Pelham, Volume 2.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Pelham, Volume 2.
"The greater the truth, the greater the libel," said Warburton, with a
sneer.
"No," resumed Thornton, "I know nothing against Mr. Tyrrell--nothing! He
may be a very good man, and I believe he is; but as a friend, Mr. Pelham,
(and Mr. Thornton grew quite affectionate), I advise you to have as
little as possible to do with that sort of people."
"Truly," said I, "you have now excited my curiosity. Nothing, you know,
is half so inviting as mystery."
Thornton looked as if he had expected a very different reply; and
Warburton said, in an abrupt tone--"Whoever enters an unknown road in a
fog may easily lose himself."
"True," said I; "but that very chance is more agreeable than a road where
one knows every tree! Danger and novelty are more to my taste than safety
and sameness. Besides, as I never gamble myself, I can lose nothing by an
acquaintance with those who do."
Another pause ensued--and, finding I had got all from Mr. Thornton and
his uncourteous guest that I was likely to do, I took my hat and my
departure.
"I do not know," thought I, "whether I have profited much by this visit.
Let me consider. In the first place, I have not ascertained why I was put
off by Mr. Thornton--for as to his excuse, it could only have availed one
day, and had he been anxious for my acquaintance, he would have named
another. I have, however, discovered, first, that he does not wish me to
form any connection with Tyrrell; secondly, from Warburton's sarcasm, and
his glance of reply, that there is but little friendship between those
two, whatever be the intimacy; and, thirdly, that Warburton, from his
dorsal positions, so studiously preserved, either wished to be uncivil or
unnoticed." The latter, after all, was the most probable; and, upon the
whole, I felt more than ever convinced that he was the person I suspected
him to be.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Tell how the fates my giddy course did guide,
The inconstant turns of every changing hour.
--Pierce Gaveston, by M. Drayton.
Je me retire donc.--Adieu, Paris, adieu!
--Boileau.
When I returned home, I found on my table the following letter from my
mother:
"My dear Henry,
"I am rejoiced to hear you are so well entertained at Paris--that you
have been so often to the D--s and C--s; that Coulon says you are his
best pupil--that your favourite horse is so much admired--and that you
have only exceeded your allowance by a L1,000; with some difficulty I
have persuaded your uncle to transmit you an order for L1,500, which
will, I trust, make up all your deficiencies.
"You must not, my dear child, be so extravagant for the future, and for a
very good reason, namely, I do not see how you can. Your uncle, I fear,
will not again be so generous, and your father cannot assist you. You
will therefore see more clearly than ever the necessity of marrying an
heiress: there are only two in England (the daughters of gentlemen)
worthy of you--the most deserving of these has L10,000 a year, the other
has L150,000. The former is old, ugly, and very ill tempered; the latter
tolerably pretty, and agreeable, and just of age; but you will perceive
the impropriety of even thinking of her till we have tried the other. I
am going to ask both to my Sunday soirees, where I never admit any single
men, so that there, at least, you will have no rivals.
"And now, my dear son, before I enter into a subject of great importance
to you, I wish to recal to your mind that pleasure is never an end, but a
means--viz. that in your horses and amusements at Paris--your visits and
your liaisons--you have always, I trust, remembered that these were only
so far desirable as the methods of shining in society. I have now a new
scene on which you are to enter, with very different objects in view, and
where any pleasures you may find have nothing the least in common with
those you at present enjoy.
"I know that this preface will not frighten you as it might many silly
young men. Your education has been too carefully attended to, for you to
imagine that any step can be rough or unpleasant which raises you in the
world.
"To come at once to the point. One of the seats in your uncle's borough
of Buyemall is every day expected to be vacated; the present member, Mr.
Toolington, cannot possibly live a week, and your uncle is very desirous
that you should fill the vacancy which Mr. Toolington's death will
create. Though I called it Lord Glenmorris's borough, yet it is not
entirely at his disposal, which I think very strange, since my father,
who was not half so rich as your uncle, could send two members to
Parliament without the least trouble in the world--but I don't understand
these matters. Possibly your uncle (poor man) does not manage them well.
However, he says no time is to be lost. You are to return immediately to
England, and come down to his house in--shire. It is supposed you will
have some contest, but be certain eventually to come in.
