CHAPTER L.
Letters from divers hands, which will absolve
Ourselves from long narration.--Tanner of Tyburn.
One morning about a fortnight after Talbot's death, Clarence was
sitting alone, thoughtful and melancholy, when the three following
letters were put into his hand:
LETTER I.
FROM THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD.
Let me, my dear Linden, be the first to congratulate you upon your
accession of fortune: five thousand a year, Scarsdale, and 80,000 in
the Funds, are very pretty foes to starvation! Ah, my dear fellow, if
you had but shot that frosty Caucasus of humanity, that pillar of the
state, made not to bend, that--but you know already whom I mean, and
so I will spare you more of my lamentable metaphors: had you shot Lord
Borodaile, your happiness would now be complete! Everybody talks of
your luck. La Meronville tending on you with her white hands, the
prettiest hands in the world: who would not be wounded even by Lord
Borodaile, for such a nurse? And then Talbot's--yet, I will not speak
of that, for you are very unlike the present generation; and who knows
but you may have some gratitude, some affection, some natural feeling
in you? I had once; but that was before I went to France: those
Parisians, with their fine sentiments, and witty philosophy, play the
devil with one's good old-fashioned feelings. So Lord Aspeden is to
have an Italian ministry. By the by, shall you go with him, or will
you not rather stay at home, and enjoy your new fortunes,--hunt, race,
dine out, dance, vote in the House of Commons, and, in short, do all
that an Englishman and a gentleman should do? Ornamento e splendor
del secolo nostro. Write me a line whenever you have nothing better
to do.
And believe me, Most truly yours, HAVERFIELD.
Will you sell your black mare, or will you buy my brown one? Utrum
horum mavis accipe, the only piece of Latin I remember.
LETTER FROM LORD ASPEDEN.
My Dear Linden,--Suffer me to enter most fully into your feeling.
Death, my friend, is common to all: we must submit to its
dispensations. I heard accidentally of the great fortune left you by
Mr. Talbot (your father, I suppose I may venture to call him).
Indeed, though there is a silly prejudice against illegitimacy, yet as
our immortal bard says,--
"Wherefore base?
When thy dimensions are as well compact,
Thy mind as generous and thy shape as true
As honest madam's issue!"
For my part, my dear Linden, I say, on your behalf, that it is very
likely that you are a natural son, for such are always the luckiest
and the best.
You have probably heard of the honour his Majesty has conferred on me,
in appointing to my administration the city of ----. As the choice of
a secretary has been left to me, I need not say how happy I shall be
to keep my promise to you. Indeed, as I told Lord ---- yesterday
morning, I do not know anywhere a young man who has more talent, or
who plays better on the flute.
Adieu, my dear young friend, and believe me, Very truly yours,
ASPEDEN.
LETTER FROM MADAME DE LA MERONVILLE. (Translated.)
You have done me wrong,--great wrong. I loved you,--I waited on you,
tended you, nursed you, gave all up for you; and you forsook
me,--forsook me without a word. True, that you have been engaged in a
melancholy duty, but, at least, you had time to write a line, to cast
a thought, to one who had shown for you the love that I have done.
But we will pass over all this: I will not reproach you; it is beneath
me. The vicious upbraid: the virtuous forgive! I have for several
days left your house. I should never have come to it, had you not
been wounded, and, as I fondly imagined, for my sake. Return when you
will, I shall no longer be there to persecute and torment you.
Pardon this letter. I have said too much for myself,--a hundred times
too much to you; but I shall not sin again. This intrusion is my
last. CECILE DE LA MERONVILLE.
These letters will probably suffice to clear up that part of
Clarence's history which had not hitherto been touched upon; they will
show that Talbot's will (after several legacies to his old servants,
his nearest connections, and two charitable institutions, which he had
founded, and for some years supported) had bequeathed the bulk of his
property to Clarence. The words in which the bequest was made were
kind, and somewhat remarkable. "To my relation and friend, commonly
known by the name of Clarence Linden, to whom I am bound alike by
blood and affection," etc. These expressions, joined to the magnitude
of the bequest, the apparently unaccountable attachment of the old man
to his heir, and the mystery which wrapped the origin of the latter,
all concurred to give rise to an opinion, easily received, and soon
universally accredited, that Clarence was a natural son of the
deceased; and so strong in England is the aristocratic aversion to an
unknown lineage, that this belief, unflattering as it was, procured
for Linden a much higher consideration, on the score of birth, than he
might otherwise have enjoyed. Furthermore will the above
correspondence testify the general eclat of Madame la Meronville's
attachment, and the construction naturally put upon it. Nor do we see
much left for us to explain, with regard to the Frenchwoman herself,
which cannot equally well be gleaned by any judicious and intelligent
reader, from the epistle last honoured by his perusal. Clarence's
sense of gallantry did, indeed, smite him severely, for his negligence
and ill requital to one who, whatever her faults or follies, had at
least done nothing with which he had a right to reproach her. It
must. however, be considered in his defence that the fatal event which
had so lately occurred, the relapse which Clarence had suffered in
consequence, and the melancholy confusion and bustle in which the last
week or ten days had been passed, were quite sufficient to banish her
from his remembrance. Still she was a woman, and had loved, or seemed
to love; and Clarence, as he wrote to her a long, kind, and almost
brotherly letter, in return for her own, felt that, in giving pain to
another, one often suffers almost as much for avoiding as for
committing a sin.
We have said his letter was kind; it was also frank, and yet prudent.
In it he said that he had long loved another, which love alone could
have rendered him insensible to her attachment; that he, nevertheless,
should always recall her memory with equal interest and admiration;
and then, with a tact of flattery which the nature of the
correspondence and the sex of the person addressed rendered excusable,
he endeavoured, as far as he was able, to soothe and please the vanity
which the candour of his avowal was calculated to wound.
When he had finished this letter he despatched another to Lord
Aspeden, claiming a reprieve of some days before he answered the
proposal of the diplomatist. After these epistolary efforts, he
summoned his valet, and told him, apparently in a careless tone, to
find out if Lady Westborough was still in town. Then throwing himself
on the couch, he wrestled with the grief and melancholy which the
death of a friend, and more than a father, might well cause in a mind
less susceptible than his, and counted the dull hours crawl onward
till his servant returned. Lady Westborough and all the family had
been gone a week to their seat in ----.
"Well," thought Clarence, "had he been alive, I could have intrusted
my cause to a mediator; as it is, I will plead, or rather assert it,
myself. Harrison," said he aloud, "see that my black mare is ready by
sunrise to-morrow: I shall leave town for some days."
"Not in your present state of health, sir, surely?" said Harrison,
with the license of one who had been a nurse.
"My health requires it: no more words, my good Harrison, see that I am
obeyed." And Harrison, shaking his head doubtfully, left the room.
"Rich, independent, free to aspire to the heights which in England are
only accessible to those who join wealth to ambition, I have at
least," said Clarence, proudly, "no unworthy pretensions even to the
hand of Lady Flora Ardenne. If she can love me for myself, if she can
trust to my honour, rely on my love, feel proud in my pride, and
aspiring in my ambition, then, indeed, this wealth will be welcome to
me, and the disguised name which has cost me so many mortifications
become grateful, since she will not disdain to share it."
