The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v6
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George Meredith >> The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v6
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CHAPTER XLII
THE MARQUIS OF EDBURY AND HIS PUPPET
I passed from man to man, hearing hints and hesitations, alarming half-
remarks, presumed to be addressed to one who could supply the remainder,
and deduce consequences. There was a clearer atmosphere in the street of
Clubs. Jennings was the first of my father's more intimate acquaintances
to meet me frankly. He spoke, though not with great seriousness, of the
rumour of a possible prosecution. Sir Weeton Slater tripped up to us
with a mixed air of solicitude and restraint, asked whether I was well,
and whether I had seen the newspapers that morning; and on my informing
him that I had just come up from Riversley, on account of certain
rumours, advised me to remain in town strictly for the present. He also
hinted at rumours of prosecutions. 'The fact is----' he began several
times, rendered discreet, I suppose, by my juvenility, fierte, and
reputed wealth.
We were joined by Admiral Loftus and Lord Alton. They queried and
counterqueried as to passages between my father and the newspapers, my
father and the committee of his Club, preserving sufficient consideration
for me to avoid the serious matter in all but distant allusions; a point
upon which the breeding of Mr. Serjeant Wedderburn was not so accurate a
guide to him. An exciting public scandal soon gathers knots of gossips
in Clubland. We saw Wedderburn break from a group some way down the
pavement and pick up a fresh crumb of amusement at one of the doorsteps.
'Roy Richmond is having his benefit to-day!' he said, and repeated this
and that, half audible to me. For the rest, he pooh-poohed the idea of
the Law intervening. His 'How d' ye do, Mr. Richmond, how d' ye do?' was
almost congratulatory. 'I think we meet at your father's table to-night?
It won't be in the Tower, take my word for it. Oh! the papers! There's
no Act to compel a man to deny what appears in the papers. No such luck
as the Tower!--though Littlepitt (Mr. Wedderburn's nickname for our
Premier) would be fool enough for that. He would. If he could turn
attention from his Bill, he'd do it. We should have to dine off Boleyn's
block:--coquite horum obsonia he'd say, eh?''
Jennings espied my father's carriage, and stepped to speak a word to the
footman. He returned, saying, with a puff of his cheeks: 'The Grand
Monarque has been sending his state equipage to give the old backbiting
cripple Brisby an airing. He is for horse exercise to-day they've
dropped him in Courtenay Square. There goes Brisby. He'd take the good
Samaritan's shilling to buy a flask of poison for him. He 'll use Roy's
carriage to fetch and carry for that venomous old woman Kane, I'll
swear.'
'She's a male in Scripture,' said Wedderburn, and this reminded me of an
anecdote that reminded him of another, and after telling them, he handed
round his hat for the laugh, as my father would have phrased it.
'Has her ladyship declared war?' Sir Weeton Slater inquired.
'No, that's not her preliminary to wageing it,' Wedderburn replied.
These high-pressure smart talkers had a moment of dulness, and he
bethought him that he must run into the Club for letters, and was busy at
Westminster, where, if anything fresh occurred between meridian and six
o'clock, he should be glad, he said, to have word of it by messenger,
that he might not be behind his Age.
The form of humour to express the speed of the world was common, but it
struck me as a terrible illustration of my father's. I had still a sense
of pleasure in the thought that these intimates of his were gentlemen who
relished and, perhaps, really liked him. They were not parasites; not
the kind of men found hanging about vulgar profligates.
I quitted them. Sir Weeton Slater walked half-a-dozen steps beside me.
'May I presume on a friendly acquaintance with your father, Mr.
Richmond?' he said. 'The fact is--you will not be offended?--he is apt
to lose his head, unless the Committee of Supply limits him very
precisely. I am aware that there is no material necessity for any
restriction.' He nodded to me as to one of the marvellously endowed, as
who should say, the Gods presided at your birth. The worthy baronet
struggled to impart his meaning, which was, that he would have me define
something like an allowance to my father, not so much for the purpose of
curtailing his expenditure--he did not venture upon private ground--as to
bridle my father's ideas of things possible for a private gentleman in
this country. In that character none were like him. As to his suit, or
appeal, he could assure me that Serjeant Wedderburn, and all who would or
could speak on the subject, saw no prospect of success; not any. The
worst of it was, that it caused my father to commit himself in sundry
ways. It gave a handle to his enemies. It--he glanced at me
indicatively.
I thanked the well-meaning gentleman without encouraging him to continue.
