"If she was the daughter of King Charlemagne," cries Lambert, "she is not too good for James Wolfe, or for his mother's son."

"Mr. Lambert would not say so if he knew her," the young Colonel declared.

"Oh, of course, she is the priceless pearl, and you are nothing," cries mamma. "No. I am of Colonel Lambert's opinion; and, if she brought all Cumberland to you for a jointure, I should say it was my James's due. That is the way with 'em, Mr. Warrington. We tend our children through fevers, and measles, and whooping-cough, and small-pox; we send them to the army and can't sleep at night for thinking; we break our hearts at parting with 'em, and have them at home only for a week or two in the year, or maybe ten years, and, after all our care, there comes a lass with a pair of bright eyes, and away goes our boy, and never cares a fig for us afterwards."

"And pray, my dear, how did you come to marry James's papa?" said the elder Colonel Wolfe. "And why didn't you stay at home with your parents?"

"Because James's papa was gouty, and wanted somebody to take care of him, I suppose; not because I liked him a bit," answers the lady: and so with much easy talk and kindness the evening passed away.

On the morrow, and with many expressions of kindness and friendship for his late guest, Colonel Lambert gave over the young Virginian to Mr. Wolfe's charge, and turned his horse's head homewards, while the two gentlemen sped towards Tunbridge Wells. Wolfe was in a hurry to reach the place, Harry Warrington was, perhaps, not quite so eager: nay, when Lambert rode towards his own home, Harry's thoughts followed him with a great deal of longing desire to the parlour at Oakhurst, where he had spent three days in happy calm. Mr. Wolfe agreed in all Harry's enthusiastic praises of Mr. Lambert, and of his wife, and of his daughters, and of all that excellent family. "To have such a good name, and to live such a life as Colonel Lambert's," said Wolfe, "seem to me now the height of human ambition."

"And glory and honour?" asked Warrington, "are those nothing? and would you give up the winning of them?"

"They were my dreams once," answered the Colonel, who had now different ideas of happiness, "and now my desires are much more tranquil. I have followed arms ever since I was fourteen years of age. I have seen almost every kind of duty connected with my calling. I know all the garrison towns in this country, and have had the honour to serve wherever there has been work to be done during the last ten years. I have done pretty near the whole of a soldier's duty, except, indeed, the command of an army, which can hardly be hoped for by one of my years; and now, methinks, I would like quiet, books to read, a wife to love me, and some children to dandle on my knee. I have imagined some such Elysium for myself, Mr. Warrington. True love is better than glory; and a tranquil fireside, with the woman of your heart seated by it, the greatest good the gods can send to us."

Harry imagined to himself the picture which his comrade called up. He said "Yes," in answer to the other's remark; but, no doubt, did not give a very cheerful assent, for his companion observed upon the expression of his face.

"You say 'Yes' as if a fireside and a sweetheart were not particularly to your taste."

"Why, look you, Colonel, there are other things which a young fellow might like to enjoy. You have had sixteen years of the world: and I am but a few months away from my mother's apron-strings. When I have seen a campaign or two, or six, as you have: when I have distinguished myself like Mr. Wolfe, and made the world talk of me, I then may think of retiring from it."

To these remarks, Mr. Wolfe, whose heart was full of a very different matter, replied by breaking out in a further encomium of the joys of marriage; and a special rhapsody upon the beauties and merits of his mistress—a theme intensely interesting to himself, though not so, possibly, to his hearer, whose views regarding a married life, if he permitted himself to entertain any, were somewhat melancholy and despondent. A pleasant afternoon brought them to the end of their ride; nor did any accident or incident accompany it, save, perhaps, a mistake which Harry Warrington made at some few miles' distance from Tunbridge Wells, where two horsemen stopped them, whom Harry was for charging, pistol in hand, supposing them to be highwaymen. Colonel Wolfe, laughing, bade Mr. Warrington reserve his fire, for these folks were only innkeepers' agents, and not robbers (except in their calling). Gumbo, whose horse ran away with him at this particular juncture, was brought back after a great deal of bawling on his master's part, and the two gentlemen rode into the little town, alighted at their inn, and then separated, each in quest of the ladies whom he had come to visit.

Mr. Warrington found his aunt installed in handsome lodgings, with a guard of London lacqueys in her anteroom, and to follow her chair when she went abroad. She received him with the utmost kindness. His cousin, my Lady Maria, was absent when he arrived: I don't know whether the young gentleman was unhappy at not seeing her: or whether he disguised his feelings, or whether Madame de Bernstein took any note regarding them.

A beau in a rich figured suit, the first specimen of the kind Harry had seen, and two dowagers with voluminous hoops and plenty of rouge, were on a visit to the Baroness when her nephew made his bow to her. She introduced the young man to these personages as her nephew, the young Croesus out of Virginia, of whom they had heard. She talked about the immensity of his estate, which was as large as Kent; and, as she had read, infinitely more fruitful. She mentioned how her half-sister, Madam Esmond, was called Princess Pocahontas in her own country. She never tired in her praises of mother and son, of their riches and their good qualities. The beau shook the young man by the hand, and was delighted to have the honour to make his acquaintance. The ladies praised him to his aunt so loudly that the modest youth was fain to blush at their compliments. They went away to inform the Tunbridge society of the news of his arrival. The little place was soon buzzing with accounts of the wealth, the good breeding, and the good looks of the Virginian.

"You could not have come at a better moment, my dear," the Baroness said to her nephew, as her visitors departed with many curtseys and congees. "Those three individuals have the most active tongues in the Wells. They will trumpet your good qualities in every company where they go. I have introduced you to a hundred people already, and, Heaven help me! have told all sorts of fibs about the geography of Virginia in order to describe your estate. It is a prodigious large one, but I am afraid I have magnified it. I have filled it with all sorts of wonderful animals, gold mines, spices; I am not sure I have not said diamonds. As for your negroes, I have given your mother armies of them, and, in fact, represented her as a sovereign princess reigning over a magnificent dominion. So she has a magnificent dominion: I cannot tell to a few hundred thousand pounds how much her yearly income is, but I have no doubt it is a very great one. And you must prepare, sir, to be treated here as the heir-apparent of this royal lady. Do not let your head be turned. From this day forth you are going to be flattered as you have never been flattered in your life."

"And to what end, ma'am?" asked the young gentleman. "I see no reason why I should be reputed so rich, or get so much flattery."

"In the first place, sir, you must not contradict your old aunt, who has no desire to be made a fool of before her company. And as for your reputation, you must know we found it here almost ready-made on our arrival. A London newspaper has somehow heard of you, and come out with a story of the immense wealth of a young gentleman from Virginia lately landed, and a nephew of my Lord Castlewood. Immensely wealthy you are, and can't help yourself. All the world is eager to see you. You shall go to church to-morrow morning, and see how the whole congregation will turn away from its books and prayers, to worship the golden calf in your person. You would not have had me undeceive them, would you, and speak ill of my own flesh and blood?"

"But how am I bettered by this reputation for money?" asked Harry.

"You are making your entry into the world, and the gold key will open most of its doors to you. To be thought rich is as good as to be rich. You need not spend much money. People will say that you hoard it, and your reputation for avarice will do you good rather than harm. You'll see how the mothers will smile upon you, and the daughters will curtsey! Don't look surprised! When I was a young woman myself I did as all the rest of the world did, and tried to better myself by more than one desperate attempt at a good marriage. Your poor grandmother, who was a saint upon earth to be sure, bating a little jealousy, used to scold me, and called me worldly. Worldly, my dear! So is the world worldly; and we must serve it as it serves us; and give it nothing for nothing. Mr. Henry Esmond Warrington—I can't help loving the two first names, sir, old woman as I am, and that I tell you—on coming here or to London, would have been nobody. Our protection would have helped him but little. Our family has little credit, and, entre nous, not much reputation. I suppose you know that Castlewood was more than suspected in '45, and hath since ruined himself by play?"

Harry had never heard about Lord Castlewood or his reputation.

"He never had much to lose, but he has lost that and more: his wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages. He has been at all sorts of schemes to raise money:—my dear, he has been so desperate at times, that I did not think my diamonds were safe with him; and have travelled to and from Castlewood without them. Terrible, isn't it, to speak so of one's own nephew? But you are my nephew, too, and not spoiled by the world yet, and I wish to warn you of its wickedness. I heard of your play-doings with Will and the chaplain, but they could do you no harm,—nay, I am told you had the better of them. Had you played with Castlewood, you would have had no such luck: and you would have played, had not an old aunt of yours warned my Lord Castlewood to keep his hands off you."

"What, ma'am, did you interfere to preserve me?"

"I kept his clutches off from you: be thankful that you are come out of that ogre's den with any flesh on your bones! My dear, it has been the rage and passion of all our family. My poor silly brother played; both his wives played, especially the last one, who has little else to live upon now but her nightly assemblies in London, and the money for the cards. I would not trust her at Castlewood alone with you: the passion is too strong for them, and they would fall upon you, and fleece you; and then fall upon each other, and fight for the plunder. But for his place about the Court my poor nephew hath nothing, and that is Will's fortune, too, sir, and Maria's and her sister's."

"And are they, too, fond of the cards?"

