Chance will not do the work--Chance sends the breeze;
But if the pilot slumber at the helm,
The very wind that wafts us towards the port
May dash us on the shelves.--The steersman's part is vigilance,
Blow it or rough or smooth.
_Old Play_.
We left Nigel, whose fortunes we are bound to trace by the engagement
contracted in our title-page, sad and solitary in the mansion of
Trapbois the usurer, having just received a letter instead of a visit
from his friend the Templar, stating reasons why he could not at
that time come to see him in Alsatia. So that it appeared that his
intercourse with the better and more respectable class of society, was,
for the present, entirely cut off. This was a melancholy, and, to a
proud mind like that of Nigel, a degrading reflection.
He went to the window of his apartment, and found the street enveloped
in one of those thick, dingy, yellow-coloured fogs, which often invest
the lower part of London and Westminster. Amid the darkness, dense and
palpable, were seen to wander like phantoms a reveller or two, whom the
morning had surprised where the evening left them; and who now, with
tottering steps, and by an instinct which intoxication could not wholly
overcome, were groping the way to their own homes, to convert day into
night, for the purpose of sleeping off the debauch which had turned
night into day. Although it was broad day in the other parts of the
city, it was scarce dawn yet in Alsatia; and none of the sounds of
industry or occupation were there heard, which had long before aroused
the slumberers in any other quarter. The prospect was too tiresome and
disagreeable to detain Lord Glenvarloch at his station, so, turning from
the window, he examined with more interest the furniture and appearance
of the apartment which he tenanted.
Much of it had been in its time rich and curious--there was a huge
four-post bed, with as much carved oak about it as would have made the
head of a man-of-war, and tapestry hangings ample enough to have
been her sails. There was a huge mirror with a massy frame of gilt
brass-work, which was of Venetian manufacture, and must have been worth
a considerable sum before it received the tremendous crack, which,
traversing it from one corner to the other, bore the same proportion to
the surface that the Nile bears to the map of Egypt. The chairs were
of different forms and shapes, some had been carved, some gilded, some
covered with damasked leather, some with embroidered work, but all were
damaged and worm-eaten. There was a picture of Susanna and the Elders
over the chimney-piece, which might have been accounted a choice piece,
had not the rats made free with the chaste fair one's nose, and with the
beard of one of her reverend admirers.
In a word, all that Lord Glenvarloch saw, seemed to have been articles
carried off by appraisement or distress, or bought as pennyworths at
some obscure broker's, and huddled together in the apartment, as in a
sale-room, without regard to taste or congruity.
The place appeared to Nigel to resemble the houses near the sea-coast,
which are too often furnished with the spoils of wrecked vessels, as
this was probably fitted up with the relics of ruined profligates.--"My
own skiff is among the breakers," thought Lord Glenvarloch, "though my
wreck will add little to the profits of the spoiler."
He was chiefly interested in the state of the grate, a huge assemblage
of rusted iron bars which stood in the chimney, unequally supported
by three brazen feet, moulded into the form of lion's claws, while the
fourth, which had been bent by an accident, seemed proudly uplifted
as if to paw the ground; or as if the whole article had nourished the
ambitious purpose of pacing forth into the middle of the apartment, and
had one foot ready raised for the journey. A smile passed over Nigel's
face as this fantastic idea presented itself to his fancy.--"I must
stop its march, however," he thought; "for this morning is chill and raw
enough to demand some fire."
He called accordingly from the top of a large staircase, with a heavy
oaken balustrade, which gave access to his own and other apartments, for
the house was old and of considerable size; but, receiving no answer to
his repeated summons, he was compelled to go in search of some one who
might accommodate him with what he wanted.
Nigel had, according to the fashion of the old world in Scotland,
received an education which might, in most particulars, be termed
simple, hardy, and unostentatious; but he had, nevertheless, been
accustomed to much personal deference, and to the constant attendance
and ministry of one or more domestics. This was the universal custom in
Scotland, where wages were next to nothing, and where, indeed, a man of
title or influence might have as many attendants as he pleased, for
the mere expense of food, clothes, and countenance. Nigel was therefore
mortified and displeased when he found himself without notice or
attendance; and the more dissatisfied, because he was at the same time
angry with himself for suffering such a trifle to trouble him at all,
amongst matters of more deep concernment. "There must surely be some
servants in so large a house as this," said he, as he wandered over the
place, through which he was conducted by a passage which branched
off from the gallery. As he went on, he tried the entrance to several
apartments, some of which he found were locked and others unfurnished,
all apparently unoccupied; so that at length he returned to the
staircase, and resolved to make his way down to the lower part of the
house, where he supposed he must at least find the old gentleman, and
his ill-favoured daughter. With this purpose he first made his entrance
into a little low, dark parlour, containing a well-worn leathern
easy-chair, before which stood a pair of slippers, while on the left
side rested a crutch-handled staff; an oaken table stood before it, and
supported a huge desk clamped with iron, and a massive pewter inkstand.
