The life of Louis De Crespigny, from the hour he entered the army, was
one continued steeple-chase after pleasure and amusement, in whatever
form they could be courted, or at whatever expense they could be
enjoyed. At a very early age, he was already a veteran in the world
and its ways; for he stood "alone in his glory," the most admired,
courted, and idolized of mankind, a perfect adept in all the arts of
rendering himself agreeable in society, and possessing many pleasant
qualities, but none that were valuable. During a gay career of
dissipation and frivolity, he had entered with successive eagerness on
a thousand flirtations, though he always forgot to marry in the end,
while his heart, like a phoenix, was frequently consumed, yet never
destroyed, and always ready at the service of any young lady, with
youth, beauty, and accomplishments enough to excite his temporary
interest. Being of opinion, that, though not yet a peer, he ought
speedily to be one, young De Crespigny openly avowed the impossibility
of marrying while Lord Doncaster survived, and jocularly remarked,
that it would be a pity prematurely to cut off the hopes of his
hundred and one Scotch cousins, who lived, like Ernest Anstruther, on
the hope, that if his neck were broken at Melton, his succession might
yet be "cut up" amongst them; and to the friendly inquiries of his
many relatives, he frequently replied with a condoling look, that he
and his uncle were both "hopelessly well."
Lord Doncaster was not even yet, by any means, so great a
Methusalemite in age, nor so weighed down by infirmities, as his
lively nephew chose among the mothers and daughters of his intimate
acquaintance to represent; and some ladies whom young De Crespigny had
piqued or affronted, were actually ill-natured enough to hint, that
Lord Doncaster was still almost young and almost handsome! They had
even been so malicious as to insinuate, that his Lordship might
possibly have a genius for marrying his house-keeper, almost the only
respectable female who ever crossed his threshold; but Mrs. Fireland's
very mature age, and very antiquated dress, shewed how completely she
must have given up that point; and even her desire to please him in
her own department, became every hour so increasingly difficult, and
was attended with failures and disappointments so unforeseen and
unaccountable, that the good woman often shook her head ominously, in
alluding to his Lordship's numerous whims, saying, in a confidential
under tone, which seemed to mean more than met the ear, to the
steward, "he's petiklar! he's very petiklar! It would require a person
bespoke to order to please his Lordship." And certainly he had become
of late years more particular than ever.
One personage only seemed to have the art of doing no wrong in the
estimation of Lord Doncaster; and the respect which he withheld from
all mankind, was concentrated to an immeasurable degree on the Abbe
Mordaunt, who was the Cardinal Wolsey of Kilmarnock Abbey and
Beaujolie Castle. Proud, overbearing, harsh, and arbitrary, he ruled
over the house, the purse, and even the will of his patron, with
despotic and unlimited sway. Men are generally advanced in years
before the passions and feelings have stamped their indelible traces,
like the impression of a seal, which becomes permanent only after the
wax has began to cool; but in every feature of the Abbe's countenance,
might now be seen the evidences of a gloomy, severe, and almost
ferocious temper, yet never was there a greater triumph of art over
nature, than in the skill with which he adapted his looks and
conversation to the taste or caprice of those whom it was his interest
to govern, and the astonishing facility with which he could call up a
bland smile and insinuating voice, to supersede the habitual
haughtiness of his tone and manner.
Educated at St. Omers, in all the dark superstitions of that bigoted
college, the Abbe was nevertheless far from desirous to seek within
the walls of a cloister any protection from those temptations to
worldly indulgence, which he had not even the wish to resist. He
neither preached nor practised the virtues of his vocation, but
paraded a whole troop of vices openly in the public eye; and far from
attempting to reform mankind, he never attempted even to reform
himself. Though in personal appearance of distinguished ugliness, yet
such was the magic of his manner, that even by ladies he was
considered perfectly irresistible; and to all, whether old or young,
he generally succeeded in imparting a conviction, that he saw in her,
for the first time, a realization of female perfection and female
fascination. The Abbe was never known to stop half-way in arduously
pursuing any object of pleasure, profit, or ambition, nor, whatever
might be the impediments, was he ever seen to fail of success; for,
like Bonaparte, he did not know the meaning of the word "impossible."
