Part 22 (1/2)
”Indeed, Sir,” said Walter, ”I should not, to look at you, imagine that you suffered under any complaint. You seem still the same picture of health, that my uncle describes you to have been when you knew him so many years ago.”
”Yes, Sir, yes; the confounded malaria fixed the colour to my cheeks; the blood is stagnant, Sir. Would to G.o.d I could see myself a shade paler!--the blood does not flow; I am like a pool in a citizen's garden, with a willow at each corner;--but a truce to my complaints. You see, Sir, I am no hypochondriac, as my fool of a doctor wants to persuade me: a hypochondriac shudders at every breath of air, trembles when a door is open, and looks upon a window as the entrance of death. But I, Sir, never can have enough air; thorough draught or east wind, it is all the same to me, so that I do but breathe. Is that like hypochondria?--pshaw!
But tell me, young gentleman, about your uncle; is he quite well,--stout,--hearty,--does he breathe easily,--no oppression?”
”Sir, he enjoys exceedingly good health: he did please himself with the hope that I should give him good tidings of yourself, and another of his old friends whom I accidentally saw yesterday,--Sir Peter Hales.”
”Hales, Peter Hales!--ah! a clever little fellow that: how delighted Lester's good heart will be to hear that little Peter is so improved;--no longer a dissolute, harum-scarum fellow, throwing away his money, and always in debt. No, no; a respectable steady character, an excellent manager, an active member of Parliament, domestic in private life,--Oh! a very worthy man, Sir, a very worthy man!”
”He seems altered indeed, Sir,” said Walter, who was young enough in the world to be surprised at this eulogy; ”but is still agreeable and fond of anecdote. He told me of his race with you for a thousand guineas.”
”Ah, don't talk of those days,” said Mr. Courtland, shaking his head pensively, ”it makes me melancholy. Yes, Peter ought to recollect that, for he has never paid me to this day; affected to treat it as a jest, and swore he could have beat me if he would. But indeed it was my fault, Sir; Peter had not then a thousand farthings in the world, and when he grew rich, he became a steady character, and I did not like to remind him of our former follies. Aha! can I offer you a pinch of snuff?--You look feverish, Sir; surely this room must affect you, though you are too polite to say so. Pray open that door, and then this window, and put your chair right between the two. You have no notion how refres.h.i.+ng the draught is.”
Walter politely declined the proffered ague, and thinking he had now made sufficient progress in the acquaintance of this singular non-hypochondriac to introduce the subject he had most at heart, hastened to speak of his father.
”I have chanced, Sir,” said he, ”very unexpectedly upon something that once belonged to my poor father;” here he showed the whip. ”I find from the saddler of whom I bought it, that the owner was at your house some twelve or fourteen years ago. I do not know whether you are aware that our family have heard nothing respecting my father's fate for a considerably longer time than that which has elapsed since you appear to have seen him, if at least I may hope that he was your guest, and the owner of this whip; and any news you can give me of him, any clue by which he can possibly be traced, would be to us all--to me in particular--an inestimable obligation.”
”Your father!” said Mr. Courtland. ”Oh,--ay, your uncle's brother. What was his Christian name?--Henry?”
”Geoffrey.”
”Ay, exactly; Geoffrey! What, not been heard of?--his family not know where he is? A sad thing, Sir; but he was always a wild fellow; now here, now there, like a flash of lightning. But it is true, it is true, he did stay a day here, several years ago, when I first bought the place. I can tell you all about it;--but you seem agitated,--do come nearer the window:--there, that's right. Well, Sir, it is, as I said, a great many years ago,--perhaps fourteen,--and I was speaking to the landlord of the Greyhound about some hay he wished to sell, when a gentleman rode into the yard full tear, as your father always did ride, and in getting out of his way I recognised Geoffrey Lester. I did not know him well--far from it; but I had seen him once or twice with your uncle, and though he was a strange pickle, he sang a good song, and was deuced amusing. Well, Sir, I accosted him, and, for the sake of your uncle, I asked him to dine with me, and take a bed at my new house.
