Peveril of the Peak by Walter Scott (android based ebook reader txt) 📗

CHAPTER XXXVIII “Speak not of niceness, when there’s chance of wreck,” The captain said, as ladies writhed their neck To see the dying dolphin flap the deck: “If we go down, on us these gentry sup; We dine upon them, if we haul them up. Wise men applaud us when we eat the eaters, As the devil laughs when keen folks cheat the cheaters.” —THE SEA VOYAGE.

There was nothing in Duke’s manner towards Christian which could have conveyed to that latter personage, experienced as he was in the worst possible ways of the world, that Buckingham would, at that particular moment, rather have seen the devil than himself; unless it was that Buckingham’s reception of him, being rather extraordinarily courteous towards so old an acquaintance, might have excited some degree of suspicion.

Having escaped with some difficulty from the vague region of general compliments, which bears the same relation to that of business that Milton informs us the Limbo Patrum has to the sensible and material earth, Christian asked his Grace of Buckingham, with the same blunt plainness with which he usually veiled a very deep and artificial character, whether he had lately seen Chiffinch or his helpmate?

“Neither of them lately,” answered Buckingham. “Have not you waited on them yourself?—I thought you would have been more anxious about the great scheme.”

“I have called once and again,” said Christian, “but I can gain no access to the sight of that important couple. I begin to be afraid they are paltering with me.”

“Which, by the welkin and its stars, you would not be slow in avenging, Master Christian. I know your puritanical principles on that point well,” said the Duke. “Revenge may be well said to be sweet, when so many grave and wise men are ready to exchange for it all the sugar-plums which pleasures offer to the poor sinful people of the world, besides the reversion of those which they talk of expecting in the way of post obit.”

“You may jest, my lord,” said Christian, “but still——”

“But still you will be revenged on Chiffinch, and his little commodious companion. And yet the task may be difficult—Chiffinch has so many ways of obliging his master—his little woman is such a convenient pretty sort of a screen, and has such winning little ways of her own, that, in faith, in your case, I would not meddle with them. What is this refusing their door, man? We all do it to our best friends now and then, as well as to duns and dull company.”

“If your Grace is in a humour of rambling thus wildly in your talk,” said Christian, “you know my old faculty of patience—I can wait till it be your pleasure to talk more seriously.”

“Seriously!” said his Grace—“Wherefore not?—I only wait to know what your serious business may be.”

“In a word, my lord, from Chiffinch’s refusal to see me, and some vain calls which I have made at your Grace’s mansion, I am afraid either that our plan has miscarried, or that there is some intention to exclude me from the farther conduct of the matter.” Christian pronounced these words with considerable emphasis.

“That were folly as well as treachery,” returned the Duke, “to exclude from the spoil the very engineer who conducted the attack. But hark ye, Christian—I am sorry to tell bad news without preparation; but as you insist on knowing the worst, and are not ashamed to suspect your best friends, out it must come—Your niece left Chiffinch’s house the morning before yesterday.”

Christian staggered, as if he had received a severe blow; and the blood ran to his face in such a current of passion, that the Duke concluded he was struck with an apoplexy. But, exerting the extraordinary command which he could maintain under the most trying circumstances, he said, with a voice, the composure of which had an unnatural contrast with the alteration of his countenance, “Am I to conclude, that in leaving the protection of the roof in which I placed her, the girl has found shelter under that of your Grace?”

“Sir,” replied Buckingham gravely, “the supposition does my gallantry more credit than it deserves.”

“Oh, my Lord Duke,” answered Christian, “I am not one whom you can impose on by this species of courtly jargon. I know of what your Grace is capable; and that to gratify the caprice of a moment you would not hesitate to disappoint even the schemes at which you yourself have laboured most busily.—Suppose this jest played off. Take your laugh at those simple precautions by which I intended to protect your Grace’s interest, as well as that of others. Let us know the extent of your frolic, and consider how far its consequences can be repaired.”

“On my word, Christian,” said the Duke, laughing, “you are the most obliging of uncles and of guardians. Let your niece pass through as many adventures as Boccaccio’s bride of the King of Garba, you care not. Pure or soiled, she will still make the footstool of your fortune.”

An Indian proverb says, that the dart of contempt will even pierce through the shell of the tortoise; but this is more peculiarly the case when conscience tells the subject of the sarcasm that it is justly merited. Christian, stung with Buckingham’s reproach, at once assumed a haughty and threatening mien, totally inconsistent with that in which sufferance seemed to be as much his badge as that of Shylock. “You are a foul-mouthed and most unworthy lord,” he said; “and as such I will proclaim you, unless you make reparation for the injury you have done me.”

“And what,” said the Duke of Buckingham, “shall I proclaim you,