After having recklessly squandered, in a career of almost startling
dissipation, the whole of his own patrimony, it was believed that he
had obtained fraudulent possession of £10,000 belonging to his very
beautiful niece, to whom he must have refunded it had she lived to
come of age, or had she married it must have been restored to her
children, but about the time our story commences, she was supposed
either to have died, or to have retired to a convent abroad, though
whether upon conviction or not, might be considered very doubtful, as
she had been educated by her mother in the Protestant faith, and it
was generally conjectured that to so sudden and entire a removal from
all former connections, her poverty more than her will must have
consented. Laura Mordaunt had resided much at Kilmarnock Abbe with her
uncle, to whom she seemed warmly and blindly attached, but the
gossiping world sometimes conjectured that perhaps the evident
partiality and admiration of Lord Doncaster might have roused in her
some ambitious thoughts, backed by the influence of the Abbe. Among
the peculiarities of the Marquis he had always professed a decided
contempt for all respectable ladies, and therefore his attentions to
Laura Mordaunt were at best a very questionable compliment, and became
naturally of a nature which few relatives would have wished to
encourage, yet Miss Mordaunt still remained a guest at Kilmarnock
Abbey, till the period of her sudden disappearance, which caused so
much astonishment among her intimate friends and near connections,
that the father of Richard Granville, her cousin, shortly before his
own death, wrote an affectionate letter, entreating her to return,
were it but for a few months, and to make a home of his house for the
future, should it suit her to do so; but to this kind and generous
offer no reply ever came, and as all communications were to pass
through the Abbe's hands, who alone knew his niece's direction, it
might be doubted whether the invitation ever reached that hand for
which it was intended.
That Lord Doncaster had cruelly disappointed Laura Mordaunt, as he had
already disappointed many others, her friend and cousin had good
reason to believe; and though unable to imagine any really romantic or
lasting attachment to a man, however elevated in rank or agreeable in
manners, of at least fifty years old, yet he knew that Laura, who
lived so retired that she could boast of few friends and no admirers,
might really have been dazzled with the splendour of his rank or the
fascination of his conversation; while it seemed the most
unaccountable part of the whole affair, that if such were the case,
the attachment had not been reciprocal, between a young and beautiful
girl, thrown so continually in his way, and an aged roue, who had so
evidently admired her.
If the probable duration of Lord Doncaster's life had been measured
according to the estimate formed of it in many an Edinburgh
drawing-room, it would have brought a very small premium indeed at the
insurance offices. By referring to that valuable record, Debrett's
peerage, it was satisfactorily proved that the De Crespignys were a
very short-lived family! One Lord Doncaster had died of a fall from
his horse at thirty-five; another had been killed in battle, at
forty-two; and not one of them had contrived very much to exceed
eighty, therefore hopes might be entertained of the popular and
fascinating Louis De Crespigny at last gaining the long-expected
"step." It might have been supposed by strangers in Edinburgh, that
there was but one marquisate in Britain, so frequently were the
strawberry-leaves of Lord Doncaster under animated discussion; and any
visitor who accidentally took Burke or Debrett in his hand, might
smile to observe that the pages naturally fell open where that
interesting paragraph presented itself to notice,
"Doncaster, Marquis of. Heir presumptive, Louis Henry De
Crespigny."
A tradition prevailed among the elder ladies of fashion now in
society, that a splendid set of diamonds, which had been long the
ornament and admiration of Queen Charlotte's drawing-rooms, were since
entailed, by an old Lady Doncaster, in the family; and many a young
beauty, in arranging a bright futurity on her own plan, had frequently
worn these far-famed jewels in her imagination, when presented at
Court as a Marchioness, the envy and admiration of all her
contemporaries. Meantime nothing could be more astonishing than to
find how much was known in Edinburgh concerning the modes of life,
temper, and character of the present Lord Doncaster, though he lived
not only secluded from society, but made it his peculiar study to
evade the scrutiny of impertinent curiosity, and was so anxious to
check the loquaciousness of servants, that his butler and housekeeper
had strict orders to keep up a sort of prison discipline in the
establishment, and not to allow a word to be spoken when at meals. It
was, however, authentically ascertained by some unknown means, that
Lord Doncaster, who had formerly been a man of dissipated habits and
irregular hours, now devoted himself to the care of his health as
diligently and intensely as a miser does to the care of his money, and
that to him it had become a subject of almost avaricious interest. If
the Marquis had a finger-ache, it was magnified in Edinburgh into a
case of certain death; but after a really severe illness, he was heard
jocularly to remark, in sporting phrase, "I have had another round
with death!" while he seemed confident, on these occasions, of always
coming off victorious, though few among the young ladies of his
nephew's acquaintance would have been found ready to back his
expectations, while Agnes Dunbar impatiently remarked, that Lord
Doncaster had been so long in the world, he seemed not to know how to
leave it.
