Mr. Tims was as silent as a mouse, for he saw that he was near dangerous ground; and, at that moment, six-and-eightpence would hardly have induced him to say a word--at least if it went farther than, "Exactly so, my lord!"
The matter was still a difficult one for Lord Ashborough to get over; for it is wonderful how easily men can persuade themselves that the evil they wish to commit is right; and yet how troublesome they find even the attempt to persuade another that it is so, although they know him to be as unscrupulous a personage as ever lived or died unhung. Now Lord Ashborough himself had no very high idea of the rigid morality of his friend Mr. Tims's principles, and well knew that his interest would induce him to do any thing on earth; and yet, strange to say, that though Lord Ashborough only desired to indulge a gentlemanlike passion, which, under very slight modifications, or rather disguises, is considered honorable and is patronized by all sorts of people, yet he did not at all like to display, even to the eyes of Mr. Tims, the real motive that was now influencing him. As it was necessary, however, to do so to some one, and he knew that he could not do so to any one whose virtue was less ferocious than that of Mr. Tims, he drew his clenched fist, on which his cheek was resting, half over his mouth, and went on.
"The fact is, you must know, Mr. Tims," he said, "this Sir Sidney Delaware is my first cousin--but you knew that before. Well, we were never very great friends, though he and my brother were; and at college it used to be his pleasure to thwart many of my views and purposes. There is not, perhaps, a prouder man living than he is, and that intolerable pride, added to his insolent sarcasms, kept us greatly asunder in our youth, and therefore you see he has really no claim upon my friendship or affection in this business."
"None in the world! None in the world!" cried Tims. "Indeed, all I wonder at is, that your lordship does not use the power you have to annoy him!"
Mr. Tims harped aright, and it is inexpressible what a relief Lord Ashborough felt--one of the proudest men in Europe, by the way--at finding that the little, contemptible despised lawyer, whom he looked upon, on ordinary occasions, as the the dust under his feet, had, in the present instance, got the right end of a clew which he was ashamed or afraid to unwind himself. Besides, the way he put it gave Lord Ashborough an opportunity of _chucking_ fine and generous, as the Westminster fellows have it; and he immediately replied--"No, sir, no! I never had any wish to annoy him. My only wish has been to lower that pride, which is ruinous to himself, and insulting to others; and I should not have even pursued that wish so far, had it not been that a circumstance happened which called us into immediate collision."
On finding that simple personal hatred and revenge--feelings that might have been stated in three words--were the real and sole motives which Lord Ashborough found it so difficult to enunciate, Mr. Tims chuckled--but mark me, I beg--it was not an open and barefaced cachination--it was, on the contrary, one of those sweet internal chuckles that gently shake the diaphragm and the parietes of the abdomen, and cause even a gentle percussion of the ensiform cartilage, without one muscle of the face vibrating in sympathy, or the slightest spasm taking place in the trachea or epiglottis. There is the anatomy of a suppressed chuckle for you! The discovery, however, was of more service than in the simple production of such agreeable phenomena. Mr. Tims, perceiving the motive of his patron, perceived also the precise road on which he was to lead, and instantly replied, "Whatever circumstance called your lordship into competition with Sir Sidney Delaware, must of course have been very advantageous to yourself, if you chose to put forth your full powers. But that, let me be permitted to say, is what I should suspect, from all that I have the honor of knowing of your lordship's character, you would not do. For I am convinced you have already shown more lenity than was very consistent with your own interest, and perhaps more than was even beneficial to the object; but I humbly crave your lordship's pardon for presuming to--"
Lord Ashborough waved his hand. "Not at all, Mr. Tims! Not at all!" he said. "Your intentions, I know, are good. But hear me. We came in collision concerning the lady whom he afterward married, and made a well bred beggar of. He had known her, and, it seems, obtained promises from her before I became acquainted: and though a transitory fancy for her took place in my own bosom"--and Lord Ashborough turned deadly pale--"yet of course, when I heard of my cousin's arrangements with her, I withdrew my claims, without, as you say, exerting power that I may flatter myself--"
He left the sentence unfinished, but he bowed his head proudly, which finished it sufficiently; and Mr. Tims immediately chimed in, "Oh, there can be no doubt--if your lordship had chosen--who the deuce is Sir Sidney Delaware, compared--" &c., &c., &c., &c.
"Well, I forgot the matter entirely," continued Lord Ashborough, in a frank and easy tone, for it is wonderful how the lawyer's little insignificances helped him on. "Well, I forgot the matter entirely."
"But you never married any one else," thought the lawyer, "and you remember it now." All this was thought in the lowest possible tone, so that Satan himself could hardly hear it--but Lord Ashborough went on. "I never, indeed, remembered the business more, till, on lending the money to his father, I found from a letter which the late man let me see, that the present man had not forgiven me some little progress I had made in the lady's affection. He said--I recollect the words very well--he said, that he could have borne his father borrowing the money at any rate of interest from any person but myself, who had endeavored to supplant him--and all the rest that you can imagine. Well, from that moment I determined to bow that man's pride, for his own sake, as well as other people's. I thought I had done so pretty well too; but, on my refusing to suffer the redemption--which no one can doubt that I had a right to do--he wrote me that letter; and his lordship threw across the table, to his solicitor, the letter which he had taken out of the drawer, just as the other entered. It was in the form of a note, and couched in the following terms:--