Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience

by Charles James Lever

I at first hesitated, but at last consented to give the required pledge; and though for a while it occurred to me that a frank avowal of my real claim to be the person designated might best suit the object I had in view, I suddenly bethought me that if Ysaffich once believed that he himself was not the prime mover in the scheme, and that I was other than a mere puppet in his hand, he was far more likely to mar than to make our fortune. Intrigue and trick were the very essence of the man's nature; and it was enough that the truthful entered into anything to destroy its whole value or interest in his eyes. That this plot had long been lying in his mind, I had but to remember the night in the garden at Hamburg to be convinced of, and since that time he had never ceased to ruminate upon it. Indeed, he now told me that it constantly occurred to him to fancy that this piece of success was to be a crowning recompense for a long life of reverses and failures.

How gladly did my thoughts turn from him and all his crafty counsels to think of that true friend, poor Raper, and my dear, dear mother, as I used to call her, who had, in the midst of their own hard trials, devoted their best energies to my cause. It is not necessary to say that Raper was the faithful clerk, and Polly the unknown lady who had given the impulse to this search. The papers, of which Ysaffich showed me several, were all in the handwriting of one or other of them; a few of my father's own letters were also in one packet, and though referring to matters far remote from this object, had an indescribable interest for me.

“Seven years ago,” said the Count, “this estate was in the possession of a certain Mr. Curtis, who claimed to be the next of kin of the late owner, and who, I believe, was so, in the failure of this youth's legitimacy. This is now our great fact, since we have already found the individual. Eh, Gervois?” said he, laughing. “Our man is here, and from this hour forth your name is—let me see what it is—ay, here we have it: Jasper Carew, son of Walter Carew and Josephine de Courtois, his wife.”

“Jasper Carew am I from this day, then, and never to be called by any other name,” said I.

“Ay, but you must have your lesson perfect,” said he; “you must not forget the name of your parents.”

“Never fear,” said I; “Walter Carew and Josephine de Courtois are easily remembered.”

“All correct,” said he, well pleased at my accuracy. “Now, as to family history, this paper will tell you enough. It is drawn out by Mr. Raper, and is minutely exact. There is not a strong point of the case omitted, nor a weak one forgotten. Read it over carefully; mark the points in which you trace resemblance to your own life; study well where any divergence or difficulty may occur; and, lastly, draw up a brief memoir in the character of Jasper Carew, with all your recollections of childhood: for remember that up to the age of twelve or thirteen, if not later, you were domesticated with this Countess de Gabriac, and educated by Raper. After that you are free to follow out what fancy, or reality, if you like it better, may suggest. When you have drawn up everything, with all the consistency and plausibility you can, avoid none of the real difficulties, but rather show yourself fully aware of them, and also of all their importance. Let the task of having persuaded you to address Messrs. Bickering and Ragge be left to me; I have already held correspondence with them, and on this very subject. I give you three days to do this; meanwhile I start at once for Brussels, where I can consult a lawyer, an old friend of mine, as to our first steps in the campaign.”

The man who stoops once to a minute dissection of his life must perforce steel his heart against many a sense of shame, since even in the story of the good and the upright are passages of dark omen, moments when the bad has triumphed, and seasons when the true has been postponed by the false. It is not now that, having revealed so much as I have done of my secret history, I dare make any pretensions to superior honesty, or affect to be one of the “unblemished few.” Still, I have a craving desire not to be judged over harshly,—a painful feeling of anxiety that no evil construction should be put upon those actions of my life other than what they absolutely merit. My “over-reachings” have been many,—my “shortcomings” still more; but, with all their weight and gravity before me, I still entreat a merciful judgment, and hope that if the sentence be “guilty,” there will be at least the alleviation of “attenuating circumstances.”

I am now an old man; the world has no more any bribe to my ambition than have I within me the energy to attempt it. The friendships that warmed up the late autumn of my life are departed; they lie in the churchyard, and none have ever replaced them. In these confessions, therefore, humiliating as they often would seem, there are none to suffer pain. I make them at the cost of my own feelings alone, and in some sense I do so as an act of atonement and reparation to a world that, with some hard lessons, has still treated me with kindness, and to whom, with the tremulous fingers of old age, I write myself most grateful.

If they who read this story suppose that I should not have hesitated to propose myself a claimant for an estate to which I had no right, I have no better answer to give them than a mere denial, and even that uttered in all humility, since it comes from one whose good name has been impeached, and whose good faith may be questioned. Still do I repeat it, this was an act I could not have done. There is a kind of half-way rectitude in the world which never scruples at the means of any success so long as it injures no other, but which recoils from the thought of any advantage obtained at another's cost and detriment. Such I suspect to have been mine. At least, I can declare with truth that I am not conscious of an incident in my life which will bear the opposite construction.