Letters from divers hands, which will absolve
Ourselves from long narration.--Tanner of Tyburn.
One morning about a fortnight after Talbot’s death, Clarence was sitting
alone, thoughtful and melancholy, when the three following letters were
put into his hand:
LETTER I. FROM THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD.
Let me, my dear Linden, be the first to congratulate you upon your
accession of fortune: five thousand a year, Scarsdale, and 80,000 in the
Funds, are very pretty foes to starvation! Ah, my dear fellow, if you
had but shot that frosty Caucasus of humanity, that pillar of the state,
made not to bend, that--but you know already whom I mean, and so I will
spare you more of my lamentable metaphors: had you shot Lord Borodaile,
your happiness would now be complete! Everybody talks of your luck. La
Meronville tending on you with her white hands, the prettiest hands in
the world: who would not be wounded even by Lord Borodaile, for such
a nurse? And then Talbot’s--yet, I will not speak of that, for you are
very unlike the present generation; and who knows but you may have some
gratitude, some affection, some natural feeling in you? I had once;
but that was before I went to France: those Parisians, with their
fine sentiments, and witty philosophy, play the devil with one’s good
old-fashioned feelings. So Lord Aspeden is to have an Italian ministry.
By the by, shall you go with him, or will you not rather stay at home,
and enjoy your new fortunes,--hunt, race, dine out, dance, vote in
the House of Commons, and, in short, do all that an Englishman and a
gentleman should do? Ornamento e splendor del secolo nostro. Write me a
line whenever you have nothing better to do.
And believe me, Most truly yours, HAVERFIELD.
Will you sell your black mare, or will you buy my brown one? Utrum horum
mavis accipe, the only piece of Latin I remember.
LETTER FROM LORD ASPEDEN.
My Dear Linden,--Suffer me to enter most fully into your feeling. Death,
my friend, is common to all: we must submit to its dispensations. I
heard accidentally of the great fortune left you by Mr. Talbot (your
father, I suppose I may venture to call him). Indeed, though there is a
silly prejudice against illegitimacy, yet as our immortal bard says,--
“Wherefore base?
When thy dimensions are as well compact,
Thy mind as generous and thy shape as true
As honest madam’s issue!”
For my part, my dear Linden, I say, on your behalf, that it is very
likely that you are a natural son, for such are always the luckiest and
the best.
You have probably heard of the honour his Majesty has conferred on me,
in appointing to my administration the city of ----. As the choice of
a secretary has been left to me, I need not say how happy I shall be to
keep my promise to you. Indeed, as I told Lord ---- yesterday morning,
I do not know anywhere a young man who has more talent, or who plays
better on the flute.
Adieu, my dear young friend, and believe me, Very truly yours,
ASPEDEN.
LETTER FROM MADAME DE LA MERONVILLE. (Translated.)
You have done me wrong,--great wrong. I loved you,--I waited on
you, tended you, nursed you, gave all up for you; and you forsook
me,--forsook me without a word. True, that you have been engaged in a
melancholy duty, but, at least, you had time to write a line, to cast a
thought, to one who had shown for you the love that I have done. But we
will pass over all this: I will not reproach you; it is beneath me. The
vicious upbraid: the virtuous forgive! I have for several days left your
house. I should never have come to it, had you not been wounded, and, as
I fondly imagined, for my sake. Return when you will, I shall no longer
be there to persecute and torment you.
Pardon this letter. I have said too much for myself,--a hundred times
too much to you; but I shall not sin again. This intrusion is my last. CECILE DE LA MERONVILLE.
These letters will probably suffice to clear up that part of Clarence’s
history which had not hitherto been touched upon; they will show that
Talbot’s will (after several legacies to his old servants, his nearest
connections, and two charitable institutions, which he had founded, and
for some years supported) had bequeathed the bulk of his property
to Clarence. The words in which the bequest was made were kind, and
somewhat remarkable. “To my relation and friend, commonly known by
the name of Clarence Linden, to whom I am bound alike by blood and
affection,” etc. These expressions, joined to the magnitude of the
bequest, the apparently unaccountable attachment of the old man to
his heir, and the mystery which wrapped the origin of the latter,
all concurred to give rise to an opinion, easily received, and soon
universally accredited, that Clarence was a natural son of the deceased;
and so strong in England is the aristocratic aversion to an unknown
lineage, that this belief, unflattering as it was, procured for Linden
a much higher consideration, on the score of birth, than he might
otherwise have enjoyed. Furthermore will the above correspondence
testify the general eclat of Madame la Meronville’s attachment, and the
construction naturally put upon it. Nor do we see much left for us to
explain, with regard to the Frenchwoman herself, which cannot equally
well be gleaned by any judicious and intelligent reader, from the
epistle last honoured by his perusal. Clarence’s sense of gallantry did,
indeed, smite him severely, for his negligence and ill requital to one
who, whatever her faults or follies, had at least done nothing with
which he had a right to reproach her. It must however, be considered
in his defence that the fatal event which had so lately occurred, the
relapse which Clarence had suffered in consequence, and the melancholy
confusion and bustle in which the last week or ten days had been passed,
were quite sufficient to banish her from his remembrance. Still she was
a woman, and had loved, or seemed to love; and Clarence, as he wrote to
her a long, kind, and almost brotherly letter, in return for her own,
felt that, in giving pain to another, one often suffers almost as much
for avoiding as for committing a sin.
We have said his letter was kind; it was also frank, and yet prudent. In
it he said that he had long loved another, which love alone could have
rendered him insensible to her attachment; that he, nevertheless, should
always recall her memory with equal interest and admiration; and then,
with a tact of flattery which the nature of the correspondence and the
sex of the person addressed rendered excusable, he endeavoured, as far
as he was able, to soothe and please the vanity which the candour of his
avowal was calculated to wound.
When he had finished this letter he despatched another to Lord Aspeden,
claiming a reprieve of some days before he answered the proposal of the
diplomatist. After these epistolary efforts, he summoned his valet, and
told him, apparently in a careless tone, to find out if Lady Westborough
was still in town. Then throwing himself on the couch, he wrestled with
the grief and melancholy which the death of a friend, and more than
a father, might well cause in a mind less susceptible than his, and
counted the dull hours crawl onward till his servant returned. Lady
Westborough and all the family had been gone a week to their seat in
----.
“Well,” thought Clarence, “had he been alive, I could have intrusted
my cause to a mediator; as it is, I will plead, or rather assert it,
myself. Harrison,” said he aloud, “see that my black mare is ready by
sunrise to-morrow: I shall leave town for some days.”
“Not in your present state of health, sir, surely?” said Harrison, with
the license of one who had been a nurse.
“My health requires it: no more words, my good Harrison, see that I am
obeyed.” And Harrison, shaking his head doubtfully, left the room.
“Rich, independent, free to aspire to the heights which in England are
only accessible to those who join wealth to ambition, I have at least,”
said Clarence, proudly, “no unworthy pretensions even to the hand of
Lady Flora Ardenne. If she can love me for myself, if she can trust to
my honour, rely on my love, feel proud in my pride, and aspiring in
my ambition, then, indeed, this wealth will be welcome to me, and the
disguised name which has cost me so many mortifications become grateful,
since she will not disdain to share it.”