"You will also, in this visit to Lord Glenmorris, have an excellent
opportunity of securing his affection; you know it is some time since he
saw you, and the greater part of his property is unentailed. If you come
into the House you must devote yourself wholly to it, and I have no fear
of your succeeding; for I remember, when you were quite a child, how well
you spoke, 'My name is Norval,' and 'Romans, countrymen, and lovers,' I
heard Mr. Canning speak the other day, and I think his voice is quite
like yours; in short, I make no doubt of seeing you in the ministry in a
very few years.
"You see, my dear son, that it is absolutely necessary you should set out
immediately. You will call on Lady--, and you will endeavour to make firm
friends of the most desirable among your present acquaintance; so that
you may be on the same footing you are now, should you return to Paris.
This a little civility will easily do: nobody (as I before observed),
except in England, ever loses by politeness; by the by, that last word is
one you must never use, it is too Gloucester-place like.
"You will also be careful, in returning to England, to make very little
use of French phrases; no vulgarity is more unpleasing. I could not help
being exceedingly amused by a book written the other day, which professes
to give an accurate description of good society. Not knowing what to make
us say in English, the author has made us talk nothing but French. I have
often wondered what common people think of us, since in their novels they
always affect to pourtray us so different from themselves. I am very much
afraid we are in all things exactly like them, except in being more
simple and unaffected. The higher the rank, indeed, the less pretence,
because there is less to pretend to. This is the chief reason why our
manners are better than low persons: ours are more natural, because they
imitate no one else; theirs are affected, because they think to imitate
ours; and whatever is evidently borrowed becomes vulgar. Original
affection is sometimes ton--imitated affectation, always bad.
"Well, my dear Henry, I must now conclude this letter, already too long
to be interesting. I hope to see you about ten days after you receive
this; and if you could bring me a Cachemire shawl, it would give me great
pleasure to see your taste in its choice. God bless you, my dear son.
"Your very affectionate
"Frances Pelham."
"P.S. I hope you go to church sometimes: I am sorry to see the young men
of the present day so irreligious. Perhaps you could get my old friend,
Madame De--, to choose the Cachemire--take care of your health."
This letter, which I read carefully twice over, threw me into a most
serious meditation. My first feeling was regret at leaving Paris; my
second, was a certain exultation at the new prospects so unexpectedly
opened to me. The great aim of a philosopher is, to reconcile every
disadvantage by some counterbalance of good--where he cannot create this,
he should imagine it. I began, therefore, to consider less what I should
lose than what I should gain, by quitting Paris. In the first place, I
was tolerably tired of its amusements: no business is half so fatiguing
as pleasure. I longed for a change: behold, a change was at hand! Then,
to say truth, I was heartily glad of a pretence of escaping from a
numerous cohort of folles amours, with Madame D'Anville at the head; and
the very circumstance which men who play the German flute and fall in
love, would have considered the most vexatious, I regarded as the most
consolatory.
There was yet another reason which reconciled me more than any other to
my departure. I had, in my residence at Paris, among half wits and whole
roues, contracted a certain--not exactly grossierete--but want of
refinement--a certain coarseness of expression and idea which, though
slight, and easily thrown off, took in some degree from my approach to
that character which I wished to become. I know nothing which would so
polish the manners as continental intercourse, were it not for the
English debauches with which that intercourse connects one. English
profligacy is always coarse, and in profligacy nothing is more contagious
than its tone. One never keeps a restraint on the manner when one
unbridles the passions, and one takes from the associates with whom the
latter are indulged, the air and the method of the indulgence.
I was, the reader well knows, too solicitous for improvement, not to be
anxious to escape from such chances of deterioration, and I therefore
consoled myself with considerable facility for the pleasures and the
associates I was about to forego. My mind being thus relieved from all
regret at my departure, I now suffered it to look forward to the
advantages of my return to England. My love of excitement and variety
made an election, in which I was to have both the importance of the
contest and the certainty of the success, a very agreeable object of
anticipation.
