CHAPTER XXXIII.
'T is true his nature may with faults abound;
But who will cavil when the heart is sound?--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currant.-HORACE.
["The foolish while avoiding vice run into the opposite
extremes."]
The next day Sir Christopher Findlater called on Clarence. "Let us
lounge in the park," said he.
"With pleasure," replied Clarence; and into the park they lounged.
By the way they met a crowd, who were hurrying a man to prison. The
good-hearted Sir Christopher stopped: "Who is that poor fellow?" said
he.
"It is the celebrated" (in England all criminals are celebrated.
Thurtell was a hero, Thistlewood a patriot, and Fauntleroy was
discovered to be exactly like Buonaparte!) "it is the celebrated
robber, John Jefferies, who broke into Mrs. Wilson's house, and cut
the throats of herself and her husband, wounded the maid-servant, and
split the child's skull with the poker." Clarence pressed forward: "I
have seen that man before," thought he. He looked again, and
recognized the face of the robber who had escaped from Talbot's house
on the eventful night which had made Clarence's fortune. It was a
strongly-marked and rather handsome countenance, which would not be
easily forgotten; and a single circumstance of excitement will stamp
features on the memory as deeply as the commonplace intercourse of
years.
"John Jefferies!" exclaimed the baronet; "let us come away."
"Linden," continued Sir Christopher, "that fellow was my servant once.
He robbed me to some considerable extent. I caught him. He appealed
to my heart; and you know, my dear fellow, that was irresistible, so I
let him off. Who could have thought he would have turned out so?"
And the baronet proceeded to eulogize his own good-nature, by which it
is just necessary to remark that one miscreant had been saved for a
few years from transportation, in order to rob and murder ad libitum,
and, having fulfilled the office of a common pest, to suffer on the
gallows at last. What a fine thing it is to have a good heart! Both
our gentlemen now sank into a revery, from which they were awakened,
at the entrance of the park, by a young man in rags who, with a
piteous tone, supplicated charity. Clarence, who, to his honour be it
spoken, spent an allotted and considerable part of his income in
judicious and laborious benevolence, had read a little of political
morals, then beginning to be understood, and walked on. The good-
hearted baronet put his hand in his pocket, and gave the beggar half a
guinea, by which a young, strong man, who had only just commenced the
trade, was confirmed in his imposition for the rest of his life; and,
instead of the useful support, became the pernicious incumbrance of
society.
Sir Christopher had now recovered his spirits. "What's like a good
action?" said he to Clarence, with a swelling breast.
The park was crowded to excess; our loungers were joined by Lord St.
George. His lordship was a stanch Tory. He could not endure Wilkes,
liberty, or general education. He launched out against the
enlightenment of domestics. [The ancestors of our present footmen, if
we may believe Sir William Temple, seem to have been to the full as
intellectual as their descendants. "I have had," observes the
philosophic statesman, "several servants far gone in divinity, others
in poetry; have known, in the families of some friends; a keeper deep
in the Rosicrucian mysteries and a laundress firm in those of
Epicurus."]
"What has made you so bitter?" said Sir Christopher.
"My valet," cried Lord St. George,--"he has invented a new toasting-
fork, is going to take out a patent, make his fortune, and leave me;
that's what I call ingratitude, Sir Christopher; for I ordered his
wages to be raised five pounds but last year."
"It was very ungrateful," said the ironical Clarence.
"Very!" reiterated the good-hearted Sir Christopher.
"You cannot recommend me a valet, Findlater," renewed his lordship, "a
good, honest, sensible fellow, who can neither read nor write?"
"N-o-o,--that is to say, yes! I can; my old servant Collard is out of
place, and is as ignorant as--as--"
"I--or you are?" said Lord St. George, with a laugh.
"Precisely," replied the baronet.
"Well, then, I take your recommendation: send him to me to-morrow at
twelve."
"I will," said Sir Christopher.
"My dear Findlater," cried Clarence, when Lord St. George was gone,
"did you not tell me, some time ago, that Collard was a great rascal,
and very intimate with Jefferies? and now you recommend him to Lord
St. George!"
"Hush, hush, hush!" said the baronet; "he was a great rogue to be
sure: but, poor fellow, he came to me yesterday with tears in his
eyes, and said he should starve if I would not give him a character;
so what could I do?"
"At least, tell Lord St. George the truth," observed Clarence.
"But then Lord St. George would not take him!" rejoined the good-
hearted Sir Christopher, with forcible naivete. "No, no, Linden, we
must not be so hard-hearted; we must forgive and forget;" and so
saying, the baronet threw out his chest, with the conscious exultation
of a man who has uttered a noble sentiment. The moral of this little
history is that Lord St. George, having been pillaged "through thick
and thin," as the proverb has it, for two years, at last missed a gold
watch, and Monsieur Collard finished his career as his exemplary
tutor, Mr. John Jefferies, had done before him. Ah! what a fine thing
it is to have a good heart!
But to return. Just as our wanderers had arrived at the farther end
of the park, Lady Westborough and her daughter passed them. Clarence,
excusing himself to his friend, hastened towards them, and was soon
occupied in saying the prettiest things in the world to the prettiest
person, at least in his eyes; while Sir Christopher, having done as
much mischief as a good heart well can do in a walk of an hour,
returned home to write a long letter to his mother, against "learning
and all such nonsense, which only served to blunt the affections and
harden the heart."
"Admirable young man!" cried the mother, with tears in her eyes. "A
good heart is better than all the heads in the world."
Amen!
