“There are that love the shades of life,
And shun the splendid walks of fame.”
LANGHORNE.
Horatio Markham has been but seldom before our readers during the
progress of our narrative; but when he has been introduced, it has been
very apparent that he has been somewhat of a favorite with us. When a
young barrister attends closely and seriously to business; and when,
in addition to his rising reputation, which promises at once profit
and honor, he enjoys the patronage of a nobleman of exalted rank and
commanding influence; when the young man has a motive to industry in
seeing and partly enjoying the fruits of professional diligence, his
adventures must of necessity be very few, and the tenor of his life
must be very monotonous. He may indeed, as Markham very probably did,
visit many respectable families; may slip quietly into many an evening
party, and as quietly slip out again. He may sit still, or walk about,
and say little to any body present at these parties; for his mind may
be otherwise engaged; his eyes may be dazzled with many a beauty, and
may twinkle for an hour or two, annoyed by excess of artificial light;
and he may go home and dream about the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,
and the Statutes at Large, and be very glad of a quiet cup of coffee the
next morning. He may perhaps think now and then that it would be very
desirable that he should have a house at the west end of the town with
three drawing-rooms; and that he should have an income, allowing him to
spend four or five hundred pounds in an evening to entertain four or five
hundred people who would never thank him for his trouble; and that he
should have for his wife a woman possessed of every virtue under the sun,
beautiful as Venus, but infinitely more decent; majestic as Juno, but
not quite such a termagant; and wise as Minerva, but not quite so prosy
as Mentor. He may think, again, that perhaps rather less may content his
ambition. He may occasionally, by way of recreation, attend a theatre or
an opera, and he may forget next morning whether he had been witnessing
tragedy or comedy; and perhaps he might not know at the time if he had
not a play-bill. He may sometimes have a friend to breakfast with him at
his chambers, and he may talk very sensibly on an infinite variety of
subjects, and may give his opinions on many a decision, and on various
points of law. He may sometimes in an evening visit a quiet domestic
family, and make himself very agreeable to all branches of the family,
talking politics with the gentleman, economy with the lady, poetry
with the daughters, and science with the sons: he may even carry his
complaisance so far as to discover tokens of genius in infants six months
old; and if the mania of craniology has bitten any of the family, he may
discover the organ of numbers in a great booby who, at ten years of age,
has just got into long division. He may hold a share in a literary and
scientific institution; and he may look wise over a lecture on chemistry
without learning how to make soap, or acquiring the art of detecting the
admixture of cape with sherry.
Thus quietly may he hold on the even tenor of his way; and gradually,
though surely, may he rise to celebrity in his profession, and to
reputation in the world. All this while, however, he has no adventures;
he is as monotonous and remarkless as the sun when it rises without a
cloud. But if the said young man neglect his business and run riot, and
yield himself up to any species of intemperance and folly, then does
he bring himself into ten thousand pretty scrapes, which though not
very pleasant to himself, may by a skilful narrator be rendered highly
diverting to a reader; or, if the narrator have not confidence in his
power of amusing, he may at least assume the air of a monitor, and give
through the narrative of transgression an admonition to transgressors.
Now, if the gentleman whose vanity we have represented as being gratified
by the title of Earl of Trimmerstone had been content to form his
fortunes for himself, instead of leaning luxuriously idle on a capricious
relative, he would have avoided many of those perplexities into which
he was thrown; and though he might not have been honored so much by an
association with men of high rank, he would have been honored much more
by an intimacy with men of good understanding and decorous conduct. His
history would have been more brief, and his mortifications fewer.
The above remarks are designed not as an apology for, but as an
explanation of, the circumstance that so little has been said of Markham
in this our narrative. Our readers, however, will bear in mind, that such
is the young man’s character, that he must have been all this while
employing his time and talents as he ought. Some little exception may
be made, and that we have mentioned: our allusion is to the weakness by
which he suffered himself to be made almost the prey of Miss Henderson.
We have alluded, and but slightly, to the perplexity and embarrassment
wherewith he was annoyed and distressed on this account. It would be
almost wearisome to describe at length the torment which that silly
affair inflicted on him. He was not indeed quite such a hero as to
resolve in spite of himself to marry the young lady merely because he
saw that she thought that he was in love with her. He had not quite
so much of the heroism of prudishness, or the prudishness of heroism
in his composition, as to make so great a sacrifice. When, however,
that ingenious, eloquent, and learned physician, Dr. Crack, made his
appearance as a visitor and dangler at Mr. Henderson’s; and when Miss
Henderson showed a manifest partiality to Dr. Crack, and when Dr. Crack
showed a manifest partiality for Miss Henderson, then a weight was
removed from the mind of Markham, and he recovered his spirits most
surprisingly.
But such is the lot of humanity, that the removal of one calamity or
sorrow is but the making way for another. For now that Markham’s mind
was emancipated from Miss Henderson, he began to feel more uneasiness
at Tippetson’s intimacy with Clara. It had been, hitherto, a matter of
comparative indifference to him while he was annoyed by the persecutions
of Miss Henderson; but when trouble was removed, the other appeared
greater. He continued, however, his intercourse with Mr. Martindale’s
family, out of respect to and at the request of that queer old gentleman.
