A little druid wight
Of withered aspect; but his eye was keen
With sweetness mixed,—a russet brown bedight.
THOMSON: Castle of Indolence.
Thus holding high discourse, they came to where
The cursed carle was at his wonted trade,
Still tempting heedless men into his snare,
In witching wise, as I before have said.—Ibid.
It was a fine, joyous summer morning when Clarence set out, alone and on horseback, upon his enterprise of love and adventure. If there be anything on earth more reviving and inspiriting than another, it is, to my taste, a bright day,—a free horse, a journey of excitement before one, and loneliness! Rousseau—in his own way, a great though rather a morbid epicure of this world’s enjoyments—talks with rapture of his pedestrian rambles when in his first youth. But what are your foot-ploddings to the joy which lifts you into air with the bound of your mettled steed?
But there are times when an iron and stern sadness locks, as it were, within itself our capacities of enjoyment; and the song of the birds, and the green freshness of the summer morning, and the glad motion of the eager horse, brought neither relief nor change to the musings of the young adventurer.
He rode on for several miles without noticing anything on his road, and only now and then testifying the nature of his thoughts and his consciousness of solitude by brief and abrupt exclamations and sentences, which proclaimed the melancholy yet exciting subjects of his meditations. During the heat of the noon, he rested at a small public-house about —— miles from town; and resolving to take his horse at least ten miles farther before his day’s journey ceased, he remounted towards the evening and slowly resumed his way.
He was now entering the same county in which he first made his appearance in this history. Although several miles from the spot on which the memorable night with the gypsies had been passed, his thoughts reverted to its remembrance, and he sighed as he recalled the ardent hopes which then fed and animated his heart. While thus musing, he heard the sound of hoofs behind him, and presently came by a sober-looking man, on a rough, strong pony, laden (besides its master’s weight) with saddle-bags of uncommon size, and to all appearance substantially and artfully filled.
Clarence looked, and, after a second survey, recognized the person of his old acquaintance, Mr. Morris Brown.
Not equally reminiscent was the worshipful itinerant, who, in the great variety of forms and faces which it was his professional lot to encounter, could not be expected to preserve a very nice or distinguishing recollection of each.
“Your servant, sir, your servant,” said Mr. Brown, as he rode his pony alongside of our traveller. “Are you going as far as W—— this evening?”
“I hardly know yet,” answered Clarence; “the length of my ride depends upon my horse rather than myself.”
“Oh, well, very well,” said Mr. Brown; “but you will allow me, perhaps, sir, the honour of riding with you as far as you go.”
“You give me much gratification by your proposal, Mr. Brown!” said Clarence.
The broker looked in surprise at his companion. “So you know me, sir?”
“I do,” replied Clarence. “I am surprised that you have forgotten me.”
Slowly Mr. Brown gazed, till at last his memory began to give itself the rousing shake. “God bless me, sir, I beg you a thousand pardons: I now remember you perfectly; Mr. Linden, the nephew of my old patroness, Mrs. Minden. Dear, dear, how could I be so forgetful! I hope, by the by, sir, that the shirts wore well? I am thinking you will want some more. I have some capital cambric of curiously fine quality and texture, from the wardrobe of the late Lady Waddilove.”
“What, Lady Waddilove still!” cried Clarence. “Why, my good friend, you will offer next to furnish me with pantaloons from her ladyship’s wardrobe.”
“Why, really, sir, I see you preserve your fine spirits; but I do think I have one or two pair of plum-coloured velvet inexpressibles, that passed into my possession when her ladyship’s husband died, which might, perhaps, with a leetle alteration, fit you, and, at all events, would be a very elegant present from a gentleman to his valet.”
“Well, Mr. Brown, whenever I or my valet wear plum-coloured velvet breeches, I will certainly purchase those in your possession; but to change the subject, can you inform me what has become of my old host and hostess, the Copperases, of Copperas Bower?”
