Book: Night and Morning, Volume 4

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Night and Morning, Volume 4




"Don't you think," she once whispered to Vaudemont, "that God attends to
us more if we are good to those who are sick and hungry?"

"Certainly we are taught to think so."

"Well, I'll tell you a secret--don't tell again. Grandpapa once said
that my father had done bad things; now, if Fanny is good to those she
can help, I think that God will hear her more kindly when she prays him
to forgive what her father did. Do you think so too? Do say--you are
so wise!"

"Fanny, you are wiser than all of us; and I feel myself better and
happier when I hear you speak."

There were, indeed, many moments when Vaudemont thought that her
deficiencies of intellect might have been repaired, long since, by
skilful culture and habitual companionship with those of her own age;
from which companionship, however, Fanny, even when at school, had shrunk
aloof. At other moments there was something so absent and distracted
about her, or so fantastic and incoherent, that Vaudemont, with the man's
hard, worldly eye, read in it nothing but melancholy confusion.
Nevertheless, if the skein of ideas was entangled, each thread in itself
was a thread of gold.

Fanny's great object--her great ambition--her one hope--was a tomb for
her supposed father. Whether from some of that early religion attached
to the grave, which is most felt in Catholic countries, and which she had
imbibed at the convent; or from her residence so near the burial ground,
and the affection with which she regarded the spot;--whatever the cause,
she had cherished for some years, as young maidens usually cherish the
desire of the Altar--the dream of the Gravestone. But the hoard was
amassed so slowly;--now old Gawtrey was attacked by illness;--now there
was some little difficulty in the rent; now some fluctuation in the price
of work; and now, and more often than all, some demand on her charity,
which interfered with, and drew from, the pious savings. This was a
sentiment in which her new friend sympathised deeply; for he, too,
remembered that his first gold had bought that humble stone which still
preserved upon the earth the memory of his mother.

Meanwhile, days crept on, and no new violence was offered to Fanny.
Vaudemont learned, then, by little and little--and Fanny's account was
very confused--the nature of the danger she had run.

It seemed that one day, tempted by the fineness of the weather up the
road that led from the suburb farther into the country, Fanny was stopped
by a gentleman in a carriage, who accosted her, as she said, very kindly:
and after several questions, which she answered with her usual
unsuspecting innocence, learned her trade, insisted on purchasing some
articles of work which she had at the moment in her basket, and promised
to procure her a constant purchaser, upon much better terms than she had
hitherto obtained, if she would call at the house of a Mrs. West, about a
mile from the suburb towards London. This she promised to do, and this
she did, according to the address he gave her. She was admitted to a
lady more gaily dressed than Fanny had ever seen a lady before,--the
gentleman was also present,--they both loaded her with compliments, and
bought her work at a price which seemed about to realise all the hopes of
the poor girl as to the gravestone for William Gawtrey,--as if his evil
fate pursued that wild man beyond the grave, and his very tomb was to be
purchased by the gold of the polluter! The lady then appointed her to
call again; but, meanwhile, she met Fanny in the streets, and while she
was accosting her, it fortunately chanced that Miss Semper the milliner
passed that way--turned round, looked hard at the lady, used very angry
language to her, seized Fanny's hand, led her away while the lady slunk
off; and told her that the said lady was a very bad woman, and that Fanny
must never speak to her again. Fanny most cheerfully promised this.
And, in fact, the lady, probably afraid, whether of the mob or the
magistrates, never again came near her.

"And," said Fanny, "I gave the money they had both given to me to Miss
Semper, who said she would send it back."

"You did right, Fanny; and as you made one promise to Miss Semper, so you
must make me one--never to stir from home again without me or some other
person. No, no other person--only me. I will give up everything else to
go with you."

"Will you? Oh, yes. I promise! I used to like going alone, but that
was before you came, brother."

And as Fanny kept her promise, it would have been a bold gallant indeed
who would have ventured to molest her by the side of that stately and
strong protector.




CHAPTER VI.

"Timon. Each thing's a thief
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power
Have unchecked theft.

The sweet degrees that this brief world affords,
To such as may the passive drugs of it
Freely command."--_Timon of Athens_.

On the day and at the hour fixed for the interview with the stranger who
had visited Mr. Beaufort, Lord Lilburne was seated in the library of his
brother-in-law; and before the elbow-chair, on which he lolled
carelessly, stood our old friend Mr. Sharp, of Bow Street notability.

