Peveril of the Peak

'My breeding is too plain to understand ends of playhouse verse, my lord,' said the Colonel suddenly. 'Has your Grace no other service to command me?'

'None—only I am told you have published a Narrative concerning the Plot.'

'What should ail me, my lord?' said the Colonel; 'I hope I am a witness as competent as any that has yet appeared?'

'Truly, I think so to the full,' said the Duke; 'and it would have been hard, when so much profitable mischief was going, if so excellent a Protestant as yourself had not come in for a share.'

'I came to take your Grace's commands, not to be the object of your wit,' said the Colonel.

'Gallantly spoken, most resolute and most immaculate Colonel! As you are to be on full pay in my service for a month to come, I pray your acceptance of this purse, for contingents and equipments, and you shall have my instructions from time to time.'

'They shall be punctually obeyed, my lord,' said the Colonel; 'I know the duty of a subaltern officer. I wish your Grace a good morning.'

So saying, he pocketed the purse, without either affecting hesitation, or expressing gratitude, but merely as a part of a transaction in the regular way of business, and stalked from the apartment with the same sullen gravity which marked his entrance. 'Now, there goes a scoundrel after my own heart,' said the Duke; 'a robber from his cradle, a murderer since he could hold a knife, a profound hypocrite in religion, and a worse and deeper hypocrite in honour,—would sell his soul to the devil to accomplish any villainy, and would cut the throat of his brother, did he dare to give the villainy he had so acted its right name.—Now, why stand you amazed, good Master Jerningham, and look on me as you would on some monster of Ind, when you had paid your shilling to see it, and were staring out your pennyworth with your eyes as round as a pair of spectacles? Wink, man, and save them, and then let thy tongue untie the mystery.'

'On my word, my Lord Duke,' answered Jerningham, 'since I am compelled to speak, I can only say, that the longer I live with your Grace, I am the more at a loss to fathom your motives of action. Others lay plans, either to attain profit or pleasure by their execution; but your Grace's delight is to counteract your own schemes, when in the very act of performance; like a child—forgive me—that breaks its favourite toy, or a man who should set fire to the house he has half built.'

'And why not, if he wanted to warm his hands at the blaze?' said the Duke.

'Ay, my lord,' replied his dependent; 'but what if, in doing so, he should burn his fingers?—My lord, it is one of your noblest qualities, that you will sometimes listen to the truth without taking offence; but were it otherwise, I could not, at this moment, help speaking out at every risk.'

'Well, say on, I can bear it,' said the Duke, throwing himself into an easy-chair, and using his toothpick with graceful indifference and equanimity; 'I love to hear what such potsherds as thou art, think of the proceeding of us who are of the pure porcelain clay of the earth.'

'In the name of Heaven, my lord, let me then ask you,' said Jerningham, 'what merit you claim, or what advantage you expect, from having embroiled everything in which you are concerned to a degree which equals the chaos of the blind old Roundhead's poem which your Grace is so fond of? To begin with the King. In spite of good-humour, he will be incensed at your repeated rivalry.'

'His Majesty defied me to it.'

'You have lost all hopes of the Isle, by quarrelling with Christian.'

'I have ceased to care a farthing about it,' replied the Duke.

'In Christian himself, whom you have insulted, and to whose family you intend dishonour, you have lost a sagacious, artful, and cool-headed instrument and adherent,' said the monitor.

'Poor Jerningham!' answered the Duke; 'Christian would say as much for thee, I doubt not, wert thou discarded tomorrow. It is the common error of such tools as you and he to think themselves indispensable. As to his family, what was never honourable cannot be dishonoured by any connection with my house.'

'I say nothing of Chiffinch,' said Jerningham, 'offended as he will be when he learns why, and by whom, his scheme has been ruined, and the lady spirited away—He and his wife, I say nothing of them.'

'You need not,' said the Duke; 'for were they even fit persons to speak to me about, the Duchess of Portsmouth has bargained for their disgrace.'

'Then this bloodhound of a Colonel, as he calls himself, your Grace cannot even lay him on a quest which is to do you service, but you must do him such indignity at the same time, as he will not fail to remember, and be sure to fly at your throat should he ever have an opportunity of turning on you.'

'I will take care he has none,' said the Duke; 'and yours, Jerningham, is a low-lived apprehension. Beat your spaniel heartily if you would have him under command. Ever let your agents see you know what they are, and prize them accordingly. A rogue, who must needs be treated as a man of honour, is apt to get above his work. Enough, therefore, of your advice and censure, Jerningham; we differ in every particular. Were we both engineers, you would spend your life in watching some old woman's wheel, which spins flax by the ounce; I must be in the midst of the most varied and counteracting machinery, regulating checks and counter-checks, balancing weights, proving springs and wheels, directing and controlling a hundred combined powers.'

'And your fortune, in the meanwhile?' said Jerningham; 'pardon this last hint, my lord.'

'My fortune,' said the Duke, 'is too vast to be hurt by a petty wound; and I have, as thou knowest, a thousand salves in store for the scratches and scars which it sometimes receives in greasing my machinery.'

'Your Grace does not mean Dr. Wilderhead's powder of projection?'

'Pshaw! he is a quacksalver, and mountebank, and beggar.'

'Or Solicitor Drowndland's plan for draining the fens?'

'He is a cheat,—videlicet, an attorney.'

'Or the Laird of Lackpelf's sale of Highland woods?'

'He is a Scotsman,' said the Duke,—'videlicet, both cheat and beggar.'

'These streets here, upon the site of your noble mansion-house?' said Jerningham.

'The architect's a bite, and the plan's a bubble. I am sick of the sight of this rubbish, and I will soon replace our old alcoves, alleys, and flower-pots by an Italian garden and a new palace.'

'That, my lord, would be to waste, not to improve your fortune,' said his domestic.

'Clodpate, and muddy spirit that thou art, thou hast forgot the most hopeful scheme of all—the South Sea Fisheries—their stock is up 50 per cent. already. Post down to the Alley, and tell old Mansses to buy ?20,000 for me.—Forgive me, Plutus, I forgot to lay my sacrifice on thy shrine, and yet expected thy favours!—Fly post-haste, Jerningham—for thy life, for thy life, for thy life!'[26]

With hands and eyes uplifted, Jerningham left the apartment; and the Duke, without thinking a moment farther on old or new intrigues—on the friendship he had formed, or the enmity he had provoked—on the beauty whom he had carried off from her natural protectors, as well as from her lover—or on the monarch against whom he had placed himself in rivalship,—sat down to calculate chances with all the zeal of Demoivre, tired of the drudgery in half-an-hour, and refused to see the zealous agent whom he had employed in the city, because he was busily engaged in writing a new lampoon.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Ah! changeful head, and fickle heart!

—PROGRESS OF DISCONTENT.

No event is more ordinary in narratives of this nature, than the abduction of the female on whose fate the