Part 2 (2/2)
annuities consol. ”This,” said Harley's instructor, ”was a gentleman well known in Change Alley. He was once worth fifty thousand pounds, and had actually agreed for the purchase of an estate in the West, in order to realise his money; but he quarrelled with the proprietor about the repairs of the garden wall, and so returned to town, to follow his old trade of stock-jobbing a little longer; when an unlucky fluctuation of stock, in which he was engaged to an immense extent, reduced him at once to poverty and to madness. Poor wretch! he told me t'other day that against the next payment of differences he should be some hundreds above a plum.”
”It is a spondee, and I will maintain it,” interrupted a voice on his left hand. This a.s.sertion was followed by a very rapid recital of some verses from Homer. ”That figure,” said the gentleman, ”whose clothes are so bedaubed with snuff, was a schoolmaster of some reputation: he came hither to be resolved of some doubts he entertained concerning the genuine p.r.o.nunciation of the Greek vowels. In his highest fits, he makes frequent mention of one Mr.
Bentley.
”But delusive ideas, sir, are the motives of the greatest part of mankind, and a heated imagination the power by which their actions are incited: the world, in the eye of a philosopher, may be said to be a large madhouse.” ”It is true,” answered Harley, ”the pa.s.sions of men are temporary madnesses; and sometimes very fatal in their effects.
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede.”
”It was, indeed,” said the stranger, ”a very mad thing in Charles to think of adding so vast a country as Russia to his dominions: that would have been fatal indeed; the balance of the North would then have been lost; but the Sultan and I would never have allowed it.”-- ”Sir!” said Harley, with no small surprise on his countenance.-- ”Why, yes,” answered the other, ”the Sultan and I; do you know me?
I am the Chan of Tartary.”
Harley was a good deal struck by this discovery; he had prudence enough, however, to conceal his amazement, and bowing as low to the monarch as his dignity required, left him immediately, and joined his companions.
He found them in a quarter of the house set apart for the insane of the other s.e.x, several of whom had gathered about the female visitors, and were examining, with rather more accuracy than might have been expected, the particulars of their dress.
Separate from the rest stood one whose appearance had something of superior dignity. Her face, though pale and wasted, was less squalid than those of the others, and showed a dejection of that decent kind, which moves our pity unmixed with horror: upon her, therefore, the eyes of all were immediately turned. The keeper who accompanied them observed it: ”This,” said he, ”is a young lady who was born to ride in her coach and six. She was beloved, if the story I have heard is true, by a young gentleman, her equal in birth, though by no means her match in fortune: but love, they say, is blind, and so she fancied him as much as he did her. Her father, it seems, would not hear of their marriage, and threatened to turn her out of doors if ever she saw him again. Upon this the young gentleman took a voyage to the West Indies, in hopes of bettering his fortune, and obtaining his mistress; but he was scarce landed, when he was seized with one of the fevers which are common in those islands, and died in a few days, lamented by every one that knew him. This news soon reached his mistress, who was at the same time pressed by her father to marry a rich miserly fellow, who was old enough to be her grandfather. The death of her lover had no effect on her inhuman parent: he was only the more earnest for her marriage with the man he had provided for her; and what between her despair at the death of the one, and her aversion to the other, the poor young lady was reduced to the condition you see her in. But G.o.d would not prosper such cruelty; her father's affairs soon after went to wreck, and he died almost a beggar.”
Though this story was told in very plain language, it had particularly attracted Harley's notice; he had given it the tribute of some tears. The unfortunate young lady had till now seemed entranced in thought, with her eyes fixed on a little garnet ring she wore on her finger; she turned them now upon Harley. ”My Billy is no more!” said she; ”do you weep for my Billy? Blessings on your tears! I would weep too, but my brain is dry; and it burns, it burns, it burns!”--She drew nearer to Harley.--”Be comforted, young lady,” said he, ”your Billy is in heaven.”--”Is he, indeed? and shall we meet again? and shall that frightful man (pointing to the keeper) not be there!--Alas! I am grown naughty of late; I have almost forgotten to think of heaven: yet I pray sometimes; when I can, I pray; and sometimes I sing; when I am saddest, I sing: --You shall hear me--hus.h.!.+
”Light be the earth on Billy's breast, And green the sod that wraps his grave.”
There was a plaintive wildness in the air not to be withstood; and, except the keeper's, there was not an unmoistened eye around her.
