected is on the western side, about a mile and a half from the head of the Cape; and it is usual for those who ascend it to go many miles round from this starting-place to gain the summit, because a direct upward ascent is considered impracticable. But having much confidence in my climbing capabilities, I resolved to adventure the latter feat; and although burdened with my sea-cloak and other things, I instantly commenced the task, leaving the crew to slumber in the boat until my return. I found the whole of the western side, opposite the landing-place, clothed with the most luxuriant vegetation to the height of about a hundred yards. There were myriads of flowers, including exquisite white violets with hairy stems; purple, red, and white star-flowers; the beautiful large yellow cup-flower, growing on stems two feet high, and called by the Norwegians knap-sul-len-öie-blomster (literally, button-sun-eye-flower); and many other varieties of species unknown to me. There were also several kinds of dwarf shrubs, including the juniper, then in green berry. Butterflies and insects flitted gayly from flower to flower. After resting on a ledge of rock to take breath, and look down on the glassy waters and the boat at my feet—now dwindled to a speck—I resumed my clambering; but to my extreme mortification, when I had ascended two-thirds of the way, at no small risk to my bones, I was mastered by overhanging masses of rock, all trickling with slimy moisture from the congealed snow above. Here I had a narrow escape from being killed by a fragment of loose rock giving way beneath me, and drawing down other pieces after it; but I clung tenaciously to a firm part, and the heavy stones bounded harmlessly over my head. I descended with difficulty; and after carefully surveying the face of the rocks, tried at a more favorable place, and even then I was above an hour in gaining the summit. I understand that I am the first adventurer who has scaled the Cape at that place; and I certainly was thankful when I could throw my weary frame down, and eat some frugal fare, slaking my thirst with a handful of snow from the solid patch by my side. Though I had been more than forty-eight hours without rest, bodily fatigue was little felt. I could behold from my airy elevation many miles of the surface of the island. The higher peaks and the sheltered hollows were clothed with snow, glittering in the midnight sun, and several dark lakes nestled amid the frowning rocks.
Resuming my progress, I passed over the surface of the Cape. It is covered with slaty débris, and, what struck me as very remarkable, quantities of a substance resembling coarse white marble, totally different from the Cape itself. The only vegetation on the summit is a species of moss, which bears most beautiful flowers, generally of a purple hue, blooming in hundreds and thousands together. These dumb witnesses of nature's benevolent handiwork filled my soul with pleasing, grateful thoughts, and uplifted it to the Divine Being who maketh flowers to bloom and waters to gush in the most desolate regions of the earth. In the bed of a ravine, crossed in my way toward the end of the Cape, I found a rapid stream of the purest water, which proved deliciously refreshing. I wandered along; and, after skirting much of the western precipice, drew nigh the bourne of my pilgrimage. The Cape terminates in a shape approaching a semicircle, but the most northern part swells out in a clear appreciable point. About a hundred yards from the latter I came upon a circle of stones, piled nearly breast high, inclosing a space some dozen feet in diameter. This had evidently been erected by a party of visitors as a shelter from the winds. Not far distant, a block of black rock rises above the level, which is otherwise smooth as a bowling-green, and covered with minute fragments of rock. Within two or three yards of the extreme point is a small pole, sustained in the centre of a pile of stones. I found several initials and dates cut on this very perishable register, and added my own. I believe it was set up by the government expedition three or four years ago as a signal-post for their trigonometrical survey.
I can not adequately describe the tide of emotion which filled my soul as I walked up to the dizzy verge. I only know that, after standing a moment with folded arms, beating heart, and tear-dimmed eye, I knelt, and with lowly-bowed head, returned thanks to God for permitting me to thus realize one darling dream of my boyhood!
Despite the wind, which here blew violently, I sat down by the side of the pole, and wrapping my cloak around me, long contemplated the grand spectacle of nature in one of her sublimest aspects. I was truly alone. Not a living being was in sight: far beneath was the boundless expanse of ocean, with a sail or two on its bosom, at an immense distance; above was the canopy of heaven, flecked with snowy cloudlets; the sun was gleaming through a broad belt of blood-red horizon; the only sounds were the whistling of the wind, and the occasional plaintive scream of hovering sea-fowl. My pervading feeling was a calm though deep sense of intellectual enjoyment and triumph—very natural to an enthusiastic young wanderer upon achieving one of the long-cherished enterprises of his life.
With reluctant and wildly-devious steps, I bade what is probably an eternal adieu to the wondrous Cape, and effected a comparatively easy descent to the place whence I had started. My men had dropped grapnel a considerable distance from the rock; and being unwilling to disturb their slumber, I spent some further time in exploring the western base. There is a very curious cavernous range of rock washed out by the terrific beating of wintry storms, so as to form a species of arcade. The sides are of immense thickness, but the sea has worn them open at the top. The water here, as along the whole coast of Norway and Finmark, is marvelously transparent. Weeds and fish may be seen at a prodigious depth clearly as in a mirror.
On the return voyage, we ran into a creek near Sandbugt, and the crew went ashore to a Lap gamme (hut) to sleep; but as I had no desire to furnish a dainty fresh meal to the vermin with which every gamme swarms, I slept soundly on my reindeer skins in the boat, although it was now rainy and intensely cold. After the lapse of a few hours I joined them at the gamme, and bought a fine pœsk or tunic of reindeer skin from an old Lap; and learning that his herd of reins was in the vicinity, I had a long ramble in search of them, but without avail; for they had wandered far away, influenced by that remarkable instinct which impels reindeer to invariably run against the wind. I gathered some fine specimens of sponge in marshy hollows. In the course of our subsequent voyage, I made another pause of a few hours at Giesvohr, where I examined the works for curing the fish and extracting the oil, but declined taking any repose. Next morning, being favored with a powerful wind, our little craft fairly leaped over the waves; and I noted her dextrous management with the eye of an amateur receiving a valuable lesson. The old pilot kept the sheet of the lug-sail constantly ready to slip, and another hand stood by the greased halyard to let all go by the run; for there are frequent eddies and squalls of wind along this very dangerous coast, which would upset a boat in an instant, were not great tact and unremitting vigilance exercised. The sea ran exceedingly high, and we shipped water from stem to stern every time we settled in its trough, in such a way that the baling never ceased. Safely, however, did we run into Havösund once more at about eight o'clock.
Young Ulich welcomed my unexpectedly early return at the landing-place, and I was delighted to again become the eagerly-welcomed guest of his house. Happily, and only too quickly, did the time speed. I chatted in my sadly-broken Norwegian—the first to laugh at my own comical blunders; and the eldest young lady sweetly sang to me several of the most ancient and popular of her native ballads, accompanying them on her guitar—the fashionable instrument of music in the North, where many things which have fallen into desuetude with us universally flourish. As she could understand no other language, I in return did my best to chant the celebrated national Danish song, Den tappre Landsoldat, the fame of which has penetrated to the far North. So popular is this song in Denmark, that its author and composer have both recently received an order of knighthood for it. In the library were translations of Marryat, and other English novelists; and they showed me a copy of—Cruikshank's Bottle! I thought that if that gifted artist could have thus beheld how his fame and a genuine copy of his greatest work has penetrated, and is highly appreciated in the vicinity of the North Cape, he would have experienced a glow of enviable, and not undeserved satisfaction. The only teetotaller, by the way, whom I ever met with in Scandinavia, was one of the crew of the boat with me. He invariably declined the brændiviin, as I passed it round from time to time, and assured me he drank only water and milk.
The young ladies had about a score of pretty tame pigeons; and to my extreme regret a couple were killed, to give me an additional treat at a dinner served in a style which I should rather have expected to meet with in an English hotel than at a solitary house on an arctic island. They afterward conducted me to their—garden! Yes, a veritable garden, the fame of which has extended far and wide in Finmark; for there is nothing to compare to it for at least four hundred miles southward. It is of considerable size, inclosed by high wooden walls, painted black to attract the sun's rays, which are very fervid in the latter end of summer. Potatoes, peas, and other table vegetables, were in a thriving state, but only come to maturity in favorable seasons. I had some radishes at dinner, and excellent they were. Glazed frames protected cucumber and other plants, and many very beautiful and delicate flowers bloomed in the open air. The young ladies gathered some of the finest specimens of these, including large blue forget-me-nots, and placed them within the leaves of my Bible. Highly do I treasure them, for they will ever vividly recall a host of pleasant and romantic associations.
Most pressing were they all to induce me to stay some days with them, and gladly indeed would I have complied had circumstances permitted; but I felt compelled to hasten back to Hammerfest. In the afternoon, therefore, I bade adieu to a family which had shown me a degree of engaging kindness greater than any I had experienced since I left my warmly-attached Danish friends.
The remainder of our return voyage was wet and tempestuous. We sailed and rowed all night, and reached Hammerfest at eight a.m. on July 5, much to the astonishment of the good folks there, who had not anticipated seeing us again in less than a week or ten days. The consul and many others assured me that my voyage had been performed with unprecedented speed, the whole time occupied being not quite three and a half days.
A CONVERSATION IN A KENTUCKY STAGE COACH.[13]
I can not refrain from giving a conversation which I heard as we came by the coach to Louisville. One of the speakers was a very agreeable and apparently well-informed gentleman, who seemed to have seen a great deal of the world. When he first entered the "stage," it would seem it was with the benignant intention of giving a sort of converzatione in the coach, in which, after a few preliminary interrogatories to the various passengers (as if to take the size and measure of their capacities), he sustained all the active part, not calling upon them for the slightest exercise of their conversational powers. He varied the entertainment occasionally, by soliloquizing and monopolyguizing; and ever and anon it appeared as if he addressed the human race generally, or was speaking for posterity in a very elevated tone indeed, and seemingly oblivious of that fraction of the contemporaneous generation who were then largely benefiting by his really most animated and amusing discourse—for he was thoroughly original and very shrewd and entertaining.
