“Would it not make any one lose patience,” said Mowbray, “to hear her quoting the rhapsodies of a hobnail'd peasant, when a man is speaking of the downfall of an ancient house! Your ploughman, I suppose, becoming one degree poorer than he was born to be, would only go without his dinner, or without his usual potation of ale. His comrades would cry ‘poor fellow!’ and let him eat out of their kit, and drink out of their bicker without scruple, till his own was full again. But the poor gentleman—the downfallen man of rank—the degraded man of birth—the disabled and disarmed man of power!—it is he that is to be pitied, who loses not merely drink and dinner, but honour, situation, credit, character, and name itself!”
“You are declaiming in this manner in order to terrify me,” said Clara: “but, friend John, I know you and your ways, and I have made up my mind upon all contingencies that can take place. I will tell you more—I have stood on this tottering pinnacle of rank and fashion, if our situation can be termed such, till my head is dizzy with the instability of my eminence; and I feel that strange desire of tossing myself down, which the devil is said to put into folk's heads when they stand on the top of steeples—at least, I had rather the plunge were over.”
“Be satisfied, then; if that will satisfy you—the plunge is over, and we are—what they used to call it in Scotland—gentle beggars—creatures to whom our second, and third, and fourth, and fifth cousins may, if they please, give a place at the side-table, and a seat in the carriage with the lady's maid, if driving backwards will not make us sick.”
“They may give it to those who will take it,” said Clara; “but I am determined to eat bread of my own buying—I can do twenty things, and I am sure some one or other of them will bring me all the little money I will need. I have been trying, John, for several months, how little I can live upon, and you would laugh if you heard how low I have brought the account.”
“There is a difference, Clara, between fanciful experiments and real poverty—the one is a masquerade, which we can end when we please, the other is wretchedness for life.”
“Methinks, brother,” replied Miss Mowbray, “it would be better for you to set me an example how to carry my good resolutions into effect, than to ridicule them.”
“Why, what would you have me do?” said he, fiercely—“turn postilion, or rough-rider, or whipper-in?—I don't know any thing else that my education, as I have used it, has fitted me for—and then some of my old acquaintances would, I dare say, give me a crown to drink now and then for old acquaintance' sake.”
“This is not the way, John, that men of sense think or speak of serious misfortunes,” answered his sister; “and I do not believe that this is so serious as it is your pleasure to make it.”
“Believe the very worst you can think,” replied he, “and you will not believe bad enough!—You have neither a guinea, nor a house, nor a friend;—pass but a day, and it is a chance that you will not have a brother.”
“My dear John, you have drunk hard—rode hard.”