"No; to do poor Molly justice, gaming is not her passion: but when she is amongst them in London, little Fanny will bet her eyes out of her head. I know what the passion is, sir: do not look so astonished; I have had it, as I had the measles when I was a child. I am not cured quite. For a poor old woman there is nothing left but that. You will see some high play at my card-tables to-night. Hush! my dear. It was that I wanted, and without which I moped so at Castlewood! I could not win of my nieces or their mother. They would not pay if they lost. 'Tis best to warn you, my dear, in time, lest you should be shocked by the discovery. I can't live without the cards, there's the truth!"

A few days before, and while staying with his Castlewood relatives, Harry, who loved cards, and cock-fighting, and betting, and every conceivable sport himself, would have laughed very likely at this confession. Amongst that family into whose society he had fallen, many things were laughed at, over which some folks looked grave. Faith and honour were laughed at; pure lives were disbelieved; selfishness was proclaimed as common practice; sacred duties were sneeringly spoken of, and vice flippantly condoned. These were no Pharisees: they professed no hypocrisy of virtue, they flung no stones at discovered sinners:—they smiled, shrugged their shoulders, and passed on. The members of this family did not pretend to be a whit better than their neighbours, whom they despised heartily; they lived quite familiarly with the folks about whom and whose wives they told such wicked, funny stories; they took their share of what pleasure or plunder came to hand, and lived from day to day till their last day came for them. Of course there are no such people now; and human nature is very much changed in the last hundred years. At any rate, card-playing is greatly out of mode: about that there can be no doubt: and very likely there are not six ladies of fashion in London who know the difference between Spadille and Manille.

"How dreadfully dull you must have found those humdrum people at that village where we left you—but the savages were very kind to you, child!" said Madame de Bernstein, patting the young man's cheek with her pretty old hand.

"They were very kind; and it was not at all dull, ma'am, and I think they are some of the best people in the world," said Harry, with his face flushing up. His aunt's tone jarred upon him. He could not bear that any one should speak or think lightly of the new friends whom he had found. He did not want them in such company.

The old lady, imperious and prompt to anger, was about to resent the check she had received, but a second thought made her pause. "Those two girls," she thought, "a sick-bed—an interesting stranger—of course he has been falling in love with one of them." Madame Bernstein looked round with a mischievous glance at Lady Maria, who entered the room at this juncture.



CHAPTER XXV. New Acquaintances

Cousin Maria made her appearance, attended by a couple of gardener's boys bearing baskets of flowers, with which it was proposed to decorate Madame de Bernstein's drawing-room against the arrival of her ladyship's company. Three footmen in livery, gorgeously laced with worsted, set out twice as many card-tables. A major-domo in black and a bag, with fine laced ruffles; and looking as if he ought to have a sword by his side, followed the lacqueys bearing fasces of wax candles, which he placed a pair on each card-table, and in the silver sconces on the wainscoted wall that was now gilt with the slanting rays of the sun, as was the prospect of the green common beyond, with its rocks and clumps of trees and houses twinkling in the sunshine. Groups of many-coloured figures in hoops and powder and brocade sauntered over the green, and dappled the plain with their shadows. On the other side from the Baroness's windows you saw the Pantiles, where a perpetual fair was held, and heard the clatter and buzzing of the company. A band of music was here performing for the benefit of the visitors to the Wells. Madame Bernstein's chief sitting-room might not suit a recluse or a student, but for those who liked bustle, gaiety, a bright cross light, and a view of all that was going on in the cheery busy place, no lodging could be pleasanter. And when the windows were lighted up, the passengers walking below were aware that her ladyship was at home and holding a card-assembly, to which an introduction was easy enough. By the way, in speaking of the past, I think the night-life of society a hundred years since was rather a dark life. There was not one wax-candle for ten which we now see in a lady's drawing-room: let alone gas and the wondrous new illuminations of clubs. Horrible guttering tallow smoked and stunk in passages. The candle-snuffer was a notorious officer in the theatre. See Hogarth's pictures: how dark they are, and how his feasts are, as it were, begrimed with tallow! In "Marriage a la Mode," in Lord Viscount Squanderfield's grand saloons, where he and his wife are sitting yawning before the horror-stricken steward when their party is over—there are but eight candles—one on each card-table, and half a dozen in a brass chandelier. If Jack Briefless convoked his friends to oysters and beer in his chambers, Pump Court, he would have twice as many. Let us comfort ourselves by thinking that Louis Quatorze in all his glory held his revels in the dark, and bless Mr. Price and other Luciferous benefactors of mankind, for banishing the abominable mutton of our youth.

So Maria with her flowers (herself the fairest flower), popped her roses, sweet-williams, and so forth, in vases here and there, and adorned the apartment to the best of her art. She lingered fondly over this bowl and that dragon jar, casting but sly timid glances the while at young cousin Harry, whose own blush would have become any young woman, and you might have thought that she possibly intended to outstay her aunt; but that Baroness, seated in her arm-chair, her crooked tortoiseshell stick in her hand, pointed the servants imperiously to their duty; rated one and the other soundly: Tom for having a darn in his stocking; John for having greased his locks too profusely out of the candle-box; and so forth—keeping a stern domination over them. Another remark concerning poor Jeames of a hundred years ago: Jeames slept two in a bed, four in a room, and that room a cellar very likely, and he washed in a trough such as you would hardly see anywhere in London now out of the barracks of her Majesty's Foot Guards.

If Maria hoped a present interview, her fond heart was disappointed. "Where are you going to dine, Harry?" asks Madame de Bernstein. "My niece Maria and I shall have a chicken in the little parlour—I think you should go to the best ordinary. There is one at the White Horse at three, we shall hear his bell in a minute or two. And you will understand, sir, that you ought not to spare expense, but behave like Princess Pocahontas's son. Your trunks have been taken over to the lodging I have engaged for you. It is not good for a lad to be always hanging about the aprons of two old women. Is it, Maria?"

"No," says her ladyship, dropping her meek eyes; whilst the other lady's glared in triumph. I think Andromeda had been a good deal exposed to the Dragon in the course of the last five or six days: and if Perseus had cut the latter's cruel head off he would have committed not unjustifiable monstricide. But he did not bare sword or shield; he only looked mechanically at the lacqueys in tawny and blue as they creaked about the room.

"And there are good mercers and tailors from London always here to wait on the company at the Wells. You had better see them, my dear, for your suit is not of the very last fashion—a little lace——"

"I can't go out of mourning, ma'am," said the young man, looking down at his sables.

"Ho, sir," cried the lady, rustling up from her chair and rising on her cane, "wear black for your brother till you are as old as Methuselah, if you like. I am sure I don't want to prevent you. I only want you to dress, and to do like other people, and make a figure worthy of your name."

"Madam," said Mr. Warrington with great state, "I have not done anything to disgrace it that I know."

Why did the old Woman stop and give a little start as if she had been struck? Let bygones be bygones. She and the boy had a score of little passages of this kind in which swords were crossed and thrusts rapidly dealt or parried. She liked Harry none the worse for his courage in facing her. "Sure a little finer linen than that shirt you wear will not be a disgrace to you, sir," she said, with rather a forced laugh.

Harry bowed and blushed. It was one of the homely gifts of his Oakhurst friends. He felt pleased somehow to think he wore it; thought of the new friends, so good, so pure, so simple, so kindly, with immense tenderness, and felt, while invested in this garment, as if evil could not touch him. He said he would go to his lodging, and make a point of returning arrayed in the best linen he had.

"Come back here, sir," said Madame Bernstein, "and if our company has not arrived, Maria and I will find some ruffles for you!" And herewith, under a footman's guidance, the young fellow walked off to his new lodgings.

Harry found not only handsome and spacious apartments provided for him, but a groom in attendance waiting to be engaged by his honour, and a second valet, if he was inclined to hire one to wait upon Mr. Gumbo. Ere he had been many minutes in his rooms, emissaries from a London tailor and bootmaker waited him with the cards and compliments of their employers, Messrs. Regnier and Tull; the best articles in his modest wardrobe were laid out by Gumbo, and the finest linen with which his thrifty Virginian mother had provided him. Visions of the snow-surrounded home in his own country, of the crackling logs and the trim quiet ladies working by the fire, rose up before him. For the first time a little thought that the homely clothes were not quite smart enough, the home-worked linen not so fine as it might be, crossed the young man's mind. That he should be ashamed of anything belonging to him or to Castlewood! That was strange. The simple folks there were only too well satisfied with all things that were done, or said, or produced at Castlewood; and Madam Esmond, when she sent her son forth on his travels, thought no young nobleman need be better provided. The clothes might have fitted better and been of a later fashion, to be sure—but still the young fellow presented a comely figure enough when he issued from his apartments, his toilet over; and Gumbo calling a chair, marched beside it, until they reached the ordinary where the young gentleman was to dine.

Here he expected to find the beau whose acquaintance he had made a few hours before at his aunt's lodging, and who had indicated to Harry that the White Horse was the most modish place for dining at the Wells, and he mentioned his friend's name to the host: but the landlord and waiters leading him into the room with many smiles and bows assured his honour that his honour did not need any other introduction than his own, helped him to hang up his coat and sword on a peg, asked him whether he would drink Burgundy, Pontac, or champagne to his dinner, and led him to a table.