I was also by this time wearied with my attendance upon women, and eager
to exchange it for the ordinary objects of ambition to men; and my vanity
whispered that my success in the one was no unfavourable omen of my
prosperity in the other. On my return to England, with a new scene and a
new motive for conduct, I resolved that I would commence a different
character to that I had hitherto assumed. How far I kept this resolution
the various events hereafter to be shown, will testify. For myself, I
felt that I was now about to enter a more crowded scene upon a more
elevated ascent; and my previous experience of human nature was
sufficient to convince me that my safety required a more continual
circumspection, and my success a more dignified bearing.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Je noterai cela, Madame, dans mon livre.
--Moliere.
I am not one of those persons who are many days in deciding what may be
effected in one. "On the third day from this," said I to Bedos, "at half
past nine in the morning, I shall leave Paris for England."
"Oh, my poor wife!" said the valet, "she will break her heart if I leave
her."
"Then stay," said I. Bedos shrugged his shoulders.
"I prefer being with Monsieur to all things."
"What, even to your wife?" The courteous rascal placed his hand to his
heart and bowed. "You shall not suffer by your fidelity--you shall take
your wife with you."
The conjugal valet's countenance fell. "No," he said, "no; he could not
take advantage of Monsieur's generosity."
"I insist upon it--not another word."
"I beg a thousand pardons of Monsieur; but--but my wife is very ill, and
unable to travel."
"Then, in that case, so excellent a husband cannot think of leaving a
sick and destitute wife."
"Poverty has no law; if I consulted my heart and stayed, I should starve,
et il faut vivre."
"Je n'en vois pas la necessite," replied I, as I got into my carriage.
That repartee, by the way, I cannot claim as my own; it is the very
unanswerable answer of a judge to an expostulating thief.
I made the round of reciprocal regrets, according to the orthodox
formula. The Duchesse de Perpignan was the last--(Madame D'Anville I
reserved for another day)--that virtuous and wise personage was in the
boudoir of reception. I glanced at the fatal door as I entered. I have a
great aversion, after any thing has once happened and fairly subsided, to
make any allusion to its former existence. I never, therefore, talked to
the Duchess about our ancient egaremens. I spoke, this morning, of the
marriage of one person, the death of another, and lastly, the departure
of my individual self.
"When do you go?" she said, eagerly.
"In two days: my departure will be softened, if I can execute any
commissions in England for Madame."
"None," said she; and then in a low tone (that none of the idlers, who
were always found at her morning levees, should hear), she added, "you
will receive a note from me this evening."
I bowed, changed the conversation, and withdrew. I dined in my own rooms,
and spent the evening in looking over the various billets-doux, received
during my sejour at Paris.
"Where shall I put all these locks of hair?" asked Bedos, opening a
drawer full.
"Into my scrap-book."
"And all these letters?"
"Into the fire."
I was just getting into bed when the Duchesse de Perpignan's note
arrived--it was as follows:--
"My dear Friend,
"For that word, so doubtful in our language, I may at least call you in
your own. I am unwilling that you should leave this country with those
sentiments you now entertain of me, unaltered, yet I cannot imagine any
form of words of sufficient magic to change them. Oh! if you knew how
much I am to be pitied; if you could look for one moment into this lonely
and blighted heart; if you could trace, step by step, the progress I have
made in folly and sin, you would see how much of what you now condemn and
despise, I have owed to circumstances, rather than to the vice of my
disposition. I was born a beauty, educated a beauty, owed fame, rank,
power to beauty; and it is to the advantages I have derived from person
that I owe the ruin of my mind. You have seen how much I now derive from
art I loathe myself as I write that sentence; but no matter: from that
moment you loathed me too. You did not take into consideration, that I
had been living on excitement all my youth, and that in my maturer years
I could not relinquish it. I had reigned by my attractions, and I thought
every art preferable to resigning my empire: but in feeding my vanity, I
had not been able to stifle the dictates of my heart. Love is so natural
to a woman, that she is scarcely a woman who resists it: but in me it has
been a sentiment, not a passion.
"Sentiment, then, and vanity, have been my seducers. I said, that I owed
my errors to circumstances, not to nature. You will say, that in
confessing love and vanity to be my seducers, I contradict this
assertion--you are mistaken. I mean, that though vanity and sentiment
were in me, yet the scenes in which I have been placed, and the events
which I have witnessed, gave to those latent currents of action a wrong
and a dangerous direction. I was formed to love; for one whom I did love
I could have made every sacrifice. I married a man I hated, and I only
learnt the depths of my heart when it was too late.