"Mr. Sharp," said the peer, "I have sent for you to do me a little
favour. I expect a man here who professes to give Mr. Beaufort, my
brother-in-law, some information about a lawsuit. It is necessary to
know the exact value of his evidence. I wish you to ascertain all
particulars about him. Be so good as to seat yourself in the porter's
chair in the hall; note him when he enters, unobserved yourself--but as
he is probably a stranger to you, note him still more when he leaves the
house; follow him at a distance; find out where he lives, whom he
associates with, where he visits, their names and directions, what his
character and calling are;--in a word, everything you can, and report to
me each evening. Dog him well, never lose sight of him--you will be
handsomely paid. You understand?"

"Ah!" said Mr. Sharp, "leave me alone, my lord. Been employed before by
your lordship's brother-in-law. We knows what's what."

"I don't doubt it. To your post--I expect him every moment."

And, in fact, Mr. Sharp had only just ensconced himself in the porter's
chair when the stranger knocked at the door--in another moment he was
shown in to Lord Lilburne.

"Sir," said his lordship, without rising, "be so good as to take a chair.
Mr. Beaufort is obliged to leave town--he has asked me to see you--I am
one of his family--his wife is my sister--you may be as frank with me as
with him,--more so, perhaps."

"I beg the fauvour of your name, sir," said the stranger, adjusting his
collar.

"Yours first--business is business."

"Well, then, Captain Smith."

"Of what regiment?"

"Half-pay."

"I am Lord Lilburne. Your name is Smith--humph!" added the peer, looking
over some notes before him. "I see it is also the name of the witness
appealed to by Mrs. Morton--humph!"

At this remark, and still more at the look which accompanied it, the
countenance, before impudent and complacent, of Captain Smith fell into
visible embarrassment; he cleared his throat and said, with a little
hesitation,--

"My lord, that witness is living!"

"No doubt of it--witnesses never die where property is concerned and
imposture intended."

At this moment the servant entered, and placed a little note, quaintly
folded, before Lord Lilburne. He glanced at it in surprise--opened, and
read as follows, in pencil,--

"My LORD,--I knows the man; take caer of him; he is as big a roge as ever
stept; he was transported some three year back, and unless his time has
been shortened by the Home, he's absent without leve. We used to call
him Dashing Jerry. That ere youngster we went arter, by Mr. Bofort's
wish, was a pall of his. Scuze the liberty I take.
"J. SHARP."

While Lord Lilburne held this effusion to the candle, and spelled his way
through it, Captain Smith, recovering his self-composure, thus proceeded:

"Imposture, my lord! imposture! I really don't understand. Your
lordship really seems so suspicious, that it is quite uncomfortable. I
am sure it is all the same to me; and if Mr. Beaufort does not think
proper to see me himself, why I'd best make my bow."

And Captain Smith rose.

"Stay a moment, sir. What Mr. Beaufort may yet do, I cannot say; but I
know this, you stand charged of a very grave offence, and if your witness
or witnesses--you may have fifty, for what I care--are equally guilty, so
much the worse for them."

"My lord, I really don't comprehend."

"Then I will be more plain. I accuse you of devising an infamous
falsehood for the purpose of extorting money. Let your witnesses appear
in court, and I promise that you, they, and the young man, Mr. Morton,
whose claim they set up, shall be indicted for conspiracy--conspiracy, if
accompanied (as in the case of your witnesses) with perjury, of the
blackest die. Mr. Smith, I know you; and, before ten o'clock to-morrow,
I shall know also if you had his majesty's leave to quit the colonies!
Ah! I am plain enough now, I see."

And Lord Lilburne threw himself back in his chair, and coldly
contemplated the white face and dismayed expression of the crestfallen
captain. That most worthy person, after a pause of confusion, amaze, and
fear, made an involuntary stride, with a menacing gesture, towards
Lilburne; the peer quietly placed his hand on the bell.

"One moment more," said the latter; "if I ring this bell, it is to place
you in custody. Let Mr. Beaufort but see you here once again--nay, let
him but hear another word of this pretended lawsuit--and you return to
the colonies. Pshaw! Frown not at me, sir! A Bow Street officer is in
the hall. Begone!--no, stop one moment, and take a lesson in life.
Never again attempt to threaten people of property and station. Around
every rich man is a wall--better not run your head against it."