It was generally understood by the juries who sat upon Lord
Doncaster's case in society, that his breakfast consisted of strong
gravy-soup and poached eggs, which were pronounced to be very
plethoric,--he ate no luncheon, which must be very exhausting at his
time of life,--he had an enormous appetite for dinner, which would
certainly drive blood to his head,--and above all, he took a hot
supper, which must be fatal at last;--every newspaper tends to prove,
that after eating a hearty supper the night before, people are
invariably found dead in their beds the next morning;--and it was
already unaccountable how many mornings Lord Doncaster had survived!
Any day in the world might bring accounts of his death,--some day must
do so, sooner or later,--hundreds of old people were dying
continually, and so might the superannuated peer; yet though his days
were numbered in so many houses, they nevertheless seemed to be
numberless, while gentlemen, older than himself, were often heard
impatiently speculating and wondering what will he would make, and
declaring they only wished to live, in order to know the result of so
many anxious conjectures, while his dutiful nephew gayly remarked,
that his uncle need never wait for parchment to write his will upon,
while the skin on his face looked so like it.
Still Lord Doncaster obstinately persevered in living on, while,
strange to say, many of the manoeuvring mamas who had been heard to
declare, that if an old person must die at any rate, they could spare
his Lordship better than any other mortal, became mortal themselves,
and were first consigned to the tomb. Even some of the young and
lovely girls, who had thought, in the morning of life, before the
freshness of their bloom had been dimmed, or the lustre of their
beauty had decayed, that this one obstacle to their happiness must be
removed,--many of these gay, joyous, and unthinking beings had sunk
unexpectedly into an early grave, while still Lord Doncaster, in a
most provoking and unprincipled manner, disappointed everybody, and
continued to exist in a world where he was anything but welcome,
resolved apparently, never, in an every-day vulgar way, to die at all.
In the mean time, Louis De Crespigny, devoted to the amusements of
life, but independent of all its finer sympathies, seemed to breathe
nothing but the exhilarating ether of life, joyous, giddy, and
intoxicating. He revelled in a laughing, lively, satirical
consciousness of his own exact position in society, and privately
resolved to make the most of it,--not that he deliberately made up his
mind to deceive,--his code of honor was rigid enough in respect to his
transactions with gentlemen, but in the case of young ladies it was
otherwise,--
"Man, to man so oft unjust,
Is always so to woman."
With ladies Mr. De Crespigny considered his own brilliant prospects
and personal fascinations to be fair, marketable produce, which there
could be no objection that he should use to the utmost advantage, for
bringing in the largest possible return of pleasure, profit, and
amusement. Accordingly, the gay young Cornet, living upon what he
could borrow, on the disinterested attentions of manoeuvring
mothers, and on the expectation of his uncle's speedy demise, made
himself the chosen attendant of half a hundred accomplished and
perfectly amiable young ladies, who laughed, talked, sang, and danced
with him, while he soon became but too intimately known as a ruthless
flirt, to many a young heart, and to many a happy home, where he took
care that it should be distinctly implied and understood, that nothing
but the jealous penuriousness of "that old quiz, Lord Doncaster,"
impeded his ardent wish to settle for life; while in the mean time,
wherever a good table and cellar were kept, he testified exactly such
a degree of partiality for the sister or daughter of his host, as made
her be considered his wife-presumptive, and secured him a regular
knife and fork in the house on all family festivals and state
occasions, without any trouble in either ordering or paying for the
entertainment. It has been said, that as a rolling stone gathers no
moss, neither does a roving heart gain any affection; but whatever
might be the case with others, Louis De Crespigny felt himself without
a doubt the idol of every drawing-room, where he sentimentalized,
rattled, and flirted in every style, with every girl under twenty, as
diligently as if he were canvassing for an election, while they
talked, looked, smiled, and dressed their very best; and the
excellence of any gentleman's wine might be accurately estimated by
the thermometer of Mr. De Crespigny's attention to the daughters; but
he had a declared abhorrence of family dinners, which looked too
business-like and domestic, as if he had really committed himself;
though, as Lady Towercliffe remarked to her four daughters one day,
"he never said anything to the purpose, when the purpose was
marriage."