“Oh, sir, they are the same as ever; nice, genteel people they are, too. Master Adolphus has grown into a fine young gentleman, very nearly as tall as you and I are. His worthy father preserves his jovial vein, and is very merry whenever I call there. Indeed it was but last week that he made an admirable witticism. ‘Bob,’ said he (Tom,—you remember Tom, or De Warens, as Mrs. Copperas was pleased to call him,—Tom is gone), ‘Bob, have you stopped the coach?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Bob. ‘And what coach is it?’ asked Mr. Copperas. ‘It be the Swallow, sir,’ said the boy. ‘The Swallow! oh, very well,’ cried Mr. Copperas; ‘then, now, having swallowed in the roll, I will e’en roll in the swallow! ‘Ha! ha! ha! sir, very facetious, was it not?”
“Very, indeed,” said Clarence; “and so Mr. de Warens has gone; how came that?”
“Why, sir, you see, the boy was always of a gay turn, and he took to frisking about, as he called it, of a night, and so he was taken up for thrashing a watchman, and appeared before Sir John, the magistrate, the next morning.”
“Caractacus before Caesar!” observed Linden; “and what said Caesar?”
“Sir?” said Mr. Brown.
“I mean, what said Sir John?”
“Oh! he asked him his name, and Tom, whose head Mrs. Copperas (poor good woman!) had crammed with pride enough for fifty foot-boys, replied, ‘De Warens,’ with all the air of a man of independence. ‘De Warens!’ cried Sir John, amazed, ‘we’ll have no De’s here: take him to Bridewell!’ and so, Mrs. Copperas, being without a foot-boy, sent for me, and I supplied her—with Bob!”
“Out of the late Lady Waddilove’s wardrobe too?” said Clarence.
“Ha, ha! that’s well, very well, sir. No, not exactly; but he was a son of her late ladyship’s coachman. Mr. Copperas has had two other servants of the name of Bob before, but this is the biggest of all, so he humorously calls him ‘Triple Bob Major!’ You observe that road to the right, sir: it leads to the mansion of an old customer of mine, General Cornelius St. Leger; many a good bargain have I sold to his sister. Heaven rest her! when she died I lost a good friend, though she was a little hot or so, to be sure. But she had a relation, a young lady; such a lovely, noble-looking creature: it did one’s heart, ay, and one’s eyes also, good to look at her; and she’s gone too; well, well, one loses one’s customers sadly; it makes me feel old and comfortless to think of it. Now, yonder, as far as you can see among those distant woods, lived another friend of mine, to whom I offered to make some very valuable presents upon his marriage with the young lady I spoke of just now, but, poor gentleman, he had not time to accept them; he lost his property by a lawsuit, a few months after he was married, and a very different person now has Mordaunt Court.”
“Mordaunt Court!” cried Clarence; “do you mean to say that Mr. Mordaunt has lost that property?”
“Why, sir, one Mr. Mordaunt has lost it, and another has gained it: but the real Mr. Mordaunt has not an acre in this county or elsewhere, I fear, poor gentleman. He is universally regretted, for he was very good and very generous, though they say he was also mighty proud and reserved; but for my part I never perceived it. If one is not proud one’s self, Mr. Linden, one is very little apt to be hurt by pride in other people.”
“And where is Mr. Algernon Mordaunt?” asked Clarence, as he recalled his interview with that person, and the interest with which Algernon then inspired him.
“That, sir, is more than any of us can say. He has disappeared altogether. Some declare that he has gone abroad, others that he is living in Wales in the greatest poverty. However, wherever he is, I am sure that he cannot be rich; for the lawsuit quite ruined him, and the young lady he married had not a farthing.”
“Poor Mordaunt!” said Clarence, musingly.
