Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  “Buckhurst Falconer cannot be of this party — Colonel Hauton has him at his regiment. But Buckhurst’s two friends, the Clays, are earnestly pressed into the service. Notwithstanding the fine sanctified speech Mrs. Falconer made me, about that sad affair of Lewis Clay with Lady Harriot H —— , she invites him; and I have a notion, if Count Altenberg had not appeared, that she would have liked to have had him, or his brother, for her son-in-law. That you may judge how much my mother would like them for her sons-in-law, I will take the trouble to draw you portraits of both gentlemen.

  “French Clay and English Clay, as they have been named, are brothers, both men of large fortune, which their father acquired respectably by commerce, and which they are spending in all kinds of extravagance and profligacy, not from inclination, but merely to purchase admission into fine company. French Clay is a travelled coxcomb, who, à propos de bottes, begins with, ‘When I was abroad with the Princess Orbitella—’ But I am afraid I cannot speak of this man with impartiality, for I cannot bear to see an Englishman apeing a Frenchman. The imitation is always so awkward, so ridiculous, so contemptible. French Clay talks of tact, but without possessing any; he delights in what he calls persiflage, but in his persiflage, instead of the wit and elegance of Parisian raillery, there appears only the vulgar love and habit of derision. He is continually railing at our English want of savoir vivre, yet is himself an example of the ill-breeding which he reprobates. His manners have neither the cordiality of an Englishman nor the polish of a foreigner. To improve us in l’esprit de société, he would introduce the whole system of French gallantry — the vice without the refinement. I heard him acknowledge it to be ‘his principle’ to intrigue with every married woman who would listen to him, provided she has any one of his four requisites, wit, fashion, beauty, or a good table. He says his late suit in Doctors’-commons cost him nothing; for 10,000l. are nothing to him.

  “Public virtue, as well as private, he thinks it a fine air to disdain, and patriotism and love of our country, he calls prejudices of which a philosopher ought to divest himself. Some charitable people say that he is not so unfeeling as he seems to be, and that above half his vices arise from affectation, and from a mistaken ambition to be what he thinks perfectly French.

  “His brother, English Clay, is a cold, reserved, proud, dull-looking man, whom art, in despite of nature, strove, and strove in vain, to quicken into a ‘gay deceiver.’ He is a grave man of pleasure — his first care being to provide for his exclusively personal gratifications. His dinner is a serious, solemn business, whether it be at his own table or at a tavern, which last he prefers — he orders it so that his repast shall be the very best of its kind that money can procure. His next care is, that he be not cheated in what he is to pay. Not that he values money, but he cannot bear to be taken in. Then his dress, his horses his whole appointment and establishment, are complete, and accurately in the fashion of the day — no expense spared. All that belongs to Mr. Clay, of Clay-hall, is the best of its kind, or, at least, had from the best hand in England. Every thing about him is English; but I don’t know whether this arises from love of his country or contempt of his brother. English Clay is not ostentatious of that which is his own, but he is disdainful of all that belongs to another. The slightest deficiency in the appointments of his companions he sees, and marks by a wink to some bystander, or with a dry joke laughs the wretch to scorn. In company he delights to sit by silent and snug, sneering inwardly at those who are entertaining the company, and committing themselves. He never entertains, and is seldom entertained. His joys are neither convivial nor intellectual; he is gregarious, but not companionable; a hard drinker, but not social. Wine sometimes makes him noisy, but never makes him gay; and, whatever be his excesses, he commits them seemingly without temptation from taste or passion. He keeps a furiously expensive mistress, whom he curses, and who curses him, as Buckhurst informs me, ten times a day; yet he prides himself on being free and unmarried! Scorning and dreading women in general, he swears he would not marry Venus herself unless she had 100,000l. in each pocket; and now that no mortal Venus wears pockets, he thanks Heaven he is safe. Buckhurst, I remember, assured me that beneath this crust of pride there is some good-nature. Deep hid under a large mass of selfishness there may be some glimmerings of affection. He shows symptoms of feeling for his horses, and his mother, and his coachman, and his country. I do believe he would fight for old England, for it is his country, and he is English Clay. Affection for his coachman, did I say? — He shows admiration, if not affection, for every whip of note in town. He is their companion — no, their pupil, and, as Antoninus Pius gratefully prided himself in recording the names of those relations and friends from whom he learnt his several virtues, this man may boast to after-ages of having learnt from one coachman how to cut a fly off his near leader’s ear, how to tuck up a duck from another, and the true spit from a third — by-the-bye, it is said, but I don’t vouch for the truth of the story, that this last accomplishment cost him a tooth, which he had had drawn to attain it in perfection. Pure slang he could not learn from any one coachman, but from constantly frequenting the society of all. I recollect Buckhurst Falconer telling me that he dined once with English Clay, in company with a baronet, a viscount, an earl, a duke, and the driver of a mail-coach, to whom was given, by acclamation, the seat of honour. I am told there is a house, at which these gentlemen and noblemen meet regularly every week, where there are two dining-rooms divided by glass doors. In one room the real coachmen dined, in the other the amateur gentlemen, who, when they are tired of their own conversation, throw open the glass doors, that they may be entertained and edified by the coachmen’s wit and slang; in which dialect English Clay’s rapid proficiency has, it is said, recommended him to the best society, even more than his being the master of the best of cooks, and of Clay-hall.