Though Mr. De Crespigny seemed, at the "dignity dinners" in Edinburgh,
to live for no other object on earth, but the one fascinating young
lady, with whom it was his game at the time to appear _epris_, and
though she might probably be astonished and piqued during the following
week, to observe this indefatigable amateur in flirtations equally
assiduous in his attentions to another, and shooting like a brilliant
meteor in the ball-room, unheedingly past herself, yet she might
console herself by reflecting, that Mr. De Crespigny was in the habit
of confidentially hinting how much he felt embarrassed and annoyed by
the necessity of generalizing his intimacies, that no gossiping reports
might reach his whimsical relative. "Because actually!" he one day
whispered in confidence to Lady Towercliffe, "when my uncle becomes
irritable, he threatens to make all sorts of ridiculous marriages
himself; and it would be my last hour in his will, if he thought me
heretic enough merely to dance with a Protestant partner. He would not
engage so much as a housemaid of your persuasion; but for my own part,
I leave all these concerns to the Abbe Mordaunt, who, to do him
justice, lets me off very easily."
The difference of faith made wonderfully little difference in the
intentions of those young ladies who believed themselves the objects
of Mr. De Crespigny's unacknowledged preference, for every bit of
millinery in a ball-room was in a flutter of agitation whenever he
approached; and certainly no one ever excelled more in making those he
conversed with rise in their own opinion, from his tact in showing how
very high they stood in his, and the consequence was, that he already
possessed a rare and romantic collection of sentimental valentines,
sketches with his figure in the foreground, songs with the magical
name of Louis conspicuously introduced, withered bouquets, anagrams,
anonymous letters, and anonymous verses, all with a too-well-remembered
history belonging to them, which called up a smile of derision, or a
sigh of self-reproach, according as the case required, but all
treasured as relics of former happy hours, which had perhaps been the
history of a lifetime to the fair donors, and the diversion of a few
days only to himself, while he secretly applauded his own dexterity in
escaping the matrimonial noose, and to them there remained only the
silent remembrance of that intercourse, now for ever at an end, which
they had believed was to last for life.
Mr. De Crespigny's engagement book was nearly as complicated an affair
as any ledger or day-book, and much more so than his own banker's
account, for he arranged it on the most systematic principles of
profit and loss. In whatever house he had been invited to dine, he
considered himself as "owing a quadrille" to one of the young ladies
at the next assembly. If he had actually "sat under her father's
mahogany," as he termed it, she might be perhaps entitled to two
dances; and when he had spent the greater part of a summer in her
mother's country house, that established a sort of sinking fund in her
behalf, which entitled him to have the use of him as a partner,
whenever he happened accidentally to be disengaged, though indeed
nothing ever occurred accidentally in Captain De Crespigny's
arrangements, for he never acted on impulse, but always on systematic
calculation. He seemed, with his gay pell-mell manner, the most
off-hand, careless, and undesigning of men; but even in the trifling
affair of going to a ball, where he might literally have exclaimed, "I
am monarch of all I survey," he invariably carried in his mind's eye a
list of all those partners with whom policy or self-interest directed
him to dance, and very seldom indeed did he swerve from his
pre-conceived muster-roll.
It was a singular evidence of young De Crespigny's discretion and
skill, that, while paying attentions which should either have never
been paid at all, or never afterwards discontinued, and while, with all
its fascinations, Lady Towercliffe declared it was dangerous to a young
lady's happiness to be even introduced to him, still, in not one
instance had "his intentions" ever yet been asked, and neither fathers,
uncles, nor brothers had betrayed the slightest symptoms of
insurrection against his universal dominion, believing, as his excuse
for delaying to propose was so perfectly unanswerable and respectable,
that his intentions might safely be allowed to "lie on the table,"
while they awaited in breathless suspense the _denouement_, certainly
to take place on Lord Doncaster's death.
Some of Mr. De Crespigny's brother officers, envious perhaps of his
extraordinary success in society, threw out sceptical hints respecting
the certainty of his succession, and laughed sarcastically at the
indefatigable vanity with which he evidently liked being thus torn to
pieces among the chaperons and dowagers of society; but he laughed as
heartily as themselves. No one could ever get the start of him in a
joke; and his associates, when he came in competition with any one of
them, found it no laughing matter. He knew his own power--who does not
know that?--and difficulties only enhanced his triumph.