Where had he not been? What had he not seen? what not met, tried, suffered, sought, found, dared, done, won, lost, said? The last we could give the most implicit credence to, no matter how large the demand. Now he told us, or the ceiling of the coach, how he had been eighteen months in the prairies (which keep very open house for all visitors), shooting herds of buffaloes, and with his cloak for his only castle, and all his household furniture, and how he had been all this time without bed or bread: and he described the longing for the last, much in the way Mr. Ruxton does in his account of prairie excursions; and now—but I will not attempt to follow him in all his wondrous adventures.
Suffice it to say, Robinson Crusoe, placed in juxtaposition with him, was a mere fire-side stay-at-home sort of personage, one who had never left his own comfortable arm-chair, in comparison. In short, the adventures were marvelous and manifold, and all told in the same agreeable, lively, Scheherezade-like sort of a manner—so agreeable, indeed, that I am sure had Judge Lynch himself had any little account to settle with him, he would have postponed—à la Sultan of the Indies—any trifling beheading or strangling, or unpleasant little operation of the sort, to hear the end of the tale.
After these narratives and amusing lectures had been poured forth continuously for a length of time, it chanced that a quiet countryman-like person got into the coach, bundle and stick in hand. After a few questions to this rustic wayfarer, our eloquent orator left off his historic and other tales, and devoted himself to drawing out, and "squeezing the orange of the brains" of this apparently simple-minded and unlettered man. The discourse that ensued was a singular one—to take place, too, in the United States between Americans.
The new-comer was a Kentuckian by birth, who had not very long ago gone to settle in Indiana. He called himself a mechanic—these facts came out in answer to the queries put to him by our unwearied talker—but he had, as I have said, much more the appearance of a respectable country farming man—and, indeed, I believe, mechanic means here, in a general sense, a laborer. He seemed a fine, honest-hearted, straight-forward, noble-spirited son of the plow; and his lofty, earnest, generous sentiments were spoken in somewhat unpolished but energetic and good language; and what particularly struck me was a really beautiful and almost child-like simplicity of mind and manner, that was combined with the most uncompromising firmness and unflinching adherence in argument, to what he conceived to be right.
His features were decidedly plain, but the countenance was very fine, chiefly characterized by great ingenuousness, commingled with gentleness and benevolence; and yet bearing evident traces of strength, determination, and energetic resolution. It was rather a complicated countenance, so to say, notwithstanding its great openness and expression of downright truth and goodness.
After opening the conversation with him, as you would an oyster, by the introduction of a pretty keen knife of inquisitorial questions, the chief speaker began to hold forth, capriciously enough, on the essentials and distinguishing attributes of a gentleman. He declared, emphatically, that one qualification alone was necessary, and that money only made a gentleman, according to the world, and, above all, in the United States (quite a mistake is this, I fully believe). "Let a man," said he, "be dressed here in every thing of the best, with splendid rings on his fingers, and plenty of money to spend at the ends of them, and he may go where he will, and be received as a gentleman; ay, though he may be a gambler, a rogue, or a swindler, and you, now, you may be a good honest mechanic; but he will at once get into the best society in these parts, which you would never dream even of attempting to accomplish—"
"But he would not be a gentleman," broke in the Kentuckian, indignantly. "No, sir; nor will I ever allow that money only makes the gentleman: it is the principle, sir, and the inner feeling, and the mind—and no fine clothes can ever make it; and no rough ones unmake it, that's a fact. And, sir, there's many a better gentleman following the plow in these parts than there is among the richer classes: I mean those poor men who're contented with their lot, and work hard and try no mean shifts and methods to get on an' up in the world; for there's little some 'ill stick at to get at money; and such means a true gentleman (what I call a gentleman) will avoid like poison, and scorn utterly."
"Now, that's all very well for you to talk so here just now; but you know yourself, I don't doubt, that your own object, as well as all the world's around you, is to make money. It is with that object that you work hard and save up: you do not work only to live, or make yourself more comfortable, but to get money: and money is the be-all and end-all of all and every body; and that only commands consideration and respect."
"That only, sir, would never command mine, and—"
"Why, how you talk now! if you meet a fine dressed-out gentleman in one of these stages, you look on him as one directly—you don't ask him did he make or take his money—what's that to you?—there he is, and it is not for you to busy or bother yourself to find out all the private particulars of his history; and if you find him, as I say, well dressed in superfine, and he acts the gentleman to you, he may be the greatest rogue in existence, but he will be treated by you like a gentleman—yes, even by you."
"Yes, sir, that maybe while I know nothing of him—while, as you say, he acts the gentleman to me; but let me once find out what he is, and I would never show him respect more—no! though he had all the gold of California."
"Ah, California! just look at that now—look at people by scores and thousands, leaving their families, and friends, and homes—and what for but for gold? people with a comfortable competence already; but it's fine talking. Why, what are you taking this very journey for?—why, I can answer for you—for gold, I doubt not; and every other action of your life is for that object: confess the real truth now."
"I will, sir—I am come here from Indiana, for though I'm a Kentucky man, I live in the Hoosier State. I'm come here to see a dear brother; and instead of gaining money I'm spending it in these stages to get to see him and 'old Kentuck' agin. So you see, Sir, I love my brother—I do, more than money, poor man as I am; ay, and that I do, too."
"Well, I dare say you do; but come now, just tell me—haven't you a little bit of a speculation, now, here, that you're come after, as well as your brother—some trifle of a speculation afoot? You know you have now. You must have. Some horse, perhaps—"
It was quite delightful to see and hear the indignant burst of eager denial which this elicited from the ingenuous Kentuckian.
"No, sir! no, I have not—none whatever, indeed I have not:" his voice quivered with emotion; the earnest expression of his countenance was more than eloquent. If his interrogator had accused him of a serious crime he could hardly more anxiously and more earnestly have disclaimed it. To him, I thought the bare suspicion seemed like a coarse desecration of his real motives, a kind of undervaluing even of his "dear brother," to suppose he must have had a "little speculation on hand" to make it worth his while to go to see him.
He went on in an agitated, eager tone:
"And look ye here; I am leaving off my work and money-making for some days on purpose—only for that, and spending money at it, too!"
His somewhat case-hardened antagonist looked the least in the world discomfited; for that angry denial was a magnificent burst, and uttered in a tone that actually seemed to give an additional jolt to the rough coach; and I might say it had really a splendid theatrical effect, but that I should hesitate to use that expression with reference to one of the most beautiful natural exhibitions of deep feeling and generous sentiment I ever witnessed.
"Where are you going to?" at last inquired the other, apparently about to commence a little cross-examination.
"About twenty miles beyond Munsfordville," replied Kentucky, in his simple direct manner, "to"—I forget the name.
"Why, you're come by the wrong stage, then," exclaimed the other, "you should have waited till to-morrow, and then taken the stage to ——, and then you would have gone direct."
"Well, yes, sir; it's true enough, sir; but you see—in short, I couldn't wait—no, that I couldn't. I was so anxious, and I felt so like seeing my brother; and I was in such a mortal hurry to get to him."
"Hurry, man! why how will you see him any sooner by this? Why, you might as well have walked up and down Main-street till to-morrow; it would have advanced you just as much on your journey."
"You're right, sir, I know that; but I really couldn't wait: I wanted to feel I was going ahead, and getting nearer my brother at any rate; I got so impatient-like. No, sir; I couldn't have staid till the morning any how you could fix it."
"You'll have to walk for your folly, for you'll get no conveyance this way, I tell you."
"I'll have to walk the twenty miles to-night, I suppose," said Kentucky, with the most imperturbable smiling composure; "but never mind that! I shall be getting near my brother, then. Ha," he said, after a pause, "you see I do love my brother, sir, and I don't regard trouble for him. I'll have to walk the twenty miles to-night with my bundle, I dare say, and spending money at that, too, perhaps, for a bit of food; but I couldn't have waited—no! not another hour at Louisville—I felt so like getting nearer to my brother."
At the end of the argument about money-making being the all in all, one or two of us signified briefly that we thought Kentucky was right. You never saw any body so surprised. He had evidently entertained a deep conviction that all in the stage-coach were opposed to his opinions, and that he stood alone in his view on the matter. He replied he was glad any body thought as he did, and reiterated with strong emphasis to his opponent:
"I'm sure, sir, I'm right; it is the principle, and the manners, and the mind, and not money that makes a gentleman. No, no; money can never make half a one."
I shall feel a respect for "old Kentucky" forever after for his sake.
ANECDOTES OF JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN.[14]
CURRAN'S START IN LIFE.
After toiling for a very inadequate recompense at the sessions of Cork, and wearing, as he said himself, his teeth almost to their stumps, Curran proceeded to the metropolis, taking for his wife and young children a miserable lodging upon Hay Hill. Term after term, without either profit or professional reputation, he paced the hall of the Four Courts. Among those who had the discrimination to appreciate, and the heart to feel for him, luckily for Curran, was Mr. Arthur Wolfe, afterward the unfortunate but respected Lord Kilwarden. The first fee of any consequence which he received was through his recommendation; and his recital of the incident can not be without its interest to the young professional aspirant whom a temporary neglect may have sunk into dejection. "I then lived," said he, "upon Hay Hill; my wife and children were the chief furniture of my apartments; and as to my rent, it stood pretty much the same chance of liquidation with the national debt. Mrs. Curran, however, was a barrister's lady, and what she wanted in wealth she was well determined should be supplied by dignity. The landlady, on the other hand, had no idea of any gradation except that of pounds, shillings, and pence. I walked out one morning to avoid the perpetual altercations on the subject, with my mind, you may imagine, in no very enviable temperament. I fell into the gloom to which, from my infancy, I had been occasionally subject. I had a family for whom I had no dinner, and a landlady for whom I had no rent. I had gone abroad in despondence—I returned home almost in desperation. When I opened the door of my study, where Lavater alone could have found a library, the first object which presented itself was an immense folio of a brief, twenty golden guineas wrapped up beside it, and the name of Old Bob Lyons marked upon the back of it. I paid my landlady—bought a good dinner—gave Bob Lyons a share of it—and that dinner was the date of my prosperity." Such was his own exact account of his professional advancement.
