Remorse for past misdeeds and follies Harry sincerely felt, when he found himself a prisoner in that dismal lock-up house, and wrath and annoyance at the idea of being subjected to the indignity of arrest; but the present unpleasantry he felt sure could only be momentary. He had twenty friends who would release him from his confinement: to which of them should he apply, was the question. Mr. Draper, the man of business, who had been so obsequious to him: his kind uncle the Baronet, who had offered to make his house Harry’s home, who loved him as a son: his cousin Castlewood, who had won such large sums from him: his noble friends at the Chocolate-House, his good Aunt Bernstein — any one of these Harry felt sure would give him a help in his trouble, though some of the relatives, perhaps, might administer to him a little scolding for his imprudence. The main point was, that the matter should be transacted quietly, for Mr. Warrington was anxious that as few as possible of the public should know how a gentleman of his prodigious importance had been subject to such a vulgar process as an arrest. As if the public does not end by knowing everything it cares to know. As if the dinner I shall have today, and the hole in the stocking which I wear at this present writing, can be kept a secret from some enemy or other who has a mind to pry it out — though my boots are on, and my door was locked when I dressed myself! I mention that hole in the stocking for sake of example merely. The world can pry out everything about us which it has a mind to know. But then there is this consolation, which men will never accept in their own cases, that the world doesn’t care. Consider the amount of scandal it has been forced to hear in its time, and how weary and blase it must be of that kind of intelligence. You are taken to prison, and fancy yourself indelibly disgraced? You are bankrupt under odd circumstances? You drive a queer bargain with your friends and are found out, and imagine the world will punish you? Psha! Your shame is only vanity. Go and talk to the world as if nothing had happened, and nothing has happened. Tumble down; brush the mud off your clothes; appear with a smiling countenance, and nobody cares. Do you suppose Society is going to take out its pocket-handkerchief and be inconsolable when you die? Why should it care very much, then, whether your worship graces yourself or disgraces yourself? Whatever happens it talks, meets, jokes, yawns, has its dinner, pretty much as before. Therefore don’t be so conceited about yourself as to fancy your private affairs of so much importance, mi fili. Whereas Mr. Harry Warrington chafed and fumed as though all the world was tingling with the touch of that hand which had been laid on his sublime shoulder.
“A pretty sensation my arrest must have created at the club!” thought Harry. “I suppose that Mr. Selwyn will be cutting all sorts of jokes about my misfortune, plague take him! Everybody round the table will have heard of it. March will tremble about the bet I have with him; and, faith, ’twill be difficult to pay him when I lose. They will all be setting up a whoop of congratulation at the Savage, as they call me, being taken prisoner. How shall I ever be able to appear in the world again? Whom shall I ask to come to my help? No,” thought he, with his mingled acuteness and simplicity, “I will not send in the first instance to any of my relations or my noble friends at White’s. I will have Sampson’s counsel. He has often been in a similar predicament, and will know how to advise me.” Accordingly, as soon as the light of dawn appeared, after an almost intolerable delay — for it seemed to Harry as if the sun had forgotten to visit Cursitor Street in his rounds that morning — and as soon as the inmates of the house of bondage were stirring, Mr. Warrington despatched a messenger to his friend in Long Acre, acquainting the chaplain with the calamity just befallen him, and beseeching his reverence to give him the benefit of his advice and consolation.
Mr. Warrington did not know, to be sure, that to send such a message to the parson was as if he said, “I am fallen amongst the lions. Come down, my dear friend, into the pit with me.” Harry very likely thought Sampson’s difficulties were over; or, more likely still, was so much engrossed with his own affairs and perplexities, as to bestow little thought upon his neighbour’s. Having sent off his missive, the captive’s mind was somewhat more at ease, and he condescended to call for breakfast, which was brought to him presently. The attendant who served him with his morning repast asked him whether he would order dinner, or take his meal at Mrs. Bailiff’s table with some other gentlemen? No. Mr. Warrington would not order dinner. He should quit the place before dinner-time, he informed the chamberlain who waited on him in that grim tavern. The man went away, thinking no doubt that this was not the first young gentleman who had announced that he was going away ere two hours were over. “Well, if your honour does stay, there is good beef and carrot at two o’clock,” says the sceptic, and closes the door on Mr. Harry and his solitary meditations.
Harry’s messenger to Mr. Sampson brought back a message from that gentleman to say that he would be with his patron as soon as might be: but ten o’clock came, eleven o’clock, noon, and no Sampson. No Sampson arrived, but about twelve Gumbo with a portmanteau of his master’s clothes, who flung himself, roaring with grief, at Harry’s feet: and with a thousand vows of fidelity, expressed himself ready to die, to sell himself into slavery over again, to do anything to rescue his beloved Master Harry from this calamitous position. Harry was touched with the lad’s expressions of affection, and told him to get up from the ground where he was grovelling on his knees, embracing his master’s. “All you have to do, sir, is to give me my clothes to dress, and to hold your tongue about this business. Mind you, not a word, sir, about it to anybody!” says Mr. Warrington, severely.