“I think, sir, that the squire would not be best pleased if he heard you pity him. I don’t know why, but he certainly looked, walked, and moved like one whom you felt it very hard to pity. But I am thinking that it is a great shame that the general should not do anything for Mr. Mordaunt’s wife, for she was his own flesh and blood; and I am sure he had no cause to be angry at her marrying a gentleman of such old family as Mr. Mordaunt. I am a great stickler for birth, sir; I learned that from the late Lady W. ‘Brown,’ she said, and I shall never forget her ladyship’s air when she did say it, ‘Brown, respect your superiors, and never fall into the hands of the republicans and atheists’!”
“And why,” said Clarence, who was much interested in Mordaunt’s fate, “did General St. Leger withhold his consent?”
“That we don’t exactly know, sir; but some say that Mr. Mordaunt was very high and proud with the general, and the general was to the full as fond of his purse as Mr. Mordaunt could be of his pedigree; and so, I suppose, one pride clashed against the other, and made a quarrel between them.”
“Would not the general, then, relent after the marriage?”
“Oh! no, sir; for it was a runaway affair. Miss Diana St. Leger, his sister, was as hot as ginger upon it, and fretted and worried the poor general, who was never of the mildest, about the match, till at last he forbade the poor young lady’s very name to be mentioned. And when Miss Diana died about two years ago, he suddenly introduced a tawny sort of cretur, whom they call a mulatto or creole, or some such thing, into the house; and it seems that he has had several children by her, whom he never durst own during Miss Diana’s life, but whom he now declares to be his heirs. Well, they rule him with a rod of iron, and suck him as dry as an orange. They are a bad, griping set, all of them; and, I am sure, I don’t say so from any selfish feeling, Mr. Linden, though they have forbid me the house, and called me, to my very face, an old cheating Jew. Think of that, sir!—I, whom the late Lady W. in her exceeding friendship used to call ‘honest Brown,’—I whom your worthy—”
“And who,” uncourteously interrupted Clarence, “has Mordaunt Court now?”
“Why, a distant relation of the last squire’s, an elderly gentleman who calls himself Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt. I am going there to-morrow morning, for I still keep up a connection with the family. Indeed the old gentleman bought a lovely little ape of me, which I did intend as a present to the late (as I may call him) Mr. Mordaunt; so, though I will not say I exactly like him,—he is a hard hand at a bargain,—yet at least I will not deny him his due.”
“What sort of a person is he? What character does he bear?” asked Clarence.
“I really find it hard to answer that question,” said the gossiping Mr. Brown. “In great things he is very lavish and ostentatious, but in small things he is very penurious and saving, and miser-like; and all for one son, who is deformed and very sickly. He seems to dote on that boy; and now I have got two or three little presents in these bags for Mr. Henry. Heaven forgive me, but when I look at the poor creature, with his face all drawn up, and his sour, ill-tempered voice, and his limbs crippled, I almost think it would be better if he were in his grave, and the rightful Mr. Mordaunt, who would then be the next of kin, in his place.”
“So then, there is only this unhappy cripple between Mr. Mordaunt and the property?” said Clarence.
“Exactly so, sir. But will you let me ask where you shall put up at W——? I will wait upon you, if you will give me leave, with some very curious and valuable articles, highly desirable either for yourself or for little presents to your friends.”
“I thank you,” said Clarence, “I shall make no stay at W——, but I shall be glad to see you in town next week. Favour me, meanwhile, by accepting this trifle.”
“Nay, nay, sir,” said Mr. Brown, pocketing the money, “I really cannot accept this; anything in the way of exchange,—a ring, or a seal, or—”
“No, no, not at present,” said Clarence; “the night is coming on, and I shall make the best of my way. Good-by, Mr. Brown;” and Clarence trotted off: but he had scarce got sixty yards before he heard the itinerant merchant cry out, “Mr. Linden, Mr. Linden!” and looking back, he beheld the honest Brown putting his shaggy pony at full speed, in order to overtake him; so he pulled up.
“Well, Mr. Brown, what do you want?”
“Why, you see, sir, you gave me no exact answer about the plum-colored velvet inexpressibles,” said Mr. Brown.
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