SINGULAR ATTEMPT UPON CURRAN'S LIFE.
In one of Curran's professional excursions, a very singular circumstance had almost rendered this the termination of his biography. He was on a temporary visit to the neighboring town of Sligo, and was one morning standing at his bedroom window, which overlooked the street, occupied, as he told me, in arranging his portmanteau, when he was stunned by the report of a blunderbuss in the very chamber with him, and the panes above his head were all shivered into atoms. He looked suddenly around in the greatest consternation. The room was full of smoke, the blunderbuss on the floor just discharged, the door closed, and no human being but himself discoverable in the apartment! If this had happened in his rural retreat, it could readily have been reconciled through the medium of some offended spirit of the village mythology; but, as it was, he was in a populous town, in a civilized family, among Christian doctrines, where the fairies had no power, and their gambols no currency; and, to crown all, a poor cobbler, into whose stall on the opposite side of the street the slugs had penetrated, hinted in no very equivocal terms that the whole affair was a conspiracy against his life. It was by no means a pleasant addition to the chances of assassination to be loudly declaimed against by a crazed mechanic as an assassin himself. Day after day passed away without any solution of the mystery; when one evening, as the servants of the family were conversing round the fire on so miraculous an escape, a little urchin, not ten years old, was heard so to wonder how such an aim was missed, that a universal suspicion was immediately excited. He was alternately flogged and coaxed into a confession, which disclosed as much precocious and malignant premeditation as perhaps ever marked the annals of juvenile depravity. This little miscreant had received a box on the ear from Mr. Curran for some alleged misconduct a few days before; the Moor's blow did not sink into a mind more furious for revenge, or more predisposed by nature for such deadly impressions. He was in the bedroom by mere chance when Mr. Curran entered; he immediately hid himself in the curtains till he observed him too busy with his portmanteau for observation; he then leveled at him the old blunderbuss, which lay charged in the corner, the stiffness of whose trigger, too strong for his infant fingers, alone prevented the aim which he confessed he had taken, and which had so nearly terminated the occupations of the cobbler. The door was ajar, and, mid the smoke and terror, he easily slipped out without discovery. I had the story verbatim a few months ago from Mr. Curran's lips, whose impressions on the subject it was no wonder that forty years had not obliterated.
CURRAN AS A CROSS-EXAMINER.
At cross-examination, the most difficult and by far the most hazardous part of a barrister's profession, Curran was quite inimitable. There was no plan which he did not detect, no web which he did not disentangle; and the unfortunate wretch, who commenced with all the confidence of preconcerted perjury, never failed to retreat before him in all the confusion of exposure. Indeed, it was almost impossible for the guilty to offer a successful resistance. He argued, he cajoled, he ridiculed, he mimicked, he played off the various artillery of his talent upon the witness; he would affect earnestness upon trifles, and levity upon subjects of the most serious import, until at length he succeeded in creating a security that was fatal, or a sullenness that produced all the consequences of prevarication. No matter how unfair the topic, he never failed to avail himself of it; acting upon the principle that, in law as well as in war, every stratagem was admissible. If he was hard pressed, there was no peculiarity of person, no singularity of name, no eccentricity of profession at which he would not grasp, trying to confound the self-possession of the witness by the, no matter how excited, ridicule of the audience. To a witness of the name of Halfpenny he once began: "Halfpenny, I see you're a rap, and for that reason you shall be nailed to the counter." "Halfpenny is sterling," exclaimed the opposite counsel. "No, no," said he, "he's exactly like his own conscience—only copper washed." This phrase alluded to an expression previously used on the trial.
To Lundy Foot, the celebrated tobacconist, once hesitating on the table: "Lundy, Lundy—that's a poser—a devil of a pinch." This gentleman applied to Curran for a motto when he first established his carriage. "Give me one, my dear Curran," said he, "of a serious cast, because I am afraid the people will laugh at a tobacconist setting up a carriage, and, for the scholarship's sake, let it be in Latin." "I have just hit on it," said Curran; "it is only two words, and it will at once explain your profession, your elevation, and your contempt for their ridicule, and it has the advantage of being in two languages, Latin or English, just as the reader chooses. Put up 'Quid rides' upon your carriage."
Inquiring his master's age from a horse-jockey's servant, he found it almost impossible to extract an answer. "Come, come, friend, has he not lost his teeth?" "Do you think," retorted the fellow, "that I know his age, as he does his horse's, by the mark of mouth?" The laugh was against Curran, but he instantly recovered: "You were very right not to try, friend, for you know your master's a great bite."
Having one day a violent argument with a country schoolmaster on some classical subject, the pedagogue, who had the worst of it, said, in a towering passion, that he would lose no more time, and must go back to his scholars. "Do, my dear doctor," said Curran, "but don't indorse my sins upon their backs."
Curran was told that a very stingy and slovenly barrister had started for the Continent with a shirt and a guinea: "He'll not change either till he comes back," said he.
It was well known that Curran entertained a dislike and a contempt for Downes. "Bushe," said he, "came up to me one day with a very knowing look, and said, 'Do you know, Curran, I have just left the pleasantest fellow I ever met?' 'Indeed! who is he?' 'The chief justice,' was the answer. My reply was compendious and witty. I looked into his eye, and said 'hum.' It required all his oil to keep his countenance smooth."
A very stupid foreman once asked a judge how they were to ignore a bill. "Why, sir," said Curran, "when you mean to find a true one, just write Ignoramus for self and fellows on the back of it."
A gentleman just called to the bar took up a pauper case. It was remarked upon. "The man's right," said Curran; "a barber begins on a beggar, that when he arrives at the dignity he may know how to shave a duchess."
He was just rising to cross-examine a witness before a judge who could not comprehend any jest that was not written in black letter. Before he said a single word, the witness began to laugh. "What are you laughing at, friend—what are you laughing at? Let me tell you that a laugh without a joke is like—is like—" "Like what, Mr. Curran?" asked the judge, imagining he was nonplused. "Just exactly, my lord, like a contingent remainder without any particular estate to support it." I am afraid that none but my legal readers will understand the admirable felicity of the similitude, but it was quite to his lordship's fancy, and rivaled with him all "the wit that Rabelais ever scattered."
Examining a country squire who disputed a collier's bill: "Did he not give you the coals, friend?" "He did, sir, but—" "But what? On your oath, wasn't your payments slack?"
It was thus that, in some way or other, he contrived to throw the witnesses off their centre, and he took care they seldom should recover it. "My lard, my lard!" vociferated a peasant witness, writhing under this mental excruciation, "I can't answer yon little gentleman, he's putting me in such a doldrum." "A doldrum! Mr. Curran, what does he mean by a doldrum!" exclaimed Lord Avonmore. "Oh! my lord, it's a very common complaint with persons of this description: it's merely a confusion of the head arising from the corruption of the heart."
To the bench he was at times quite as unceremonious; and if he thought himself reflected on or interfered with, had instant recourse either to ridicule or invective. There is a celebrated reply in circulation of Mr. Dunning to a remark of Lord Mansfield, who curtly exclaimed at one of his legal positions, "O! if that be law, Mr. Dunning, I may burn my law-books!" "Better read them, my lord," was the sarcastic and appropriate rejoinder. In a different spirit, but with similar effect, was Mr. Curran's retort upon an Irish judge, quite as remarkable for his good-humor and raillery as for his legal researches. He was addressing a jury on one of the state trials in 1803, with his usual animation. The judge, whose political bias, if any judge can have one, was certainly supposed not to be favorable to the prisoner, shook his head in doubt or denial of one of the advocate's arguments. "I see, gentlemen," said Mr. Curran, "I see the motion of his lordship's head; common observers might imagine that implied a difference of opinion, but they would be mistaken: it is merely accidental. Believe me, gentlemen, if you remain here many days, you will, yourselves perceive that, when his lordship shakes his head, there's nothing in it!"
PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND HABITS OF GRATTAN.
Grattan was short in stature, and unprepossessing in appearance. His arms were disproportionably long. His walk was a stride. With a person swaying like a pendulum, and an abstracted air, he seemed always in thought, and each thought provoked an attendant gesticulation. Such was the outward and visible form of one whom the passenger would stop to stare at as a droll, and the philosopher to contemplate as a study. How strange it seems that a mind so replete with grace and symmetry, and power and splendor, should have been allotted such a dwelling for its residence. Yet so it was; and so also was it one of his highest attributes, that his genius, by its "excessive light," blinded the hearer to his physical imperfections. It was the victory of mind over matter. The man was forgotten in the orator. Mr. Grattan, whose father represented the city of Dublin in Parliament, and was also its recorder, was born in the year 1746. He entered the Middle Temple in 1767 and was called to the Irish bar in 1772. In the University of Dublin he was eminently distinguished, sharing its honors, in then amicable contention, with Fitzgibbon—not merely the antagonist, but the enemy, and the bitter one of an after day. We have a record, more authentic than usual, of his pursuits while at the Temple. The study of the law occupied but little of his attention. He never relished it, and soon abandoned the profession altogether. Of the theatre he was very fond—little wonder in the zenith of Garrick—and it was a taste he indulged in to the last. I well remember, somewhere about the year 1813, being in Crow-street when he entered with Catalani leaning on his arm. The house was crowded, and he was hailed with acclamations. In vain he modestly consigned them to the lovely siren his companion. His name rang wildly through the theatre. I think I still hear the shouts when his person was recognized, and still behold his venerable figure bowing its awkward gratitude. No one knew better the true value of that bubble tribute. Another of his amusements, if indeed it was not something more, when he was at the Temple, seems to have been a frequent attendance in both houses of Parliament. He sketched the debates and the speakers by whom he was most attracted.