Around the apartment were shelves, cabinets, and other places convenient
for depositing papers. A sword, musketoon, and a pair of pistols, hung
over the chimney, in ostentatious display, as if to intimate that the
proprietor would be prompt in the defence of his premises.
"This must be the usurer's den," thought Nigel; and he was about to
call aloud, when the old man, awakened even by the slightest noise,
for avarice seldom sleeps sound, soon was heard from the inner room,
speaking in a voice of irritability, rendered more tremulous by his
morning cough.
"Ugh, ugh, ugh--who is there? I say--ugh, ugh--who is there? Why,
Martha!--ugh! ugh--Martha Trapbois--here be thieves in the house, and
they will not speak to me--why, Martha!--thieves, thieves--ugh, ugh,
ugh!"
Nigel endeavoured to explain, but the idea of thieves had taken
possession of the old man's pineal gland, and he kept coughing and
screaming, and screaming and coughing, until the gracious Martha entered
the apartment; and, having first outscreamed her father, in order
to convince him that there was no danger, and to assure him that the
intruder was their new lodger, and having as often heard her sire
ejaculate--"Hold him fast--ugh, ugh--hold him fast till I come," she at
length succeeded in silencing his fears and his clamour, and then
coldly and dryly asked Lord Glenvarloch what he wanted in her father's
apartment.
Her lodger had, in the meantime, leisure to contemplate her appearance,
which did not by any means improve the idea he had formed of it by
candlelight on the preceding evening. She was dressed in what was called
a Queen Mary's ruff and farthingale; not the falling ruff with which the
unfortunate Mary of Scotland is usually painted, but that which, with
more than Spanish stiffness, surrounded the throat, and set off
the morose head, of her fierce namesake, of Smithfield memory. This
antiquated dress assorted well with the faded complexion, grey eyes,
thin lips, and austere visage of the antiquated maiden, which was,
moreover, enhanced by a black hood, worn as her head-gear, carefully
disposed so as to prevent any of her hair from escaping to view,
probably because the simplicity of the period knew no art of disguising
the colour with which time had begun to grizzle her tresses. Her figure
was tall, thin, and flat, with skinny arms and hands, and feet of the
larger size, cased in huge high-heeled shoes, which added height to
a stature already ungainly. Apparently some art had been used by
the tailor, to conceal a slight defect of shape, occasioned by
the accidental elevation of one shoulder above the other; but the
praiseworthy efforts of the ingenious mechanic, had only succeeded in
calling the attention of the observer to his benevolent purpose, without
demonstrating that he had been able to achieve it.
Such was Mrs. Martha Trapbois, whose dry "What were you seeking here,
sir?" fell again, and with reiterated sharpness, on the ear of Nigel,
as he gazed upon her presence, and compared it internally to one of the
faded and grim figures in the old tapestry which adorned his bedstead.
It was, however, necessary to reply, and he answered, that he came in
search of the servants, as he desired to have a fire kindled in his
apartment on account of the rawness of the morning.
"The woman who does our char-work," answered Mistress Martha, "comes at
eight o'clock-if you want fire sooner, there are fagots and a bucket of
sea-coal in the stone-closet at the head of the stair--and there is a
flint and steel on the upper shelf--you can light fire for yourself if
you will."
"No--no--no, Martha," ejaculated her father, who, having donned his
rustic tunic, with his hose all ungirt, and his feet slip-shod, hastily
came out of the inner apartment, with his mind probably full of robbers,
for he had a naked rapier in his hand, which still looked formidable,
though rust had somewhat marred its shine.--What he had heard at
entrance about lighting a fire, had changed, however, the current of his
ideas. "No--no--no," he cried, and each negative was more emphatic than
its predecessor-"The gentleman shall not have the trouble to put on a
fire--ugh--ugh. I'll put it on myself, for a con-si-de-ra-ti-on."