"But I swear solemnly," cried the knave, with an emphasis so startling
that it carried with it the appearance of truth, "that the marriage did
take place."

"And I say, no less solemnly, that any one who swears it in a court of
law shall be prosecuted for perjury! Bah! you are a sorry rogue, after
all!"

And with an air of supreme and half-compassionate contempt, Lord Lilburne
turned away and stirred the fire. Captain Smith muttered and fumbled a
moment with his gloves, then shrugged his shoulders and sneaked out.

That night Lord Lilburne again received his friends, and amongst his
guests came Vaudemont. Lilburne was one who liked the study of
character, especially the character of men wrestling against the world.
Wholly free from every species of ambition, he seemed to reconcile
himself to his apathy by examining into the disquietude, the
mortification, the heart's wear and tear, which are the lot of the
ambitious. Like the spider in his hole, he watched with hungry pleasure
the flies struggling in the web; through whose slimy labyrinth he walked
with an easy safety. Perhaps one reason why he loved gaming was less
from the joy of winning than the philosophical complacency with which he
feasted on the emotions of those who lost; always serene, and, except in
debauch, always passionless,--Majendie, tracing the experiments of
science in the agonies of some tortured dog, could not be more rapt in
the science, and more indifferent to the dog, than Lord Lilburne, ruining
a victim, in the analysis of human passions,--stoical in the writhings of
the wretch whom he tranquilly dissected. He wished to win money of
Vaudemont--to ruin this man, who presumed to be more generous than other
people--to see a bold adventurer submitted to the wheel of the Fortune
which reigns in a pack of cards;--and all, of course, without the least
hate to the man whom he then saw for the first time. On the contrary, he
felt a respect for Vaudemont. Like most worldly men, Lord Lilburne was
prepossessed in favour of those who seek to rise in life: and like men
who have excelled in manly and athletic exercises, he was also
prepossessed in favour of those who appeared fitted for the same success.

Liancourt took aside his friend, as Lord Lilburne was talking with his
other guests:--

"I need not caution you, who never play, not to commit yourself to Lord
Lilburne's tender mercies; remember, he is an admirable player."

"Nay," answered Vaudemont, "I want to know this man: I have reasons,
which alone induce me to enter his house. I can afford to venture
something, because I wish to see if I can gain something for one dear to
me. And for the rest (he muttered)--I know him too well not to be on my
guard." With that he joined Lord Lilburne's group, and accepted the
invitation to the card-table. At supper, Vaudemont conversed more than
was habitual to him; he especially addressed himself to his host, and
listened, with great attention, to Lilburne's caustic comments upon every
topic successively started. And whether it was the art of De Vaudemont,
or from an interest that Lord Lilburne took in studying what was to him a
new character,--or whether that, both men excelling peculiarly in all
masculine accomplishments, their conversation was of a nature that was
more attractive to themselves than to others; it so happened that they
were still talking while the daylight already peered through the window-
curtains.

"And I have outstayed all your guests," said De Vaudemont, glancing round
the emptied room.

"It is the best compliment you could pay me. Another night we can
enliven our _tete-a-tete_ with _ecarte_; though at your age, and with
your appearance, I am surprised, Monsieur de Vaudemont, that you are fond
of play: I should have thought that it was not in a pack of cards that
you looked for hearts. But perhaps you are _blaze_ betimes of the _beau
sexe_."

"Yet your lordship's devotion to it is, perhaps, as great now as ever?"

"Mine?--no, not as ever. To different ages different degrees. At your
age I wooed; at mine I purchase--the better plan of the two: it does not
take up half so much time."

"Your marriage, I think, Lord Lilburne, was not blessed with children.
Perhaps sometimes you feel the want of them?"

"If I did, I could have them by the dozen. Other ladies have been more
generous in that department than the late Lady Lilburne, Heaven rest
her!"

"And," said Vaudemont, fixing his eyes with some earnestness on his host,
"if you were really persuaded that you had a child, or perhaps a
grandchild--the mother one whom you loved in your first youth--a child
affectionate, beautiful, and especially needing your care and protection,
would you not suffer that child, though illegitimate, to supply to you
the want of filial affection?"

"Filial affection, _mon cher_!" repeated Lord Lilburne, "needing my care
and protection! Pshaw! In other words, would I give board and lodging
to some young vagabond who was good enough to say he was son to Lord
Lilburne?"