'It led him to perform once more as a Statue of Bronze before the whole
of gaping London!' I could have added. That scene on the pine-promontory
arose in my vision, followed by other scenes of the happy German days.
I had no power to conjure up the princess.
Jorian DeWitt was the man I wanted to see. After applications at his
Club and lodgings I found him dragging his Burgundy leg in the Park,
on his road to pay a morning visit to his fair French enchantress.
I impeached him, and he pleaded guilty, clearly not wishing to take me
with him, nor would he give me Mlle. Jenny's address, which I had. By
virtue of the threat that I would accompany him if he did not satisfy me,
I managed to extract the story of the Dauphin, aghast at the discovery of
its being true. The fatal after-dinner speech he believed to have been
actually spoken, and he touched on that first. 'A trap was laid for him,
Harry Richmond; and a deuced clever trap it was. They smuggled in
special reporters. There wasn't a bit of necessity for the toast.
But the old vixen has shown her hand, so now he must fight. He can beat
her single-handed on settees. He'll find her a tartar at long bowls: she
sticks at nothing. She blazes out, that he scandalizes her family. She
has a dozen indictments against him. You must stop in town and keep
watch. There's fire in my leg to explode a powder-magazine a mile off!'
'Is it the Margravine of Rippau?' I inquired. I could think of no other
waspish old woman.
'Lady Dane,' said Jorian. 'She set Edbury on to face him with the
Dauphin. You don't fancy it came of the young dog "all of himself,"
do you? Why, it was clever! He trots about a briefless little
barrister, a scribbler, devilish clever and impudent, who does his farces
for him. Tenby 's the fellow's name, and it's the only thing I haven't
heard him pun on. Puns are the smallpox of the language;--we're cursed
with an epidemic. By gad, the next time I meet him I 'll roar out for
vaccine matter.'
He described the dinner given by Edbury at a celebrated City tavern where
my father and this so-called Dauphin were brought together. 'Dinner to-
night,' he nodded, as he limped away on his blissful visit of ceremony to
sprightly Chassediane (a bouquet had gone in advance): he left me
stupefied. The sense of ridicule enveloped me in suffocating folds,
howling sentences of the squire's Boeotian burlesque by fits. I felt
that I could not but take the world's part against the man who allowed
himself to be made preposterous externally, when I knew him to be staking
his frail chances and my fortune with such rashness. It was unpardonable
for one in his position to incur ridicule. Nothing but a sense of duty
kept me from rushing out of London, and I might have indulged the impulse
advantageously. Delay threw me into the clutches of Lady Kane herself,
on whom I looked with as composed a visage as I could command, while she
leaned out of her carriage chattering at me, and sometimes over my head
to passing gentlemen.
She wanted me to take a seat beside her, she had so much to say. Was
there not some funny story abroad of a Pretender to the Throne of France?
she asked, wrinkling her crow'sfeet eyelids to peer at me, and wished to
have the particulars. I had none to offer. 'Ah! well,' said she; 'you
stay in London? Come and see me. I'm sure you 're sensible. You and I
can put our heads together. He's too often in Courtenay Square, and he's
ten years too young for that, still. He ought to have good advice. Tell
me, how can a woman who can't guide herself help a man?--and the most
difficult man alive! I'm sure you understand me. I can't drive out in
the afternoon for them. They make a crush here, and a clatter of
tongues! . . . That's my private grievance. But he's now keeping
persons away who have the first social claim . . . I know they can't
appear. Don't look confused; no one accuses you. Only I do say it 's
getting terribly hot in London for somebody. Call on me. Will you?'
She named her hours. I bowed as soon as I perceived my opportunity.
Her allusions were to Lady Edbury, and to imputed usurpations of my
father's. I walked down to the Chambers where Temple was reading Law,
for a refuge from these annoyances. I was in love with the modest
shadowed life Temple lived, diligently reading, and glancing on the world
as through a dusky window, happy to let it run its course while he
sharpened his weapons. A look at Temple's face told me he had heard
quite as much as was known in the West. Dining-halls of lawyers are not
Cistercian; he was able to give me three distinct versions of the story
of the Dauphin. No one could be friendlier. Indeed Temple now urged me
forcibly to prevent my father from spending money and wearing his heart
out in vain, by stopping the case in Dettermain and Newson's hands.
They were respectable lawyers, he said, in a lawyer's ordinary tone when
including such of his species as are not black sheep. He thought it
possible that my father's personal influence overbore their judgment.
In fact, nothing bound them to refuse to work for him, and he believed
that they had submitted their views for his consideration.