O'CONNELL'S DUEL.
Living, as he did, in constant turmoil, and careless, as he was, to whom he gave offense, O'Connell of course had a multitude of enemies. Of this, himself the cause, he had no right to complain; but he had a right to complain of the calumnies they circulated. Most rife of these was a charge of want of courage—in Ireland a rare and very detrimental accusation. O'Connell, during his latter years, declined dueling, and publicly avowed his determination. The reason given, and given in the House of Commons, was, that having "blood upon his hands, he had registered a vow in heaven." To this there could have been no possible objection had he included in the registry a vow not to offend. The real charge to which he made himself amenable was his perseverance at once in insult and irresponsibility. The truth is, O'Connell's want of courage consisted in his fighting the duel in which the vow originated. The facts of the case are few and simple. In one of his many mob speeches he called the corporation of Dublin a "beggarly corporation." A gentleman named D'Esterre affected to feel this as a personal affront, he being one of that very numerous body, and accordingly fastened a quarrel on the offender. It is quite true that O'Connell endeavored to avoid the encounter. He did not do enough. He should have summoned D'Esterre before the tribunals of the country, after failing to appease him by a repeated declaration that he meant him no personal offense, and could not, he being a total stranger to him. However, in an evil hour, he countenanced a savage and anti-Christian custom—the unfortunate D'Esterre paid for his perverseness with his life, and the still more unfortunate O'Connell expiated his moral timidity with much mental anguish to the day of his death. The perpetration of a duel appears to me no proof whatever of personal courage; the refusal, in the then state of society, would have shown much more. However, on the occasion in question he showed a total absence of what is vulgarly called fear; indeed, his frigid determination was remarkable. Let those who read the following anecdote remember that he most reluctantly engaged in the combat; that he was then the father of seven children; and that it was an alternative of life or death with him, D'Esterre being reputed an unerring marksman. Being one of those who accompanied O'Connell, he beckoned me aside to a distant portion of the very large field, which had a slight covering of snow. "Phillips," said he, "this seems to me not a personal, but a political affair. I am obnoxious to a party, and they adopt a false pretense to cut me off. I shall not submit to it. They have reckoned without their host, I promise you. I am one of the best shots in Ireland at a mark, having, as a public man, considered it a duty to prepare, for my own protection, against such unprovoked aggression as the present. Now, remember what I say to you. I may be struck myself, and then skill is out of the question; but if I am not, my antagonist may have cause to regret his having forced me into this conflict." The parties were then very soon, placed on the ground, at, I think, twelve paces distance, each having a case of pistols, with directions to fire when they chose after a given signal. D'Esterre rather agitated himself by making a short speech, disclaiming all hostility to his Roman Catholic countrymen, and took his ground, somewhat theatrically crossing his pistols upon his bosom. They fired almost together, and instantly on the signal. D'Esterre fell, mortally wounded. There was the greatest self-possession displayed by both. It seemed to me a duty to narrate these details in O'Connell's lifetime wherever I heard his courage questioned, and justice to his memory now prompts me to record them here.
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[15]
Book V.—INITIAL CHAPTER.
"I hope, Pisistratus," said my father, "that you do not intend to be dull!"
"Heaven forbid, sir! what could make you ask such a question? Intend! No! if I am dull it is from innocence."
"A very long Discourse upon Knowledge!" said my father; "very long. I should cut it out!"
I looked upon my father as a Byzantian sage might have looked on a Vandal. "Cut it out!"
"Stops the action, sir!" said my father, dogmatically.
"Action! But a novel is not a drama."
"No, it is a great deal longer—twenty times as long, I dare say," replied Mr. Caxton, with a sigh.
"Well, sir—well! I think my Discourse upon Knowledge has much to do with the subject—is vitally essential to the subject; does not stop the action—only explains and elucidates the action. And I am astonished, sir, that you, a scholar, and a cultivator of knowledge—"
"There—there!" cried my father, deprecatingly. "I yield—I yield. What better could I expect when I set up for a critic! What author ever lived that did not fly into a passion—even with his own father, if his father presumed to say—'Cut out!' Pacem imploro—"
Mrs. Caxton.—"My dear Austin, I am sure Pisistratus did not mean to offend you, and I have no doubt he will take your—"
Pisistratus (hastily).—"Advice for the future, certainly. I will quicken the action, and—"
"Go on with the Novel," whispered Roland, looking up from his eternal account-book. "We have lost £200 by our barley!"
Therewith I plunged my pen into the ink, and my thoughts into the "Fair Shadowland."
CHAPTER II.
"Halt!" cried a voice; and not a little surprised was Leonard when the stranger who had accosted him the preceding evening got into the chaise.
"Well," said Richard, "I am not the sort of man you expected, eh? Take time to recover yourself." And with these words Richard drew forth a book from his pocket, threw himself back, and began to read. Leonard stole many a glance at the acute, hardy, handsome face of his companion, and gradually recognized a family likeness to poor John, in whom, despite age and infirmity, the traces of no common share of physical beauty were still evident. And with that quick link in ideas which mathematical aptitude bestows, the young student at once conjectured that he saw before him his uncle Richard. He had the discretion, however, to leave that gentleman free to choose his own time for introducing himself, and silently revolved the new thoughts produced by the novelty of his situation. Mr. Richard read with notable quickness—sometimes cutting the leaves of the book with his penknife, sometimes tearing them open with his forefinger, sometimes skipping whole pages altogether. Thus he galloped to the end of the volume—flung it aside—lighted his cigar, and began to talk.
He put many questions to Leonard relative to his rearing, and especially to the mode by which he had acquired his education; and Leonard, confirmed in the idea that he was replying to a kinsman, answered frankly.
Richard did not think it strange that Leonard should have acquired so much instruction with so little direct tuition. Richard Avenel himself had been tutor to himself. He had lived too long with our go-ahead brethren, who stride the world on the other side the Atlantic with the seven-leagued boots of the Giant-killer, not to have caught their glorious fever for reading. But it was for a reading wholly different from that which was familiar to Leonard. The books he read must be new; to read old books would have seemed to him going back in the world. He fancied that new books necessarily contained new ideas—a common mistake—and our lucky adventurer was the man of his day.
Tired with talking, he at length chucked the book he had run through to Leonard, and, taking out a pocket-book and pencil, amused himself with calculations on some detail of his business, after which he fell into an absorbed train of thought—part pecuniary, part ambitious.
Leonard found the book interesting; it was one of the numerous works, half-statistic, half-declamatory, relating to the condition of the working classes, which peculiarly distinguish our century, and ought to bind together rich and poor, by proving the grave attention which modern society bestows upon all that can affect the welfare of the last.
"Dull stuff—theory—claptrap," said Richard, rousing himself from his reverie at last: "it can't interest you."
"All books interest me, I think," said Leonard, "and this especially; for it relates to the working class, and I am one of them."
"You were yesterday, but you mayn't be to-morrow," answered Richard, good-humoredly, and patting him on the shoulder. "You see, my lad, that it is the middle class which ought to govern the country. What the book says about the ignorance of country magistrates is very good; but the man writes pretty considerable trash when he wants to regulate the number of hours a free-born boy should work at a factory—only ten hours a day—pooh! and so lose two to the nation! Labor is wealth: and if we could get men to work twenty-four hours a day, we should be just twice as rich. If the march of civilization is to proceed," continued Richard, loftily, "men, and boys, too, must not lie a-bed doing nothing all night, sir." Then with a complacent tone—"We shall get to the twenty-four hours at last; and, by gad, we must, or we shan't flog the Europeans as we do now."
On arriving at the inn at which Richard had first made acquaintance with Mr. Dale, the coach by which he had intended to perform the rest of the journey was found to be full. Richard continued to perform the journey in post-chaises, not without some grumbling at the expense, and incessant orders to the post-boys to make the best of the way. "Slow country this, in spite of all its brag," said he—"very slow. Time is money—they know that in the States; for why, they are all men of business there. Always slow in a country where a parcel of lazy, idle lords, and dukes, and baronets, seem to think 'time is pleasure.'"
Toward evening the chaise approached the confines of a very large town, and Richard began to grow fidgety. His easy cavalier air was abandoned. He withdrew his legs from the window, out of which they had been luxuriously dangling; pulled down his waistcoat; buckled more tightly his stock: it was clear that he was resuming the decorous dignity that belongs to state. He was like a monarch who, after traveling happy and incognito, returns to his capital. Leonard divined at once that they were nearing their journey's end.
Humble foot-passengers now looked at the chaise, and touched their hats. Richard returned the salutation with a nod—a nod less gracious than condescending. The chaise turned rapidly to the left, and stopped before a smart lodge, very new, very white, adorned with two Doric columns in stucco, and flanked by a large pair of gates. "Hollo!" cried the post-boy, and cracked his whip.
Two children were playing before the lodge, and some clothes were hanging out to dry on the shrubs and pales round the neat little building.
"Hang those brats! they are actually playing," growled Dick. "As I live, the jade has been washing again! Stop, boy." During this soliloquy, a good-looking young woman had rushed from the door—slapped the children as, catching sight of the chaise, they ran toward the house—opened the gates, and, dropping a courtesy to the ground, seemed to wish that she could drop into it altogether, so frightened and so trembling seemed she to shrink from the wrathful face which the master now put out of the window.
"Did I tell you, or did I not," said Dick, "that I would not have these horrid disreputable cubs of yours playing just before my lodge gates?"