"Enough of this; you will leave this country; we shall never meet again--
never! You may return to Paris, but I shall then be no more; n'importe--I
shall be unchanged to the last. Je mourrai en reine.
"As a latest pledge of what I have felt for you, I send you the enclosed
chain and ring; as a latest favour, I request you to wear them for six
months, and, above all, for two hours in the Tuileries tomorrow. You will
laugh at this request: it seems idle and romantic--perhaps it is so. Love
has many exaggerations in sentiment, which reason would despise. What
wonder, then, that mine, above that of all others, should conceive them?
You will not, I know, deny this request. Farewell!--in this world we
shall never meet again, and I believe not in the existence of another.
Farewell!
"E. P."
"A most sensible effusion," said I to myself, when I had read this
billet; "and yet, after all, it shows more feeling and more character
than I could have supposed she possessed." I took up the chain: it was of
Maltese workmanship; not very handsome, nor, indeed, in any way
remarkable, except for a plain hair ring which was attached to it, and
which I found myself unable to take off, without breaking. "It is a very
singular request," thought I, "but then it comes from a very singular
person; and as it rather partakes of adventure and intrigue, I shall at
all events appear in the Tuileries, tomorrow, chained and ringed."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Thy incivility shall not make me fail to do what becomes me; and
since thou hast more valour than courtesy, I for thee will hazard
that life which thou wouldst take from me.--Cassandra, "elegantly
done into English by Sir Charles Cotterell."
About the usual hour for the promenade in the Tuileries, I conveyed
myself thither. I set the chain and ring in full display, rendered still
more conspicuous by the dark coloured dress which I always wore. I had
not been in the gardens ten minutes, before I perceived a young
Frenchman, scarcely twenty years of age, look with a very peculiar air at
my new decorations. He passed and repassed me, much oftener than the
alternations of the walk warranted; and at last, taking off his hat, said
in a low tone, that he wished much for the honour of exchanging a few
words with me in private. I saw, at the first glance, that he was a
gentleman, and accordingly withdrew with him among the trees, in the more
retired part of the garden.
"Permit me," said he, "to inquire how that ring and chain came into your
possession?"
"Monsieur," I replied, "you will understand me, when I say, that the
honour of another person is implicated in my concealment of that secret."
"Sir," said the Frenchman, colouring violently, "I have seen them before
--in a word, they belong to me!"
I smiled--my young hero fired at this. "Oui, Monsieur," said he, speaking
very loud, and very quick, "they belong to me, and I insist upon your
immediately restoring them, or vindicating your claim to them by arms."
"You leave me but one answer, Monsieur," said I; "I will find a friend to
wait upon you immediately. Allow me to inquire your address?" The
Frenchman, who was greatly agitated, produced a card. We bowed and
separated.
I was glancing over the address I held in my hand, which was--C.
D'Azimart, Rue de Bourbon Numero--, when my ears were saluted with--
"'Now do you know me?--thou shouldst be Alonzo.'"
I did not require the faculty of sight to recognize Lord Vincent. "My
dear fellow," said I, "I am rejoiced to see you!" and thereupon I poured
into his ear the particulars of my morning adventure. Lord Vincent
listened to me with much apparent interest, and spoke very unaffectedly
of his readiness to serve me, and his regret at the occasion.
"Pooh." said I, "a duel in France, is not like one in England; the former
is a matter of course; a trifle of common occurrence; one makes an
engagement to fight, in the same breath as an engagement to dine; but the
latter is a thing of state and solemnity--long faces--early rising--and
willmaking. But do get this business over as soon as you can, that we may
dine at the Rocher afterwards."
"Well, my dear Pelham," said Vincent, "I cannot refuse you my services;
and as I suppose Monsieur D'Azimart will choose swords, I venture to
augur every thing from your skill in that species of weapon. It is the
first time I have ever interfered in affairs of this nature, but I hope
to get well through the present.
"'Nobilis ornatur lauro collega secundo,'
as Juvenal says: au revoir," and away went Lord Vincent, half forgetting
all his late anxiety for my life, in his paternal pleasure for the
delivery of his quotation.