'I do wish he'd throw it up,' Temple exclaimed. 'It makes him enemies.
And just examining it, you see he could get no earthly good out of it: he
might as well try to scale a perpendicular rock. But when I'm with him,
I'm ready to fancy what he pleases--I acknowledge that. He has excess of
phosphorus, or he's ultra-electrical; doctors could tell us better than
lawyers.' Temple spoke of the clever young barrister Tenby as the man
whom his father had heard laughing over the trick played upon 'Roy
Richmond.' I conceived that I might furnish Mr. Tenby a livelier kind of
amusement, and the thought that I had once been sur le terrain, and had
bitterly regretted it, by no means deterred me from the idea of a second
expedition, so black was my mood. A review of the circumstances, aided
by what reached my ears before the night went over, convinced me that
Edbury was my man. His subordinate helped him to the instrument, and
possibly to the plot, but Edbury was the capital offender.
The scene of the prank was not in itself so bad as the stuff which a
cunning anecdotist could make out of it. Edbury invited my father to a
dinner at a celebrated City tavern. He kept his guests (Jennings, Jorian
DeWitt, Alton, Wedderburn, were among the few I was acquainted with who
were present) awaiting the arrival of a person for whom he professed
extraordinary respect. The Dauphin of France was announced. A mild,
flabby, amiable-looking old person, with shelving forehead and grey
locks--excellently built for the object, Jorian said--entered. The Capet
head and embonpoint were there. As far as a personal resemblance might
go, his pretensions to be the long-lost Dauphin were grotesquely
convincing, for, notwithstanding the accurate picture of the Family
presented by him, the man was a pattern bourgeois:--a sturdy impostor,
one would have thought, and I thought so when I heard of him; but I have
been assured that he had actually grown old in the delusion that he,
carrying on his business in the City of London, was the identical
Dauphin.
Edbury played his part by leading his poor old victim half way to meet
his other most honoured guest, hesitating then and craving counsel
whether he was right in etiquette to advance the Dauphin so far. The
Dauphin left him mildly to decide the point: he was eminently mild
throughout, and seems to have thought himself in good faith surrounded by
believers and adherents. Edbury's task soon grew too delicate for that
coarse boy. In my father's dexterous hands he at once lost his
assumption of the gallantry of manner which could alone help him to
retain his advantage. When the wine was in him he began to bawl. I
could imagine the sort of dialogue he raised. Bets on the Dauphin, bets
on Roy: they were matched as on a racecourse. The Dauphin remembered
incidents of his residence in the Temple, with a beautiful juvenile
faintness: a conscientious angling for recollection, Wedderburn said.
Roy was requested to remember something, to drink and refresh his memory
infantine incidents were suggested. He fenced the treacherous host
during dinner with superb complacency.
The Dauphin was of an immoveable composure. He 'stated simple facts: he
was the Dauphin of France, providentially rescued from the Temple in the
days of the Terror.' For this deliverance, somewhat to the consternation
of the others, he offered up a short prayer of thanksgiving over his
plate. He had, he said, encountered incredulity. He had his proofs.
He who had never been on the soil of France since early boyhood, spoke
French with a pure accent: he had the physical and moral constitution of
the Family: owing to events attending his infant days, he was timid.
Jorian imitated him:--'I start at the opening of a door; I see dark faces
in my sleep: it is a dungeon; I am at the knees of my Unfortunate Royal
Father, with my Beautiful Mother.' His French was quaint, but not absurd.
He became loquacious, apostrophizing vacancy with uplifted hand and eye.
The unwonted invitation to the society of noblemen made him conceive his
Dauphinship to be on the high road to a recognition in England, and he
was persuaded to drink and exhibit proofs: which were that he had the
constitution of the Family, as aforesaid, in every particular; that he
was peculiarly marked with testificatory spots; and that his mere aspect
inspired all members and branch members of the Family with awe and
stupefaction. One of the latter hearing of him, had appointed to meet
him in a pastrycook's shop. He met him, and left the place with a cloud
on his brow, showing tokens of respectful sympathy.