"Please, sir—"
"Don't answer me. And did I tell you, or did I not, that the next time I saw you making a drying-ground of my lilacs, you should go out, neck and crop—"
"Oh, please, sir—"
"You leave my lodge next Saturday: drive on, boy. The ingratitude and insolence of those common people are disgraceful to human nature," muttered Richard, with an accent of the bitterest misanthropy.
The chaise wheeled along the smoothest and freshest of gravel roads, and through fields of the finest land, in the highest state of cultivation. Rapid as was Leonard's survey, his rural eye detected the signs of a master in the art agranomial. Hitherto he had considered the Squire's model farm as the nearest approach to good husbandry he had seen: for Jackeymo's finer skill was developed rather on the minute scale of market-gardening than what can fairly be called husbandry. But the Squire's farm was degraded by many old-fashioned notions, and concessions to the whim of the eye, which would not be found in model farms nowadays—large tangled hedgerows, which, though they constitute one of the beauties most picturesque in old England, make sad deductions from produce; great trees, overshadowing the corn, and harboring the birds; little patches of rough sward left to waste; and angles of woodland running into fields, exposing them to rabbits, and blocking out the sun. These and suchlike blots on a gentleman farmer's agriculture, common-sense and Giacomo had made clear to the acute comprehension of Leonard. No such faults were perceptible in Richard Avenel's domain. The fields lay in broad divisions, the hedges were clipped and narrowed into their proper destination of mere boundaries. Not a blade of wheat withered under the cold shade of a tree: not a yard of land lay waste; not a weed was to be seen, not a thistle to waft its baleful seed through the air: some young plantations were placed, not where the artist would put them, but just where the farmer wanted a fence from the wind. Was there no beauty in this? Yes, there was beauty of its kind—beauty at once recognizable to the initiated—beauty of use and profit—beauty that could bear a monstrous high rent. And Leonard uttered a cry of admiration which thrilled through the heart of Richard Avenel.
"This is farming!" said the villager.
"Well, I guess it is," answered Richard, all his ill-humor vanishing. "You should have seen the land when I bought it. But we new men, as they call us—(damn their impertinence)—are the new blood of this country."
Richard Avenel never said any thing more true. Long may the new blood circulate through the veins of the mighty giantess; but let the grand heart be the same as it has beat for proud ages.
The chaise, now passed through a pretty shrubbery, and the house came into gradual view—a house with a portico—all the offices carefully thrust out of sight.
The post-boy dismounted and rang the bell.
"I almost think they are going to keep me waiting," said Mr. Richard, well-nigh in the very words of Louis XIV.
But that fear was not realized—the door opened; a well-fed servant out of livery presented himself. There was no hearty welcoming smile on his face, but he opened the chaise-door with demure and taciturn respect.
"Where's George? why does not he come to the door?" asked Richard, descending from the chaise slowly, and leaning on the servant's outstretched arm with as much precaution as if he had had the gout.
Fortunately, George here came into sight, settling himself hastily into his livery coat.
"See to the things, both of you," said Richard, as he paid the post-boy.
Leonard stood on the gravel sweep, gazing at the square white house.
"Handsome elevation—classical, I take it—eh?" said Richard, joining him. "But you should see the offices."
He then, with familiar kindness, took Leonard by the arm, and drew him within. He showed him the hall, with a carved mahogany stand for hats; he showed him the drawing-room, and pointed out its beauties—though it was summer the drawing-room looked cold, as will look rooms newly furnished, with walls newly papered, in houses newly built. The furniture was handsome, and suited to the rank of a rich trader. There was no pretense about it, and therefore no vulgarity, which is more than can be said for the houses of many an honorable Mrs. Somebody in Mayfair, with rooms twelve feet square, chokeful of buhl, that would have had its proper place in the Tuileries. Then Richard showed him the library, with mahogany book-cases and plate glass, and the fashionable authors handsomely bound. Your new men are much better friends to living authors than your old families who live in the country, and at most subscribe to a book-club. Then Richard took him up-stairs, and led him through the bedrooms—all very clean and comfortable, and with every modern convenience; and, pausing in a very pretty single gentleman's chamber, said, "This is your den. And now, can you guess who I am?"
"No one but my Uncle Richard could be so kind," answered Leonard.
But the compliment did not flatter Richard. He was extremely disconcerted and disappointed. He had hoped that he should be taken for a lord at least, forgetful of all that he had said in disparagement of lords.
"Pish!" said he at last, biting his lip—"so you don't think that I look like a gentleman! Come, now, speak honestly."
Leonard wonderingly saw he had given pain, and with the good breeding which comes instinctively from good-nature, replied—"I judged you by your heart, sir, and your likeness to my grandfather—otherwise I should never have presumed to fancy we could be relations."
"Hum!" answered Richard. "You can just wash your hands, and then come down to dinner; you will hear the gong in ten minutes. There's the bell; ring for what you want."
With that, he turned on his heel; and descending the stairs, gave a look into the dining-room, and admired the plated salver on the sideboard, and the king's pattern spoons and forks on the table. Then he walked to the looking-glass over the mantle-piece; and wishing to survey the whole effect of his form, mounted a chair. He was just getting into an attitude which he thought imposing, when the butler entered, and being London bred, had the discretion to try to escape unseen; but Richard caught sight of him in the looking-glass, and colored up to the temples.
"Jarvis," said he mildly, "Jarvis, put me in mind to have these inexpressibles altered."
CHAPTER III.
Apropos of the inexpressibles, Mr. Richard did not forget to provide his nephew with a much larger wardrobe than could have been thrust into Dr. Riccabocca's knapsack. There was a very good tailor in the town, and the clothes were very well made. And, but for an air more ingenuous, and a cheek that, despite study and night vigils, retained much of the sunburnt bloom of the rustic, Leonard Fairfield might now have almost passed, without disparaging comment, by the bow-window at White's. Richard burst into an immoderate fit of laughter when he first saw the watch which the poor Italian had bestowed upon Leonard; but, to atone for the laughter, he made him a present of a very pretty substitute, and bade him "lock up his turnip." Leonard was more hurt by the jeer at his old patron's gift than pleased by his uncle's. But Richard Avenel had no conception of sentiment. It was not for many days that Leonard could reconcile himself to his uncle's manner. Not that the peasant could pretend to judge of its mere conventional defects; but there is an ill breeding to which, whatever our rank and nurture, we are almost equally sensitive—the ill breeding that comes from want of consideration for others. Now, the Squire was as homely in his way as Richard Avenel, but the Squire's bluntness rarely hurt the feelings: and when it did so, the Squire perceived and hastened to repair his blunder. But Mr. Richard, whether kind or cross, was always wounding you in some little delicate fibre—not from malice, but from the absence of any little delicate fibres of his own. He was really, in many respects, a most excellent man and certainly a very valuable, citizen. But his merits wanted the fine tints and fluent curves that constitute beauty of character. He was honest, but sharp in his practice, and with a keen eye to his interests. He was just, but as a matter of business. He made no allowances, and did not leave to his justice the large margin of tenderness and mercy. He was generous, but rather from an idea of what was due to himself than with much thought of the pleasure he gave to others; and he even regarded generosity as capital put out to interest. He expected a great deal of gratitude in return, and, when he obliged a man, considered that he had bought a slave. Every needy voter knew where to come, if he wanted relief or a loan; but woe to him if he had ventured to express hesitation when Mr. Avenel told him how he must vote.
In this town Richard had settled after his return from America, in which country he had enriched himself—first, by spirit and industry—lastly, by bold speculation and good luck. He invested his fortune in business—became a partner in a large brewery—soon bought out his associates—and then took a principal share in a flourishing corn-mill. He prospered rapidly—bought a property of some two or three hundred acres, built a house, and resolved to enjoy himself, and make a figure. He had now become the leading man of the town, and the boast to Audley Egerton that he could return one of the members, perhaps both, was by no means an exaggerated estimate of his power. Nor was his proposition, according to his own views, so unprincipled as it appeared to the statesman. He had taken a great dislike to both the sitting members—a dislike natural to a sensible man of modern politics, who had something to lose. For Mr. Slappe, the active member—who was head-over-ears in debt—was one of the furious democrats rare before the Reform Bill—and whose opinions were held dangerous even by the mass of a Liberal constituency; while Mr. Sleekie, the gentleman member, who laid by £5000 every year from his dividends in the Funds, was one of those men whom Richard justly pronounced to be "humbugs"—men who curry favor with the extreme party by voting for measures sure not to be carried; while, if there were the least probability of coming to a decision that would lower the money-market, Mr. Sleekie was seized with a well-timed influenza. Those politicians are common enough now. Propose to march to the Millennium, and they are your men. Ask them to march a quarter of a mile, and they fall to feeling their pockets, and trembling for fear of the foot-pads. They are never so joyful as when there is no chance of a victory. Did they beat the Minister, they would be carried out of the house in a fit.
