Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
Colonel Maltravers made no answer, but he revolved the pros and cons;
and then he began to think how much it cost him in gamekeepers and
carpenters and bailiffs and gardeners and Heaven knows whom besides; and
then the pagoda flashed across him; and then the cabbage-stalks, and at
last he went to his solicitor.
"You may sell Lisle Court," said he, quietly.
The solicitor dipped his pen in the ink. "The particulars, Colonel?"
"Particulars of Lisle Court! everybody, that is, every gentleman, knows
Lisle Court!"
"Price, sir?"
"You know the rents; calculate accordingly. It will be too large
a purchase for one individual; sell the outlying woods and farms
separately from the rest."
"We must draw up an advertisement, Colonel."
"Advertise Lisle Court! out of the question, sir. I can have no
publicity given to my intention: mention it quietly to any capitalist;
but keep it out of the papers till it is all settled. In a week or two
you will find a purchaser,--the sooner the better."
Besides his horror of newspaper comments and newspaper puffs, Colonel
Maltravers dreaded that his brother--then in Paris--should learn his
intention, and attempt to thwart it; and, somehow or other, the colonel
was a little in awe of Ernest, and a little ashamed of his resolution.
He did not know that, by a singular coincidence, Ernest himself had
thought of selling Burleigh.
The solicitor was by no means pleased with this way of settling the
matter. However, he whispered it about that Lisle Court was in the
market; and as it really was one of the most celebrated places of
its kind in England, the whisper spread among bankers and brewers and
soap-boilers and other rich people--the Medici of the New Noblesse
rising up amongst us--till at last it reached the ears of Mr. Douce.
Lord Vargrave, however bad a man he might be, had not many of those
vices of character which belong to what I may call the _personal class
of vices_,--that is, he had no ill-will to individuals. He was not,
ordinarily, a jealous man, nor a spiteful, nor a malignant, nor a
vindictive man: his vices arose from utter indifference to all men,
and all things--except as conducive to his own ends. He would not have
injured a worm if it did him no good; but he would have set any house
on fire if he had no other means of roasting his own eggs. Yet still,
if any feeling of personal rancour could harbour in his breast, it was,
first, towards Evelyn Cameron, and, secondly, towards Ernest Maltravers.
For the first time in his life, he did long for revenge,--revenge
against the one for stealing his patrimony, and refusing his hand; and
that revenge he hoped to gratify.
As to the other, it was not so much dislike he felt, as an uneasy
sentiment of inferiority. However well he himself had got on in the
world, he yet grudged the reputation of a man whom he had remembered
a wayward, inexperienced boy: he did not love to hear any one praise
Maltravers. He fancied, too, that this feeling was reciprocal, and that
Maltravers was pained at hearing of any new step in his own career.
In fact, it was that sort of jealousy which men often feel for the
companions of their youth, whose characters are higher than their own,
and whose talents are of an order they do not quite comprehend. Now, it
certainly did seem at that moment to Lord Vargrave that it would be
a most splendid triumph over Mr. Maltravers of Burleigh to be lord of
Lisle Court, the hereditary seat of the elder branch of the family
to be, as it were, in the very shoes of Mr. Ernest Maltravers's elder
brother. He knew, too, that it was a property of great consequence. Lord
Vargrave of Lisle Court would hold a very different post in the peerage
from Lord Vargrave of -----, Fulham! Nobody would call the owner of
Lisle Court an adventurer; nobody would suspect such a man of caring
three straws about place and salary. And if he married Evelyn, and if
Evelyn bought Lisle Court, would not Lisle Court be his? He vaulted over
the _ifs_, stiff monosyllables though they were, with a single jump.
Besides, even should the thing come to nothing, there was the very
excuse he sought for joining Evelyn at Paris, for conversing with her,
consulting her. It was true that the will of the late lord left
it solely at the discretion of the trustees to select such landed
investment as seemed best to them; but still it was, if not legally
necessary, at least but a proper courtesy to consult Evelyn. And plans,
and drawings, and explanations, and rent-rolls, would justify him in
spending morning after morning alone with her.
Thus cogitating, Lord Vargrave suffered Mr. Douce to stammer out
sentence upon sentence, till at length, as he rang for coffee, his
lordship stretched himself with the air of a man stretching himself into
self-complacency or a good thing, and said,--
"Mr. Douce, I will go down to Lisle Court as soon as I can; I will see
it; I will ascertain all about it; I will consider favourably of it. I
agree with you, I think it will do famously."