Though the most fashionable ordinary in the village, the White Horse did not happen to be crowded on this day. Monsieur Barbeau, the landlord, informed Harry that there was a great entertainment at Summer Hill, which had taken away most of the company; indeed, when Harry entered the room, there were but four other gentlemen in it. Two of these guests were drinking wine, and had finished their dinner: the other two were young men in the midst of their meal, to whom the landlord, as he passed, must have whispered the name of the new-comer, for they looked at him with some appearance of interest, and made him a slight bow across the table as the smiling host bustled away for Harry's dinner.

Mr. Warrington returned the salute of the two gentlemen, who bade him welcome to Tunbridge, and hoped he would like the place upon better acquaintance. Then they smiled and exchanged waggish looks with each other, of which Harry did not understand the meaning, nor why they cast knowing glances at the two other guests over their wine.

One of these persons was in a somewhat tarnished velvet coat with a huge queue and bag, and voluminous ruffles and embroidery. The other was a little beetle-browed, hook-nosed, high-shouldered gentleman, whom his opposite companion addressed as milor, or my lord, in a very high voice. My lord, who was sipping the wine before him, barely glanced at the new-comer, and then addressed himself to his own companion.

"And so you know the nephew of the old woman—the Croesus who comes to arrive?"

"You're thrown out there, Jack!" says one young gentleman to the other.

"Never could manage the lingo," said Jack. The two elders had begun to speak in the French language.

"But assuredly, my dear lord!" says the gentleman with the long queue.

"You have shown energy, my dear Baron! He has been here but two hours. My people told me of him only as I came to dinner."

"I knew him before!—I have met him often in London with the Baroness and my lord, his cousin," said the Baron.

A smoking soup for Harry here came in, borne by the smiling host. "Behold, sir! Behold a potage of my fashion!" says my landlord, laying down the dish and whispering to Harry the celebrated name of the nobleman opposite. Harry thanked Monsieur Barbeau in his own language, upon which the foreign gentleman, turning round, grinned most graciously at Harry, and said, "Fous bossedez notre langue barfaidement, monsieur." Mr. Warrington had never heard the French language pronounced in that manner in Canada. He bowed in return to the foreign gentleman.

"Tell me more about the Croesus, my good Baron," continued his lordship, speaking rather superciliously to his companion, and taking no notice of Harry, which perhaps somewhat nettled the young man.

"What will you, that I tell you, my dear lord? Croesus is a youth like other youths; he is tall, like other youths; he is awkward, like other youths; he has black hair, as they all have who come from the Indies. Lodgings have been taken for him at Mrs. Rose's toy-shop."

"I have lodgings there too," thought Mr. Warrington. "Who is Croesus they are talking of? How good the soup is!"

"He travels with a large retinue," the Baron continued, "four servants, two postchaises, and a pair of outriders. His chief attendant is a black man who saved his life from the savages in America, and who will not hear, on any account, of being made free. He persists in wearing mourning for his elder brother from whom he inherits his principality."

"Could anything console you for the death of yours, Chevalier?" cried out the elder gentleman.

"Milor! his property might," said the Chevalier, "which you know is not small."

"Your brother lives on his patrimony—which you have told me is immense—you by your industry, my dear Chevalier."

"Milor!" cries the individual addressed as Chevalier.

"By your industry or your esprit,—how much more noble! Shall you be at the Baroness's to-night? She ought to be a little of your parents, Chevalier?"

"Again I fail to comprehend your lordship," said the other gentleman, rather sulkily.

"Why, she is a woman of great wit—she is of noble birth—she has undergone strange adventures—she has but little principle (there you happily have the advantage of her). But what care we men of the world? You intend to go and play with the young Creole, no doubt, and get as much money from him as you can. By the way, Baron, suppose he should be a guet-apens, that young Creole? Suppose our excellent friend has invented him up in London, and brings him down with his character for wealth to prey upon the innocent folks here?"

"J'y ai souvent pense, milor," says the little Baron, placing his finger to his nose very knowingly, "that Baroness is capable of anything."

"A Baron—a Baroness, que voulez-vous, my friend? I mean the late lamented husband. Do you know who he was?"

"Intimately. A more notorious villain never dealt a card. At Venice, at Brussels, at Spa, at Vienna—the gaols of every one of which places he knew. I knew the man, my lord."

"I thought you would. I saw him at the Hague, where I first had the honour of meeting you, and a more disreputable rogue never entered my doors. A minister must open them to all sorts of people, Baron,—spies, sharpers, ruffians of every sort."

"Parbleu, milor, how you treat them!" says my lord's companion.

"A man of my rank, my friend—of the rank I held then—of course, must see all sorts of people—entre autres your acquaintance. What his wife could want with such a name as his I can't conceive."

"Apparently, it was better than the lady's own."

"Effectively! So I have heard of my friend Paddy changing clothes with the scarecrow. I don't know which name is the most distinguished, that of the English bishop or the German baron."

"My lord," cried the other gentleman, rising and laying his hand on a large star on his coat, "you forget that I, too, am a Baron and a Chevalier of the Holy Roman——"

"—Order of the Spur!—not in the least, my dear knight and baron! You will have no more wine? We shall meet at Madame de Bernstein's to-night." The knight and baron quitted the table, felt in his embroidered pockets, as if for money to give the waiter, who brought him his great laced hat, and waving that menial off with a hand surrounded by large ruffles and blazing rings, he stalked away from the room.

It was only when the person addressed as my lord had begun to speak of the bishop's widow and the German baron's wife that Harry Warrington was aware how his aunt and himself had been the subject of the two gentlemen's conversation. Ere the conviction had settled itself on his mind, one of the speakers had quitted the room, and the other, turning to a table at which two gentlemen sate, said, "What a little sharper it is! Everything I said about Bernstein relates mutato nomine to him. I knew the fellow to be a spy and a rogue. He has changed his religion I don't know how many times. I had him turned out of the Hague myself when I was ambassador, and I know he was caned in Vienna."

"I wonder my Lord Chesterfield associates with such a villain!" called out Harry from his table. The other couple of diners looked at him. To his surprise the nobleman so addressed went on talking.

"There cannot be a more fieffe coquin than this Poellnitz. Why, Heaven be thanked, he has actually left me my snuff-box! You laugh?—the fellow is capable of taking it." And my lord thought it was his own satire at which the young men were laughing.

"You are quite right, sir," said one of the two diners, turning to Mr. Warrington, "though, saving your presence, I don't know what business it is of yours. My lord will play with anybody who will set him. Don't be alarmed, he is as deaf as a post, and did not hear a word that you said; and that's why my lord will play with anybody who will put a pack of cards before him, and that is the reason why he consorts with this rogue."

"Faith, I know other noblemen who are not particular as to their company," says Mr. Jack.

"Do you mean because I associate with you? I know my company, my good friend, and I defy most men to have the better of me."

Not having paid the least attention to Mr. Warrington's angry interruption, my lord opposite was talking in his favourite French with Monsieur Barbeau, the landlord, and graciously complimenting him on his dinner. The host bowed again and again; was enchanted that his Excellency was satisfied: had not forgotten the art which he had learned when he was a young man in his Excellency's kingdom of Ireland. The salmi was to my lord's liking? He had just served a dish to the young American seigneur who sate opposite, the gentleman from Virginia.

"To whom?" My lord's pale face became red for a moment, as he asked this question, and looked towards Harry Warrington, opposite to him.

"To the young gentleman from Virginia who has just arrived, and who perfectly possesses our beautiful language!" says Mr. Barbeau, thinking to kill two birds, as it were, with this one stone of a compliment.

"And to whom your lordship will be answerable for language reflecting upon my family, and uttered in the presence of these gentlemen," cried out Mr. Warrington, at the top of his voice, determined that his opponent should hear.

"You must go and call into his ear, and then he may perchance hear you," said one of the younger guests.

"I will take care that his lordship shall understand my meaning, one way or other," Mr. Warrington said, with much dignity; "and will not suffer calumnies regarding my relatives to be uttered by him or any other man!"

Whilst Harry was speaking, the little nobleman opposite to him did not hear him, but had time sufficient to arrange his own reply. He had risen, passing his handkerchief once or twice across his mouth, and laying his slim fingers on the table. "Sir," said he, "you will believe, on the word of a gentleman, that I had no idea before whom I was speaking, and it seems that my acquaintance, Monsieur de Poellnitz, knew you no better than myself. Had I known you, believe me that I should have been the last man in the world to utter a syllable that should give you annoyance; and I tender you my regrets and apologies, before my Lord March and Mr. Morris here present."

To these words, Mr. Warrington could only make a bow, and mumble out a few words of acknowledgment: which speech having made believe to hear, my lord made Harry another very profound bow, and saying he should have the honour of waiting upon Mr. Warrington at his lodgings, saluted the company, and went away.