  “I have said so much more than I intended of both these brothers, that I have no room for more portraits; indeed, the other gentlemen are zeros.

  “Yours affectionately,

  “ALFRED PERCY.”

  Notwithstanding the pains which Mrs. Falconer took to engage these Mr. Clays to accompany her, she could obtain only a promise that they would wait upon her, if possible, some time during the recess.

  Count Altenberg also, much to Mrs. Falconer’s disappointment, was detained in town a few days longer than he had foreseen, but he promised to follow Lord Oldborough early in the ensuing week. All the rest of the prodigious party arrived at Falconer-court, which was within a few miles of Lord Oldborough’s seat at Clermont-park.

  The day after Lord Oldborough’s arrival in the country, his lordship was seized with a fit of the gout, which fixed in his right hand. Commissioner Falconer, when he came in the morning to pay his respects, and to inquire after his patron’s health, found him in his study, writing a letter with his left hand. “My lord, shall not I call Mr. Temple — or — could I offer my services as secretary?”

  “I thank you, sir — no. This letter must be written with my own hand.”

  Whom can this letter be to, that is of so much consequence? thought the commissioner; and glancing his eye at the direction, he saw, as the letter was given to a servant, “To L. Percy, Esq.” — his surprise arrested the pinch of snuff which he was just going to take. “What could be the business — the secret — only a few lines, what could they contain?”

  Simply these words

  “MY DEAR SIR,

  “I write to you with my left hand, the gout having, within these few hours, incapacitated my right. Since this gout keeps me a prisoner, and I cannot, as I had intended, go to you, may I beg that you will do me the favour to come to me, if it could suit your convenience, to-morrow morning, when I shall be alone from twelve till four.

  “With true esteem,

  “Yours,

  “OLDBOROUGH.”

  In the course of the day the commissioner found out, by something Lord Oldborough let fall, what his lordship had no intention to conceal, tha
t he had requested Mr. Percy to come to Clermont-park the next morning; and the commissioner promised himself that he would be in the way to see his good cousin Percy, and to satisfy his curiosity. But his manoeuvres and windings were, whenever it was necessary, counteracted and cut short by the unexpected directness and peremptory plain dealing of his patron. In the morning, towards the hour of twelve, the commissioner thought he had well begun a conversation that would draw out into length upon a topic which he knew must be interesting to his lordship, and he held in his hand private letters of great consequence from his son Cunningham; but Lord Oldborough, taking the letters, locked them up in his desk, saying, “To-night I will read them — this morning I have set apart for a conversation with Mr. Percy, whom I wish to see alone. In the mean time, my interest in the borough has been left too much to the care of that attorney Sharpe, of whom I have no great opinion. Will you be so good to ride over, as you promised me that you would, to the borough, and see what is doing there?”

  The commissioner endeavoured not to look disconcerted or discomfited, rang the bell for his horses, and took his leave, as Lord Oldborough had determined that he should, before the arrival of Mr. Percy, who came exactly at twelve.

