In the parlour to which we have already been introduced, sat Mr.
Fips--over his wine it must be confessed, yet apparently uniting the
_utile et dulce_, for beside his bottle of port stood an ink-bottle;
amid walnut-shells and remnants of biscuit lay sundry long-shaped folded
papers, and though he held a glass in his hand, from which he sipped
from time to time, there was a pen behind his ear; his wig was pushed on
one side and Geoffery was his companion.
"Should we not subpoena Lady Arden?" asked Fips.
"By all means," replied Geoffery, "her evidence will be of great
importance: we can prove by it, that Sir Alfred had actually made
proposals to and been accepted by Lady Caroline, the very day before his
brother came to town: and also, that he felt his disappointment much
more bitterly than was generally supposed."
Here Geoffery repeated the particulars of a conversation on the subject,
which it may be remembered he once overheard, between Lady Arden and her
son. And Fips took down notes, for suggesting questions to counsel.
"Do you think," he said, "there would be any use in sending subpoenas
to Lady Palliser and her daughter?"
"No, on the contrary, I have reason to suspect, some circumstances might
come out on their examination, rather calculated to raise a doubt in the
minds of jurors; I am therefore better pleased that they are on the
continent."
"When did they go abroad?"
"A short time before the death of Sir Willoughby; immediately after his
return to Arden."
"Are they likely to be brought forward on the other side, think you?"
"I should say not: from the conversations I have had with Sir Alfred, I
should think that he was not at all aware that their evidence could be
of the slightest service to him."
"You seem to have more reasons for thinking so, Mr. Arden," said Fips,
"than you have been pleased to confide to me. Now 'tis well and wisely
said, that a man, for his own sake, should have no secrets either from
his doctor or his lawyer. That, however, is your look out; I can only
serve you to the best of my ability, as far as my information goes."
"Which is quite as far as mine, I assure you Fips. It was merely my own
surmise, that Sir Willoughby might not have been quite as well received
latterly as his vanity had, at first, led him to believe he should be.
Now, I naturally thought that such an idea being promulgated, might
suggest the possibility of Sir Willoughby's having taken the poison
himself; which idea, though not amounting to evidence on either side,
might, as I said before, raise doubts in the minds of a jury, calculated
to bias their judgments, and so defeat the ends of justice."
"I thought," observed Fips, sulkily, for he fancied he saw that Geoffery
was playing an underhand game, "I understood you to have said, you had
reasons for your opinion."
"Yes, so I have--those I have just stated."
He had others, however, which he had not stated, because, as we have
said, he did not wish to put himself absolutely in Fips's power, unless
there should be no other means of gaining his end.
"His sisters too," continued Geoffery, "and his aunt Mrs. Dorothea, can
be produced to prove so far, that Sir Alfred, before the appearance of
his brother on the stage, was an assiduous, and believed himself to be a
favoured lover. I do not mean to say, that either this or Lady Arden's
evidence would be any proof of Sir Alfred's guilt; but, by adding the
incentives of jealousy and revenge to that of mere avarice, it makes his
having committed the crime much less improbable, and must therefore
influence, more or less, the minds of the jury."
When the various subjects under discussion were arranged and the bottle
of port finished, Mr. Fips repaired to his office--for he was a labourer
at his vocation, late, as well as early--while Geoffery, whom the
strains of a female voice, accompanied by a pianoforte, had been long
inviting to the drawing-room, repaired thither.
Miss Fips, as the only child of Mr. Fips, was destined to be the
receiver of stolen goods to a large amount; or, in other words, to
inherit all the money her father had scraped together. She had therefore
been sent to a London boarding-school, to receive an education
proportionate to her fortune. Her Italian singing-master, called her
voice a made one. He had found it impossible to give her either ear or
taste; while the unshrinking audacity with which she caricatured a
_bravura_, gave to her performance the semblance of having been got up
on purpose for a burlesque: a stranger would seriously have thought,
that the most polite thing they could do was to stand by and laugh
openly. Her shakes were shudders, and seemed to have been produced by a
sort of second-sight view of some approaching horror, invisible to all
beside. Her prolonged notes resembled the howls of a chained dog, on a
moonlight night; while her abrupt changes, and impassioned passages,
were the starts and yells of a maniac.
Without somewhat of the grace of natural timidity, the most splendid
performance could scarcely please; with what feeling then, but that of
unqualified disgust, could such a display as we have just described have
been witnessed; while Geoffery, who had the part of a lover not only of
music, but of the lady to maintain, was thereby called upon to enact
raptures.
