The Disowned — Volume 07

"With all my heart, sir," cried the honest steward; "and after Wednesday you will, I trust, assume your rightful name."

"Certainly," replied Clarence; "since I am no longer 'the Disowned.'"

Leaving Clarence now for a brief while to renew his acquaintance with the scenes of his childhood, and to offer the tribute of his filial tears to the ashes of a father whose injustice had been but "the stinging of a heart the world had stung," we return to some old acquaintances in the various conduct of our drama.

CHAPTER LXXII

Upon his couch the veiled Mokanna lay.—The Veiled Prophet.

The autumn sun broke through an apartment in a villa in the neighbourhood of London, furnished with the most prodigal yet not tasteless attention to luxury and show, within which, beside a table strewed with newspapers, letters, and accounts, lay Richard Crauford, extended carelessly upon a sofa which might almost have contented the Sybarite who quarrelled with a rose-leaf. At his elbow was a bottle half emptied and a wineglass just filled. An expression of triumph and enjoyment was visible upon his handsome but usually inexpressive countenance.

"Well," said he, taking up a newspaper, "let us read this paragraph again. What a beautiful sensation it is to see one's name in print. 'We understand that Richard Crauford, Esq., M. P. for ——, is to be raised to the dignity of the peerage. There does not perhaps exist in the country a gentleman more universally beloved and esteemed' (mark that, Dicky Crauford). 'The invariable generosity with which his immense wealth has been employed, his high professional honour, the undeviating and consistent integrity of his political career' (ay, to be sure, it is only your honest fools who are inconsistent: no man can deviate who has one firm principle, self-interest), 'his manly and energetic attention to the welfare of religion' (he! he! he!), 'conjoined to a fortune almost incalculable, render this condescension of our gracious Sovereign no less judicious than deserved! We hear that the title proposed for the new peer is that of Viscount Innisdale, which, we believe, was formerly in the noble family of which Mr. Crauford is a distant branch.'

"He! he! he! Bravo! bravo! Viscount Innisdale, noble family, distant branch,—the devil I am! What an ignoramus my father was not to know that! Why, rest his soul, he never knew who his grandfather was; but the world shall not be equally ignorant of that important point. Let me see, who shall be Viscount Innisdale's great-grandfather? Well, well, whoever he is, here's long life to his great-grandson! 'Incalculable fortune!' Ay, ay, I hope at all events it will never be calculated. But now for my letters. Bah! this wine is a thought too acid for the cellars of Viscount Innisdale! What, another from Mother H——! Dark eyes, small mouth, sings like an angel, eighteen! Pish! I am too old for such follies now: 't is not pretty for Viscount Innisdale. Humph! Lisbon, seven hundred pounds five shillings and seven-pence—half-penny, is it, or farthing? I must note that down. Loan for King of Prussia. Well, must negotiate that to-morrow. Ah, Hockit, the wine-merchant, pipe of claret in the docks, vintage of 17—. Bravo! all goes smooth for Viscount Innisdale! Pish! from my damnable wife! What a pill for my lordship! What says she?"

DAWLISH, DEVONSHIRE. You have not, my dearest Richard, answered my letters for months. I do not, however, presume to complain of your silence; I know well that you have a great deal to occupy your time, both in business and pleasure. But one little line, dear Richard,—one little line, surely that is not too much now and then. I am most truly sorry to trouble you again about money; and you must know that I strive to be as saving as possible; ("Pish—curse the woman; sent her twenty pounds three months ago!") but I really am so distressed, and the people here are so pressing; and, at all events, I cannot bear the thought of your wife being disgraced. Pray, forgive me, Richard, and believe how painful it is in me to say so much. I know you will answer this! and, oh, do, do tell me how you are.

    Ever your affectionate wife, CAROLINE CRAUFORD.