Richard Avenel—despising both these gentlemen, and not taking kindly to the Whigs since the great Whig leaders were Lords—looked with a friendly eye to the Government as it then existed, and especially to Audley Egerton, the enlightened representative of commerce. But in giving Audley and his colleagues the benefit of his influence, through conscience, he thought it all fair and right to have a quid pro quo, and, as he had so frankly confessed, it was his whim to rise up "Sir Richard." For this worthy citizen abused the aristocracy much on the same principle as the fair Olivia depreciated Squire Thornhill—he had a sneaking affection for what he abused. The society of Screwstown was like most provincial capitals, composed of two classes—the commercial and the exclusive. These last dwelt chiefly apart, around the ruins of an old abbey; they affected its antiquity in their pedigrees, and had much of its ruin in their finances. Widows of rural thanes in the neighborhood—genteel spinsters—officers retired on half-pay—younger sons of rich squires, who had now become old bachelors—in short, a very respectable, proud, aristocratic set—who thought more of themselves than do all the Gowers and Howards, Courtenays and Seymours, put together. It had early been the ambition of Richard Avenel to be admitted into this sublime coterie, and, strange to say, he had partially succeeded. He was never more happy than when he was asked to their card-parties, and never more unhappy than when he was actually there. Various circumstances combined to raise Mr. Avenel into this elevated society. First, he was unmarried, still very handsome, and in that society there was a large proportion of unwedded females. Secondly, he was the only rich trader in Screwstown who kept a good cook, and professed to give dinners, and the half-pay captains and colonels swallowed the host for the sake of the venison. Thirdly, and principally, all these exclusives abhorred the two sitting members, and "idem nolle idem velle de republica, ea firma amicitia est;" that is, congeniality in politics pieces porcelain and crockery together better than the best diamond cement. The sturdy Richard Avenel—who valued himself on American independence—held these ladies and gentlemen in an awe that was truly Brahminical. Whether it was that in England, all notions, even of liberty, are mixed up historically, traditionally, socially, with that fine and subtle element of aristocracy which, like the press, is the air we breathe; or whether Richard imagined that he really became magnetically imbued with the virtues of these silver pennies and gold seven-shilling pieces, distinct from the vulgar coinage in popular use, it is hard to say. But the truth must be told—Richard Avenel was a notable tuft-hunter. He had a great longing to marry out of this society; but he had not yet seen any one sufficiently high-born and high-bred to satisfy his aspirations. In the mean while, he had convinced himself that his way would be smooth could he offer to make his ultimate choice "My Lady;" and he felt that it would be a proud hour in his life when he could walk before stiff Colonel Pompley to the sound of "Sir Richard." Still, however disappointed at the ill-success of his bluff diplomacy with Mr. Egerton, and however yet cherishing the most vindictive resentment against that individual—he did not, as many would have done, throw up his political convictions out of personal spite. He resolved still to favor the ungrateful and undeserving Administration; and as Audley Egerton had acted on the representations of the mayor and deputies, and shaped his bill to meet their views, so Avenel and the Government rose together in the popular estimation of the citizens of Screwstown.
But duly to appreciate the value of Richard Avenel, and in just counterpoise to all his foibles, one ought to have seen what he had effected for the town. Well might he boast of "new blood;" he had done as much for the town as he had for his fields. His energy, his quick comprehension of public utility, backed by his wealth, and bold, bullying, imperious character, had sped the work of civilization as if with the celerity and force of a steam-engine.
If the town were so well paved and so well lighted—if half-a-dozen squalid lanes had been transformed into a stately street—if half the town no longer depended on tanks for their water—if the poor-rates were reduced one-third—praise to the brisk new blood which Richard Avenel had infused into vestry and corporation. And his example itself was so contagious! "There was not a plate-glass window in the town when I came into it," said Richard Avenel; "and now look down the High-street!" He took the credit to himself, and justly; for, though his own business did not require windows of plate-glass, he had awakened the spirit of enterprise which adorns a whole city.
Mr. Avenel did not present Leonard to his friends for more than a fortnight. He allowed him to wear off his rust. He then gave a grand dinner, at which his nephew was formally introduced, and, to his great wrath and disappointment, never opened his lips. How could he, poor youth, when Miss Clarina Mowbray only talked upon high life, till proud Colonel Pompley went in state through the history of the siege of Seringapatam.
CHAPTER IV
While Leonard accustoms himself gradually to the splendors that surround him, and often turns with a sigh to the remembrance of his mother's cottage and the sparkling fount in the Italian's flowery garden, we will make with thee, O reader, a rapid flight to the metropolis, and drop ourselves amidst the gay groups that loiter along the dusty ground, or loll over the roadside palings of Hyde Park. The season is still at its height; but the short day of fashionable London life, which commences two hours after noon, is in its decline. The crowd in Rotten-row begins to thin. Near the statue of Achilles, and apart from all other loungers, a gentleman, with one hand thrust into his waistcoat, and the other resting on his cane, gazed listlessly on the horsemen and carriages in the brilliant ring. He was still in the prime of life, at the age when man is usually the most social—when the acquaintances of youth have ripened into friendship, and a personage of some rank and fortune has become a well-known feature in the mobile face of society. But though, when his contemporaries were boys scarce at college, this gentleman had blazed foremost among the princes of fashion, and though he had all the qualities of nature and circumstance which either retain fashion to the last, or exchange its false celebrity for a graver repute, he stood as a stranger in that throng of his countrymen. Beauties whirled by to the toilet—statesmen passed on to the senate—dandies took flight to the clubs; and neither nods, nor becks, nor wreathed smiles, said to the solitary spectator, "Follow us—thou art one of our set." Now and then, some middle-aged beau, nearing the post of the loiterer, turned round to look again; but the second glance seemed to dissipate the recognition of the first, and the beau silently continued his way.
"By the tombs of my fathers!" said the solitary to himself, "I know now what a dead man might feel if he came to life again, and took a peep at the living."
Time passed on—the evening shades descended fast. Our stranger in London had well-nigh the Park to himself. He seemed to breathe more freely as he saw that the space was so clear.
"There's oxygen in the atmosphere now," said he, half aloud; "and I can walk without breathing in the gaseous fumes of the multitude. O those chemists—what dolts they are! They tell us crowds taint the air, but they never guess why! Pah! it is not the lungs that poison the element—it is the reek of bad hearts. When a periwig-pated fellow breathes on me, I swallow a mouthful of care. Allons! my friend Nero; now for a stroll." He touched with his cane a large Newfoundland dog, who lay stretched near his feet; a dog and man went slow through the growing twilight, and over the brown dry turf. At length our solitary paused, and threw himself on a bench under a tree. "Half-past eight!" said he, looking at his watch—"one may smoke one's cigar without shocking the world."
He took out his cigar-case, struck a light, and in another moment, reclined at length on the bench, seemed absorbed in regarding the smoke, that scarce colored ere it vanished into air.
"It is the most barefaced lie in the world, my Nero," said he, addressing his dog—"this boasted liberty of man! Now, here am I, a freeborn Englishman, a citizen of the world, caring—I often say to myself—caring not a jot for Kaisar or Mob; and yet I no more dare smoke this cigar in the Park at half-past six, when all the world is abroad, than I dare pick my Lord Chancellor's pocket, or hit the Archbishop of Canterbury a thump on the nose. Yet no law in England forbids me my cigar, Nero! What is law at half-past eight, was not crime at six and a half! Britannia says, "Man, thou art free," and she lies like a commonplace woman. O Nero, Nero! you enviable dog!—you serve but from liking. No thought of the world costs you one wag of the tail. Your big heart and true instinct suffice you for reason and law. You would want nothing to your felicity, if in these moments of ennui you would but smoke a cigar. Try it, Nero!—try it!" And, rising from his incumbent posture, he sought to force the end of the weed between the teeth of the dog.
While thus gravely engaged, two figures had approached the place. The one was a man who seemed weak and sickly. His threadbare coat was buttoned to the chin, but hung large on his shrunken breast. The other was a girl of about fourteen, on whose arm he leant heavily. Her cheek was wan, and there was a patient sad look on her face, which seemed so settled that you would think she could never have known the mirthfulness of childhood.
"Pray rest here, papa," said the child softly; and she pointed to the bench, without taking heed of its pre-occupant, who now, indeed, confined to one corner of the seat, was almost hidden by the shadow of a tree.
The man sate down, with a feeble sigh; and then, observing the stranger, raised his hat, and said, in that tone of voice which betrays the usages of polished society, "Forgive me, if I intrude on you, sir."
The stranger looked up from his dog, and seeing that the girl was standing, rose at once as if to make room for her on the bench.
But still the girl did not heed him. She hung over her father, and wiped his brow tenderly with a little kerchief which she took from her own neck for the purpose.
Nero, delighted to escape the cigar, had taken to some unwieldy curvets and gambols, to vent the excitement into which he had been thrown; and now returning, approached the bench with a low look of surprise, and sniffed at the intruders on his master's privacy.
"Come here, sir," said the master. "You need not fear him," he added, addressing himself to the girl.
But the girl, without turning round to him, cried in a voice rather of anguish than alarm, "He has fainted! Father! father!"
The stranger kicked aside his dog, which was in the way, and loosened the poor man's stiff military stock. While thus charitably engaged, the moon broke out, and the light fell full on the pale care-worn face of the unconscious sufferer.
"This face seems not unfamiliar to me, though sadly changed," said the stranger to himself; and bending toward the girl, who had sunk on her knees and was chafing her father's hands, he asked, "My child, what is your father's name?"
The child continued her task, too absorbed to answer.
The stranger put his hand on her shoulder, and repeated the question.
"Digby," answered the child, almost unconsciously; and as she spoke the man's senses began to return. In a few minutes more he had sufficiently recovered to falter forth his thanks to the stranger. But the last took his hand, and said, in a voice at once tremulous and soothing, "Is it possible that I see once more an old brother in arms? Algernon Digby, I do not forget you; but it seems England has forgotten?"
A hectic flush spread over the soldier's face, and he looked away from the speaker as he answered—
"My name is Digby, it is true, sir; but I do not think we have met before. Come, Helen, I am well now—we will go home."
"Try and play with that great dog, my child," said the stranger—"I want to talk with your father."
The child bowed her submissive head, and moved away; but she did not play with the dog.
"I must re-introduce myself, formally, I see," quoth the stranger. "You were in the same regiment with myself, and my name is L'Estrange."
"My lord," said the soldier, rising, "forgive me that—"
"I don't think that it was the fashion to call me 'my lord' at the mess-table. Come, what has happened to you?—on half-pay?"
Mr. Digby shook his head mournfully.