"But if you were convinced that the claimant were your son, or perhaps
your daughter--a tenderer name of the two, and a more helpless claimant?"

"My dear Monsieur de Vaudemont, you are doubtless a man of gallantry and
of the world. If the children whom the law forces on one are, nine times
out of ten, such damnable plagues, judge if one would father those whom
the law permits us to disown! Natural children are the pariahs of the
world, and I--am one of the Brahmans."

"But," persisted Vaudemont, "forgive me if I press the question farther.
Perhaps I seek from your wisdom a guide to my own conduct;--suppose,
then, a man had loved, had wronged, the mother;--suppose that in the
child he saw one who, without his aid, might be exposed to every curse
with which the pariahs (true, the pariahs!) of the world are too often
visited, and who with his aid might become, as age advanced, his
companion, his nurse, his comforter--"

"Tush!" interrupted Lilburne, with some impatience; "I know not how our
conversation fell on such a topic--but if you really ask my opinion in
reference to any case in practical life, you shall have it. Look you,
then Monsieur de Vaudemont, no man has studied the art of happiness more
than I have; and I will tell you the great secret--have as few ties as
possible. Nurse!--pooh! you or I could hire one by the week a thousand
times more useful and careful than a bore of a child. Comforter!--a man
of mind never wants comfort. And there is no such thing as sorrow while
we have health and money, and don't care a straw for anybody in the
world. If you choose to love people, their health and circumstances, if
either go wrong, can fret you: that opens many avenues to pain. Never
live alone, but always feel alone. You think this unamiable: possibly.
I am no hypocrite, and, for my part, I never affect to be anything but
what I am--John Lilburne."

As the peer thus spoke, Vaudemont, leaning against the door, contemplated
him with a strange mixture of interest and disgust. "And John Lilburne
is thought a great man, and William Gawtrey was a great rogue. You don't
conceal your heart?--no, I understand. Wealth and power have no need of
hypocrisy: you are the man of vice--Gawtrey, the man of crime. You never
sin against the law--he was a felon by his trade. And the felon saved
from vice the child, and from want the grandchild (Your flesh and blood)
whom you disown: which will Heaven consider the worse man? No, poor
Fanny, I see I am wrong. If he would own you, I would not give you up to
the ice of such a soul:--better the blind man than the dead heart!"

"Well, Lord Lilburne," said De Vaudemont aloud, shaking off his reverie,
"I must own that your philosophy seems to me the wisest for yourself.
For a poor man it might be different--the poor need affection."

"Ay, the poor, certainly," said Lord Lilburne, with an air of patronising
candour.

"And I will own farther," continued De Vaudemont, "that I have willingly
lost my money in return for the instruction I have received in hearing
you converse."

"You are kind: come and take your revenge next Thursday. Adieu."

As Lord Lilburne undressed, and his valet attended him, he said to that
worthy functionary,--

"So you have not been able to make out the name of the stranger--the new
lodger you tell me of?"

"No, my lord. They only say he is a very fine-looking man."

"You have not seen him?"

"No, my lord. What do you wish me now to do?"

"Humph! Nothing at this moment! You manage things so badly, you might
get me into a scrape. I never do anything which the law or the police,
or even the news papers, can get hold of. I must think of some other
way--humph! I never give up what I once commence, and I never fail in
what I undertake! If life had been worth what fools trouble it with--
business and ambition--I suppose I should have been a great man with a
very bad liver--ha ha! I alone, of all the world, ever found out what
the world was good for! Draw the curtains, Dykeman."




CHAPTER VII.

"_Org._ Welcome, thou ice that sitt'st about _his_ heart
No heat can ever thaw thee!"--FORD: _Broken Heart_.

"_Nearch._ Honourable infamy!"--Ibid.

"_Amye._ Her tenderness hath yet deserved no rigour,
So to be crossed by fate!"

"_Arm._ You misapply, sir,
With favour let me speak it, what Apollo
Hath clouded in dim sense!"--Ibid.