Now, Markham was modest almost to sheepishness. He had a confidence in
his judgment as to matters of an abstract nature, but he had not the
slightest share of personal conceit or vanity. He did not think, as some
young gentlemen seem to do, that he might have any hand he pleased to ask
for. He did not for a moment think of setting himself up as a rival to
supplant Mr. Tippetson in the affections of Clara; nor did it altogether
comport with his notions of propriety and dignity to sigh and mope like a
lackadaisical disappointed lover. He conducted himself, therefore, with
cheerful good-humor; and the only symptom he showed of uneasiness was,
that he seldom stayed when Tippetson was there.
Any one but himself might observe that Markham was decidedly the
favorite; but as for a long while Clara thought that he was engaged to
Miss Henderson, she was herself scarcely aware of the existence, still
less of the manifestation of any partiality for him. But Tippetson could
always see it, inasmuch as he was a crafty man and full of design. And it
is not improbable that seeing this he resolved on that scheme which he at
last carried into execution.
Although in some respect Markham may be called our hero, as Lord
Trimmerstone is our anti-hero, yet as Lord Trimmerstone is not all that
is bad, so neither is Markham a paragon of all possible and impossible
excellence. What a stupid world it would be if we were all heroes! it
would be like a great school of good boys. Now if Markham had been a
true hero, he would have married Miss Henderson without any attempt at
shuffling or delaying; and if he had been a true hero, he would also
have been sadly grieved for Lord Trimmerstone’s loss, and he would have
lamented Mr. Tippetson’s wickedness. But in spite of himself, he could
not but feel pleased at Tippetson’s departure under circumstances which
rendered his return as a suitor absolutely impossible. Unobservant and
inattentive as he was, this movement of Mr. Tippetson came upon him
with the suddenness and unpreparedness of a thunderbolt. And when soon
after hearing the news of the elopement he received a brief from the
plaintiff’s attorney, he looked over that brief with most prodigious
attention; he saw hope in every line of it. Never before had he
perused the long, dry, prosy details of a stupidly-drawn brief with
one half the interest with which he perused this brief, in which the
Earl of Trimmerstone was plaintiff, and Mr. Henry Augustus Tippetson
defendant. While he was reading it, he could not but recollect the very
complimentary epistle which he had once received from Miss Henderson in
consequence of his dexterity and sagacity in a suit of a delicate nature.
He had no wish to receive another epistle from the same quarter, nor
would he have been much pleased had Clara in like manner complimented him
on the present occasion. But he knew, or thought he knew, Clara better
than to suppose that he should be thus complimented by her. Supposing
that Tippetson was an accepted, or presumedly accepted lover of Clara,
he thought it very natural that the present occurrence would be to her a
painful event. He wished to console her, but he feared lest his offers of
condolence might be repulsed or ungraciously accepted.
Very anxiously did he await the day of trial, and very carefully did
he weigh in his own mind the various modes of treating the subject.
Finding that the chief speaker on the other side was a man of prodigious
eloquence, he determined that he would not have recourse to balderdash,
but that he would manage the business in such a plain matter-of-fact
style as that the frothy, sloppy, feathery, flowery sputtering of the
antagonist counsel should not have an inch of foundation to rest upon.
This arrangement, as we have mentioned, answered his purpose. And when
the defendant’s counsel had made a long, vehement spoutification, all
about nothing at all at all, the judge in summing up observed, that
though a very _beautiful_ speech had been delivered by the defendant’s
counsel, there did not seem to be any real defence set up against the
action.
Now, in making this remark, the judge laid such a peculiar emphasis on
the word _beautiful_, and at the same time gave such a schoolmaster-look
to the gentleman who had spouted that schoolboy speech, that the orator
himself looked absolutely sheepish, and he almost determined never to
be eloquent again; but, as second thoughts are best, he retracted that
determination, for he considered that if he were not eloquent he was
nothing.
Wishing to be instructive as well as amusing, we cannot overlook the
present opportunity of a digression in favor of eloquence. It is a great
pity that our barristers cannot plead in Greek, for then Demosthenes
might be very useful to them; and it would be, in all probability,
quite as intelligible to the jury as much of that eloquence which is
now spouted in English. To use Greek is quite out of the question, and
therefore all they can do is to make their English as much like Greek
to the jury as they possibly can. This they often do with wonderful
success. Eloquence is in our days most grievously neglected, being
almost solely confined to provincial newspapers, in which we may still
enjoy the fine metaphorical language of the _olden_ time. It is in those
choice repositories that we can even yet revel in that fine figure of
speech called “_circumbendibus_;” and were it not for these and a few
eloquent barristers, and divers aggrieved parishioners in divers little
city parishes which become immortalized by vestry squabbles, we should
have scarcely any eloquence at all. This is such a favorite topic with
us that we dare not trust ourselves to give way to our feelings; we
will therefore content ourselves with giving a valuable hint to eloquent
barristers. We advise them, if they wish to keep their eloquence and
their countenance too, never to look at the judge, or at the opposing
counsel, or at any attorney, or at any one of the jury who has the least
look of understanding, but to direct their eyes, if they must keep them
open, to any one who looks prodigiously serious and has his mouth wide
open.