Fips's wife had died, in giving birth to this only child. Fips was then
a poor clerk. When the child began to require the aid of a first school,
he lodged in a garret, and dined in a cellar, that he might be able to
defray the expense. Yet, strange to say, notwithstanding this seeming
noble self-denial, his was not a worthy nor a genuine affection; he was
incapable of such. In the first place, he was naturally a man of
parsimonious habits, and imbued with a prudent sense of the necessity of
giving to persons unprovided for, at least an education, that they might
be able to do something for themselves. The sentiment, however, which he
mistook for affection, was little better than gratified vanity. The
child happened to be very beautiful; to which his attention was
particularly drawn, by the circumstance of his being often obliged, for
want of mother or nurse-maid, to walk out with it himself. When he did
so, almost every one they met would turn to look or to make some comment
as they passed. Sometimes, groups would stop and speak to the child;
kiss it, ask it to shake hands, &c. On such occasions Fips would stop
also, and becoming imboldened, desire his little girl to look up, and
show its pretty eyes; to laugh, and show its pretty teeth; then, its
pretty mouth, its rosy lips, its lovely colour, its beautiful skin, its
pretty curls, its pretty foot, would each in succession form a topic for
eulogy, till the poor child was hardened into little better than a
hawked-about show while Fips, to whom his little girl, through the
medium of gratified vanity, otherwise _pride_, thus became a source of
pleasure, fancied himself a fond father. As the child grew, Fips having
no principles himself could not impart any. Meanwhile, his fortunes also
grew rapidly, not without suspicions that he had found out by-ways to
the attainment of riches, which he would have been very sorry to have
pointed out to a fellow-traveller. The possession of wealth, in the
course of time, suggested the necessity for the fashionable
finishing-school already mentioned.
The orders were given, that no pains or expense should be spared in
making Miss Fips highly accomplished. These accomplishments, in all
their various stages, became at each vacation the subjects of new
displays; till at length the young lady came home the perfect singer of
Italian bravuras, performance of which we have just witnessed; and
furthermore imbued with a thorough contempt for her vulgar, and except
in the chicanery of the law, ignorant father. Of this contempt she made
no secret; but on the contrary, laughed at his opinions and scoffed at
his authority, on the plea of being herself a much better judge of every
thing, save, as she expressed it, of musty parchments.
All men, besides a natural dislike to milliners' bills, let them be ever
so clumsy in every thing else, have a sort of notion of what is becoming
to women in dress.
Fips, accordingly, on one occasion ventured to hint to his daughter,
that she looked as handsome again when she had not half so many fine
things on. She was at the moment just equipped to step forth into the
streets of a country town, dressed in a bright green silk pelisse,
extremely short, to display the pretty foot and ancle; her stockings
were of open-work embroidery, the slippers scarlet, the hat (not bonnet)
yellow crape, adorned with white blond and pink ostrich feathers tipped
with scarlet. She also wore, flung across one shoulder, and hung over
the contrary arm, a long flying canary-coloured scarf, and held
perpendicularly above her head, that it might neither conceal nor
derange its trappings, a conspicuous-sized, canopy-shaped, lilac
parasol, deeply bordered with a gold-coloured net-work fringe, and
tasseled at every point. Chains, ear-rings, bracelets, brooches, clasps,
watch, and reticule, were of course none of them forgotten; while the
very backs of the canary-coloured kid gloves were embroidered with lilac
and gold.
Fips's remark was received with a sneer, and "I beg, sir, you'll mind
your parchments, and give me leave to be the best judge of my dress."
"Well, well, my dear, follow your own way."
"That I shall, sir, you may rest assured."
Such a figure as we have described, walking the streets alone, with a
bold erect carriage, it may be believed, drew a good deal of attention,
particularly at assize-time, when there were many strangers and young
barristers in the town, and such of course were the occasions on which
Miss Fips was fondest of making a display. Her generally walking alone,
at least until she had picked up two or three young men, proceeded from
a combination of circumstances: in the first place, Fips had little time
for recreation, and if he had had more, his dutiful daughter would not
have been fond of appearing with so unwieldly and unsightly a companion.
As to other young women, Miss Fips, proud of her beauty, and the fortune
she was taught to expect, treated those in her own sphere with
impertinence, while it was very improbable that ladies in a sphere above
her would be induced to take by the hand an inferior, whose natural
boldness rendered her vulgarity and bad taste so conspicuous. Though we
have used the expression natural boldness, it is most probable that the
unprepossessing quality we have thus described, was in this instance
both produced and strengthened into second nature by that most baneful
and unsexing of lessons to a young female, early _personal_ display.
The remaining traits in the character of this young woman, together with
what we have already said, are quite in accordance with a favourite
theory of ours, that want of personal modesty is more than a presumption
both of want of heart and want of taste or genius; because it is a proof
of the absence of that susceptibility--that acuteness of moral
perception, the presence of which is indispensable to the mental process
by which both the powers of genius and the capability of loving are
developed, almost, we might say, created in the human mind.
Flattery too, with the want of early control, had made the temper of
Miss Fips violent and insolent in the extreme. From the time of her
return from school there was no peace in the house, and little, as far
as their own set went, in the town. She quarrelled with the
neighbours--insulted the boarder clerks--and scolded the servants; and
when Fips was too busy with his own, if not more amiable, at least more
important avocations, to join her in pouring forth invectives against
whoever had provoked her ire, she would stand over his desk and scold
himself; or interrupted in a like tempestuous manner, the quiet
enjoyment of his bottle of port, his only recreation, till his life
became a perfect burden to him.
Still he toiled on--her aggrandizement being the sole object of his
labours; nay, he entered eagerly into projects which he could not but be
aware must condemn his soul to perdition, to secure to her a marriage
above her sphere, and add wealth to wealth still for her! And why?
Because his daughter, undutiful and disrespectful though she was,
happened to be the part and portion of himself, in which his vanity, his
ambition, his _pride_ had centered; and his selfishness, when he
remembered that he could not carry his riches with him to the grave,
sought in her a sort of immortality, at least a prolongation of
existence. Yet did this unprincipled being sanctify to himself, (strange
sophistry) many a sin, by the belief that he was the fondest of fathers,
and did every thing for the love of his only child.