“Oh no, sir, never to nobody!” says Gumbo, looking most solemnly, and proceeded to dress his master carefully, who had need of a change and a toilette after his yesterday’s sudden capture, and night’s dismal rest. Accordingly Gumbo flung a dash of powder in Harry’s hair, and arrayed his master carefully and elegantly, so that he made Mr. Warrington look as fine and splendid as if he had been stepping into his chair to go to St. James’s.
Indeed all that love and servility could do Mr. Gumbo faithfully did for his master, for whom he had an extreme regard and attachment. But there were certain things beyond Gumbo’s power. He could not undo things which were done already; and he could not help lying and excusing himself when pressed upon points disagreeable to himself. The language of slaves is lies (I mean black slaves and white). The creature slinks away and hides with subterfuges, as a hunted animal runs to his covert at the sight of man, the tyrant and pursuer. Strange relics of feudality, and consequence of our ever-so-old social life! Our domestics (are they not men, too, and brethren?) are all hypocrites before us. They never speak naturally to us, or the whole truth. We should be indignant: we should say, confound their impudence: we should turn them out of doors if they did. But quo me rapis, O my unbridled hobby?
Well, the truth is, that as for swearing not to say a word about his master’s arrest — such an oath as that was impossible to keep for, with a heart full of grief, indeed, but with a tongue that never could cease wagging, bragging, joking, and lying, Mr. Gumbo had announced the woeful circumstance to a prodigious number of his acquaintances already, chiefly gentlemen of the shoulder-knot and worsted lace. We have seen how he carried the news to Colonel Lambert’s and Lord Wrotham’s servants: he had proclaimed it at the footman’s club to which he belonged, and which was frequented by the gentlemen of some of the first nobility. He had subsequently condescended to partake of a mug of ale in Sir Miles Warrington’s butler’s room, and there had repeated and embellished the story. Then he had gone off to Madame Bernstein’s people, with some of whom he was on terms of affectionate intercourse, and had informed that domestic circle of his grief and, his master being captured, and there being no earthly call for his personal services that evening, Gumbo had stepped up to Lord Castlewood’s, and informed the gentry there of the incident which had just come to pass. So when, laying his hand on his heart, and with gushing floods of tears, Gumbo says, in reply to his master’s injunction, “Oh no, master! nebber to nobody!” we are in a condition to judge of the degree of credibility which ought to be given to the lad’s statement.
The black had long completed his master’s toilet: the dreary breakfast was over: slow as the hours went to the prisoner, still they were passing one after another, but no Sampson came in accordance with the promise sent in the morning. At length, some time after noon, there arrived, not Sampson, but a billet from him, sealed with a moist wafer, and with the ink almost yet wet. The unlucky divine’s letter ran as follows:
“Oh, sir, dear sir, I have done all that a man can at the command and in the behalf of his patron! You did not know, sir, to what you were subjecting me, did you? Else, if I was to go to prison, why did I not share yours, and why am I in a lock-up house three doors off?
“Yes. Such is the fact. As I was hastening to you, knowing full well the danger to which I was subject:— but what danger will I not affront at the call of such a benefactor as Mr. Warrington hath been to me? — I was seized by two villains who had a writ against me, and who have lodged me at Naboth’s, hard by, and so close to your honour, that we could almost hear each other across the garden walls of the respective houses where we are confined.
“I had much and of importance to say, which I do not care to write down on paper regarding your affairs. May they mend! May my cursed fortunes, too, better themselves, is the prayer of —
“Your honour’s afflicted Chaplain-inOrdinary, J. S.”
And now, as Mr. Sampson refuses to speak, it will be our duty to acquaint the reader with those matters whereof the poor chaplain did not care to discourse on paper.
Gumbo’s loquacity had not reached so far as Long Acre, and Mr. Sampson was ignorant of the extent of his patron’s calamity until he received Harry’s letter and messenger from Chancery Lane. The divine was still ardent with gratitude for the service Mr. Warrington had just conferred on him, and eager to find some means to succour his distressed patron. He knew what a large sum Lord Castlewood had won from his cousin, had dined in company with his lordship on the day before, and now ran to Lord Castlewood’s house, with a hope of arousing him to some pity for Mr. Warrington. Sampson made a very eloquent and touching speech to Lord Castlewood about his kinsman’s misfortune, and spoke with a real kindness and sympathy, which, however, failed to touch the nobleman to whom he addressed himself.