CHAPTER XXVI. In which we are at a very Great Distance from Oakhurst

Within the precinct of the White Horse Tavern, and coming up to the windows of the eating-room, was a bowling-green, with a table or two, where guests might sit and partake of punch or tea. The three gentlemen having come to an end of their dinner about the same time, Mr. Morris proposed that they should adjourn to the Green, and there drink a cool bottle. "Jack Morris would adjourn to the Dust Hole, as a pretext for a fresh drink," said my lord. On which Jack said he supposed each gentleman had his own favourite way of going to the deuce. His weakness, he owned, was a bottle.

"My Lord Chesterfield's deuce is deuce-ace," says my Lord March. "His lordship can't keep away from the cards or dice."

"My Lord March has not one devil, but several devils. He loves gambling, he loves horse-racing, he loves betting, he loves drinking, he loves eating, he loves money, he loves women; and you have fallen into bad company, Mr. Warrington, when you lighted upon his lordship. He will play you for every acre you have in Virginia."

"With the greatest pleasure in life, Mr. Warrington!" interposes my lord.

"And for all your tobacco, and for all your spices, and for all your slaves, and for all your oxen and asses, and for everything that is yours."

"Shall we begin now? Jack, you are never without a dice-box or a bottle-screw. I will set Mr. Warrington for what he likes."

"Unfortunately, my lord, the tobacco, and the slaves, and the asses, and the oxen, are not mine, as yet. I am just of age, and my mother, scarce twenty years older, has quite as good chance of long life as I have."

"I will bet you that you survive her. I will pay you a sum now against four times the sum to be paid at her death. I will set you a fair sum over this table against the reversion of your estate in Virginia at the old lady's departure. What do you call your place?"

"Castlewood."

"A principality, I hear it is. I will bet that its value has been exaggerated ten times at least amongst the quidnuncs here. How came you by the name of Castlewood?—you are related to my lord? Oh, stay: I know,—my lady, your mother, descends from the real head of the house. He took the losing side in '15. I have had the story a dozen times from my old Duchess. She knew your grandfather. He was friend of Addison and Steele, and Pope and Milton, I dare say, and the bigwigs. It is a pity he did not stay at home, and transport the other branch of the family to the plantations."

"I have just been staying at Castlewood with my cousin there," remarked Mr. Warrington.

"Hm! Did you play with him? He's fond of pasteboard and bones."

"Never, but for sixpences and a pool of commerce with the ladies."

"So much the better for both of you. But you played with Will Esmond if he was at home? I will lay ten to one you played with Will Esmond."

Harry blushed, and owned that of an evening his cousin and he had had a few games at cards.

"And Tom Sampson, the chaplain," cried Jack Morris, "was he of the party? I wager that Tom made a third, and the Lord deliver you from Tom and Will Esmond together!"

"Nay; the truth is, I won of both of them," said Mr. Warrington.

"And they paid you? Well, miracles will never cease!"

"I did not say anything about miracles," remarked Mr. Harry, smiling over his wine.

"And you don't tell tales out of school—the volto sciolto—hey, Mr. Warrington?" says my lord.

"I beg your pardon," said downright Harry, "French is the only language besides my own of which I know a little."

"My Lord March has learned Italian at the Opera, and a pretty penny his lessons have cost him," remarked Jack Morris. "We must show him the Opera—mustn't we, March?"

"Must we, Morris?" said my lord, as if he only half liked the other's familiarity.

Both of the two gentlemen were dressed alike, in small scratch-wigs without powder, in blue frocks with plate buttons, in buckskins and riding-boots, in little hats with a narrow cord of lace, and no outward mark of fashion.

"I don't care about the Opera much, my lord," says Harry, warming with his wine; "but I should like to go to Newmarket, and long to see a good English hunting-field."

"We will show you Newmarket and the hunting-field, sir. Can you ride pretty well?"

"I think I can," Harry said; "and I can shoot pretty well, and jump some."

"What's your weight? I bet you we weigh even, or I weigh most. I bet you Jack Morris beats you at birds or a mark, at five-and-twenty paces. I bet you I jump farther than you on flat ground, here on this green."

"I don't know Mr. Morris's shooting—I never saw either gentleman before—but I take your bets, my lord, at what you please," cries Harry, who by this time was more than warm with Burgundy.

"Ponies on each!" cried my lord.

"Done and done!" cried my lord and Harry together. The young man thought it was for the honour of his country not to be ashamed of any bet made to him.

"We can try the last bet now, if your feet are pretty steady," said my lord, springing up, stretching his arms and limbs, and looking at the crisp, dry grass. He drew his boots off, then his coat and waistcoat, buckling his belt round his waist, and flinging his clothes down to the ground.

Harry had more respect for his garments. It was his best suit. He took off the velvet coat and waistcoat, folded them up daintily, and, as the two or three tables round were slopped with drink, went to place the clothes on a table in the eating-room, of which the windows were open.

Here a new guest had entered; and this was no other than Mr. Wolfe, who was soberly eating a chicken and salad, with a modest pint of wine. Harry was in high spirits. He told the Colonel he had a bet with my Lord March—would Colonel Wolfe stand him halves? The Colonel said he was too poor to bet. Would he come out and see fair play? That he would with all his heart. Colonel Wolfe set down his glass, and stalked through the open window after his young friend.

"Who is that tallow-faced Put with the carroty hair?" says Jack Morris, on whom the Burgundy had had its due effect.

Mr. Warrington explained that this was Lieutenant-Colonel Wolfe, of the 20th Regiment.

"Your humble servant, gentlemen!" says the Colonel, making the company a rigid military bow.

"Never saw such a figure in my life!" cries Jack Morris. "Did you—March?"

"I beg your pardon, I think you said March?" said the Colonel, looking very much surprised.

"I am the Earl of March, sir, at Colonel Wolfe's service," said the nobleman, bowing. "My friend, Mr. Morris, is so intimate with me, that, after dinner, we are quite like brothers."

Why is not all Tunbridge Wells by to hear this? thought Morris. And he was so delighted that he shouted out, "Two to one on my lord!"

"Done!" calls out Mr. Warrington; and the enthusiastic Jack was obliged to cry "Done!" too.

"Take him, Colonel," Harry whispers to his friend.

But the Colonel said he could not afford to lose, and therefore could not hope to win.

"I see you have won one of our bets already, Mr. Warrington," my Lord March remarked. "I am taller than you by an inch or two, but you are broader round the shoulders."

"Pooh, my dear Will! I bet you you weigh twice as much as he does!" cries Jack Morris.

"Done, Jack!" says my lord, laughing. "The bets are all ponies. Will you take him, Mr. Warrington?"

"No, my dear fellow—one's enough," says Jack.

"Very good, my dear fellow," says my lord; "and now we will settle the other wager."

Having already arrayed himself in his best silk stockings, black satin-net breeches, and neatest pumps, Harry did not care to take off his shoes as his antagonist had done, whose heavy riding-boots and spurs were, to be sure, little calculated for leaping. They had before them a fine even green turf of some thirty yards in length, enough for a run and enough for a jump. A gravel walk ran around this green, beyond which was a wall and gate-sign—a field azure, bearing the Hanoverian White Horse rampant between two skittles proper, and for motto the name of the landlord and of the animal depicted.

My lord's friend laid a handkerchief on the ground as the mark whence the leapers were to take their jump, and Mr. Wolfe stood at the other end of the grass-plat to note the spot where each came down. "My lord went first," writes Mr. Warrington, in a letter to Mrs. Mountain, at Castlewood, Virginia, still extant. "He was for having me take the lead; but, remembering the story about the Battel of Fontanoy which my dearest George used to tell, I says, 'Monseigneur le Comte, tirez le premier, s'il vous play.' So he took his run in his stocken feet, and for the honour of Old Virginia, I had the gratafacation of beating his lordship by more than two feet—viz., two feet nine inches—me jumping twenty-one feet three inches, by the drawer's measured tape, and his lordship only eighteen six. I had won from him about my weight before (which I knew the moment I set my eye upon him). So he and Mr. Jack paid me these two betts. And with my best duty to my mother—she will not be displeased with me, for I bett for the honor of the Old Dominion, and my opponent was a nobleman of the first quality, himself holding two Erldomes, and heir to a Duke. Betting is all the rage here, and the bloods and young fellows of fashion are betting away from morning till night.

"I told them—and that was my mischief perhaps—that there was a gentleman at home who could beat me by a good foot; and when they asked who it was, and I said Col. G. Washington, of Mount Vernon—as you know he can, and he's the only man in his county or mine that can do it—Mr. Wolfe asked me ever so many questions about Col. G. W., and showed that he had heard of him, and talked over last year's unhappy campane as if he knew every inch of the ground, and he knew the names of all our rivers, only he called the Potowmac Pottamac, at which we had a good laugh at him. My Lord of March and Ruglen was not in the least ill-humour about losing, and he and his friend handed me notes out of their pocket-books, which filled mine that was getting very empty, for the vales to the servants at my cousin Castlewood's house and buying a horse at Oakhurst have very nearly put me on the necessity of making another draft upon my honoured mother or her London or Bristol agent."

These feats of activity over, the four gentlemen now strolled out of the tavern garden into the public walk, where, by this time, a great deal of company was assembled: upon whom Mr. Jack, who was of a frank and free nature, with a loud voice, chose to make remarks that were not always agreeable. And here, if my Lord March made a joke, of which his lordship was not sparing, Jack roared, "Oh, ho, ho! Oh, good Gad! Oh, my dear earl! Oh, my dear lord, you'll be the death of me!" "It seemed as if he wished everybody to know," writes Harry sagaciously to Mrs. Mountain, "that his friend and companion was an Erl!"