Conceive a monomaniacal obese old English citizen, given to lift hand and
eye and address the cornices, claiming to be an Illustrious Boy, and
calling on a beautiful historic mother and unfortunate Royal sire to
attest it! No wonder the table was shaken with laughter. He appealed to
Tenby constantly, as to the one man he knew in the room. Tenby it was
who made the discovery of him somewhere in the City, where he earned his
livelihood either as a corn-merchant; or a stockbroker, or a chronometer-
maker, or a drysalter, and was always willing to gratify a customer with
the sight of his proofs of identity. Mr. Tenby made it his business to
push his clamorous waggishness for the exhibition. I could readily
believe that my father was more than his match in disposable sallies and
weight of humour, and that he shielded the old creature successfully, so
long as he had a tractable being to protect. But the Dauphin was plied
with wine, and the marquis had his fun. Proof upon proof in verification
of his claims was proffered by the now-tremulous son of St. Louis--so he
called himself. With, Jorian admitted, a real courtly dignity, he stood
up and proposed to lead the way to any neighbouring cabinet to show the
spots on his person; living witnesses to the truth of his allegations,
he declared them to be. The squire had authority for his broad farce,
except in so far as he mixed up my father in the swinery of it.
I grew more and more convinced that my father never could have lost his
presence of mind when he found himself in the net of a plot to cover him
with ridicule. He was the only one who did not retire to the Dauphin's
'chamber of testification,' to return convulsed with vinous laughter
after gravely inspecting the evidence; for which abstention the Dauphin
reproached him violently, in round terms of abuse, challengeing him to go
through a similar process. This was the signal for Edbury, Tenby, and
some of the rest. They formed a circle, one-half for the Dauphin, one
for Roy. How long the boorish fun lasted, and what exactly came of it,
I did not hear. Jorian DeWitt said my father lost his temper, a point
contested by Wedderburn and Jennings, for it was unknown of him. Anyhow,
he thundered to some effect, inasmuch as he detached those that had
gentlemanly feelings from the wanton roysterers, and next day the latter
pleaded wine. But they told the story, not without embellishments. The
world followed their example.
I dined and slept at Temple's house, not caring to meet my incarnate
humiliation. I sent to hear that he was safe. A quiet evening with a
scholarly man, and a man of strong practical ability and shrewdness, like
Mr. Temple, did me good. I wished my father and I were on the same
footing as he and his son, and I may add his daughters. They all talked
sensibly; they were at feud with nobody; they reflected their condition.
It was a simple orderly English household, of which the father was the
pillar, the girls the ornaments, the son the hope, growing to take his
father's place. My envy of such a home was acute, and I thought of
Janet, and how well she was fashioned to build one resembling it, if only
the mate allotted to her should not be a fantastical dreamer. Temple's
character seemed to me to demand a wife like Janet on its merits; an idea
that depressed me exceedingly. I had introduced Temple to Anna Penrhys,
who was very kind to him; but these two were not framed to be other than
friends. Janet, on the contrary, might some day perceive the sterling
fellow Temple was, notwithstanding his moderate height. She might,
I thought. I remembered that I had once wished that she would, and I was
amazed at myself. But why? She was a girl sure to marry. I brushed
these meditations away. They recurred all the time I was in Temple's
house.
Mr. Temple waited for my invitation to touch on my father's Case, when he
distinctly pronounced his opinion that it could end but in failure.
Though a strict Constitutionalist, he had words of disgust for princes,
acknowledging, however, that we were not practical in our use of them,
and kept them for political purposes often to the perversion of our
social laws and their natural dispositions. He spoke of his son's freak
in joining the Navy. 'That was the princess's doing,' said Temple.
'She talked of our naval heroes, till she made me feel I had only to
wear the anchor buttons to be one myself. Don't tell her I was invalided
from the service, Richie, for the truth is, I believe, I half-shammed.
And the time won't be lost. You'll see I shall extract guineas from
"old ocean" like salt. Precious few barristers understand maritime
cases. The other day I was in Court, and prompted a great Q.C. in a
case of collision. Didn't I, sir?'
'I think there was a hoarse whisper audible up to the Judge's seat at
intervals,' said Mr. Temple.
'The Bar cannot confess to obligations from those who don't wear the
robe,' Temple rejoined.
His father advised me to read for the Bar, as a piece of very good
training.
I appealed to Temple, whether he thought it possible to read law-books in
a cockboat in a gale of wind.
Temple grimaced and his father nodded. Still it struck me that I might
one day have the felicity of quiet hours to sit down with Temple and read
Law--far behind him in the race. And he envied me, in his friendly
manner, I knew. My ambition had been blown to tatters.
