_Coke Clifton to Guy Fairfax_
_London, Dover-Street_
Why ay! He who opens the flood-gates of mischief is necessarily in most
danger of being swept away by the torrent!--I have drunken deeply of
ruin, and soon shall have my fill!
You warned me to beware of this raven: you told me he scented
carrion!--I laughed at your prophecy!--It is fulfilled!--I am a
gull!--The fleeced, cheated, despicable gull of the infernal villain
Mac Fane!
It was right that I should be loaded with every species of contempt for
myself. I have been the fool, the gudgeon, the ineffable ass to lose a
sum of money to him, which to pay would be destruction!--I begin to
hate myself with most strange inveteracy! Could I meet such another
fellow, I would spit in his face--Fairfax, it is true--By hell I hold
myself in most rooted and ample antipathy!
I find I have strangely mistaken my own character and talents--I
once thought to have driven the world before me, and to have whipped
opposition into immediate compliance: but it seems I am myself one of
the very sorry wretches at whom I was so all alive and ready to give,
and spurn! These are odd and unaccountable things! And it appears
that I am a very poor creature! A most indubitable driveller! The
twin-brother of imbecility! Ay, the counterpart and compeer of Edward
St. Ives, and the tool of the most barefaced of cheats, as well as his
familiar!--Well! I have lived long enough to make the discovery; and it
is now high time to depart!
I wrote to you but yesterday: but events hastily tread on each other's
heels, and if I do not relate them now I never shall. I told you I
expected the gambler to supper, by my own invitation--Ay, ay!--I am a
very Solomon!
I dined at home. I knew not indeed to what extremes the St. Ives
hunters might proceed: or whether they would make accusation upon oath,
sufficient to authorise a magistrate in granting a warrant, to bring me
before him; but the attempt must have been impotent and abortive, I
therefore determined to brave them: however I heard no more of them or
their suspicions.
As I sat ruminating on past events, on my sister and her epistle, and
particularly on the zeal with which Anna St. Ives appealed to the
letter written by her, which I had received from Laura, my curiosity
was so far excited that at last I determined to read them both. I own,
Fairfax, they both moved me--This sister of mine, enraged as I am
against her, has somehow found the art of making herself respected. Her
zeal has character and efficacy in it: I mean persuasion. I could not
resist some of the sensations she intended to inspire. She cited
passages from the letters of her friend that were daggers to me! At the
very time I was seeking to quarrel with Anna, she angel-like was
incessant in my praise!--And such praises, Fairfax--! There was no
resisting it!--She thought generously, nobly, ay sublimely of me: while
my irascible jealousy, false pride, and vindictive spirit were eager
only to find cause of offence!
And yet I know not!--I cannot keep my mind to a point! Surely _I had
cause of offence_: real cause?--Surely the retribution I sought had
justice in it?--She could not be wholly blameless?--No!--That would
indeed be distraction!
I then ventured to read the letter of Anna--On paper or in speech she
is the same: energetic, awful, and affecting!
While I was reading this last Mac Fane entered, and soon put an end to
my meditations. Did I tell you I had been fool enough to invite him to
supper?--He had not been with me half an hour before I was most
intolerably weary of his company!
After having vapoured of the feats of himself and the scowling rascal
his colleague, to remind me of my high obligations to them, and talking
as usual with most bitter malevolence against Henley, he soon began to
descant on the old subject; gaming--To ask a madman why he is mad were
vain! I was importuned by his jargon--'He had been pigeoned only last
night of no less than seven hundred pounds!' Repetitions, imprecations,
and lies, all of the same kind, succeeded as fast as he could utter
them!
I know all this ought to have put me upon my guard; and I know too that
it did not. I believe I had some lurking vanity in my mind; a
persuasion that I could beat him at picquet. I was weary both of myself
and him; was primed for mischief, and cared not of what kind. If you
ask me for any better reason, why, knowing him as I did, I suffered
myself to be the tool of this fellow, I can only say I have none to
give!
I ordered my own servant to fetch half a dozen packs of cards, and
imagined this precaution was some security. What will not men imagine,
when their passions are afloat and reason is flown?
To give you the history of how I was led on, from one act of idiotism
to another, or how after having lost one thousand I could be lunatic
enough to lose a second, and after a second a third, and so on to a
tenth, is more than my present temper of mind will permit. It is quite
sufficient to tell you that I have ruined myself; and that there is
not, upon the face of the earth, a fellow I so thoroughly despise as
Coke Clifton; no not even Mac Fane himself! Below the lowest am I
fallen; for I am his dupe, nay his companion, and what is worse his
debtor! It is time I were out of the world--So miserable a being does
not crawl upon its surface.
It is the very heyday of mischief, and I must abroad among it. The
exact manner of the catastrophe I cannot foresee, but it must be
tragical. I have something brooding in my mind, the outlines of a
conclusion, which rather pleases me. I have sworn to avenge myself of
Anna, disinherit my sister, and never to pay Mac Fane. These oaths must
be kept. Anna must fall! If she will but deign to live afterward, she
shall be my heir. And for myself, I know how to find a ready quietus!
My mind since this last affair is better reconciled to its destiny, and
even less disturbed than before: for previous to this, there seemed to
be some bare possibility of a generous release, on my part, and a more
generous forgetfulness of injuries on theirs. But now, all is over! I
have but to punish my opponents a little, and myself much, and having
punished expire.