This last word was a favourite expression with the old gentleman, which
he pronounced in a peculiar manner, gasping it out syllable by syllable,
and laying a strong emphasis upon the last. It was, indeed, a sort
of protecting clause, by which he guarded himself against all
inconveniences attendant on the rash habit of offering service or
civility of any kind, the which, when hastily snapped at by those to
whom they are uttered, give the profferer sometimes room to repent his
promptitude.
"For shame, father," said Martha, "that must not be. Master Grahame will
kindle his own fire, or wait till the char-woman comes to do it for him,
just as likes him best."
"No, child--no, child. Child Martha, no," reiterated the old miser--"no
char-woman shall ever touch a grate in my house; they put--ugh, ugh--the
faggot uppermost, and so the coal kindles not, and the flame goes up
the chimney, and wood and heat are both thrown away. Now, I will lay
it properly for the gentleman, for a consideration, so that it shall
last--ugh, ugh--last the whole day." Here his vehemence increased his
cough so violently, that Nigel could only, from a scattered word here
and there, comprehend that it was a recommendation to his daughter
to remove the poker and tongs from the stranger's fireside, with an
assurance, that, when necessary, his landlord would be in attendance to
adjust it himself, "for a consideration."
Martha paid as little attention to the old man's injunctions as a
predominant dame gives to those of a henpecked husband. She only
repeated, in a deeper and more emphatic tone of censure,--"For shame,
father--for shame!" then, turning to her guest, said, with her usual
ungraciousness of manner--"Master Grahame--it is best to be plain with
you at first. My father is an old, a very old man, and his wits, as you
may see, are somewhat weakened--though I would not advise you to make
a bargain with him, else you may find them too sharp for your own. For
myself, I am a lone woman, and, to say truth, care little to see or
converse with any one. If you can be satisfied with house-room, shelter,
and safety, it will be your own fault if you have them not, and they
are not always to be found in this unhappy quarter. But, if you seek
deferential observance and attendance, I tell you at once you will not
find them here."
"I am not wont either to thrust myself upon acquaintance, madam, or
to give trouble," said the guest; "nevertheless, I shall need the
assistance of a domestic to assist me to dress--Perhaps you can
recommend me to such?"
"Yes, to twenty," answered Mistress Martha, "who will pick your purse
while they tie your points, and cut your throat while they smooth your
pillow."
"I will be his servant, myself," said the old man, whose intellect,
for a moment distanced, had again, in some measure, got up with
the conversation. "I will brush his cloak--ugh, ugh--and tie his
points--ugh, ugh--and clean his shoes--ugh--and run on his errands with
speed and safety--ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh--for a consideration."
"Good-morrow to you, sir," said Martha, to Nigel, in a tone of direct
and positive dismissal. "It cannot be agreeable to a daughter that
a stranger should hear her father speak thus. If you be really a
gentleman, you will retire to your own apartment."
"I will not delay a moment," said Nigel, respectfully, for he was
sensible that circumstances palliated the woman's rudeness. "I would but
ask you, if seriously there can be danger in procuring the assistance of
a serving-man in this place?"
"Young gentleman," said Martha, "you must know little of Whitefriars to
ask the question. We live alone in this house, and seldom has a stranger
entered it; nor should you, to be plain, had my will been consulted.
Look at the door--see if that of a castle can be better secured; the
windows of the first floor are grated on the outside, and within, look
to these shutters."
She pulled one of them aside, and showed a ponderous apparatus of bolts
and chains for securing the window-shutters, while her father, pressing
to her side, seized her gown with a trembling hand, and said, in a low
whisper, "Show not the trick of locking and undoing them. Show him not
the trick on't, Martha--ugh, ugh--on _no_ consideration." Martha went
on, without paying him any attention.
"And yet, young gentleman, we have been more than once like to find all
these defences too weak to protect our lives; such an evil effect on the
wicked generation around us hath been made by the unhappy report of my
poor father's wealth."
"Say nothing of that, housewife," said the miser, his irritability
increased by the very supposition of his being wealthy--"Say nothing
of that, or I will beat thee, housewife--beat thee with my staff, for
fetching and carrying lies that will procure our throats to be cut
at last--ugh, ugh.--I am but a poor man," he continued, turning to
Nigel--"a very poor man, that am willing to do any honest turn upon
earth, for a modest consideration."
