Kate Vernon: A Tale. Vol. 1 (of 3) by Mrs. Alexander (trending books to read .TXT) 📗

interminable; and when at length my humble vehicle drew up before the portico, I received the pleasing intelligence, "my Lord is not at home, Captain Egerton, but will you please to walk in?"

"Why, yes! I intend stopping here for the night; and, Barnard, get me some mulled port, will you, lots of spice, and hot as the Devil."

"Yes, sir," said the Butler, with a slight shudder at the profanity. By the time I had roused the slumbering fire into a blaze, the house steward, an old retainer, entered with the wine, and respectfully congratulated me on my recovery; a few mutual enquiries followed, during which I could not help smiling to myself at the formal tone I felt compelled to adopt towards the grave old man who had known my boyhood; nothing would be too familiar with Mrs. O'Toole, but the stern Saxon nature demands a degree of reserve in their superiors, and would resent any freedom[Pg 229] as something derogatory to both. The coldness between English masters and servants is quite as much the fault of the latter as the former, and so it must be while the Anglo-Saxon race exists; anything demonstrative is terribly out of place with them. Il ne faut jamais faire agir un homme dans un sens different de son caract�re.

"My Lord takes the chair at a meeting of the Society for converting the Jews at—— to-day, sir, but he will return to dinner," said my informant, as he made his parting bow and retired.

"Heaven send my worthy brother may follow up the object of the meeting by converting Messrs. Levi and Co. from creditors into non-claimants, as well as all the other errors of their ways," was my mental ejaculation as I betook myself to the Record and its advertisements for pious footmen, and not sober, but serious cooks, as an escape from my own thoughts.

Egerton returned to dinner, bringing with him two sleek white neckcloth'd straight-haired gen[Pg 230]tlemen; "the deputation," he informed me, from the "Parent Society."

My brother received me very graciously, and remarking that I still looked indifferent after my illness, regretted I was not in time to attend the meeting to hear the reverend "somebody" hold forth. "Captain Egerton," said he, during one of the pauses in our repast, noticing, perhaps, something of carnal impatience in the glances of the Reverend J. E. Black towards the door, for the appearance of the next entr�e, "Captain Egerton has been, and is quartered at Carrington; did you not reside there, or in its neighbourhood?"

"Yes, my Lord," replied the son of the "Parent Society;" "I had for some time a wide field of labour at A——."

This individual was a tall man, inclined to embonpoint, with heavy features, a large hooked nose, a thick sensual under lip, and a tuft of straight coarse hair at each side of his face.

"At A——," said I, glad to exchange a word[Pg 231] with any one about a place so endeared to me; "I was there two days ago. Did you know a Mr. Winter, of Abbey Gardens? I am indebted to the kindness and care of him and his wife for my existence."

"Under Providence," he suggested, in a mild sugary voice, which, with a perpetual placid smile, characterised the revd. gentleman; his manner, too, was extremely courteous, almost well-bred, though one could not help perceiving a something lurking below, like the odour of cigars, when you endeavour to overpower it with mille fleurs or eau de miel.

"Of course, of course," said I.

"I was not personally acquainted with him," he observed, "but from his repute I fear he is not a Christian."

"Well, at least he is a good Samaritan," I replied.

"My brother is a military man, you know, my dear sir," observed Lord Egerton, and he sighed.

"Come, Egerton," said I, "although we may[Pg 232] not be as good as we ought, we are not so bad after all."

"Indeed, my Lord, there is a little more light in the army than formerly," said his revd. friend, "when I was a soldier their state of darkness was awful!"

"Pray, sir, may I ask you how you managed to grope your way out of it," I enquired.

Thoughtless as I then was, I felt shocked at the profane familiarity with sacred things evinced by his reply, nor will I record it. I noticed merely his hint of having been a soldier, and made a few languid enquiries as to his Regiment, &c. But Egerton and the other clerico soon plunged into discussion of things and people incomprehensible and unknown to me; their occasional awkward attempts to change or rather descend to topics more congenial to their unregenerate companion, conveying the pleasant notion that they looked upon me as a hawk in a dove cot, a wolf among lambs, but that they would endeavour to let me see they were not too proud[Pg 233] of their superiority. Mr. Black indeed frequently turned to me, endeavouring to suit his conversation to my depraved taste, by repeating wretched anecdotes of various London notorieties. By the way, I generally observe your parvenu always appears to think a familiarity with steward and housekeeper's room on dits the most certain proof he can adduce of his own fitness for good society. I took a most unconquerable dislike to this blessed babe of the Parent Society, especially when I heard him descanting to Egerton as we sipped our coffee, on the sinfulness of dancing and the necessity of faith unadorned by works; nor was I the least surprised on hearing afterwards from Winter, that he fully carried out his principles in his practice, by leaving every thing to his faith, and dispensing with those more commonplace duties less privileged individuals consider binding; his poor wife, neglected and abused, sought safety in separation; and his sons, ground down by tyranny and injustice, being left to the unassisted care of that Providence with whose[Pg 234] dispensation he was too pious to let parental anxieties interfere. But I am giving too much time to a man who annoyed me through a whole evening; there are not many like him I should hope. His companion, although tiresome, seemed a simple, straightforward person.

