Heavens, have I said, the bounty of this lord!
How many prodigal bits have slaves, and peasants,
This night englutted! Who is not Timon’s?
What heart, head, sword, force, means, but is Lord Timon’s?
Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon!
Ah! when the means are gone that buy this praise,
The breath is gone, whereof this praise is made:
Feast-won, fast-lost; one cloud of winter showers,
These flies are couch’d.
SHAKSPEARE.
Eventful indeed had these few last hours been to Oakley. They had
brought with them, crowded within their narrow limits, (and utterly
unforeseen, up to the moment of their arrival,) changes which would
have sufficed to fill up a long life of anticipation. The emotions
which they had excited in his mind had been as varied as the alteration
they had produced in his situation was complete.
He had that morning, for the first time in his life, beheld one who was
then his nearest surviving relative. He had, though hitherto a perfect
stranger, been admitted at once to his confidence. That confidence
was as yet incomplete--when interrupted as abruptly as it had been
commenced by final separation. But this strange benefactor had left
him a solid memento of their transient connexion, a splendid fortune,
which at once secured him the command of the attention and attractions
of the world, coupled with the warning legacy which bade him repel its
advances, and resist its allurements.
To the substantial advantages arising from his change in situation
he was likely to be by no means insensible, but this arose rather
from a disagreeable recollection of the slights to which a dependent
state had subjected his impatient spirit, than to any expectation of
particular pleasure to be derived from future enjoyments. The parting
advice with which the dying bequest had been accompanied, was on many
accounts calculated to make the greatest impression on Oakley. That it
was disinterested could not be denied, from the situation of him who
gave it. That it was dictated by a sincere regard for him to whom it
was addressed, had at the same time been testified by solid proofs.
The natural bent of Oakley’s character gave additional weight to these
considerations. Neither his virtues nor talents were of that order
which makes a man partial to society, because society is partial to
him. A natural instability of temperament predisposed him to take
offence, whilst a want of animal spirits prevented his shining in
the ready “give and take” of every-day intercourse. The unpleasant
impressions which these deficiencies implanted in a proud and reserved
nature, had left a distaste for the world which had already prepared
the way for that distrust which was inculcated in the last admonition
of his dying uncle.
The aged attendant who had performed the last offices to his departed
lord had left the room, and Oakley had remained, he knew not how long,
absorbed in the reflections, which all that he had heard and seen was
calculated to excite, even in the most thoughtless, but which had taken
deep root in a mind to which gloomy impressions were so congenial.
The sight of death itself is for the time saddening, even to the most
mercurial spirit; but it was not that alone which infected Oakley.
It was not the actual presence of the breathless body before him, so
much as the chilling contagion of the withered mind he had so lately
communed with, which still oppressed him. Most men, if thus suddenly
endowed with a princely fortune, whilst possessing youth and health to
enjoy it purchased at no sacrifice of kindly feelings, would have felt
even the decent solemnity of the passing moment somewhat chequered
with the coming gleams of the brightening future.
But this was not the impression made on Oakley. He even envied the
lifeless form before him its release from the contests of the world,
and almost repined at being left as his deputy in a situation where he
must undergo the daily drudgery of resisting imposition, and detecting
falsehood.
“Must I then,” thought he, “commence this painful pilgrimage to which
youth and health threaten a long perspective, and can I do so without
dislike and dread, seeing as I have seen, that by twenty long years
of ceaseless struggle and hopeless suffering, that proud spirit, the
transient gleam of whose former fire lives in the canvas I this morning
beheld, has been reduced to a fit tenant for the care-worn carcase
from which it has but now obtained its release?”
Surfeited at length with the morbid indulgence of these feelings,
Oakley sought a temporary relief in change of scene, and rose to leave
the chamber of death, to which the shades of night had now imparted
a congenial obscurity. The next room--the picture-gallery mentioned
above--was only lighted by a single small candlestick, left as it
were carelessly on a table at the upper end, immediately under the
portrait of Lord Rockington, and to which alone of all the inmates
of the gallery it bent its feeble light. The surrounding gloom gave
additional effect to that which alone was visible, and the countenance
of which Oakley had only previously remarked the habitually imperious
expression, seemed now to his heated imagination to indicate some
special command to himself, and following the direction of the
out-stretched arm which pointed at vacancy, he fancied he beheld a door
open at the further extremity of the gallery.
He could not be mistaken. He saw the figure of the aged attendant,
who advanced with a cautious but a heavy tread, bearing in both
hands a weight under which he seemed ready to sink. As he approached
the candle, Oakley raised it over his head, to convince himself he
was not deceived, upon which the old man dropped his load, and fled
precipitately.
Oakley stopped one instant to examine what appeared to be a strong box,
probably containing valuables, and then followed the fugitive. But
his ignorance of the intricate turnings of the passages favoured the
flight of the other, and after pursuing him in vain for some time, his
attention was attracted by a noise which sounded like the animating
applause of a theatre, and a moment afterwards many voices joined in
the jocund chorus of “Life’s a Bumper.”