If Vaudemont had fancied that, considering the age and poverty of Simon,
it was his duty to see whether Fanny's not more legal, but more natural
protector were, indeed, the unredeemed and unmalleable egotist which
Gawtrey had painted him, the conversation of one night was sufficient to
make him abandon for ever the notion of advancing her claims upon Lord
Lilburne. But Philip had another motive in continuing his acquaintance
with that personage. The sight of his mother's grave had recalled to him
the image of that lost brother over whom he had vowed to watch. And,
despite the deep sense of wronged affection with which he yet remembered
the cruel letter that had contained the last tidings of Sidney, Philip's
heart clung with undying fondness to that fair shape associated with all
the happy recollections of childhood; and his conscience as well as his
love asked him, each time that he passed the churchyard, "Will you make
no effort to obey that last prayer of the mother who consigned her
darling to your charge?" Perhaps, had Philip been in want, or had the
name he now bore been sullied by his conduct, he might have shrunk from
seeking one whom he might injure, but could not serve. But though not
rich, he had more than enough for tastes as hardy and simple as any to
which soldier of fortune ever limited his desires. And he thought, with
a sentiment of just and noble pride, that the name which Eugenie had
forced upon him had been borne spotless as the ermine through the trials
and vicissitudes he had passed since he had assumed it. Sidney could
give him nothing, and therefore it was his duty to seek Sidney out. Now,
he had always believed in his heart that the Beauforts were acquainted
with a secret which he more and more pined to penetrate. He would, for
Sidney's sake, smother his hate to the Beauforts; he would not reject
their acquaintance if thrown in his way; nay, secure in his change of
name and his altered features, from all suspicion on their part, he
would seek that acquaintance in order to find his brother and fulfil
Catherine's last commands. His intercourse with Lilburne would
necessarily bring him easily into contact with Lilburne's family. And in
this thought he did not reject the invitations pressed on him. He felt,
too, a dark and absorbing interest in examining a man who was in himself
the incarnation of the World--the World of Art--the World as the Preacher
paints it--the hollow, sensual, sharp-witted, self-wrapped WORLD--the
World that is all for this life, and thinks of no Future and no God!

Lord Lilburne was, indeed, a study for deep contemplation. A study to
perplex the ordinary thinker, and task to the utmost the analysis of more
profound reflection. William Gawtrey had possessed no common talents; he
had discovered that his life had been one mistake; Lord Lilburne's
intellect was far keener than Gawtrey's, and he had never made, and if he
had lived to the age of Old Parr, never would have made a similar
discovery. He never wrestled against a law, though he slipped through
all laws! And he knew no remorse, for he knew no fear. Lord Lilburne
had married early, and long survived, a lady of fortune, the daughter of
the then Premier--the best match, in fact, of his day. And for one very
brief period of his life he had suffered himself to enter into the field
of politics the only ambition common with men of equal rank. He showed
talents that might have raised one so gifted by circumstance to any
height, and then retired at once into his old habits and old system of
pleasure. "I wished to try," said he once, "if fame was worth one
headache, and I have convinced myself that the man who can sacrifice the
bone in his mouth to the shadow of the bone in the water is a fool."
From that time he never attended the House of Lords, and declared himself
of no political opinions one way or the other. Nevertheless, the world
had a general belief in his powers, and Vaudemont reluctantly subscribed
to the world's verdict. Yet he had done nothing, he had read but little,
he laughed at the world to its face,--and that last was, after all, the
main secret of his ascendancy over those who were drawn into his circle.
That contempt of the world placed the world at his feet. His sardonic
and polished indifference, his professed code that there was no life
worth caring for but his own life, his exemption from all cant,
prejudice, and disguise, the frigid lubricity with which he glided out of
the grasp of the Conventional, whenever it so pleased him, without
shocking the Decorums whose sense is in their ear, and who are not roused
by the deed but by the noise,--all this had in it the marrow and essence
of a system triumphant with the vulgar; for little minds give importance
to the man who gives importance to nothing. Lord Lilburne's authority,
not in matters of taste alone, but in those which the world calls
judgment and common sense, was regarded as an oracle. He cared not a
straw for the ordinary baubles that attract his order; he had refused
both an earldom and the garter, and this was often quoted in his honour.
But you only try a man's virtue when you offer him something that he
covets. The earldom and the garter were to Lord Lilburne no more
tempting inducements than a doll or a skipping-rope; had you offered him
an infallible cure for the gout, or an antidote against old age, you
might have hired him as your lackey on your own terms. Lord Lilburne's
next heir was the son of his only brother, a person entirely dependent on
his uncle. Lord Lilburne allowed him L1000. a year and kept him always
abroad in a diplomatic situation. He looked upon his successor as a man
who wanted power, but not inclination, to become his assassin.

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