A new day dawned. The household rose and met at the breakfast-table,
devoid of any dread of the morning newspapers. Their talk was like the
chirrup of birds. Temple and his father walked away together to
chambers, bent upon actual business--upon doing something! I reflected
emphatically, and compared them to ships with rudders, while I was at the
mercy of wind, tide, and wave. I called at Dettermain and Newson's, and
heard there of a discovery of a witness essential to the case, either in
North Wales or in New South. I did not, as I had intended, put a veto on
their proceedings. The thing to do was to see my father, and cut the
case at the fountain head. For this purpose, it was imperative that I
should go to him, and prepare myself for the interview by looking at the
newspapers first. I bought one, hastily running my eyes down the columns
in the shop. His name was printed, but merely in a fashionable
notification that carriages took up and set down for his costume Ball,
according to certain regulations. The relief of comparative obscurity
helped me to breathe freely: not to be laughed at, was a gain. I was
rather inclined to laud his courage in entering assembly-rooms, where he
must be aware that he would see the Dauphin on every face. Perhaps he
was guilty of some new extravagance last night, too late for scandal to
reinforce the reporters!
Mrs. Waddy had a woeful visage when informing me that he was out, gone to
Courtenay Square. She ventured a murmur of bills coming in. Like
everybody else, she fancied he drew his supplies from my inexhaustible
purse; she hoped the bills would be paid off immediately: the servants'
wages were overdue. 'Never can I get him to attend to small accounts,'
she whimpered, and was so ready to cry outright, that I said, 'Tusk,' and
with the one word gave her comfort. 'Of course, you, Mr. Harry, can
settle them, I know that.' We were drawing near to poor old Sewis's
legacy, even for the settling of the small accounts!
London is a narrow place to one not caring to be seen. I could not
remain in this creditor-riddled house; I shunned the Parks, the Clubs,
and the broad, brighter streets of the West. Musing on the refreshing
change it would be to me to find myself suddenly on board Captain Jasper
Welsh's barque Priscilla, borne away to strange climes and tongues, the
world before me, I put on the striding pace which does not invite
interruption, and no one but Edbury would have taken the liberty. I
heard his shout. 'Halloa! Richmond.' He was driving his friend
Witlington in his cabriolet. 'Richmond, my hearty, where the deuce have
you been? I wanted you to dine with me the other night.'
I replied, looking at him steadily, that I wished I had been there.
'Compendious larks!' cried he, in the slang of his dog's day. 'I say;
you're one at Duke Fitz's masquerade to-night? Tell us your toggery.
Hang it, you might go for the Black Prince. I'm Prince Hal. Got a
headache? Come to my Club and try my mixture. Yoicks! it'd make
Methuselah and Melchisedec jump up and have a twirl and a fandango. I
say, you're thick with that little French actress Chastedian jolly little
woman! too much to say for herself to suit me.'
He described the style of woman that delighted him--an ideal English
shepherdess of the print-shops, it appeared, and of extremely remote
interest to me, I thought at the time. Eventually I appointed to walk
round to his Club, and he touched his horse gently, and bobbed his
diminutive henchman behind his smart cabriolet, the admiration of the
street.
I found him waiting for me on the steps of his Club, puffing a cigar with
all his vigour, in the classic attitude of a trumpeter. My first words
were: 'I think I have to accuse you of insulting me.'
'Insulting you, Richmond!' he cried, much surprised, holding his cigar in
transit.
'If you insult my father, I make you responsible to me.'
'Insult old Duke Fitz! I give you my word of honour, Richmond--why,
I like him; I like the old boy. Wouldn't hurt him for the world and all
Havannah.
What the deuce have you got into your head? Come in and smoke.'
The mention of his dinner and the Dauphin crazed him with laughter.
He begged me as a man to imagine the scene: the old Bloated Bourbon of
London Wall and Camberwell! an Illustrious Boy!--drank like a fish!--
ready to show himself to the waiters! And then with 'Gee' and 'Gaw,' the
marquis spouted out reminiscences of scene, the best ever witnessed!
'Up starts the Dauphin. "Damn you, sir! and damn me, sir, if believe
you have a spot on your whole body!" And snuffles and puffs--you should
have been there Richmond, I wrote to ask you: did, upon my life! wanted
you there. Lord! why, you won't get such fun in a century. And old
Roy! he behaved uncommonly finely: said capital things, by Jove! Never
saw him shine so; old trump! Says Dauphin, "My beautiful mother had a
longing for strawberries out of season. I am marked with a strawberry,
here." Says Roy: "It is an admirable and roomy site, but as I am not
your enemy, sir, I doubt if I shall often have the opportunity to behold
it." Ha! ha!--gee! Richmond, you've missed the deucedest good scene
ever acted.'
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