Peveril of the Peak

the leap of a lion, like the London 'prentice bold, than venture on my master at this moment, who is even now in a humour nearly as dangerous as the animal.'

He then ushered Christian into his master's presence, taking care to post himself within earshot of the door. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII

'Speak not of niceness, when there's chance of wreck,'
The captain said, as ladies writhed their neck
To see the dying dolphin flap the deck:
'If we go down, on us these gentry sup;
We dine upon them, if we haul them up.
Wise men applaud us when we eat the eaters,
As the devil laughs when keen folks cheat the cheaters.'

—THE SEA VOYAGE.

There was nothing in Duke's manner towards Christian which could have conveyed to that latter personage, experienced as he was in the worst possible ways of the world, that Buckingham would, at that particular moment, rather have seen the devil than himself; unless it was that Buckingham's reception of him, being rather extraordinarily courteous towards so old an acquaintance, might have excited some degree of suspicion.

Having escaped with some difficulty from the vague region of general compliments, which bears the same relation to that of business that Milton informs us the Limbo Patrum has to the sensible and material earth, Christian asked his Grace of Buckingham, with the same blunt plainness with which he usually veiled a very deep and artificial character, whether he had lately seen Chiffinch or his helpmate?

'Neither of them lately,' answered Buckingham. 'Have not you waited on them yourself?—I thought you would have been more anxious about the great scheme.'

'I have called once and again,' said Christian, 'but I can gain no access to the sight of that important couple. I begin to be afraid they are paltering with me.'

'Which, by the welkin and its stars, you would not be slow in avenging, Master Christian. I know your puritanical principles on that point well,' said the Duke. 'Revenge may be well said to be sweet, when so many grave and wise men are ready to exchange for it all the sugar-plums which pleasures offer to the poor sinful people of the world, besides the reversion of those which they talk of expecting in the way of post obit.'

'You may jest, my lord,' said Christian, 'but still——'

'But still you will be revenged on Chiffinch, and his little commodious companion. And yet the task may be difficult—Chiffinch has so many ways of obliging his master—his little woman is such a convenient pretty sort of a screen, and has such winning little ways of her own, that, in faith, in your case, I would not meddle with them. What is this refusing their door, man? We all do it to our best friends now and then, as well as to duns and dull company.'

'If your Grace is in a humour of rambling thus wildly in your talk,' said Christian, 'you know my old faculty of patience—I can wait till it be your pleasure to talk more seriously.'

'Seriously!' said his Grace—'Wherefore not?—I only wait to know what your serious business may be.'

'In a word, my lord, from Chiffinch's refusal to see me, and some vain calls which I have made at your Grace's mansion, I am afraid either that our plan has miscarried, or that there is some intention to exclude me from the farther conduct of the matter.' Christian pronounced these words with considerable emphasis.

'That were folly as well as treachery,' returned the Duke, 'to exclude from the spoil the very engineer who conducted the attack. But hark ye, Christian—I am sorry to tell bad news without preparation; but as you insist on knowing the worst, and are not ashamed to suspect your best friends, out it must come—Your niece left Chiffinch's house the morning before yesterday.'

Christian staggered, as if he had received a severe blow; and the blood ran to his face in such a current of passion, that the Duke concluded he was struck with an apoplexy. But, exerting the extraordinary command which he could maintain under the most trying circumstances, he said, with a voice, the composure of which had an unnatural contrast with the alteration of his countenance, 'Am I to conclude, that in leaving the protection of the roof in which I placed her, the girl has found shelter under that of your Grace?'

'Sir,' replied Buckingham gravely, 'the supposition does my gallantry more credit than it deserves.'

'Oh, my Lord Duke,' answered Christian, 'I am not one whom you can impose on by this species of courtly jargon. I know of what your Grace is capable; and that to gratify the caprice of a moment you would not hesitate to disappoint even the schemes at which you yourself have laboured most busily.—Suppose this jest played off. Take your laugh at those simple precautions by which I intended to protect your Grace's interest, as well as that of others. Let us know the extent of your frolic, and consider how far its consequences can be repaired.'

'On my word, Christian,' said the Duke, laughing, 'you are the most obliging of uncles and of guardians. Let your niece pass through as many adventures as Boccaccio's bride of the King of Garba, you care not. Pure or soiled, she will still make the footstool of your fortune.'

An Indian proverb says, that the dart of contempt will even pierce through the shell of the tortoise; but this is more peculiarly the case when conscience tells the subject of the sarcasm that it is justly merited. Christian, stung with Buckingham's reproach, at once assumed a haughty and threatening mien, totally inconsistent with that in which sufferance seemed to be as much his badge as that of Shylock. 'You are a foul-mouthed and most unworthy lord,' he said; 'and as such I will proclaim you, unless you make reparation for the injury you have done me.'

'And what,' said the Duke of Buckingham, 'shall I proclaim you, that can give you the least title to notice from such as I am? What name shall I bestow on the little transaction which has given rise to such unexpected misunderstanding?'

Christian was silent, either from rage or from mental conviction.

'Come, come, Christian,' said the Duke, smiling, 'we know too much of each other to make a quarrel safe. Hate each other we may—circumvent each other—it is the way of Courts—but proclaim!—a fico for the phrase.'

'I used it not,' said Christian, 'till your Grace drove me to extremity. You know, my lord, I have fought both at home and abroad; and you should not rashly think that I will endure any indignity which blood can wipe away.'

'On the contrary,' said the Duke, with the same civil and sneering manner, 'I can confidently assert, that the life of half a score of your friends would seem very light to you, Christian, if their existence interfered, I do not say with your character, as being a thing of much less consequence, but with any advantage which their existence might intercept. Fie upon it, man, we have known each other long. I never thought you a coward; and am only glad to see I could strike a few sparkles of heat out of your cold and constant disposition. I will now, if you please, tell you at once the fate of the young lady, in which I pray you to believe that I am truly interested.'

'I hear you, my Lord Duke,' said Christian. 'The curl of your upper lip, and your eyebrow, does not escape me. Your Grace knows the French proverb, 'He laughs best who laughs last.' But I hear you.'

'Thank Heaven you do,' said Buckingham; 'for your case requires haste, I promise you, and involves no laughing matter. Well then, hear a simple truth, on which (if it became me to offer any pledge for what I assert to be such) I could pledge life, fortune, and honour. It was the morning before last, when meeting with the King at Chiffinch's unexpectedly—in fact I had looked in to fool an hour away, and to learn how your scheme advanced—I