"Was there ever poor man so plagued? Where's my note book? Mem.— Send Car. to-morrow 20 pounds to last her the rest of the year. Mem. —Send Mother H——, 100 pounds. Mem.—Pay Hockit's bill, 830 pounds. Bless me, what shall I do with Viscountess Innisdale? Now, if I were not married, I would be son-in-law to a duke. Mem.—Go down to Dawlish, and see if she won't die soon. Healthy situation, I fear,— devilish unlucky,—must be changed. Mem.—Swamps in Essex. Who's that?"

A knock at the door disturbed Mr. Crauford in his meditations. He started up, hurried the bottle and glass under the sofa, where the descending drapery completely hid them; and, taking up a newspaper, said in a gentle tone, "Come in." A small thin man, bowing at every step, entered.

"Ah! Bradley, is it you, my good fellow?" said Crauford: "glad to see you,—a fine morning: but what brings you from town so early?"

"Why, sir," answered Mr. Bradley, very obsequiously, "something unpleasant has—"

"Merciful Heaven!" cried Crauford, blanched into the whiteness of death, and starting up from the sofa with a violence which frightened the timid Mr. Bradley to the other end of the room, "the counting- house, the books,—all safe?"

"Yes, sir, yes, at present, but—"

"But what, man?"

"Why, honoured sir," returned Mr. Bradley, bowing to the ground, "your partner, Mr. Jessopp, has been very inquisitive about the accounts. He says Mr. Da Costa, the Spanish merchant, has been insinuating very unpleasant hints, and that he must have a conversation with you at your earliest convenience; and when, sir, I ventured to remonstrate about the unreasonableness of attending to what Mr. Da Costa said, Mr. Jessopp was quite abusive, and declared that there seemed some very mysterious communication between you (begging your pardon, sir) and me, and that he did not know what business I, who had no share in the firm, had to interfere."

"But," said Crauford, "you were civil to him; did not reply hotly, eh! my good Bradley?"

"Lord forbid, sir; Lord forbid, that I should not know my place better, or that I should give an unbecoming word to the partner of my honoured benefactor. But, sir, if I dare venture to say so, I think Mr. Jessopp is a little jealous or so of you; he seemed quite in a passion at the paragraph in the paper about my honoured master's becoming a lord."

"Right, honest Bradley, right; he is jealous: we must soothe him. Go, my good fellow, go to him with my compliments, and say that I will be with him by one. Never fear this business will be easily settled."

And, bowing himself out of the room, Bradley withdrew. Left alone, a dark cloud gathered over the brow of Mr. Crauford.

"I am on a precipice," thought he; "but if my own brain does not turn giddy with the prospect, all yet may be safe. Cruel necessity, that obliged me to admit another into the business, that foiled me of Mordaunt, and drove me upon this fawning rascal! So, so: I almost think there is a Providence, now that Mordaunt has grown rich; but then his wife died; ay, ay, God saved him, but the devil killed her. [Dieu a puni ce fripon, le diable a noye les autres.—VOLTAIRE: Candide.] He! he! he! But, seriously, seriously, there is danger in the very air I breathe! I must away to that envious Jessopp instantly; but first let me finish the bottle."

CHAPTER LXXIII

A strange harmonious inclination
Of all degrees to reformation.

    —Hudibras.

About seven miles from W——, on the main road from ——, there was in 17— a solitary public-house, which by the by is now a magnificent hotel. Like many of its brethren in the more courtly vicinity of the metropolis, this amoenum hospitium peregrinae gentis then had its peculiar renown for certain dainties of the palate; and various in degree and character were the numerous parties from the neighbouring towns and farms, which upon every legitimate holiday were wont to assemble at the mansion of mine host of the Jolly Angler, in order to feast upon eel-pie and grow merry over the true Herefordshire cider.