There was, indeed, a great variety of characters who passed. M. Poellnitz, no finer dressed than he had been at dinner, grinned, and saluted with his great laced hat and tarnished feathers. Then came by my Lord Chesterfield, in a pearl-coloured suit, with his blue ribbon and star, and saluted the young men in his turn.

"I will back the old boy for taking his hat off against the whole kingdom, and France either," says my Lord March. "He has never changed the shape of that hat of his for twenty years. Look at it. There it goes again! Do you see that great, big, awkward, pock-marked, snuff-coloured man, who hardly touches his clumsy beaver in reply. D—— his confounded impudence—do you know who that is?"

"No, curse him! Who is it, March?" asks Jack, with an oath.

"It's one Johnson, a Dictionary-maker, about whom my Lord Chesterfield wrote some most capital papers, when his dixonary was coming out, to patronise the fellow. I know they were capital. I've heard Horry Walpole say so, and he knows all about that kind of thing. Confound the impudent schoolmaster!"

"Hang him, he ought to stand in the pillory!" roars Jack.

"That fat man he's walking with is another of your writing fellows,—a printer,—his name is Richardson; he wrote Clarissa, you know."

"Great heavens! my lord, is that the great Richardson? Is that the man who wrote Clarissa?" called out Colonel Wolfe and Mr. Warrington, in a breath.

Harry ran forward to look at the old gentleman toddling along the walk with a train of admiring ladies surrounding him.

"Indeed, my very dear sir," one was saying, "you are too great and good to live in such a world; but sure you were sent to teach it virtue!"

"Ah, my Miss Mulso! Who shall teach the teacher?" said the good, fat old man, raising a kind, round face skywards. "Even he has his faults and errors! Even his age and experience does not prevent him from stumbl—-. Heaven bless my soul, Mr. Johnson! I ask your pardon if I have trodden on your corn."

"You have done both, sir. You have trodden on the corn, and received the pardon," said Mr. Johnson, and went on mumbling some verses, swaying to and fro, his eyes turned towards the ground, his hands behind him, and occasionally endangering with his great stick the honest, meek eyes of his companion-author.

"They do not see very well, my dear Mulso," he says to the young lady, "but such as they are, I would keep my lash from Mr. Johnson's cudgel. Your servant, sir." Here he made a low bow, and took off his hat to Mr. Warrington, who shrank back with many blushes, after saluting the great author. The great author was accustomed to be adored. A gentler wind never puffed mortal vanity. Enraptured spinsters flung tea-leaves round him, and incensed him with the coffee-pot. Matrons kissed the slippers they had worked for him. There was a halo of virtue round his nightcap. All Europe had thrilled, panted, admired, trembled, wept, over the pages of the immortal little, kind, honest man with the round paunch. Harry came back quite glowing and proud at having a bow from him. "Ah!" says he, "my lord, I am glad to have seen him!"

"Seen him! why, dammy, you may see him any day in his shop, I suppose?" says Jack, with a laugh.

"My brother declared that he, and Mr. Fielding, I think, was the name, were the greatest geniuses in England; and often used to say, that when we came to Europe, his first pilgrimage would be to Mr. Richardson," cried Harry, always impetuous, honest, and tender, when he spoke of the dearest friend.

"Your brother spoke like a man," cried Mr. Wolfe, too, his pale face likewise flushing up. "I would rather be a man of genius, than a peer of the realm."

"Every man to his taste, Colonel," says my lord, much amused. "Your enthusiasm—I don't mean anything personal—refreshes me, on my honour it does."

"So it does me—by gad—perfectly refreshes me," cries Jack

"So it does Jack—you see—it actually refreshes Jack! I say, Jack, which would you rather be?—a fat old printer," who has written a story about a confounded girl and a fellow that ruins her,—or a peer of Parliament with ten thousand a year?"

"March—my Lord March, do you take me for a fool?" says Jack, with a tearful voice. "Have I done anything to deserve this language from you?"

"I would rather win honour than honours: I would rather have genius than wealth. I would rather make my name than inherit it, though my father's, thank God, is an honest one," said the young Colonel. "But pardon me, gentlemen," and here making, them a hasty salutation, he ran across the parade towards a young and elderly lady and a gentleman, who were now advancing.

"It is the beautiful Miss Lowther. I remember now," says my lord. "See! he takes her arm! The report is, he is engaged to her."

"You don't mean to say such a fellow is engaged to any of the Lowthers of the North?" cries out Jack. "Curse me, what is the world come to, with your printers, and your half-pay ensigns, and your schoolmasters, and your infernal nonsense?"

The Dictionary-maker, who had shown so little desire to bow to my Lord Chesterfield, when that famous nobleman courteously saluted him, was here seen to take off his beaver, and bow almost to the ground, before a florid personage in a large round hat, with bands and a gown, who made his appearance in the Walk. This was my Lord Bishop of Salisbury, wearing complacently the blue riband and badge of the Garter, of which Noble Order his lordship was prelate.

Mr. Johnson stood, hat in hand, during the whole time of his conversation with Dr. Gilbert; who made many flattering and benedictory remarks to Mr. Richardson, declaring that he was the supporter of virtue, the preacher of sound morals, the mainstay of religion, of all which points the honest printer himself was perfectly convinced.

Do not let any young lady trip to her grandpapa's bookcase in consequence of this eulogium, and rashly take down Clarissa from the shelf. She would not care to read the volumes, over which her pretty ancestresses wept and thrilled a hundred years ago; which were commended by divines from pulpits and belauded all Europe over. I wonder, are our women more virtuous than their grandmothers, or only more squeamish? If the former, then Miss Smith of New York is certainly more modest than Miss Smith of London, who still does not scruple to say that tables, pianos, and animals have legs. Oh, my faithful, good old Samuel Richardson! Hath the news yet reached thee in Hades that thy sublime novels are huddled away in corners, and that our daughters may no more read Clarissa than Tom Jones? Go up, Samuel, and be reconciled with thy brother-scribe, whom in life thou didst hate so. I wonder whether a century hence the novels of to-day will be hidden behind locks and wires, and make pretty little maidens blush?

"Who is yonder queer person in the high headdress of my grandmother's time, who stops and speaks to Mr. Richardson?" asked Harry, as a fantastically dressed lady came up, and performed a curtsey and a compliment to the bowing printer.

Jack Morris nervously struck Harry a blow in the side with the butt end of his whip. Lord March laughed.

"Yonder queer person is my gracious kinswoman, Katharine, Duchess of Dover and Queensberry, at your service, Mr. Warrington. She was a beauty price! She is changed now, isn't she? What an old Gorgon it is! She is a great patroness of your book-men and when that old frump was young, they actually made verses about her."

The Earl quitted his friends for a moment to make his bow to the old Duchess, Jack Morris explaining to Mr. Warrington how, at the Duke's death, my Lord of March and Ruglen would succeed to his cousin's dukedoms.

"I suppose," says Harry, simply, "his lordship is here in attendance upon the old lady?"

Jack burst into a loud laugh.

"Oh yes! very much! exactly!" says he. "Why, my dear fellow, you don't mean to say you haven't heard about the little Opera-dancer?"

"I am but lately arrived in England, Mr. Morris," said Harry, with a smile, "and in Virginia, I own, we have not heard much about the little Opera-dancer."

Luckily for us, the secret about the little Opera-dancer never was revealed, for the young men's conversation was interrupted by a lady in a cardinal cape, and a hat by no means unlike those lovely headpieces which have returned into vogue a hundred years after the date of our present history, who made a profound curtsey to the two gentlemen and received their salutation in return. She stopped opposite to Harry; she held out her hand, rather to his wonderment:

"Have you so soon forgotten me, Mr. Warrington?" she said.

Off went Harry's hat in an instant. He started, blushed, stammered, and called out Good Heavens! as if there had been any celestial wonder in the circumstance! It was Lady Maria come out for a walk. He had not been thinking about her. She was, to say truth, for the moment so utterly out of the young gentleman's mind, that her sudden re-entry there and appearance in the body startled Mr. Warrington's faculties, and caused those guilty blushes to crowd into his cheeks.

No. He was not even thinking of her! A week ago—a year, a hundred years ago it seemed—he would not have been surprised to meet her anywhere. Appearing from amidst darkling shrubberies, gliding over green garden terraces, loitering on stairs or corridors, hovering even in his dreams, all day or all night, bodily or spiritually, he had been accustomed to meet her. A week ago his heart used to beat. A week ago, and at the very instant when he jumped out of his sleep, there was her idea smiling on him. And it was only last Tuesday that his love was stabbed and slain, and he not only had left off mourning for her, but had forgotten her!

"You will come and walk with me a little?" she said. "Or would you like the music best? I dare say you will like the music best."

"You know," said Harry, "I don't care about any music much, except"—he was thinking of the evening hymn—"except of your playing." He turned very red again as he spoke, he felt he was perjuring himself horribly.