"I therefore warn you of the life you must lead, young gentleman," said
Martha; "the poor woman who does the char-work will assist you so far as
in her power, but the wise man is his own best servant and assistant."
"It is a lesson you have taught me, madam, and I thank you for it--I
will assuredly study it at leisure."
"You will do well," said Martha; "and as you seem thankful for advice,
I, though I am no professed counsellor of others, will give you more.
Make no intimacy with any one in Whitefriars--borrow no money, on any
score, especially from my father, for, dotard as he seems, he will make
an ass of you. Last, and best of all, stay here not an instant longer
than you can help it. Farewell, sir."
"A gnarled tree may bear good fruit, and a harsh nature may give good
counsel," thought the Lord of Glenvarloch, as he retreated to his own
apartment, where the same reflection occurred to him again and again,
while, unable as yet to reconcile himself to the thoughts of becoming
his own fire-maker, he walked up and down his bedroom, to warm himself
by exercise.
At length his meditations arranged themselves in the following
soliloquy--by which expression I beg leave to observe once for all, that
I do not mean that Nigel literally said aloud with his bodily organs,
the words which follow in inverted commas, (while pacing the room by
himself,) but that I myself choose to present to my dearest reader the
picture of my hero's mind, his reflections and resolutions, in the form
of a speech, rather than in that of a narrative. In other words, I have
put his thoughts into language; and this I conceive to be the purpose of
the soliloquy upon the stage as well as in the closet, being at once the
most natural, and perhaps the only way of communicating to the spectator
what is supposed to be passing in the bosom of the scenic personage.
There are no such soliloquies in nature, it is true, but unless they
were received as a conventional medium of communication betwixt the poet
and the audience, we should reduce dramatic authors to the recipe of
Master Puff, who makes Lord Burleigh intimate a long train of political
reasoning to the audience, by one comprehensive shake of his noddle. In
narrative, no doubt, the writer has the alternative of telling that his
personages thought so and so, inferred thus and thus, and arrived at
such and such a conclusion; but the soliloquy is a more concise and
spirited mode of communicating the same information; and therefore thus
communed, or thus might have communed, the Lord of Glenvarloch with his
own mind.
"She is right, and has taught me a lesson I will profit by. I have been,
through my whole life, one who leant upon others for that assistance,
which it is more truly noble to derive from my own exertions. I am
ashamed of feeling the paltry inconvenience which long habit had led me
to annex to the want of a servant's assistance--I am ashamed of that;
but far, far more am I ashamed to have suffered the same habit of
throwing my own burden on others, to render me, since I came to this
city, a mere victim of those events, which I have never even
attempted to influence--a thing never acting, but perpetually acted
upon--protected by one friend, deceived by another; but in the advantage
which I received from the one, and the evil I have sustained from the
other, as passive and helpless as a boat that drifts without oar or
rudder at the mercy of the winds and waves. I became a courtier, because
Heriot so advised it--a gamester, because Dalgarno so contrived it--an
Alsatian, because Lowestoffe so willed it. Whatever of good or bad has
befallen me, has arisen out of the agency of others, not from my own. My
father's son must no longer hold this facile and puerile course. Live
or die, sink or swim, Nigel Olifaunt, from this moment, shall owe his
safety, success, and honour, to his own exertions, or shall fall with
the credit of having at least exerted his own free agency. I will write
it down in my tablets, in her very words,--'The wise man is his own best
assistant.'"
He had just put his tablets in his pocket when the old charwoman, who,
to add to her efficiency, was sadly crippled by rheumatism, hobbled into
the room, to try if she could gain a small gratification by waiting on
the stranger. She readily undertook to get Lord Glenvarloch's breakfast,
and as there was an eating-house at the next door, she succeeded in a
shorter time than Nigel had augured.
As his solitary meal was finished, one of the Temple porters, or
inferior officers, was announced, as seeking Master Grahame, on the part
of his friend, Master Lowestoffe; and, being admitted by the old woman
to his apartment, he delivered to Nigel a small mail-trunk, with the
clothes he had desired should be sent to him, and then, with more
mystery, put into his hand a casket, or strong-boy, which he carefully
concealed beneath his cloak. "I am glad to be rid on't," said the
fellow, as he placed it on the table.
"Why, it is surely not so very heavy," answered Nigel, "and you are a
stout young man."