"Digby, old fellow, can you lend me £100?" said Lord L'Estrange, clapping his ci-devant brother officer on the shoulder, and in a tone of voice that seemed like a boy's—so impudent was it, and devil-me-carish. "No! Well, that's lucky, for I can lend it to you."
Mr. Digby burst into tears.
Lord L'Estrange did not seem to observe the emotion. "We were both sad extravagant fellows in our day," said he, "and I dare say I borrowed of you pretty freely."
"Me! Oh, Lord L'Estrange?"
"You have married since then, and reformed, I suppose. Tell me, old friend, all about it."
Mr. Digby, who by this time had succeeded in restoring some calm to his shattered nerves, now rose, and said in brief sentences, but clear firm tones,
"My Lord, it is idle to talk of me—useless to help me. I am fast dying. But, my child there, my only child (he paused an instant, and went on rapidly). I have relations in a distant country, if I could but get to them—I think they would at least provide for her. This has been for weeks my hope, my dream, my prayer. I can not afford the journey except by your help. I have begged without shame for myself; shall I be ashamed, then, to beg for her?"
"Digby," said L'Estrange, with some grave alteration of manner, "talk neither of dying, nor begging. You were nearer death when the balls whistled round you at Waterloo. If soldier meets soldier and says, 'Friend, thy purse,' it is not begging, but brotherhood. Ashamed! By the soul of Belisarius! if I needed money, I would stand at a crossing with my Waterloo medal over my breast, and say to each sleek citizen I had helped to save from the sword of the Frenchman, 'It is your shame if I starve.' Now, lean upon me; I see you should be at home—which way?"
The poor soldier pointed his hand toward Oxford-street, and reluctantly accepted the proffered arm.
"And when you return from your relations, you will call on me? What!—hesitate? Come, promise."
"I will."
"On your honor."
"If I live, on my honor."
"I am staying at present at Knightsbridge, with my father; but you will always hear of my address at No. — Grosvenor-square, Mr. Egerton's. So you have a long journey before you?"
"Very long."
"Do not fatigue yourself—travel slowly. Ho, you foolish child!—I see you are jealous of me. Your father has another arm to spare you."
Thus talking, and getting but short answers, Lord L'Estrange continued to exhibit those whimsical peculiarities of character, which had obtained for him the repute of heartlessness in the world. Perhaps the reader may think the world was not in the right. But if ever the world does judge rightly of the character of a man who does not live for the world, nor talk for the world, nor feel with the world, it will be centuries after the soul of Harley L'Estrange has done with this planet.
CHAPTER V.
Lord L'Estrange parted company with Mr. Digby at the entrance of Oxford-street. The father and child there took a cabriolet. Mr. Digby directed the driver to go down the Edgeware-road. He refused to tell L'Estrange his address, and this with such evident pain, from the sores of pride, that L'Estrange could not press the point. Reminding the soldier of his promise to call, Harley thrust a pocket-book into his hand, and walked off hastily toward Grosvenor-square.
He reached Audley Egerton's door just as that gentleman was getting out of his carriage; and the two friends entered the house together.
"Does the nation take a nap to-night?" asked L'Estrange. "Poor old lady! She hears so much of her affairs, that she may well boast of her constitution: it must be of iron."
"The House is still sitting," answered Audley seriously, and with small heed of his friend's witticism. "But it is not a Government motion, and the division will be late, so I came home; and if I had not found you here, I should have gone into the Park to look for you."
"Yes—one always knows where to find me at this hour. 9 o'clock p.m.—cigar—Hyde Park. There is not a man in England so regular in his habits."
Here the friends reached a drawing-room in which the Member of Parliament seldom sat, for his private apartments were all on the ground floor.
"But it is the strangest whim of yours, Harley," said he.
"What?"
"To affect detestation of ground-floors."
"Affect! O sophisticated man, of the earth, earthy! Affect!—nothing less natural to the human soul than a ground-floor. We are quite far enough from heaven, mount as many stairs as we will, without groveling by preference."
"According to that symbolical view of the case," said Audley, "you should lodge in an attic."
"So I would, but that I abhor new slippers. As for hair-brushes, I am indifferent!"
"What have slippers and hair-brushes to do with attics?"
"Try! Make your bed in an attic, and the next morning you will have neither slippers nor hair-brushes!"
"What shall I have done with them?"
"Shied them at the cats!"
"What odd things you do say, Harley!"
"Odd! By Apollo and his nine spinsters! there is no human being who has so little imagination as a distinguished Member of Parliament. Answer me this, thou solemn right honorable—Hast thou climbed to the heights of august contemplation? Hast thou gazed on the stars with the rapt eye of song? Hast thou dreamed of a love known to the angels, or sought to seize in the Infinite the mystery of life?"
"Not I indeed, my poor Harley."
"Then no wonder, poor Audley, that you can not conjecture why he who makes his bed in an attic, disturbed by base catterwauls, shies his slippers at cats. Bring a chair into the balcony. Nero spoiled my cigar to-night. I am going to smoke now. You never smoke. You can look on the shrubs in the square."
Audley slightly shrugged his shoulders, but he followed his friend's counsel and example, and brought his chair into the balcony. Nero came too, but at sight and smell of the cigar prudently retreated, and took refuge under the table.
"Audley Egerton, I want something from Government."
"I am delighted to hear it."
"There was a cornet in my regiment, who would have done better not to have come into it. We were, for the most part of us, puppies and fops."
"You all fought well, however."
"Puppies and fops do fight well. Vanity and valor generally go together. Cæsar, who scratched his head with due care of his scanty curls, and, even in dying, thought of the folds in his toga; Walter Raleigh, who could not walk twenty yards, because of the gems in his shoes; Alcibiades, who lounged into the Agora with doves in his bosom, and an apple in his hand; Murat, bedizened in gold-lace and furs; and Demetrius, the City-Taker, who made himself up like a French Marquise—were all pretty good fellows at fighting. A slovenly hero like Cromwell is a paradox in nature, and a marvel in history. But to return to my cornet. We were rich; he was poor. When the pot of clay swims down the stream with the brass-pots, it is sure of a smash. Men said Digby was stingy; I saw he was extravagant. But every one, I fear, would be rather thought stingy than poor. Bref.—I left the army, and saw him no more till to-night. There was never shabby poor gentleman on the stage more awfully shabby, more pathetically gentleman. But, look ye, this man has fought for England. It was no child's play at Waterloo, let me tell you, Mr. Egerton; and, but for such men, you would be at best a sous-prefet, and your Parliament a Provincial Assembly. You must do something for Digby. What shall it be?"
"Why, really, my dear Harley, this man was no great friend of yours—eh?"
"If he were, he would not want the Government to help him—he would not be ashamed of taking money from me."
"That is all very fine, Harley; but there are so many poor officers, and so little to give. It is the most difficult thing in the world that which you ask me. Indeed, I know nothing can be done; he has his half-pay."
"I think not; or, if he has it, no doubt it all goes on his debts. That's nothing to us: the man and his child are starving."
"But if it is his own fault—if he has been imprudent?"
"Ah—well, well; where the devil is Nero?"
"I am so sorry I can't oblige you. If it were any thing else—"
"There is something else. My valet—I can't turn him adrift—excellent fellow, but gets drunk now and then. Will you find him a place in the Stamp Office?"
"With pleasure."
"No, now I think of it—the man knows my ways: I must keep him. But my old wine-merchant—civil man, never dunned—is a bankrupt. I am under great obligations to him, and he has a very pretty daughter. Do you think you could thrust him into some small place in the colonies, or make him a king's messenger, or something of the sort?"
"If you very much wish it, no doubt I can."
"My dear Audley, I am but feeling my way: the fact is, I want something for myself."
"Ah, that indeed gives me pleasure!" cried Egerton, with animation.
"The mission to Florence will soon be vacant—I know it privately. The place would quite suit me. Pleasant city; the best figs in Italy—very little to do. You could sound Lord —— on the subject."
"I will answer beforehand. Lord —— would be enchanted to secure to the public service a man so accomplished as yourself, and the son of a peer like Lord Lansmere."
Harley L'Estrange sprang to his feet, and flung his cigar in the face of a stately policeman, who was looking up at the balcony.
"Infamous and bloodless official!" cried Harley L'Estrange; "so you could provide for a pimpled-nosed lackey—for a wine-merchant who has been poisoning the king's subjects with white lead or sloe-juice—for an idle sybarite, who would complain of a crumpled rose-leaf; and nothing in all the vast patronage of England for a broken down soldier, whose dauntless breast was her rampart."
"Harley," said the Member of Parliament, with his calm, sensible smile, "this would be very good clap-trap at a small theatre; but there is nothing in which Parliament demands such rigid economy as the military branch of the public service; and no man for whom it is so hard to effect what we must plainly call a job, as a subaltern officer, who has done nothing more than his duty—and all military men do that. Still, as you take it so earnestly, I will use what interest I can at the War Office, and get him, perhaps, the mastership of a barrack."
"You had better; for, if you do not, I swear I will turn radical, and come down to your own city to oppose you, with Hunt and Cobbett to canvass for me."
"I should be very glad to see you come into parliament, even as a radical, and at my expense," said Audley, with great kindness. "But the air is growing cold, and you are not accustomed to our climate. Nay, if you are too poetic for catarrhs and rheums, I'm not—come in."
CHAPTER VI.