Vincent is the only punster I ever knew with a good heart. No action to
that race in general is so serious an occupation as the play upon words;
and the remorseless habit of murdering a phrase, renders them perfectly
obdurate to the simple death of a friend. I walked through every variety
the straight paths of the Tuileries could afford, and was beginning to
get exceedingly tired, when Lord Vincent returned. He looked very grave,
and I saw at once that he was come to particularize the circumstances of
the last extreme. "The Bois de Boulogne--pistols--in one hour," were the
three leading features of his detail.
"Pistols!" said I; "well, be it so. I would rather have had swords, for
the young man's sake as much as my own: but thirteen paces and a steady
aim will settle the business as soon. We will try a bottle of the
chambertin to-day, Vincent." The punster smiled faintly, and for once in
his life made no reply. We walked gravely and soberly to my lodgings for
the pistols, and then proceeded to the engagement as silently as
Christians should do.
The Frenchman and his second were on the ground first. I saw that the
former was pale and agitated, not, I think, from fear, but passion. When
we took our ground, Vincent came to me, and said, in a low tone, "For
God's sake, suffer me to accommodate this, if possible?"
"It is not in our power," said I, receiving the pistol. I looked steadily
at D'Azimart, and took my aim. His pistol, owing, I suppose, to the
trembling of his hand, went off a moment sooner than he had anticipated--
the ball grazed my hat. My aim was more successful--I struck him in the
shoulder--the exact place I had intended. He staggered a few paces, but
did not fall.
We hastened towards him--his cheek assumed a still more livid hue as I
approached; he muttered some half-formed curses between his teeth, and
turned from me to his second.
"You will inquire whether Monsieur D'Azimart is satisfied," said I to
Vincent, and retired to a short distance.
"His second," said Vincent, (after a brief conference with that person,)
"replies to my question, that Monsieur D'Azimart's wound has left him,
for the present, no alternative." Upon this answer I took Vincent's arm,
and we returned forthwith to my carriage.
"I congratulate you most sincerely on the event of this duel," said
Vincent. "Monsieur de M--(D'Azimart's second) informed me, when I waited
on him, that your antagonist was one of the most celebrated pistol shots
in Paris, and that a lady with whom he had been long in love, made the
death of the chain-bearer the price of her favours. Devilish lucky for
you, my good fellow, that his hand trembled so; but I did not know you
were so good a shot."
"Why," I answered, "I am not what is vulgarly termed 'a crack shot'--I
cannot split a bullet on a penknife; but I am sure of a target somewhat
smaller than a man: and my hand is as certain in the field as it is in
the practice-yard."
"Le sentiment de nos forces les augmente," replied Vincent. "Shall I tell
the coachman to drive to the Rocher?"
CHAPTER XXIX.
Here's a kind host, that makes the invitation,
To your own cost to his fort bon collation.
--Wycherly's Gent. Dancing Master.
Vous pouvez bien juger que je n'aurai pas grande peine a me
consoler d'une chose dont je me suis deja console tant de fois.
--Lettres de Boileau.
As I was walking home with Vincent from the Rue Mont-orgueil, I saw, on
entering the Rue St. Honore, two figures before us; the tall and noble
stature of the one I could not for a moment mistake. They stopped at the
door of an hotel, which opened in that noiseless manner so peculiar to
the Conciergerie of France. I was at the porte the moment they
disappeared, but not before I had caught a glance of the dark locks and
pale countenance of Warburton--my eye fell upon the number of the hotel.
"Surely," said I, "I have been in that house before."
"Likely enough," growled Vincent, who was gloriously drunk. "It is a
house of two-fold utility--you may play with cards, or coquet with women,
selon votre gout."
At these words I remembered the hotel and its inmates immediately. It
belonged to an old nobleman, who, though on the brink of the grave, was
still grasping at the good things on the margin. He lived with a pretty
and clever woman, who bore the name and honours of his wife. They kept up
two salons, one pour le petit souper, and the other pour le petit jeu.
You saw much ecarte and more love-making, and lost your heart and your
money with equal facility. In a word, the marquis and his jolie petite
femme were a wise and prosperous couple, who made the best of their
lives, and lived decently and honourably upon other people.
"Allons, Pelham," cried Vincent, as I was still standing at the door in
deliberation; "how much longer will you keep me to congeal in this 'eager
and nipping air'--'Quamdiu nostram patientiam abutere Catilina.'"