The poor lady was agitated herself by the flutter and agitation which she saw in her young companion. Gracious Heaven! Could that tremor and excitement mean that she was mistaken, and that the lad was still faithful? "Give me your arm, and let us take a little walk," she said, waving round a curtsey to the other two gentlemen: "my aunt is asleep after her dinner." Harry could not but offer the arm, and press the hand that lay against his heart. Maria made another fine curtsey to Harry's bowing companions, and walked off with her prize. In her griefs, in her rages, in the pains and anguish of wrong and desertion, how a woman remembers to smile, curtsey, caress, dissemble! How resolutely they discharge the social proprieties; how they have a word, or a hand, or a kind little speech or reply for the passing acquaintance who crosses unknowing the path of the tragedy, drops a light airy remark or two (happy self-satisfied rogue!) and passes on. He passes on, and thinks that woman was rather pleased with what I said. "That joke I made was rather neat. I do really think Lady Maria looks rather favourably at me, and she's a dev'lish fine woman, begad she is!" O you wiseacre! Such was Jack Morris's observation and case as he walked away leaning on the arm of his noble friend, and thinking the whole Society of the Wells was looking at him. He had made some exquisite remarks about a particular run of cards at Lady Flushington's the night before, and Lady Maria had replied graciously and neatly, and so away went Jack perfectly happy.

The absurd creature! I declare we know nothing of anybody (but that for my part I know better and better every day). You enter smiling to see your new acquaintance, Mrs. A. and her charming family. You make your bow in the elegant drawing-room of Mr. and Mrs. B.? I tell you that in your course through life you are for ever putting your great clumsy foot upon the mute invisible wounds of bleeding tragedies. Mrs. B.'s closets for what you know are stuffed with skeletons. Look there under the sofa-cushion. Is that merely Missy's doll, or is it the limb of a stifled Cupid peeping out? What do you suppose are those ashes smouldering in the grate?—Very likely a suttee has been offered up there just before you came in: a faithful heart has been burned out upon a callous corpse, and you are looking on the cineri doloso. You see B. and his wife receiving their company before dinner. Gracious powers! Do you know that that bouquet which she wears is a signal to Captain C., and that he will find a note under the little bronze Shakespeare on the mantelpiece in the study? And with all this you go up and say some uncommonly neat thing (as you fancy) to Mrs. B. about the weather (clever dog!), or about Lady E.'s last party (fashionable buck!), or about the dear children in the nursery (insinuating rogue!). Heaven and earth, my good sir, how can you tell that B. is not going to pitch all the children out of the nursery window this very night, or that his lady has not made an arrangement for leaving them, and running off with the Captain? How do you know that those footmen are not disguised bailiffs?—that yonder large-looking butler (really a skeleton) is not the pawnbroker's man? and that there are not skeleton rotis and entrees under every one of the covers? Look at their feet peeping from under the tablecloth. Mind how you stretch out your own lovely little slippers, madam, lest you knock over a rib or two. Remark the death's-head moths fluttering among the flowers. See, the pale winding-sheets gleaming in the wax-candles! I know it is an old story, and especially that this preacher has yelled vanitas vanitatum five hundred times before. I can't help always falling upon it, and cry out with particular loudness and wailing, and become especially melancholy, when I see a dead love tied to a live love. Ha! I look up from my desk, across the street: and there come in Mr. and Mrs. D. from their walk in Kensington Gardens. How she hangs on him! how jolly and happy he looks, as the children frisk round! My poor dear benighted Mrs. D., there is a Regent's Park as well as a Kensington Gardens in the world. Go in, fond wretch! Smilingly lay before him what you know he likes for dinner. Show him the children's copies and the reports of their masters. Go with Missy to the piano, and play your artless duet together; and fancy you are happy!

There go Harry and Maria taking their evening walk on the common, away from the village which is waking up from its after-dinner siesta, and where the people are beginning to stir and the music to play. With the music Maria knows Madame de Bernstein will waken: with the candles she must be back to the tea-table and the cards. Never mind. Here is a minute. It may be my love is dead, but here is a minute to kneel over the grave and pray by it. He certainly was not thinking about her: he was startled and did not even know her. He was laughing and talking with Jack Morris and my Lord March. He is twenty years younger than she. Never mind. To-day is to-day in which we are all equal. This moment is ours. Come, let us walk a little way over the heath, Harry. She will go, though she feels a deadly assurance that he will tell her all is over between them, and that he loves the dark-haired girl at Oakhurst.



CHAPTER XXVII. Plenus Opus Aleae

"Let me hear about those children, child, whom I saw running about at the house where they took you in, poor dear boy, after your dreadful fall?" says Maria, as they paced the common. "Oh, that fall, Harry! I thought I should have died when I saw it! You needn't squeeze one's arm so. You know you don't care for me?"

"The people are the very best, kindest, dearest people I have ever met in the world," cries Mr. Warrington. "Mrs. Lambert was a friend of my mother when she was in Europe for her education. Colonel Lambert is a most accomplished gentleman, and has seen service everywhere. He was in Scotland with his Royal Highness, in Flanders, at Minorca. No natural parents could be kinder than they were to me. How can I show my gratitude to them? I want to make them a present: I must make them a present," says Harry, clapping his hand into his pocket, which was filled with the crisp spoils of Morris and March.

"We can go to the toy-shop, my dear, and buy a couple of dolls for the children," says Lady Maria. "You would offend the parents by offering anything like payment for their kindness."

"Dolls for Hester and Theo! Why, do you think a woman is not woman till she is forty, Maria?" (The arm under Harry's here gave a wince perhaps,—ever so slight a wince.) "I can tell you Miss Hester by no means considers herself a child, and Miss Theo is older than her sister. They know ever so many languages. They have read books—oh! piles and piles of books! They play on the harpsichord and sing together admirable; and Theo composes, and sings songs of her own."

"Indeed! I scarcely saw them. I thought they were children. They looked quite childish. I had no idea they had all these perfections, and were such wonders of the world."

"That's just the way with you women! At home, if me or George praised a woman, Mrs. Esmond. and Mountain, too, would be sure to find fault with her!" cries Harry.

"I am sure I would find fault with no one who is kind to you, Mr. Warrington," sighed Maria, "though you are not angry with me for envying them because they had to take care of you when you were wounded and ill—whilst I—I had to leave you?"

"You dear good Maria!"

"No, Harry! I am not dear and good. There, sir, you needn't be so pressing in your attentions. Look! There is your black man walking with a score of other wretches in livery. The horrid creatures are going to fuddle at the tea-garden, and get tipsy like their masters. That dreadful Mr. Morris was perfectly tipsy when I came to you, and frightened you so."

"I had just won great bets from both of them. What shall I buy for you, my dear cousin?" And Harry narrated the triumphs which he had just achieved. He was in high spirits: he laughed, he bragged a little. "For the honour of Virginia I was determined to show them what jumping was," he said. "With a little practice I think I could leap two foot farther."

Maria was pleased with the victories of her young champion. "But you must beware about play, child," she said. "You know it hath been the ruin of our family. My brother Castlewood, Will, our poor father, our aunt, Lady Castlewood herself, they have all been victims to it: as for my Lord March, he is the most dreadful gambler and the most successful of all the nobility."

"I don't intend to be afraid of him, nor of his friend Mr. Jack Morris neither," says Harry, again fingering the delightful notes. "What do you play at Aunt Bernstein's? Cribbage, all-fours, brag, whist, commerce, piquet, quadrille? I'm ready at any of 'em. What o'clock is that striking—sure 'tis seven!"

"And you want to begin now," said the plaintive Maria. "You don't care about walking with your poor cousin. Not long ago you did."

"Hey! Youth is youth, cousin!" cried Mr. Harry, tossing up his head, "and a young fellow must have his fling!" and he strutted by his partner's side, confident, happy, and eager for pleasure. Not long ago he did like to walk with her. Only yesterday, he liked to be with Theo and Hester, and good Mrs. Lambert; but pleasure, life, gaiety, the desire to shine and to conquer, had also their temptations for the lad, who seized the cup like other lads, and did not care to calculate on the headache in store for the morning. Whilst he and his cousin were talking, the fiddles from the open orchestra on the Parade made a great tuning and squeaking, preparatory to their usual evening concert. Maria knew her aunt was awake again, and that she must go back to her slavery. Harry never asked about that slavery, though he must have known it, had he taken the trouble to think. He never pitied his cousin. He was not thinking about her at all. Yet when his mishap befell him, she had been wounded far more cruelly than he was. He had scarce ever been out of her thoughts, which of course she had had to bury under smiling hypocrisies, as is the way with her sex. I know, my dear Mrs. Grundy, you think she was an old fool? Ah! do you suppose fools' caps do not cover grey hair, as well as jet or auburn? Bear gently with our elderly fredaines, O you Minerva of a woman! Or perhaps you are so good and wise that you don't read novels at all. This I know, that there are late crops of wild oats, as well as early harvests of them; and (from observation of self and neighbour) I have an idea that the avena fatua grows up to the very last days of the year.