But upon that special day on which we are about to introduce our reader into the narrow confines of its common parlour, the said hostelry was crowded with persons of a very different description from the peaceable idlers who were ordinarily wont to empty mine host's larder, and forget the price of corn over the divine inspirations of pomarial nectar. Instead of the indolent, satisfied air of the saturnalian merrymaker, the vagrant angler, or the gentleman farmer, with his comely dame who "walked in silk attire, and siller had to spare;" instead of the quiet yet glad countenances of such hunters of pleasure and eaters of eel-pie, or the more obstreperous joy of urchins let loose from school to taste some brief and perennial recreation, and mine host's delicacies at the same time; instead of these, the little parlour presented a various and perturbed group, upon whose features neither eel-pie nor Herefordshire cider had wrought the relaxation of a holiday or the serenity of a momentary content.

The day to which we now refer was the one immediately preceding that appointed for the far-famed meeting at W——; and many of the patriots, false or real, who journeyed from a distance to attend that rendezvous, had halted at our host's of the Jolly Angler, both as being within a convenient space from the appointed spot, and as a tabernacle where promiscuous intrusion and (haply) immoderate charges were less likely to occur than at the bustling and somewhat extraordinary hotels and inns of the town of W——.

The times in which this meeting was held were those of great popular excitement and discontent; and the purport of the meeting proposed was to petition Parliament against the continuance of the American war and the King against the continuance of his ministers.

Placards of an unusually inflammatory and imprudent nature had given great alarm to the more sober and well-disposed persons in the neighbourhood of W——; and so much fear was felt or assumed upon the occasion that a new detachment of Lord Ulswater's regiment had been especially ordered into the town; and it was generally rumoured that the legal authorities would interfere, even by force, for the dispersion of the meeting in question. These circumstances had given the measure a degree of general and anxious interest which it would not otherwise have excited; and while everybody talked of the danger of attending the assembly, everybody resolved to thrust himself into it.

It was about the goodly hour of noon, and the persons assembled were six in number, all members of the most violent party, and generally considered by friend and foe as embracers of republican tenets. One of these, a little, oily, corpulent personage, would have appeared far too sleek and well fed for a disturber of things existing, had not a freckled, pimpled, and fiery face, a knit brow, and a small black eye of intolerable fierceness belied the steady and contented appearance of his frame and girth. This gentleman, by name Christopher Culpepper, spoke in a quick, muffled, shuffling sort of tone, like the pace of a Welsh pony, somewhat lame, perfectly broken-winded, but an exemplary ambler for all that.

Next to him sat, with hands clasped over his knees, a thin, small man, with a countenance prematurely wrinkled and an air of great dejection. Poor Castleton! his had been, indeed, the bitter lot of a man, honest but weak, who attaches himself, heart and soul, to a public cause which, in his life at least, is hopeless. Three other men were sitting by the open window, disputing, with the most vehement gestures, upon the character of Wilkes; and at the other window, alone, silent, and absorbed, sat a man whose appearance and features were singularly calculated to arrest and to concentrate attention. His raven hair, grizzled with the first advance of age, still preserved its strong, wiry curl and luxuriant thickness. His brows, large, bushy, and indicative of great determination, met over eyes which at that moment were fixed upon vacancy with a look of thought and calmness very unusual to their ordinary restless and rapid glances. His mouth, that great seat of character, was firmly and obstinately shut; and though, at the first observation, its downward curve and iron severity wore the appearance of unmitigated harshness, disdain, and resolve, yet a more attentive deducer of signs from features would not have been able to detect in its expression anything resembling selfishness or sensuality, and in that absence would have found sufficient to redeem the more repellent indications of mind which it betrayed.

Presently the door was opened, and the landlord, making some apology to both parties for having no other apartment unoccupied, introduced a personage whose dress and air, as well as a kind of saddle-bag, which he would not intrust to any other bearer than himself, appeared to denote him as one rather addicted to mercantile than political speculations. Certainly he did not seem much at home among the patriotic reformers, who, having glared upon him for a single moment, renewed, without remark, their several attitudes or occupations.

The stranger, after a brief pause, approached the solitary reformer whom we last described; and making a salutation, half timorous and half familiar, thus accosted him,—

"Your servant, Mr. Wolfe, your servant. I think I had the pleasure of hearing you a long time ago at the Westminster election: very eloquent you were, sir, very!"