My lord peevishly and curtly put a stop to the chaplain’s passionate pleading. “Did I not tell you, two days since, when you came for money, that I was as poor as a beggar, Sampson,” said his lordship, “and has anybody left me a fortune since? The little sum I won from my cousin was swallowed up by others. I not only can’t help Mr. Warrington, but, as I pledge you my word, not being in the least aware of his calamity, I had positively written to him this morning to ask him to help me.” And a letter to this effect did actually reach Mr. Warrington from his lodgings, whither it had been despatched by the penny post.
“I must get him money, my lord. I know he had scarcely anything left in his pocket after relieving me. Were I to pawn my cassock and bands, he must have money,” cried the chaplain.
“Amen. Go and pawn your bands, your cassock, anything you please. Your enthusiasm does you credit,” said my lord; and resumed the reading of his paper, whilst, in the deepest despondency, poor Sampson left him.
My Lady Maria meanwhile had heard that the chaplain was with her brother, and conjectured what might be the subject on which they had been talking. She seized upon the parson as he issued from out his fruitless interview with my lord. She drew him into the dining-room: the strongest marks of grief and sympathy were in her countenance. “Tell me, what is this has happened to Mr. Warrington?” she asked.
“Your ladyship, then, knows?” asked the chaplain.
“Have I not been in mortal anxiety ever since his servant brought the dreadful news last night?” asked my lady. “We had it as we came from the opera — from my Lady Yarmouth’s box — my lord, my Lady Castlewood, and I.”
“His lordship, then, did know?” continued Sampson.
“Benson told the news when we came from the playhouse to our tea,” repeats Lady Maria.
The chaplain lost all patience and temper at such duplicity. “This is too bad,” he said, with an oath; and he told Lady Maria of the conversation which he had just had with Lord Castlewood, and of the latter’s refusal to succour his cousin, after winning great sums of money from him, and with much eloquence and feeling, of Mr. Warrington’s most generous behaviour to himself.
Then my Lady Maria broke out with a series of remarks regarding her own family, which were by no means complimentary to her own kith and kin. Although not accustomed to tell truth commonly, yet, when certain families fall out, it is wonderful what a number of truths they will tell about one another. With tears, imprecations, I do not like to think how much stronger language, Lady Maria burst into a furious and impassioned tirade, in which she touched upon the history of almost all her noble family. She complimented the men and the ladies alike; she shrieked out interrogatories to Heaven, inquiring why it had made such (never mind what names she called her brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, parents); and, emboldened with wrath, she dashed at her brother’s library door, so shrill in her outcries, so furious in her demeanour, that the alarmed chaplain, fearing the scene which might ensue, made for the street.
My lord, looking up from the book or other occupation which engaged him, regarded the furious woman with some surprise, and selected a good strong oath to fling at her, as it were, and check her onset.
But, when roused, we have seen how courageous Maria could be. Afraid as she was ordinarily of her brother, she was not in a mood to be frightened now by any language of abuse or sarcasm at his command.
“So, my lord!” she called out, “you sit down with him in private to cards, and pigeon him! You get the poor boy’s last shilling, and you won’t give him a guinea out of his own winnings now he is penniless!”
“So that infernal chaplain has been telling tales!” says my lord.
“Dismiss him: do! Pay him his wages, and let him go — he will be glad enough!” cries Maria.
“I keep him to marry one of my sisters, in case he is wanted,” says Castlewood, glaring at her.
“What can the women be in a family where there are such men?” says the lady.
“Effectivement!” says my lord, with a shrug of his shoulder.
“What can we be, when our fathers and brothers are what they are? We are bad enough, but what are you? I say, you neither have courage — no, nor honour, nor common feeling. As your equals won’t play with you, my Lord Castlewood, you must take this poor lad out of Virginia, your own kinsman, and pigeon him! Oh, it’s a shame — a shame!”
“We are all playing our own game, I suppose. Haven’t you played and won one, Maria? Is it you that are squeamish of a sudden about the poor lad from Virginia? Has Mr. Harry cried off, or has your ladyship got a better offer?” cried my Lord. “If you won’t have him, one of the Warrington girls will, I promise you; and the old Methodist woman in Hill Street will give him the choice of either. Are you a fool, Maria Esmond? A greater fool, I mean, than in common?”
“I should be a fool if I thought that either of my brothers could act like an honest man, Eugene!” said Maria. “I am a fool to expect that you will be other than you are; that if you find any relative in distress you will help him; that if you can meet with a victim you won’t fleece him.”
“Fleece him! Psha! What folly are you talking! Have you not seen, from the course which the lad has been running for months past, how he would end? If I had not won his money, some other would? I never grudged thee thy little plans regarding him. Why shouldst thou fly in a passion, because I ha............