Like worldly parents anxious to get rid of a troublesome child, and go out to their evening party, Madame Bernstein and her attendants had put the sun to bed, whilst it was as yet light, and had drawn the curtains over it, and were busy about their cards and their candles, and their tea and negus, and other refreshments. One chair after another landed ladies at the Baroness's door, more or less painted, patched, brocaded. To these came gentlemen in gala raiment. Mr. Poellnitz's star was the largest, and his coat the most embroidered of all present. My Lord of March and Ruglen, when he made his appearance, was quite changed from the individual with whom Harry had made acquaintance at the White Horse. His tight brown scratch was exchanged for a neatly curled feather top, with a bag and grey powder, his jockey-dress and leather breeches replaced by a rich and elegant French suit. Mr. Jack Morris had just such another wig and a suit of stuff as closely as possible resembling his lordship's. Mr. Wolfe came in attendance upon his beautiful mistress, Miss Lowther, and her aunt who loved cards, as all the world did. When my Lady Maria Esmond made her appearance, 'tis certain that her looks belied Madame Bernstein's account of her. Her shape was very fine, and her dress showed a great deal of it. Her complexion was by nature exceeding fair, and a dark frilled ribbon, clasped by a jewel, round her neck, enhanced its. snowy whiteness. Her cheeks were not redder than those of other ladies present, and the roses were pretty openly purchased by everybody at the perfumery-shops. An artful patch or two, it was supposed, added to the lustre of her charms. Her hoop was not larger than the iron contrivances which ladies of the present day hang round their persons; and we may pronounce that the costume, if absurd in some points, was pleasing altogether. Suppose our ladies took to wearing of bangles and nose-rings? I dare say we should laugh at the ornaments, and not dislike them, and lovers would make no difficulty about lifting up the ring to be able to approach the rosy lips underneath.

As for the Baroness de Bernstein, when that lady took the pains of making a grand toilette, she appeared as an object, handsome still, and magnificent, but melancholy, and even somewhat terrifying to behold. You read the past in some old faces, while some others lapse into mere meekness and content. The fires go quite out of some eyes, as the crow's-feet pucker round them; they flash no longer with scorn, or with anger, or love; they gaze, and no one is melted by their sapphire glances; they look, and no one is dazzled. My fair young reader, if you are not so perfect a beauty as the peerless Lindamira, Queen of the Ball; if, at the end of it, as you retire to bed, you meekly own that you have had but two or three partners, whilst Lindamira has had a crowd round her all night—console yourself with thinking that, at fifty, you will look as kind and pleasant as you appear now at eighteen. You will not have to lay down your coach-and-six of beauty and see another step into it, and walk yourself through the rest of life. You will have to forgo no long-accustomed homage; you will not witness and own the depreciation of your smiles. You will not see fashion forsake your quarter; and remain all dust, gloom, cobwebs within your once splendid saloons, and placards in your sad windows, gaunt, lonely, and to let! You may not have known any grandeur, but you won't feel any desertion. You will not have enjoyed millions, but you will have escaped bankruptcy. "Our hostess," said my Lord Chesterfield to his friend in a confidential whisper, of which the utterer did not in the least know the loudness, "puts me in mind of Covent Garden in my youth. Then it was the court end of the town, and inhabited by the highest fashion. Now, a nobleman's house is a gaming-house, or you may go in with a friend and call for a bottle."

"Hey! a bottle and a tavern are good things in their way," says my Lord March, with a shrug of his shoulders. "I was not born before the Georges came in, though I intend to live to a hundred. I never knew the Bernstein but as an old woman; and if she ever had beauty, hang me if I know how she spent it."

"No, hang me, how did she spend it?" laughs out Jack Morris.

"Here's a table! Shall we sit down and have a game?—Don't let the Frenchman come in. He won't pay. Mr. Warrington, will you take a card?" Mr. Warrington and my Lord Chesterfield found themselves partners against Mr. Morris and the Earl of March. "You have come too late, Baron," says the elder nobleman to the other nobleman who was advancing. "We have made our game. What, have you forgotten Mr. Warrington of Virginia—the young gentleman whom you met in London?"

"The young gentleman whom I met at Arthur's Chocolate House had black hair, a little cocked nose, and was by no means so fortunate in his personal appearance as Mr. Warrington," said the Baron, with much presence of mind. "Warrington, Dorrington, Harrington? We of the continent cannot retain your insular names. I certify that this gentleman is not the individual of whom I spoke at dinner." And, glancing kindly upon him, the old beau sidled away to a farther end of the room, where Mr. Wolfe and Miss Lowther were engaged in deep conversation in the embrasure of a window. Here the Baron thought fit to engage the Lieutenant-Colonel upon the Prussian manual exercise, which had lately been introduced into King George II.'s army—a subject with which Mr. Wolfe was thoroughly familiar, and which no doubt would have interested him at any other moment but that. Nevertheless the old gentleman uttered his criticisms and opinions, and thought he perfectly charmed the two persons to whom he communicated them.

At the commencement of the evening the Baroness received her guests personally, and as they arrived engaged them in talk and introductory courtesies. But as the rooms and tables filled, and the parties were made up, Madame de Bernstein became more and more restless, and finally retreated with three friends to her own corner, where a table specially reserved for her was occupied by her major-domo. And here the old lady sate down resolutely, never changing her place or quitting her game till cock-crow. The charge of receiving the company devolved now upon my Lady Maria, who did not care for cards, but dutifully did the honours of the house to her aunt's guests, and often rustled by the table where her young cousin was engaged with his three friends.

"Come and cut the cards for us," said my Lord March to her ladyship as she passed on one of her wistful visits. "Cut the cards and bring us luck, Lady Maria! We have had none to-night, and Mr. Warrington is winning everything."

"I hope you are not playing high, Harry?" said the lady, timidly.

"Oh no, only sixpences," cried my lord, dealing.

"Only sixpences," echoed Mr. Morris, who was Lord March's partner. But Mr. Morris must have been very keenly alive to the value of sixpence, if the loss of a few such coins could make his round face look so dismal. My Lord Chesterfield sate opposite Mr. Warrington, sorting his cards. No one could say, by inspecting that calm physiognomy, whether good or ill fortune was attending his lordship.

Some word, not altogether indicative of delight, slipped out of Mr. Morris's lips, on which his partner cried out, "Hang it, Morris, play your cards, and hold your tongue!" Considering they were only playing for sixpences, his lordship, too, was strangely affected.

Maria, still fondly lingering by Harry's chair, with her hand at the back of it, could see his cards, and that a whole covey of trumps was ranged in one corner. She had not taken away his luck. She was pleased to think she had cut that pack which had dealt him all those pretty trumps. As Lord March was dealing, he had said in a quiet voice to Mr. Warrington, "The bet as before, Mr. Warrington, or shall we double it?"

"Anything you like, my lord," said Mr. Warrington, very quietly.

"We will say, then,—shillings."

"Yes, shillings," says Mr. Warrington, and the game proceeded.

The end of the day's, and some succeeding days' sport may be gathered from the following letter, which was never delivered to the person to whom it was addressed, but found its way to America in the papers of Mr. Henry Warrington:

"TUNBRIDGE WELLS, August 10, 1756.

"DEAR GEORGE—As White's two bottles of Burgundy and a pack of cards constitute all the joys of your life, I take for granted that you are in London at this moment, preferring smoke and faro to fresh air and fresh haystacks. This will be delivered to you by a young gentleman with whom I have lately made acquaintance, and whom you will be charmed to know. He will play with you at any game for any stake, up to any hour of the night, and drink any reasonable number of bottles during the play. Mr. Warrington is no other than the Fortunate Youth about whom so many stories have been told in the Public Advertiser and other prints. He has an estate in Virginia as big as Yorkshire, with the incumbrance of a mother, the reigning Sovereign; but, as the country is unwholesome, and fevers plentiful, let us hope that Mrs. Esmond will die soon, and leave this virtuous lad in undisturbed possession. She is aunt of that polisson of a Castlewood, who never pays his play-debts, unless he is more honourable in his dealings with you than he has been with me. Mr. W. is de bonne race. We must have him of our society, if it be only that I may win my money back from him.

"He has had the devil's luck here, and has been winning everything, whilst his old card-playing beldam of an aunt has been losing. A few nights ago, when I first had the ill-luck to make his acquaintance, he beat me in jumping (having practised the art amongst the savages, and running away from bears in his native woods); he won bets off me and Jack Morris about my weight; and at night, when we sat down to play, at old Bernstein's, he won from us all round. If you can settle our last Epsom account please hand over to Mr. Warrington 350 pounds, which I still owe him, after pretty well emptying my pocket-book. Chesterfield has dropped six hundred to him, too; but his lordship does not wish to have it known, having sworn to give up play and live cleanly. Jack Morris, who has not been hit as hard as either of us, and can afford it quite as well, for the fat chuff has no houses nor train to keep up, and all his misbegotten father's money in hand, roars like a bull of Bashan about his losses. We had a second night's play, en petit comite, and Barbeau served us a fair dinner in a private room. Mr. Warrington holds his tongue like a gentleman, and none of us have talked about our losses; but the whole place does, for us. Yesterday the Cattarina looked as sulky as thunder, because I would not give her a diamond necklace, and says I refuse her because I have lost five thousand to the Virginian. My old Duchess of Q. has the very same story, besides knowing to a fraction what Chesterfield and Jack have lost.