  “I thank you for this punctuality, Mr. Percy,” said Lord Oldborough, advancing in his most gracious manner; and no two things could be more strikingly different than his gracious and ungracious manner. “I thank you for this kind punctuality. No one knows better than I do the difference between the visit of a friend and all other visits.”

  Without preface, Lord Oldborough always went directly to the point. “I have requested you to come to me, Mr. Percy, because I want from you two things, which I cannot have so much to my satisfaction from any other person as from you — assistance and sympathy. But, before I go to my own affairs, let me — and not by way of compliment, but plainly and truly — let me congratulate you, my dear sir, on the success of your sons, on the distinction and independence they have already acquired in their professions. I know the value of independence — of that which I shall never have,” added his lordship, with a forced smile and a deep sigh. “But let that be. It was not of that I meant to speak. You pursue your course; I, mine. Firmness of purpose I take to be the great difference between man and man. I am not one of those who habitually covet sympathy. It is a sign of a mind insufficient to its own support, to look for sympathy on every trivial occurrence; and on great occasions it has not been my good fortune to meet many persons who could sympathize with me.”

  “True,” said Mr. Percy, “people must think with you, before they can feel with you.”

  “It is extraordinary, Mr. Percy,” continued Lord Oldborough, “that, knowing how widely you differ from me in political principles, I should choose, of all men living, to open my mind to you. But the fact is, that I am convinced, however we may differ about the means, the end we both have in view is one and the same — the good and glory of the British empire.”

  “My lord, I believe it,” cried Mr. Percy — with energy and warmth he repeated, “My lord, I believe it.”

  “I thank you, sir,” said Lord Oldborough; “you do me justice. I have reason to be satisfied when such men as you do me justice; I have reason also to be satisfied that I have not to make the common complaint of those who serve princes. From him whom I have served I have not met with any ingratitude, with any neglect: on the contrary, I am well assured, that so firm is his conviction of my intending the good of his throne and of his people, that to preserve me his minister is the first wish of his heart. I am confident that without hesitation he would dismiss from his councils any who should obstruct my views, or be inimical to my interests.”

  “Then, my lord, you are happy; if man can be happy at the summit of ambition.”

  “Pardon me. It is a dizzy height at best; but, were it attained, I trust my head would be strong enough to bear it.”

  “Lord Verulam, you know, my lord,” said Mr. Percy, smiling, “tells us, that people, by looking down precipices, do put their spirits in the act of falling.”

  “True, true,” said Lord Oldborough, rather impatient at Mr. Percy’s going to Lord Verulam and philosophy. “But you have not yet heard the facts. I am encompassed with enemies, open and secret. Open enemies I meet and defy — their strength I can calculate and oppose; but the strength of my secret enemies I cannot calculate, for that strength depends on their combination, and that combination I cannot break till I know of what it consists. I have the power and the will to strike, but know not where to aim. In the dark I will not strike, lest I injure the innocent or destroy a friend. Light I cannot obtain, though I have been in search of it for a considerable time. Perhaps by your assistance it may be obtained.”

  “By my assistance!” exclaimed Mr. Percy: “ignorant, as I am, of all parties, and of all their secret transactions, how, my dear lord, can I possibly afford you any assistance?”

  “Precisely by your being unconnected with all parties — a cool stander-by, you can judge of the play — you can assist me with your general knowledge of human nature, and with a particular species of knowledge, of which I should never have guessed that you were possessed, but for an accidental discovery of it made to me the other day by your son Alfred — your knowledge of the art of deciphering.”

  Lord Oldborough then produced the Tourville papers, related how they had been put into his hands by Commissioner Falconer, showed him what the commissioner and his son had deciphered, pointed out where the remaining difficulty occurred, and explained how they were completely at a stand from their inability to decipher the word Gassoc, or to decide who or what it could mean. All the conjectures of the commissioner, the cassock, and the bishop, and the gosshawk, and the heraldic researches, and the French misnomers, and the puns upon the coats of arms, and the notes from Wilkins on universal language, and an old book on deciphering, which had been lent to the commissioner, and the private and public letters which Cunningham had written since he went abroad, were all laid before Mr. Percy.