Wolfe looked up for an instant at the face of the speaker, and, not recognizing it, turned abruptly away, threw open the window, and, leaning out, appeared desirous of escaping from all further intrusion on the part of the stranger; but that gentleman was by no means of a nature easily abashed.

"Fine day, sir, for the time of year; very fine day, indeed. October is a charming month, as my lamented friend and customer, the late Lady Waddilove, was accustomed to say. Talking of that, sir, as the winter is now approaching, do you not think it would be prudent, Mr. Wolfe, to provide yourself with an umbrella? I have an admirable one which I might dispose of: it is from the effects of the late Lady Waddilove. 'Brown,' said her ladyship, a short time before her death, 'Brown, you are a good creature; but you ask too much for the Dresden vase. We have known each other a long time; you must take fourteen pounds ten shillings, and you may have that umbrella in the corner into the bargain.' Mr. Wolfe, the bargain was completed, and the umbrella became mine: it may now be yours."

And so saying, Mr. Brown, depositing his saddle-bag on the ground, proceeded to unfold an umbrella of singular antiquity and form,—a very long stick, tipped with ivory, being surmounted with about a quarter of a yard of sea-green silk, somewhat discoloured by time and wear.

"It is a beautiful article, sir," said Mr. Brown, admiringly surveying it: "is it not?"

"Pshaw!" said Wolfe, impatiently, "what have I to do with your goods and chattels? Go and palm the cheatings and impositions of your pitiful trade upon some easier gull."

"Cheatings and impositions, Mr. Wolfe!" cried the slandered Brown, perfectly aghast; "I would have you to know, sir, that I have served the first families in the country, ay, and in this county too, and never had such words applied to me before. Sir, there was the late Lady Waddilove, and the respected Mrs. Minden, and her nephew the ambassador, and the Duchess of Pugadale, and Mr. Mordaunt of Mordaunt Court, poor gentleman, though he is poor no more," and Mr. Brown proceeded to enumerate the long list of his customers.

Now, we have stated that Wolfe, though he had never known the rank of Mordaunt, was acquainted with his real name, and, as the sound caught his ear, he muttered, "Mordaunt, Mordaunt, ay, but not my former acquaintance,—not him who was called Glendower. No, no: the man cannot mean him."

"Yes, sir, but I do mean him," cried Brown, in a rage. "I do mean that Mr. Glendower, who afterwards took another name, but whose real appellation is Mr. Algernon Mordaunt of Mordaunt Court, in this county, sir."

"What description of man is he?" said Wolfe; "rather tall, slender, with an air and mien like a king's, I was going to say, but better than a king's, like a freeman's?"

"Ay, ay—the same," answered Mr. Brown, sullenly; "but why should I tell you? 'Cheating and imposition,' indeed! I am sure my word can be of no avail to you; and I sha' n't stay here any longer to be insulted, Mr. Wolfe, which, I am sure, talking of freemen, no freeman ought to submit to; but as the late Lady Waddilove once very wisely said to me, 'Brown, never have anything to do with those republicans: they are the worst tyrants of all.' Good morning, Mr. Wolfe; gentlemen, your servant; 'cheating and imposition,' indeed! and Mr. Brown banged the door as he departed.

"Wolfe," said Mr. Christopher Culpepper, "who is that man?"

"I know not," answered the republican, laconically, and gazing on the ground, apparently in thought.

"He has the air of a slave," quoth the free Culpepper, and slaves cannot bear the company of freemen; therefore he did right to go, whe-w! Had we a proper and thorough and efficient reform, human nature would not be thus debased by trades and callings and barters and exchange, for all professions are injurious to the character and the dignity of man, whe-w! but, as I shall prove upon the hustings to- morrow, it is in vain to hope for any amendment in the wretched state of things until the people of these realms are fully, freely, and fairly represented, whe-w! Gentlemen, it is past two, and we have not ordered dinner, whe-w!" (N. B.—This ejaculation denotes the kind of snuffle which lent peculiar energy to the dicta of Mr. Culpepper.)