“These streets here, upon the site of your noble mansion-house?” said Jerningham.
“The architect’s a bite, and the plan’s a bubble. I am sick of the sight of this rubbish, and I will soon replace our old alcoves, alleys, and flower-pots by an Italian garden and a new palace.”
“That, my lord, would be to waste, not to improve your fortune,” said his domestic.
“Clodpate, and muddy spirit that thou art, thou hast forgot the most hopeful scheme of all—the South Sea Fisheries—their stock is up 50 per cent. already. Post down to the Alley, and tell old Mansses to buy £20,000 for me.—Forgive me, Plutus, I forgot to lay my sacrifice on thy shrine, and yet expected thy favours!—Fly post-haste, Jerningham—for thy life, for thy life, for thy life!”[*]
[*] Stock-jobbing, as it is called, that is, dealing in shares of
monopolies, patent, and joint-stock companies of every
description, was at least as common in Charles II.‘s time as our
own; and as the exercise of ingenuity in this way promised a road
to wealth without the necessity of industry, it was then much
pursued by dissolute courtiers.
With hands and eyes uplifted, Jerningham left the apartment; and the Duke, without thinking a moment farther on old or new intrigues—on the friendship he had formed, or the enmity he had provoked—on the beauty whom he had carried off from her natural protectors, as well as from her lover—or on the monarch against whom he had placed himself in rivalship,—sat down to calculate chances with all the zeal of Demoivre, tired of the drudgery in half-an-hour, and refused to see the zealous agent whom he had employed in the city, because he was busily engaged in writing a new lampoon.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Ah! changeful head, and fickle heart!
—PROGRESS OF DISCONTENT.
No event is more ordinary in narratives of this nature, than the abduction of the female on whose fate the interest is supposed to turn; but that of Alice Bridgenorth was thus far particular, that she was spirited away by the Duke of Buckingham, more in contradiction than in the rivalry of passion; and that, as he made his first addresses to her at Chiffinch’s, rather in the spirit of rivalry to this Sovereign, than from any strong impression which her beauty had made on his affections, so he had formed the sudden plan of spiriting her away by means of his dependents, rather to perplex Christian, the King, Chiffinch, and all concerned, than because he had any particular desire for her society at his own mansion. Indeed, so far was this from being the case, that his Grace was rather surprised than delighted with the success of the enterprise which had made her an inmate there, although it is probable he might have thrown himself into an uncontrollable passion, had he learned its miscarriage instead of its success.