  “As to my envoy, Mr. Cunningham Falconer,” said Lord Oldborough, as he took up the bundle of Cunningham’s letters, “I do not choose to interrupt the main business before us, by adverting to him or to his character, farther than to point out to you this mark,” showing a peculiar pencil mark, made on certain papers. “This is my note of distrust, observe, and this my note for mere circumlocution, or nonsense. And here,” continued his lordship, “is a list of all those in, or connected with the ministry, whom it is possible may be my enemies.” The list was the same as that on which the commissioner formerly went to work, except that the name of the Duke of Greenwich had been struck out, and two others added in his place, so that it stood thus: “Dukes of Doncaster and Stratford; Lords Coleman, Naresby, Skreene, Twisselton, Waltham, Wrexfield, Chelsea, and Lancaster; Sir Thomas Cope, Sir James Skipworth; Secretaries Arnold and Oldfield.” This list was marked with figures, in different coloured inks, prefixed to each name, denoting the degrees of their supposed enmity to Lord Oldborough, and these had been calculated from a paper, containing notes of the probable causes and motives of their disaffection, drawn up by Commissioner Falconer, but corrected, and in many places contradicted, by notes in Lord Oldborough’s hand-writing. His lordship marked which was his calculation of probabilities, and made some observations on the character of each, as he read over the list of names rapidly.

  Doncaster, a dunce — Stratford, a miser — Coleman, a knave — Naresby, non compos — Skreene, the most corrupt of the corrupt — Twisselton, puzzle headed — Waltham, a mere theorist — Wrexfield, a speechifier — Chelsea, a trimmer — Lancaster, deep and dark — Sir Thomas Cope, a wit, a poet, and a fool — Sir James Skipworth, finance and finesse — Arnold, able and active — and Oldfield, a diplomatist in grain.

  “And is this the summary of the history of the men with whom your lordship is obliged to act and live?” said Mr. Percy.

  “It is — I am: but, my dear sir, do not let us fly off at a tangent to mor
ality or philosophy; these have nothing to do with the present purpose. You have before you all the papers relative to this transaction. Now, will you do me the favour, the service, to look them over, and try whether you can make out le mot d’énigme? I shall not disturb you.”

  Lord Oldborough sat down at a small table by the fire, with a packet of letters and memorials beside him, and in a few minutes was completely absorbed in these, for he had acquired the power of turning his attention suddenly and entirely from one subject to another.

  Without reading the mass of Commissioner Falconer’s explanations and conjectures, or encumbering his understanding with all that Cunningham had collected, as if purposely to puzzle the cause, Mr. Percy examined first very carefully the original documents — then Lord Oldborough’s notes on the views and characters of the suspected persons, and the reasons of their several enmities or dissatisfaction. From the scale of probabilities, which he found had been with great skill calculated on these notes, he selected the principal names, and then tried with these, whether he could make out an idea that had struck him the moment he had heard of the Gassoc. He recollected the famous word Cabal, in the reign of Charles the Second, and he thought it possible that the cabalistical word Gassoc might be formed by a similar combination. But Gassoc was no English word, was no word of any language. Upon close examination of the Tourville papers, he perceived that the commissioner had been right in one of his suggestions, that the G had been written instead of a C: in some places it had been a c turned into a g, and the writer seemed to be in doubt whether the word should be Gassoc or Cassoc. Assuming, therefore, that it was Cassock, Mr. Percy found the initials of six persons, who stood high in Lord Oldborough’s scale of probabilities: Chelsea — Arnold — Skreene — Skipworth — Oldfield — Coleman; and the last k, for which he hunted in vain a considerable time, was supplied by Kensington (one of the Duke of Greenwich’s titles), whose name had been scratched out of the list, since his reconciliation and connexion by marriage with Lord Oldborough, but who had certainly at one time been of the league of his lordship’s enemies. Every circumstance and date in the Tourville papers exactly agree with this explanation: the Cassock thus composed cleared up all difficulties; and passages, that were before dark and mysterious, were rendered by this reading perfectly intelligible. The interpretation, when once given, appeared so simple, that Lord Oldborough wondered how it was possible that it had not before occurred to his mind. His satisfaction was great — he was at this moment relieved from all danger of mistaking friend for foe; he felt that his enemies were in his power, and his triumph secure.