"Ay, sir," replied the fellow; "but Samson himself would not have
carried such a matter safely through Alsatia, had the lads of the Huff
known what it was. Please to look into it, sir, and see all is right--I
am an honest fellow, and it comes safe out of my hands. How long it may
remain so afterwards, will depend on your own care. I would not my good
name were to suffer by any after-clap."
To satisfy the scruples of the messenger, Lord Glenvarloch opened the
casket in his presence, and saw that his small stock of money, with
two or three valuable papers which it contained, and particularly the
original sign-manual which the king had granted in his favour, were in
the same order in which he had left them. At the man's further instance,
he availed himself of the writing materials which were in the casket, in
order to send a line to Master Lowestoffe, declaring that his property
had reached him in safety. He added some grateful acknowledgments for
Lowestoffe's services, and, just as he was sealing and delivering his
billet to the messenger, his aged landlord entered the apartment. His
threadbare suit of black clothes was now somewhat better arranged than
they had been in the dishabille of his first appearance, and his nerves
and intellects seemed to be less fluttered; for, without much coughing
or hesitation, he invited Nigel to partake of a morning draught of
wholesome single ale, which he brought in a large leathern tankard, or
black-jack, carried in the one hand, while the other stirred it round
with a sprig of rosemary, to give it, as the old man said, a flavour.
Nigel declined the courteous proffer, and intimated by his manner,
while he did so, that he desired no intrusion on the privacy of his
own apartment; which, indeed, he was the more entitled to maintain,
considering the cold reception he had that morning met with when
straying from its precincts into those of his landlord. But the open
casket contained matter, or rather metal, so attractive to old Trapbois,
that he remained fixed, like a setting-dog at a dead point, his nose
advanced, and one hand expanded like the lifted forepaw, by which that
sagacious quadruped sometimes indicates that it is a hare which he has
in the wind. Nigel was about to break the charm which had thus arrested
old Trapbois, by shutting the lid of the casket, when his attention was
withdrawn from him by the question of the messenger, who, holding
out the letter, asked whether he was to leave it at Mr. Lowestoffe's
chambers in the Temple, or carry it to the Marshalsea?
"The Marshalsea?" repeated Lord Glenvarloch; "what of the Marshalsea?"
"Why, sir," said the man, "the poor gentleman is laid up there in
lavender, because, they say, his own kind heart led him to scald his
fingers with another man's broth."
Nigel hastily snatched back the letter, broke the seal, joined to the
contents his earnest entreaty that he might be instantly acquainted with
the cause of his confinement, and added, that, if it arose out of his
own unhappy affair, it would be of a brief duration, since he had, even
before hearing of a reason which so peremptorily demanded that he should
surrender himself, adopted the resolution to do so, as the manliest and
most proper course which his ill fortune and imprudence had left in his
own power. He therefore conjured Mr. Lowestoffe to have no delicacy upon
this score, but, since his surrender was what he had determined upon as
a sacrifice due to his own character, that he would have the frankness
to mention in what manner it could be best arranged, so as to extricate
him, Lowestoffe, from the restraint to which the writer could not but
fear his friend had been subjected, on account of the generous interest
which he had taken in his concerns. The letter concluded, that the
writer would suffer twenty-four hours to elapse in expectation of
hearing from him, and, at the end of that period, was determined to put
his purpose in execution. He delivered the billet to the messenger,
and, enforcing his request with a piece of money, urged him, without a
moment's delay, to convey it to the hands of Master Lowestoffe.
"I--I--I--will carry it to him myself," said the old usurer, "for half
the consideration."
The man who heard this attempt to take his duty and perquisites over his
head, lost no time in pocketing the money, and departed on his errand as
fast as he could.
"Master Trapbois," said Nigel, addressing the old man somewhat
impatiently, "had you any particular commands for me?"
"I--I--came to see if you rested well," answered the old man; "and--if I
could do anything to serve you, on any consideration."
"Sir, I thank you," said Lord Glenvarloch--"I thank you;" and, ere he
could say more, a heavy footstep was heard on the stair.
"My God!" exclaimed the old man, starting up--"Why,
Dorothy--char-woman--why, daughter,--draw bolt, I say, housewives--the
door hath been left a-latch!"
The door of the chamber opened wide, and in strutted the portly bulk
of the military hero whom Nigel had on the preceding evening in vain
endeavoured to recognise.