Never shall I forget that wretched evening: oppressed by the anticipation of the unpleasant conference before me, and feeling the difficulty of my task with Egerton more strongly, as every moment showed me the spirit of self-satisfied devoteeism with which my brother and his allies seemed to shut out the non-elect from all sympathy or affection.

There was a great deal of babble about the "Missionary cause," and advanced Christian and Evangelical views, and many more of the technical terms which made up their stock-in-trade; while my thoughts flew back to the real prayer I had heard poor Gilpin pour out when I lay, to all appearance, insensible, and hovering between life and death.

[Pg 235]

I felt disgusted to observe that sleek, shiny Black trying to catch Egerton with a dun (religious) hackle, while he baited a small hook with a red one (of what he would call fashionable small talk) for me: of the two, I preferred the latter, for although far from what I ought to be, nothing is so revolting to my taste as the attempt to force solemn subjects into the trivialities of commonplace conversation.

The longest and dreariest evening, and digression too, must come to an end: I pleaded the excuse of recent illness, and made my retreat, intimating to Egerton my wish for a private interview in the morning, to which he very readily assented.

I sat musing over my fire until my candle was nearly burnt out, contrasting in my mind the dreary trio I had just left with the pleasant, warmhearted, unaffected little circle, amongst whom I had so lately mingled, a favoured and indulged member—"These people live, and are happy: they lead no useless unemployed existence[Pg 236] either; but if Egerton's is the road to Heaven, Dieu m'en preserve. Oh, what a strange perversity of fate to make me the younger brother. Egerton would have made such an admirable curate, and married the best dowered of his congregation; he looks upon the 'accessories' of his position as so many hindrances to his advance in holiness, while I!—How well my poor mother's diamond tiara would look on Kate Vernon's rich brown hair!"

I never thought I should feel so like a poltroon as I did when the library door closed on Egerton and myself. Never in the course of our lives had I asked or received a favour from him: not that any unkind feeling existed between us, but we had always been blanks to each other; and now to ask this frigid, pharisaical being, who so evidently thought there was a great gulf fixed between himself and the great mass of his fellow-creatures, to help me out of a scrape I ought never to have got into—to sympathise with my passionate admiration of a penniless girl!

[Pg 237]

"You wished to speak to me, Frederic?"

I may observe, Egerton was the only one I was ever intimate with who troubled himself to give me more than one syllable to my name.

"Yes, I have a great deal to accuse myself of, Egerton, but, in short, I am in a scrape, and I want you to do a brotherly act, and help me out of it."

This bold plunge seemed to startle my companion not a little, and he moved rather restlessly on his seat as he replied, "Indeed! if in my power to assist you, I trust I shall not be deficient in the performance of my duty, but remember, I cannot countenance the godless waste of means entrusted"—

"God knows I do not want to continue any useless expenditure," said I, "it is with the wish to become free from debt, to live 'cleanly and like a gentleman,' that I come to bore you with my affairs!"

"Every one smarting under the effects of their folly is ready to abjure it, but when the sting is[Pg 238] removed, you can hardly answer for yourself," said his Lordship.

"No, but really I have not a single dissipated or extravagant taste; the more unpardonable, you will say, my getting ahead of my income; granted, yet you, living here in unbroken quiet, can hardly judge the force that habit acquires, when your only companions are a set of men whose occupation is spending, whose excitement is prodigality. It was the want of some better and deeper interest that threw me into expensive follies which I now regret; but, Egerton, I have some more certain guarantee to give for my permanent reformation than a mere desire to get rid of difficulties. I—there is a Miss—that is, I want to marry and settle."

"That alters the face of affairs; I shall be happy to do anything I can to forward this favourable arrangement; have you proposed in form? or ascertained the amount of the lady's fortune?"

I replied, laughing, "Yes and no, I have not[Pg 239] proposed, and her fortune is like my own—a blank."

"Really, Frederic, there are no limits to the imprudence into which the impetuosity of a worldly and unchastened spirit hurry those lost to the knowledge of better things. I do not see how your marriage, with a penniless girl is to better your position in any point of view, temporal or spiritual."

"There is such a thing as awakening to better and purer affections," I replied, "more settled convictions or"—

"It is our duty to curb our affections, which are all depraved and sinful," interrupted Lord Egerton, "but to return to the point we started from; what is the scrape, as you term it? substituting, no doubt, a delusive jest to disguise the real colour of the transaction."

"Why really nothing more dreadful than is done every day;" and I told him of my bets and horses; of raising the wind through the means of his proteg�es, the Jews; of their renewal[Pg 240] of bills at enormous interest, and the whole blood-sucking system; that my great object was to get free from their fangs, to cut the army, marry, and settle down somewhere as something, I did not know exactly what, but I had an idea of farming: this last was a happy stroke, I thought, for if Egerton really wants to make a good boy of me, now is his time; let him offer me one of his Devonshire farms, for I know that he purchased property there some years ago. He sat playing with his seals and chain, and looking confoundedly sour, longer than I could wait with any degree of patience; at last he said, in a discontented tone, "I suppose you want me to join you in raising money on your 'younger son's portion?' but even if I were to consent to