Lord L'Estrange threw himself on a sofa, and leaned his cheek on his hand thoughtfully. Audley Egerton sat near him, with his arms folded, and gazed on his friend's face with a soft expression of aspect, which was very unusual to the firm outline of his handsome features. The two men were as dissimilar in person as the reader will have divined that they were in character. All about Egerton was so rigid, all about L'Estrange so easy. In every posture of Harley's there was the unconscious grace of a child. The very fashion of his garments showed his abhorrence of restraint. His clothes were wide and loose; his neckcloth, tied carelessly, left his throat half bare. You could see that he had lived much in warm and southern lands, and contracted a contempt for conventionalities; there was as little in his dress as in his talk of the formal precision of the north. He was three or four years younger then Audley, but he looked at least twelve years younger. In fact, he was one of those men to whom old age seems impossible—voice, look, figure, had all the charm of youth; and, perhaps it was from this gracious youthfulness—at all events, it was characteristic of the kind of love he inspired—that neither his parents, nor the few friends admitted into his intimacy, ever called him, in their habitual intercourse, by the name of his title. He was not L'Estrange with them, he was Harley; and by that familiar baptismal I will usually designate him. He was not one of those men whom author or reader wish to view at a distance, and remember as "my Lord"—it was so rarely that he remembered it himself. For the rest, it had been said of him by a shrewd wit—"He is so natural that every one calls him affected." Harley L'Estrange was not so critically handsome as Audley Egerton; to a commonplace observer he was, at best, rather good-looking than otherwise. But women said that he had "a beautiful countenance," and they were not wrong. He wore his hair, which was of a fair chestnut, long, and in loose curls; and instead of the Englishman's whiskers, indulged in the foreigner's mustache. His complexion was delicate, though not effeminate; it was rather the delicacy of a student, than of a woman. But in his clear gray eye there was wonderful vigor of life. A skillful physiologist, looking only into that eye, would have recognized rare stamina of constitution—a nature so rich that, while easily disturbed, it would require all the effects of time, or all the fell combinations of passion and grief, to exhaust it. Even now, though so thoughtful, and even so sad, the rays of that eye were as concentred and steadfast as the light of the diamond.
"You were only, then, in jest," said Audley, after a long silence, "when you spoke of this mission to Florence. You have still no idea of entering into public life."
"None."
"I had hoped better things when I got your promise to pass one season in London. But, indeed, you have kept your promise to the ear to break it to the spirit. I could not presuppose that you would shun all society, and be as much of a hermit here as under the vines of Como."
"I have sate in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers; I have been in the pit of the Opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have walked your streets, I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills up her wrinkless with rouge."
"Of what dowager do you speak?" asked the matter-of-fact Audley.
"She has a great many titles. Some people call her fashion, you busy men, politics: it is all one—tricked out and artificial. I mean London life. No, I can't fall in love with her, fawning old harridan!"
"I wish you could fall in love with something."
"I wish I could, with all my heart."
"But you are so blasé."
"On the contrary, I am so fresh. Look out of the window—what do you see?"
"Nothing!"
"Nothing—"
"Nothing but houses and dusty lilacs, my coachman dozing on his box, and two women in pattens crossing the kennel."
"I see none of that where I lie on the sofa. I see but the stars. And I feel for them as I did when I was a schoolboy at Eton. It is you who are blasé, not I—enough of this. You do not forget my commission, with respect to the exile who has married into your brother's family?"
"No; but here you set me a task more difficult than that of saddling your cornet on the War Office."
"I know it is difficult, for the counter influence is vigilant and strong; but on the other hand, the enemy is so damnable a traitor that one must have the Fates and the household gods on one's side."
"Nevertheless," said the practical Audley, bending over a book on the table, "I think that the best plan would be to attempt a compromise with the traitor."
"To judge of others by myself," answered Harley with spirit, "it were less bitter to put up with wrong than to palter with it for compensation. And such wrong! Compromise with the open foe—that may be done with honor; but with the perjured friend—that were to forgive the perjury!"
"You are too vindictive," said Egerton; "there may be excuses for the friend, which palliate even—"
"Hush! Audley, hush! or I shall think the world has indeed corrupted you. Excuse for the friend who deceives, who betrays! No, such is the true outlaw of Humanity; and the Furies surround him even while he sleeps in the temple."
The man of the world lifted his eye slowly on the animated face of one still natural enough for the passions. He then once more returned to his book, and said, after a pause, "It is time you should marry, Harley."
"No," answered L'Estrange, with a smile at this sudden turn in the conversation—"not time yet; for my chief objection to that change in life is, that all the women nowadays are too old for me, or I am too young for them; a few, indeed, are so infantine that one is ashamed to be their toy; but most are so knowing that one is a fool to be their dupe. The first, if they condescend to love you, love you as the biggest doll they have yet dandled, and for a doll's good qualities—your pretty blue eyes, and your exquisite millinery. The last, if they prudently accept you, do so on algebraical principles; you are but the X or the Y that represents a certain aggregate of goods matrimonial—pedigree, title, rent-roll, diamonds, pin-money, opera-box. They cast you up with the help of mamma, and you wake some morning to find that plus wife minus affection equals—the Devil!"
"Nonsense," said Audley, with his quiet grave laugh. "I grant that it is often the misfortune of a man in your station to be married rather for what he has, than for what he is; but you are tolerably penetrating, and not likely to be deceived in the character of the woman you court."
"Of the woman I court?—No! But of the woman I marry, very likely indeed. Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at school; but her change par excellence is from the fairy you woo to the brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite, it is that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments. She paints charmingly, or plays like St. Cecilia. Clap a ring on her finger, and she never draws again—except perhaps your caricature on the back of a letter, and never opens a piano after the honeymoon. You marry her for her sweet temper; and next year, her nerves are so shattered that you can't contradict her but you are whirled into a storm of hysterics. You marry her because she declares she hates balls and likes quiet; and ten to one but what she becomes a patroness at Almacks, or a lady in waiting."
"Yet most men marry, and most men survive the operation."
"If it were only necessary to live, that would be a consolatory and encouraging reflection. But to live with peace, to live with dignity, to live with freedom, to live in harmony with your thoughts, your habits, your aspirations—and this in the perpetual companionship of a person to whom you have given the power to wound your peace, to assail your dignity, to cripple your freedom, to jar on each thought and each habit, and bring you down to the meanest details of earth, when you invite her, poor soul, to soar to the spheres—that makes the to be, or not to be, which is the question."
"If I were you, Harley, I would do as I have heard the author of Sandford and Merton did—choose out a child and educate her yourself after your own heart."
"You have hit it," answered Harley, seriously. "That has long been my idea—a very vague one, I confess. But I fear I shall be an old man before I find even the child."
"Ah," he continued, yet more earnestly, while the whole character of his varying countenance changed again—"ah! if indeed I could discover what I seek—one who with the heart of a child has the mind of a woman; one who beholds in nature the variety, the charm, the never feverish, ever healthful excitement that others vainly seek in the bastard sentimentalities of a life false with artificial forms; one who can comprehend, as by intuition, the rich poetry with which creation is clothed—poetry so clear to the child when enraptured with the flower, or when wondering at the star! If on me such exquisite companionship were bestowed—why, then"—he paused, sighed deeply, and, covering his face with his hand, resumed in faltering accents,
"But once—but once only, did such visions of the Beautiful made human rise before me—amidst 'golden exhalations of the dawn.' It beggared my life in vanishing. You know only—you only—how—how—"
He bowed his head, and the tears forced themselves through his clenched fingers.
"So long ago!" said Audley, sharing his friend's emotion. "Years so long and so weary, yet still thus tenacious of a mere boyish memory."
"Away with it, then!" cried Harley, springing to his feet, and with a laugh of strange merriment. "Your carriage still waits; set me home before you go to the House."
Then laying his hand lightly on his friend's shoulder, he said, "Is it for you, Audley Egerton, to speak sneeringly of boyish memories? What else is it that binds us together? What else warms my heart when I meet you? What else draws your thoughts from blue-books and beer-bills, to waste them on a vagrant like me? Shake hands. Oh, friend of my boyhood! recollect the oars that we plied and the bats that we wielded in the old time, or the murmured talk on the moss-grown bank, as we sate together, building in the summer air castles mightier than Windsor. Ah! they are strong ties, those boyish memories, believe me! I remember as if it were yesterday my translation of that lovely passage in Persius, beginning—let me see—ah!—
"Quum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit,"
that passage on friendship which gushes out so livingly from the stern heart of the satirist. And when old —— complimented me on my verses, my eye sought yours. Verily, I now say as then,
"Nescio quod, certe est quod me tibi temperet astrum."[16]
Audley turned away his head as he returned the grasp of his friend's hand; and while Harley, with his light elastic footstep, descended the stairs, Egerton lingered behind, and there was no trace of the worldly man upon his countenance when he took his place in the carriage by his companion's side.
Two hours afterward, weary cries of "Question, question!" "Divide, divide!" sank into reluctant silence as Audley Egerton rose to conclude the debate—the man of men to speak late at night, and to impatient benches: a man who would be heard; whom a Bedlam broke loose would not have roared down; with a voice clear and sound as a bell, and a form as firmly set on the ground as a church-tower. And while, on the dullest of dull questions, Audley Egerton thus, not too lively himself, enforced attention, where was Harley L'Estrange? Standing alone by the river at Richmond, and murmuring low fantastic thoughts as he gazed on the moonlit tide.
When Audley left him at home, he had joined his parents, made them gay with his careless gayety, seen the old-fashioned folks retire to rest, and then—while they, perhaps, deemed him once more the hero of ball-rooms and the cynosure of clubs—he drove slowly through the soft summer night, amidst the perfumes of many a garden and many a gleaming chestnut grove, with no other aim before him than to reach the loveliest margin of England's loveliest river, at the hour the moon was fullest and the song of the nightingale most sweet. And so eccentric a humorist was this man, that I believe, as be there loitered—no one near to cry "How affected!" or "How romantic!"—he enjoyed himself more than if he had been exchanging the politest "how-d'ye-do's" in the hottest of London drawing-rooms, or betting his hundreds on the odd trick with Lord De R—— for his partner.