”Do you weep again?” said she. ”I would not have you weep: you are like my Billy; you are, believe me; just so he looked when he gave me this ring; poor Billy! 'twas the last time ever we met! -
”'Twas when the seas were roaring--I love you for resembling my Billy; but I shall never love any man like him.”--She stretched out her hand to Harley; he pressed it between both of his, and bathed it with his tears.--”Nay, that is Billy's ring,” said she, ”you cannot have it, indeed; but here is another, look here, which I plated to- day of some gold-thread from this bit of stuff; will you keep it for my sake? I am a strange girl; but my heart is harmless: my poor heart; it will burst some day; feel how it beats!” She pressed his hand to her bosom, then holding her head in the att.i.tude of listening--”Hark! one, two, three! be quiet, thou little trembler; my Billy is cold!--but I had forgotten the ring.”--She put it on his finger. ”Farewell! I must leave you now.”--She would have withdrawn her hand; Harley held it to his lips.--”I dare not stay longer; my head throbs sadly: farewell!”--She walked with a hurried step to a little apartment at some distance. Harley stood fixed in astonishment and pity; his friend gave money to the keeper.--Harley looked on his ring.--He put a couple of guineas into the man's hand: ”Be kind to that unfortunate.”--He burst into tears, and left them.
CHAPTER XXI--THE MISANTHROPE
The friend who had conducted him to Moorfields called upon him again the next evening. After some talk on the adventures of the preceding day: ”I carried you yesterday,” said he to Harley, ”to visit the mad; let me introduce you to-night, at supper, to one of the wise: but you must not look for anything of the Socratic pleasantry about him; on the contrary, I warn you to expect the spirit of a Diogenes. That you may be a little prepared for his extraordinary manner, I will let you into some particulars of his history.
”He is the elder of the two sons of a gentleman of considerable estate in the country. Their father died when they were young: both were remarkable at school for quickness of parts and extent of genius; this had been bred to no profession, because his father's fortune, which descended to him, was thought sufficient to set him above it; the other was put apprentice to an eminent attorney. In this the expectations of his friends were more consulted than his own inclination; for both his brother and he had feelings of that warm kind that could ill brook a study so dry as the law, especially in that department of it which was allotted to him. But the difference of their tempers made the characteristical distinction between them. The younger, from the gentleness of his nature, bore with patience a situation entirely discordant to his genius and disposition. At times, indeed, his pride would suggest of how little importance those talents were which the partiality of his friends had often extolled: they were now inc.u.mbrances in a walk of life where the dull and the ignorant pa.s.sed him at every turn; his fancy and his feeling were invincible obstacles to eminence in a situation where his fancy had no room for exertion, and his feeling experienced perpetual disgust. But these murmurings he never suffered to be heard; and that he might not offend the prudence of those who had been concerned in the choice of his profession, he continued to labour in it several years, till, by the death of a relation, he succeeded to an estate of a little better than 100 pounds a year, with which, and the small patrimony left him, he retired into the country, and made a love-match with a young lady of a similar temper to his own, with whom the sagacious world pitied him for finding happiness.
”But his elder brother, whom you are to see at supper, if you will do us the favour of your company, was naturally impetuous, decisive, and overbearing. He entered into life with those ardent expectations by which young men are commonly deluded: in his friends.h.i.+ps, warm to excess; and equally violent in his dislikes.
He was on the brink of marriage with a young lady, when one of those friends, for whose honour he would have p.a.w.ned his life, made an elopement with that very G.o.ddess, and left him besides deeply engaged for sums which that good friend's extravagance had squandered.
”The dreams he had formerly enjoyed were now changed for ideas of a very different nature. He abjured all confidence in anything of human form; sold his lands, which still produced him a very large reversion, came to town, and immured himself, with a woman who had been his nurse, in little better than a garret; and has ever since applied his talents to the vilifying of his species. In one thing I must take the liberty to instruct you; however different your sentiments may be (and different they must be), you will suffer him to go on without contradiction; otherwise, he will be silent immediately, and we shall not get a word from him all the night after.” Harley promised to remember this injunction, and accepted the invitation of his friend.
When they arrived at the house, they were informed that the gentleman was come, and had been shown into the parlour. They found him sitting with a daughter of his friend's, about three years old, on his knee, whom he was teaching the alphabet from a horn book: at a little distance stood a sister of hers, some years older. ”Get you away, miss,” said he to this last; ”you are a pert gossip, and I will have nothing to do with you.”--”Nay,” answered she, ”Nancy is your favourite; you are quite in love with Nancy.”--”Take away that girl,” said he to her father, whom he now observed to have entered the room; ”she has woman about her already.” The children were accordingly dismissed.
Betwixt that and supper-time he did not utter a syllable. When supper came, he quarrelled with every dish at table, but eat of them all; only exempting from his censures a salad, ”which you have not spoiled,” said he, ”because you have not attempted to cook it.”
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