"Don't say any such thing; let me once more hear the grateful sound of Sedley Beaudesert. Shut the door, Thomas; to Gracechurch Street – Messrs Fudge and Fidget."
The carriage drove on.
"A sad affliction has befallen me," said the marquis, "and none sympathise with me!"
"Yet all, even unacquainted with the late lord, must have felt shocked at the death of one so young, and so full of promise."
"So fitted in every way to bear the burthen of the great Castleton name and property, and yet you see it killed him! Ah! if he had been but a simple gentleman, or if he had had less conscientious desire to do his duties, he would have lived to a good old age. I know what it is already. Oh, if you saw the piles of letters on my table! I positively dread the post. Such colossal improvements on the property which the poor boy had begun, for me to finish. What do you think takes me to Fudge and Fidget's? Sir, they are the agents for an infernal coal mine which my cousin had reopened in Durham, to plague my life out with another thirty thousand pounds a-year! How am I to spend the money? – how am I to spend it! There's a cold-blooded head steward, who says that charity is the greatest crime a man in high station can commit; it demoralises the poor. Then, because some half-a-dozen farmers sent me a round-robin, to the effect that their rents were too high, and I wrote them word the rents should be lowered, there was such a hullabaloo – you would have thought heaven and earth were coming together. 'If a man in the position of the Marquis of Castleton set the example of letting land below its value, how could the poorer squires in the county exist? – or, if they did exist, what injustice to expose them, to the charge that they were grasping landlords, vampires, and bloodsuckers. Clearly, if Lord Castleton lowered his rents, (they were too low already,) he struck a mortal blow at the property of his neighbours, if they followed his example; or at their character, if they did not.' No man can tell how hard it is to do good, unless fortune gives him a hundred thousand pounds a-year, and says, – 'Now, do good with it!' Sedley Beaudesert might follow his whims, and all that would be said against him would be, 'Good-natured, simple fellow!' But if Lord Castleton follow his whims, you would think he was a second Catiline – unsettling the peace, and undermining the prosperity, of the entire nation!" Here the wretched man paused, and sighed heavily; then, as his thoughts wandered into a new channel of woe, he resumed, – "Ah, if you could but see the forlorn great house I am expected to inhabit, cooped up between dead walls, instead of my pretty rooms, with the windows full on the park; and the balls I am expected to give, and the parliamentary interest I am to keep up; and the villanous proposal made to me to become a lord steward, or lord chamberlain, because it suits my rank to be a sort of a servant. Oh, Pisistratus! you lucky dog – not twenty-one, and with, I dare say, not two hundred pounds a-year in the world!"
Thus bemoaning and bewailing his sad fortunes, the poor marquis ran on, till at last he exclaimed, in a tone of yet deeper despair, —
"And everybody says I must marry, too! – that the Castleton line must not be extinct! The Beaudeserts are a good old family eno' – as old, for what I know, as the Castletons; but the British empire would suffer no loss if they sank into the tomb of the Capulets. But that the Castleton peerage should expire, is a thought of crime and woe, at which all the mothers of England rise in a phalanx! And so, instead of visiting the sins of the fathers on the sons, it is the father that is to be sacrificed for the benefit of the third and fourth generation!"
Despite my causes for seriousness, I could not help laughing; my companion turned on me a look of reproach.
"At least," said I, composing my countenance, "Lord Castleton has one comfort in his afflictions – if he must marry, he may choose as he pleases."
"That is precisely what Sedley Beaudesert could, and Lord Castleton cannot do," said the marquis gravely. "The rank of Sir Sedley Beaudesert was a quiet and comfortable rank – he might marry a curate's daughter, or a duke's – and please his eye or grieve his heart as the caprice took him. But Lord Castleton must marry, not for a wife, but for a marchioness, – marry some one who will wear his rank for him, – take the trouble of splendour off his hands, and allow him to retire into a corner, and dream that he is Sedley Beaudesert once more! Yes, it must be so – the crowning sacrifice must be completed at the altar. But a truce to my complaints. Trevanion informs me you are going to Australia, – can that be true?"
"Perfectly true."
"They say there is a sad want of ladies there."
"So much the better, – I shall be all the more steady."
"Well, there's something in that. Have you seen Lady Ellinor?"
"Yes – this morning."
"Poor woman! – a great blow to her – we have tried to console each other. Fanny, you know, is staying at Oxton, in Surrey, with Lady Castleton, – the poor lady is so fond of her – and no one has comforted her like Fanny."
"I was not aware that Miss Trevanion was out of town."
"Only for a few days, and then she and Lady Ellinor join Trevanion in the north – you know he is with Lord N – , settling measures on which – but alas, they consult me now on those matters – force their secrets on me. I have, heaven knows how many votes! Poor me! Upon my word, if Lady Ellinor was a widow, I should certainly make up to her: very clever woman – nothing bores her." (The marquis yawned – Sir Sedley Beaudesert never yawned.) "Trevanion has provided for his Scotch secretary, and is about to get a place in the Foreign Office for that young fellow Gower, whom, between you and me, I don't like. But he has bewitched Trevanion!"
"What sort of a person is this Mr Gower? – I remember you said that he was clever, and good-looking."
"He is both, but it is not the cleverness of youth; he is as hard and sarcastic as if he had been cheated fifty times, and jilted a hundred! Neither are his good looks that letter of recommendation which a handsome face is said to be. He has an expression of countenance very much like that of Lord Hertford's pet bloodhound, when a stranger comes into the room. Very sleek, handsome dog, the bloodhound is certainly – well-mannered, and I dare say exceedingly tame; but still you have but to look at the corner of the eye, to know that it is only the habit of the drawing-room that suppresses the creature's constitutional tendency to seize you by the throat, instead of giving you a paw. Still this Mr Gower has a very striking head – something about it Moorish or Spanish, like a picture by Murillo: I half suspect that he is less a Gower than a gipsy!"
"What!" – I cried, as I listened with rapt and breathless attention to this description. "He is then very dark, with high narrow forehead, features slightly aquiline, but very delicate, and teeth so dazzling that the whole face seems to sparkle when he smiles – though it is only the lip that smiles, not the eye."
"Exactly as you say; you have seen him, then?"
"Why, I am not sure, since you say his name is Gower."
"He says his name is Gower," returned Lord Castleton, drily, as he inhaled the Beaudesert mixture.
"And where is he now? – with Mr Trevanion?"
"Yes, I believe so. Ah! here we are – Fudge and Fidget! But perhaps," added Lord Castleton, with a gleam of hope in his blue eye, – "perhaps they are not at home!"
Alas, that was an illusive "imagining," as the poets of the nineteenth century unaffectedly express themselves. Messrs Fudge and Fidget were never out to such clients as the Marquis of Castleton: with a deep sigh, and an altered expression of face, the Victim of Fortune slowly descended the steps of the carriage.
"I can't ask you to wait for me," said he; "heaven only knows how long I shall be kept! Take the carriage where you will, and send it back to me."
"A thousand thanks, my dear lord, I would rather walk – but you will let me call on you before I leave town."
"Let you! – I insist on it. I am still at the old quarters, under pretence," said the marquis, with a sly twinkle of the eyelid, "that Castleton House wants painting!"
"At twelve to-morrow, then?"
"Twelve to-morrow. Alas!