CHAPTER XIII. THE GUARDSMAN
Leaving for a brief season Glenflesk and its inhabitants, we shall ask of our readers to accompany us to London, to a scene somewhat different from that of our last chapter.
In a handsomely furnished drawing-room in St. James's street, where the appliances of ease and luxury were blended with the evidence of those tastes so popular among young men of fashion of the period, sat, or rather lay, in a deep cushioned arm-chair, a young officer, who, even in the dishabille of the morning, and with the evident traces of fatigue and dissipation on his brow, was strikingly handsome. Though not more than three or four-and-twenty, the habits of his life, and the assured features of his character, made him appear several years older. In figure he was tall and well-proportioned, while his countenance bore those lineaments which are pre-eminently distinguished as Saxon,—massive but well-chiselled features, the harmony of whose expression is even more striking than their individual excellence, a look of frank daring, which many were prone to attribute to superciliousness, was the most marked trait in his face, nor was the impression lessened by a certain “hauteur,” which military men of the time assumed, and which, he, in particular, somewhat prided himself on.
The gifts of fortune and the graces of person will often seem to invest their possessor with attributes of insolence and overbearing, which are, in reality, nothing more than the unbridled buoyancy of youth and power revelling in its own exercise.
We have no fancy to practise mystery with our reader, and shall at once introduce him to Frederick Travers, Sir Marmaduke's only son, and Captain in the first regiment of Guards. Wealth and good looks were about as popular fifty years ago, as they are in the year we write in, and Frederick Travers was as universal a favorite in the circles he frequented as any man of his day. Courtly manners, spirits nothing could depress, a courage nothing could daunt, expensive tastes, gratified as rapidly as they were conceived, were all accessaries which won their way among his acquaintances, and made them proud of his intimacy, and boastful of his friendship. That circumstances like these should have rendered a young man self-willed and imperious, is not to be wondered at, and such was he in reality—less, however, from the unlimited license of his position, than from an hereditary feature which distinguished every member of his family, and made them as intolerant of restraint, as they were wayward in purpose. The motto of their house was the index of their character, and in every act and thought they seemed under the influence of their emblazoned inscription, “A tort et à travers.”
Over his father, Frederick Travers exercised an unlimited influence; from his boyhood upward he had never met a contradiction, and the natural goodness of his temper, and the affectionate turn of his disposition, made the old man believe in the excellence of a system, whose success lay less in its principle, than in the virtue of him, on whom it was practised.
Sir Marmaduke felt proud of his son's career in the world, and enjoyed to the utmost all the flattery which the young man's acceptance in society conferred; he was proud of him, almost as much as he was fond of him, and a letter from Frederick had always the effect of restoring his spirits, no matter how deep their depression the moment before.
The youth returned his father's affection with his whole heart; he knew and valued all the high and generous principles of his nature; he estimated with an honest pride those gifts which had won Sir Marmaduke the esteem and respect of his fellow-citizens; but yet, he thought he could trace certain weaknesses of character, from which his own more enlarged sphere of life had freed him.
Fashionable associates, the society of men of wit and pleasure, seem often to suggest more acute and subtle views of life, than are to be obtained in less exalted and distinguished company; the smart sayings and witty epigrams which are current among clever men appear to be so many texts in the wisdom of the world. Nothing is more common than this mistake; nothing more frequent than to find, that intercourse with such people diffuses few, if any, of their distinguishing merits among their less gifted associates, who rarely learn any thing from the intercourse, but a hearty contempt for all who are debarred from it. Frederick was of this school; the set he moved in was his religion—their phrases, their prejudices, their passions, he regarded as standards for all imitation. It is not surprising, then, if he conceived many of his father's notions obsolete and antiquated, and had they not been his, he would have treated them as ridiculous.
This somewhat tedious explanation of a character with whom we have not any very lengthened business hereafter, demands some apology from us, still, without it we should be unable to explain to our reader the reason of those events to whose narrative we are hastening.