Ah! I little thought what a dear bargain it was to be. He accepted my invitation, for I fancy--no offence, Sir,--there were few invitations that Mr. Geoffrey Lester ever refused to accept. We dined tete-a-tete,--I am an old bachelor, Sir,--and very entertaining he was, though his sentiments seemed to me broader than ever. He was capital, however, about the tricks he had played his creditors,--such manoeuvres,--such escapes! After dinner he asked me if I ever corresponded with his brother. I told him no; that we were very good friends, but never heard from each other; and he then said, 'Well, I shall surprise him with a visit shortly; but in case you should unexpectedly have any communication with him, don't mention having seen me; for, to tell you the truth, I am just returned from India, where I should have sc.r.a.ped up a little money, but that I spent it as fast as I got it. However, you know that I was always proverbially the luckiest fellow in the world--(and so, Sir, your father was!)--and while I was in India, I saved an old Colonel's life at a tiger-hunt; he went home shortly afterwards, and settled in Yorks.h.i.+re; and the other day on my return to England, to which my ill-health drove me, I learned that my old Colonel was really dead, and had left me a handsome legacy, with his house in Yorks.h.i.+re. I am now going down to Yorks.h.i.+re to convert the chattels into gold--to receive my money, and I shall then seek out my good brother, my household G.o.ds, and, perhaps, though it's not likely, settle into a sober fellow for the rest of my life.' I don't tell you, young gentleman, that those were your father's exact words,--one can't remember verbatim so many years ago;--but it was to that effect. He left me the next day, and I never heard any thing more of him: to say the truth, he was looking wonderfully yellow, and fearfully reduced. And I fancied at the time, he could not live long; he was prematurely old, and decrepit in body, though gay in spirit; so that I had tacitly imagined in never hearing of him more--that he had departed life. But, good Heavens! did you never hear of this legacy?”
”Never: not a word!” said Walter, who had listened to these particulars in great surprise. ”And to what part of Yorks.h.i.+re did he say he was going?”
”That he did not mention.”
”Nor the Colonel's name?”
”Not as I remember; he might, but I think not. But I am certain that the county was Yorks.h.i.+re, and the gentleman, whatever was his name, was a Colonel. Stay! I recollect one more particular, which it is lucky I do remember. Your father in giving me, as I said before, in his own humorous strain, the history of his adventures, his hair-breadth escapes from his duns, the various disguises, and the numerous aliases he had a.s.sumed, mentioned that the name he had borne in India, and by which, he a.s.sured me, he had made quite a good character--was Clarke: he also said, by the way, that he still kept to that name, and was very merry on the advantages of having so common an one. 'By which,' he said wittily, 'he could father all his own sins on some other Mr. Clarke, at the same time that he could seize and appropriate all the merits of all his other namesakes.' Ah, no offence; but he was a sad dog, that father of yours!
So you see that, in all probability, if he ever reached Yorks.h.i.+re, it was under the name of Clarke that he claimed and received his legacy.”
”You have told me more,” said Walter joyfully, ”than we have heard since his disappearance, and I shall turn my horses' heads northward to-morrow, by break of day. But you say, 'if he ever reached Yorks.h.i.+re,'--What should prevent him?”
”His health!” said the non-hypochondriac, ”I should not be greatly surprised if--if--In short you had better look at the grave-stones by the way, for the name of Clarke.”
”Perhaps you can give me the dates, Sir,” said Walter, somewhat cast down from his elation.
”Ay! I'll see, I'll see, after dinner; the commonness of the name has its disadvantages now. Poor Geoffrey!--I dare say there are fifty tombs, to the memory of fifty Clarkes, between this and York. But come, Sir, there's the dinner-bell.”
Whatever might have been the maladies entailed upon the portly frame of Mr. Courtland by the vegetable life of the departed trees, a want of appet.i.te was not among the number. Whenever a man is not abstinent from rule, or from early habit, as in the case of Aram, Solitude makes its votaries particularly fond of their dinner. They have no other event wherewith to mark their day--they think over it, they antic.i.p.ate it, they nourish its soft idea with their imagination; if they do look forward to any thing else more than dinner, it is--supper!
Mr. Courtland deliberately pinned the napkin to his waistcoat, ordered all the windows to be thrown open, and set to work like the good Canon in Gil Blas. He still retained enough of his former self, to preserve an excellent cook; so far at least as the excellence of a she-artist goes; and though most of his viands were of the plainest, who does not know what skill it requires to produce an unexceptionable roast, or a blameless boil? Talk of good professed cooks, indeed! they are plentiful as blackberries: it is the good, plain cook, who is the rarity!
Half a tureen of strong soup; three pounds, at least, of stewed carp; all the under part of a sirloin of beef; three quarters of a tongue; the moiety of a chicken; six pancakes and a tartlet, having severally disappeared down the jaws of the invalid,
”Et cuncta terrarum subacta Praeter atrocem animum Catonis,”
[And everything of earth subdued, except the resolute mind of Cato.]