“Wretches,” thought Oakley, “well may your insulted master have been
impatient to quit a world of which he saw around him such samples. That
the very hands which had but just been permitted to close his eyes,
should within that hour turn to plunder--and that those menials who had
been gorged with his bounty, should profane his last moments with their
orgies!”
Hurrying back towards his uncle’s chamber, he paused on the
threshold, as if unwilling to suffer the offensive sounds of mirth to
penetrate within--though the loudest uproar could no longer disturb
its unconscious inmate; but nothing now met his ear, save the more
congenial murmur of the evening breeze. Thus re-assured, he entered
boldly, and felt refreshed by the calm and solemn sympathy of the
still summer’s evening.
In all the feelings which had been excited by the events he had
latterly witnessed, he had been actuated entirely by impulse: he
adopted as indisputable all the facts stated by Lord Rockington,
without considering how much might be grounded on prejudice, and
coloured by disappointment. In the disgusting scenes which he had
afterwards witnessed, he would not have admitted it as possible that
the character and conduct of the master might a little palliate the
brutality of the servants.
By this predetermined canonization of Lord Rockington as a martyr, his
own mortified vanity felt consoled. It has been said that he was from
natural temperament peculiarly prone to suspicion, and susceptible to
slight--and if in the unmerited fall of one formerly so celebrated as
Lord Rockington, he had a proof of the caprice and falsehood of the
world, it at once confirmed him in what he was disposed to think of
others, and consoled him for what they might think of him.
“It will now,” thought he, “be mine to avoid, and theirs to court--yes,
I shall now have it in my power to repay envy with scorn!”
The next morning brought Oakley’s own servant, who had been sent to
follow him, and Oakley lost no time in giving a summary dismissal to
all the establishment of the late lord, of whose untimely and offensive
mirth he had been an unintentional witness. He also despatched a
messenger to ----, to summon Lord Rockington’s man of business, who in
due time arrived, in the person of Mr. Macdeed, the principal solicitor
of the county town.
This worthy gentleman, as he jolted along in the identical chaise
which had brought Oakley, consoled himself with the anticipation of an
accession of business arising from the change of clients consequent
upon the late demise, for Lord Rockington had not been habitually
litigious, though much of Mr. Macdeed’s celebrity had been owing to his
conduct of the famous cause of “Rockington _versus_ Latimer,” by which
he had secured to the plaintiff the accession of a property which could
never pay him twelve-pence, only at the expense of about as much as
would have paid twelve months salary to the twelve judges.
So striking a proof of how well he understood his business, had at once
obtained him professional pre-eminence in the county. The consciousness
of this sort of decided superiority in a particular line, makes some
men solemn and pompous, but Mr. Macdeed it had only made facetious and
familiar, by far the most objectionable effect of the two, to a man in
Oakley’s present frame of mind.
In spite, however, of the forbidding frowns of his auditor, Mr. Macdeed
wasted upon him much stiff parchment-like sort of pleasantry, the rough
draft of which had previously met with the approbation of the most
fastidious tea-tables at the county town aforesaid. He was particularly
lively upon the subject of the singularities of his late client. This
was an impertinence which, least of all, Oakley could bear. He had
risen that morning with an inviolable respect for the memory of his
benefactor, and a fixed determination to follow his example in hating
all whom he had left behind him in the world. It was no great trial
of the consistency of his general hatred of mankind, that the only
object which crossed his path, should be an obnoxious attorney; but the
dislike which was as yet concentrated in him, might soon have spread
over no small circle of acquaintance. Abruptly interrupting him, he
commanded him to proceed at once to business, and that, too, in a tone
sensibly wounding Mr. Macdeed’s self-importance, which was not the less
thin-skinned because dressed in smiles.
The will was found in that identical box which Oakley had accidentally
rescued from the hand of Lord Rockington’s old servant, who was a
subscribing witness, and who had therefore seen it deposited there--and
the glimpse he then caught of the other valuables in it, (many thousand
pounds worth of jewels,) had probably excited his cupidity.
The disposition of the property was concise and characteristic. There
were no legacies; and every thing, without reserve, was left to Oakley.
This being ascertained, Mr. Macdeed was summarily dismissed with a want
of courtesy which aggravated the offence already given, and of which
Oakley afterwards felt the effects.
In the arrangements Oakley made for the funeral, he thought he best
consulted the feelings of the deceased by limiting the display of
fictitious and assumed grief to those only whose aid was absolutely
necessary to remove the body to its last place of rest; forbidding the
presence of any one in the character of mourner but himself. In the
meantime, having written to Germain alone, to announce the death of
their uncle, and the change in his circumstances, he occupied himself
with solitary rambles in the picturesque wilds around the castle,
mistaking, however, the source of the pleasure he derived from this,
and attributing to satisfaction at the absence of all traces of man’s
corroding presence, the sensations which arose merely from a strong
susceptibility to the beauties of nature.