Lord Doncaster often dryly remarked, that the best economist in
Britain must certainly be Louis De Crespigny, as, to his certain
knowledge, he possessed only £300 a year, and yet he seemed to revel
in all the luxuries of life, besides having a great deal over for
extravagance. There was no occasion for the young Cornet ever to think
of dining at his club, as he might be entertained at the houses of
three or four friends in a day, if he could have mustered as many
appetites. In summer he incurred no expense, except to pay for his
place occasionally on the top of a coach, or in a steam-boat, from one
hospitable country house to another, where gigs were sent a stage to
meet him on the way, if he were expected by the mail, or if by sea, a
chariot might be seen waiting on the pier. He got "a mount" from one
friend, the best seat in a barouche from another, and often the vacant
place in a britschska from a third party, even to the expulsion of its
more legitimate occupiers.
"De Crespigny has nothing on earth, and you see how he looks!" remarked
his handsome friend Sir Patrick one day to Sir Arthur Dunbar; "yet how
magnificently he contrives to live at the expense of all those deluded
mortals who have disposable or indisposable daughters. His future
prospects act like a cork jacket in society, keeping him always at the
top. Last summer worthy Lord Towercliffe, with his rapidly increasing
family and rapidly decreasing income, took De Crespigny in his gig to
that old tumble-down castle of his in Argyleshire, where he spent six
weeks, ruining the family in champagne and wax candles. The house
became rather cold in September, so at last he accepted a cast in Lady
Winandermere's carriage to that nest of nieces and daughters at Castle
Highcombe, where he found excellent yachting and sea-bathing. There he
lingered a month, till the brother of those four pretty Miss Vavasours
bid still higher for his company, by offering him a mount at Kelso, and
mentioning that he had a first-rate French cook a '_cordon bleu_,' who
hires his own stall at the opera during the London season, and enjoys a
salary and perquisites amounting to more than the best curacy in the
English Church; and all this De Crespigny repays with a few frothy
nothings, which he is for ever repeating to any young lady who will
lend an ear. Those who beat the bush do not always snare the bird; and
I wonder the manoeuvring world does not yet see that he is evidently no
marrying man."
"What sort of looking individual, is a marrying man?" asked Sir
Arthur, slyly. "I am often told that you, for instance, do not look
like a marrying man; but pray point me out any one who does, that I
may become more a connoisseur on the subject than I am. As for what
you say of Louis De Crespigny, it sounds to my unpractised ear very
like swindling; and he is not the youth I took him for if he live in
such an element of deceit, sacrificing all sense of honor, all
confidence, and all good feeling, for a worthless and transient
popularity, or worse than all, for motives of mean, heartless
self-interest. Such a man is not worth the space he occupies in the
world!"
The Admiral's honest indignation would have been vented in still
stronger terms, could his upright and honorable mind have been made to
understand how entirely every thought, word, and action of Mr. De
Crespigny's life was based on the most unswerving principles of cold,
hard, unrelenting selfishness, and with what utter carelessness he
seemed ready to trample on the wounded feelings of others; for it
mattered not to him what degree of confidence he betrayed, or what
degree of sorrow he inflicted. If in one house where he had been
received as a son or a brother, he no longer found the cordial welcome
of other days, a hundred other doors were still opened wide to receive
him, where he could boast of having been "very nearly caught," and
carry on the same game as before, which was a pastime to him, though
fatal to the peace of many, who would willingly have died rather than
betray the injury their feelings had suffered, when, after passing
through the ordeal of his assiduities, they found themselves beguiled
and cheated of all that was deepest and most sacred in their earthly
affections--robbed without compunction by one who gave no return--who
watched with elated triumph the growing delusion of those whom he had
marked as victims to his own self-love, and whom he appeared to
consider all in all to his happiness, till they found out at last that
they were in reality less than nothing to him; yet the deception
admitted of no redress. He lived on in a sort of cowardly impunity;
for no young girl endowed with sensibility, and conscious of her own
injuries, could desire, after entrusting him with the whole story of
her hopes and affections, that the truth should be known; and his was
a crime against which no evidence can be brought; for who could
describe the tender nothings--the refined insinuations--the looks
which say everything and mean nothing--the wordless language of the
eyes, with which an undeclared love may be safely and yet obviously
professed? What but a smile of ridicule or of censure could attend on
such a detail of "unutterable things?" But with Louis De Crespigny
nothing was unutterable; for he could say and unsay the same things
two hundred times, and they always seemed to carry as much or as
little weight as he pleased at the moment, while he entered society as
a school-boy rushes into a garden, eagerly to pursue the brilliant
insects fluttering in the sunbeams, ready to crush and injure them all
for his momentary diversion, and yet on his guard to retreat in good
order, should there appear to be the slightest danger of annoyance or
discomfort to himself.