"Warrington treated the company to breakfast and music at the rooms; and you should have seen how the women tore him to pieces. That fiend of a Cattarina ogled him out of my vis-a-vis, and under my very nose, yesterday, as we were driving to Penshurst, and I have no doubt has sent him a billet-doux ere this. He shot Jack Morris all to pieces at a mark: we shall try him with partridges when the season comes.

"He is a fortunate fellow, certainly. He has youth (which is not deboshed by evil courses in Virginia, as ours is in England); he has good health, good looks, and good luck.

"In a word, Mr. Warrington has won our money in a very gentlemanlike manner; and, as I like him, and wish to win some of it back again, I put him under your worship's saintly guardianship. Adieu! I am going to the North, and shall be back for Doncaster.—Yours ever, dear George, M. et R."

"To George Augustus Selwyn, Esq., at White's Chocolate House, St. James's Street."



CHAPTER XXVIII. The Way of the World

Our young Virginian found himself, after two or three days at Tunbridge Wells, by far the most important personage in that merry little watering-place. No nobleman in the place inspired so much curiosity. My Lord Bishop of Salisbury himself was scarce treated with more respect. People turned round to look after Harry as he passed, and country-folks stared at him as they came into market. At the rooms, matrons encouraged him to come round to them, and found means to leave him alone with their daughters, most of whom smiled upon him. Everybody knew, to an acre and a shilling, the extent of his Virginian property, and the amount of his income. At every tea-table in the Wells, his winnings at play were told and calculated. Wonderful is the knowledge which our neighbours have of our affairs! So great was the interest and curiosity which Harry inspired, that people even smiled upon his servant, and took Gumbo aside and treated him with ale and cold meat, in order to get news of the young Virginian. Mr. Gumbo fattened under the diet, became a leading member of the Society of Valets in the place, and lied more enormously than ever. No party was complete unless Mr. Warrington attended it. The lad was not a little amused and astonished by this prosperity, and bore his new honours pretty well. He had been bred at home to think too well of himself, and his present good fortune no doubt tended to confirm his self-satisfaction. But he was not too much elated. He did not brag about his victories or give himself any particular airs. In engaging in play with the gentlemen who challenged him, he had acted up to his queer code of honour. He felt as if he was bound to meet them when they summoned him, and that if they invited him to a horse-race, or a drinking-bout, or a match at cards, for the sake of Old Virginia he must not draw back. Mr. Harry found his new acquaintances ready to try him at all these sports and contests. He had a strong head, a skilful hand, a firm seat, an unflinching nerve. The representative of Old Virginia came off very well in his friendly rivalry with the mother-country.

Madame de Bernstein, who got her fill of cards every night, and, no doubt, repaired the ill-fortune of which we heard in the last chapter, was delighted with her nephew's victories and reputation. He had shot with Jack Morris and beat him; he had ridden a match with Mr. Scamper and won it. He played tennis with Captain Batts, and, though the boy had never tried the game before, in a few days he held his own uncommonly well. He had engaged in play with those celebrated gamesters, my Lords of Chesterfield and March; and they both bore testimony to his coolness, gallantry, and good breeding. At his books Harry was not brilliant certainly; but he could write as well as a great number of men of fashion; and the naivete of his ignorance amused the old lady. She had read books in her time, and could talk very well about them with bookish people: she had a relish for humour and delighted in Moliere and Mr. Fielding, but she loved the world far better than the library, and was never so interested in any novel but that she would leave it for a game of cards. She superintended with fond pleasure the improvements of Harry's toilette: rummaged out fine laces for his ruffles and shirt, and found a pretty diamond-brooch for his frill. He attained the post of prime favourite of all her nephews and kinsfolk. I fear Lady Maria was only too well pleased at the lad's successes, and did not grudge him his superiority over her brothers; but those gentlemen must have quaked with fear and envy when they heard of Mr. Warrington's prodigious successes, and the advance which he had made in their wealthy aunt's favour.

After a fortnight of Tunbridge, Mr. Harry had become quite a personage. He knew all the good company in the place. Was it his fault if he became acquainted with the bad likewise? Was he very wrong in taking the world as he found it, and drinking from that sweet sparkling pleasure-cup, which was filled for him to the brim? The old aunt enjoyed his triumphs, and for her part only bade him pursue his enjoyments. She was not a rigorous old moralist, nor, perhaps, a very wholesome preceptress for youth. If the Cattarina wrote him billets-doux, I fear Aunt Bernstein would have bade him accept the invitations: but the lad had brought with him from his colonial home a stock of modesty which he still wore along with the honest homespun linen. Libertinism was rare in those thinly-peopled regions from which he came. The vices of great cities were scarce known or practised in the rough towns of the American continent. Harry Warrington blushed like a girl at the daring talk of his new European associates: even Aunt Bernstein's conversation and jokes astounded the young Virginian, so that the worldly old woman would call him Joseph, or simpleton.

But, however innocent he was, the world gave him credit for being as bad as other folks. How was he to know that he was not to associate with that saucy Cattarina? He had seen my Lord March driving her about in his lordship's phaeton. Harry thought there was no harm in giving her his arm, and parading openly with her in the public walks. She took a fancy to a trinket at the toy-shop; and, as his pockets were full of money, he was delighted to make her a present of the locket, which she coveted. The next day it was a piece of lace: again Harry gratified her. The next day it was something else: there was no end to Madame Cattarina's fancies: but here the young gentleman stopped, turning off her request with a joke and a laugh. He was shrewd enough, and not reckless or prodigal, though generous. He had no idea of purchasing diamond drops for the petulant little lady's pretty ears.

But who was to give him credit for his Modesty? Old Bernstein insisted upon believing that her nephew was playing Don Juan's part, and supplanting my Lord March. She insisted the more when poor Maria was by; loving to stab the tender heart of that spinster, and enjoying her niece's piteous silence and discomfiture.

"Why, my dear," says the Baroness, "boys will be boys, and I don't want Harry to be the first milksop in his family!" The bread which Maria ate at her aunt's expense choked her sometimes. O me, how hard and indigestible some women know how to make it!

Mr. Wolfe was for ever coming over from Westerham to pay court to the lady of his love; and, knowing that the Colonel was entirely engaged in that pursuit, Mr. Warrington scarcely expected to see much of him, however much he liked that officer's conversation and society. It was different from the talk of the ribald people round about Harry. Mr. Wolfe never spoke of cards, or horses' pedigrees; or bragged of his performances in the hunting-field; or boasted of the favours of women; or retailed any of the innumerable scandals of the time. It was not a good time. That old world was more dissolute than ours. There was an old king with mistresses openly in his train, to whom the great folks of the land did honour. There was a nobility, many of whom were mad and reckless in the pursuit of pleasure; there was a looseness of words and acts which we must note, as faithful historians, without going into particulars, and needlessly shocking honest readers. Our young gentleman had lighted upon some of the wildest of these wild people, and had found an old relative who lived in the very midst of the rout.

Harry then did not remark how Colonel Wolfe avoided him, or when they casually met, at first, notice the Colonel's cold and altered demeanour. He did not know the stories that were told of him. Who does know the stories that are told of him? Who makes them? Who are the fathers of those wondrous lies? Poor Harry did not know the reputation he was getting; and that, whilst he was riding his horse and playing his game and taking his frolic, he was passing amongst many respectable persons for being the most abandoned and profligate and godless of young men.

Alas, and alas! to think that the lad whom we liked so, and who was so gentle and quiet when with us, so simple and so easily pleased, should be a hardened profligate, a spendthrift, a confirmed gamester, a frequenter of abandoned women! These stories came to honest Colonel Lambert at Oakhurst: first one bad story, then another, then crowds of them, till the good man's kind heart was quite filled with grief and care, so that his family saw that something annoyed him. At first he would not speak on the matter at all, and put aside the wife's fond queries. Mrs. Lambert thought a great misfortune had happened; that her husband had been ruined; that he had been ordered on a dangerous service; that one of the boys was ill, disgraced, dead; who can resist an anxious woman, or escape the cross-examination of the conjugal pillow? Lambert was obliged to tell a part of what he knew about Harry Warrington. The wife was as much grieved and amazed as her husband had been. From papa's and mamma's bedroom the grief, after being stifled for a while under the bed-pillows there, came downstairs. Theo and Hester took the complaint after their parents, and had it very bad. O kind, little, wounded hearts! At first Hester turned red, flew into a great passion, clenched her little fists, and vowed she would not believe a word of the wicked stories; but she ended by believing them. Scandal almost always does master people; especially good and innocent people. Oh, the serpent they had nursed by their fire! Oh, the wretched, wretched boy! To think of his walking about with that horrible painted Frenchwoman, and giving her diamond necklaces, and parading his shame before all the society at the Wells! The three ladies having cried over the story, and the father being deeply moved by it, took the parson into their confidence. In vain he preached at church next Sunday his favourite sermon about scandal, and inveighed against our propensity to think evil. We repent we promise to do so no more; but when the next bad story comes about our neighbour we believe it. So did those kind, wretched Oakhurst folks believe what they heard about poor Harry Warrington.