"But," said Mr. Douce, who seemed singularly anxious about the matter,
"we must make haste, my lord; for really--yes, indeed--if--if--if Baron
Roths--Rothschild should--that is to say--"
"Oh, yes, I understand; keep the thing close, my dear Douce; make
friends with the colonel's lawyer; play with him a little, till I can
run down."
"Besides, you see, you are such a good man of business, my lord--that
you see, that--yes, really--there must be time to draw out the
purchase-money--sell out at a prop--prop--"
"To be sure, to be sure! Bless me, how late it is! I am afraid my
carriage is ready. I must go to Madame de L-----'s."
Mr. Douce, who seemed to have much more to say, was forced to keep it
for another time, and to take his leave. Lord Vargrave went to Madame
de L-----'s. His position in what is called Exclusive Society was rather
peculiar. By those who affected to be the best judges, the frankness of
his manner and the easy oddity of his conversation were pronounced at
variance with the tranquil serenity of thorough breeding. But still he
was a great favourite both with fine ladies and dandies. His handsome
keen countenance, his talents, his politics, his intrigues, and an
animated boldness in his bearing, compensated for his constant violation
of all the minutiae of orthodox conventionalism.
At this house he met Colonel Maltravers, and took an opportunity to
renew his acquaintance with that gentleman. He then referred, in a
confidential whisper, to the communication he had received touching
Lisle Court.
"Yes," said the colonel, "I suppose I must sell the place, if I can
do so quietly. To be sure, when I first spoke to my lawyer it was in a
moment of vexation, on hearing that the ----- railroad was to go through
the park, but I find that I overrated that danger. Still, if you will
do me the honour to go and look over the place, you will find very good
shooting; and when you come back, you can see if it will suit you. Don't
say anything about it when you are there; it is better not to publish my
intention all over the county. I shall have Sir Gregory Gubbins offering
to buy it if you do!"
"You may depend on my discretion. Have you heard anything of your
brother lately?"
"Yes; I fancy he is going to Switzerland. He would soon be in England,
if he heard I was going to part with Lisle Court!"
"What, it would vex him so?"
"I fear it would; but he has a nice old place of his own, not half so
large, and therefore not half so troublesome as Lisle Court."
"Ay! and he _did_ talk of selling that nice old place."
"Selling Burleigh! you surprise me. But really country places in England
_are_ a bore. I suppose he has his Gubbins as well as myself!"
Here the chief minister of the government adorned by Lord Vargrave's
virtues passed by, and Lumley turned to greet him.
The two ministers talked together most affectionately in a close
whisper,--so affectionately, that one might have seen, with half an eye,
that they hated each other like poison!
CHAPTER V.
INSPICERE tanquam in speculum, in vitas omnium
Jubeo.*--TERENCE.
* "I bid you look into the lives of all men, as
it were into a mirror."
ERNEST MALTRAVERS still lingered at Paris: he gave up all notion of
proceeding farther. He was, in fact, tired of travel. But there was
another reason that chained him to that "Navel of the Earth,"--there is
not anywhere a better sounding-board to London rumours than the English
_quartier_ between the Boulevard des Italiennes and the Tuileries; here,
at all events, he should soonest learn the worst: and every day, as he
took up the English newspapers, a sick feeling of apprehension and fear
came over him. No! till the seal was set upon the bond, till the Rubicon
was passed, till Miss Cameron was the wife of Lord Vargrave, he could
neither return to the home that was so eloquent with the recollections
of Evelyn, nor, by removing farther from England, delay the receipt of
an intelligence which he vainly told himself he was prepared to meet.
He continued to seek such distractions from thought as were within
his reach; and as his heart was too occupied for pleasures which had,
indeed, long since palled, those distractions were of the grave and
noble character which it is a prerogative of the intellect to afford to
the passions.
De Montaigne was neither a Doctrinaire nor a Republican,--and yet,
perhaps, he was a little of both. He was one who thought that the
tendency of all European States is towards Democracy; but he by no means
looked upon Democracy as a panacea for all legislative evils. He thought
that, while a writer should be in advance of his time, a statesman
should content himself with marching by its side; that a nation could
not be ripened, like an exotic, by artificial means; that it must
be developed only by natural influences. He believed that forms of
government are never universal in their effects. Thus, De Montaigne
conceived that we were wrong in attaching more importance to legislative
than to social reforms. He considered, for instance, that the surest
sign of our progressive civilization is in our growing distaste to
capital punishments. He believed, not in the ultimate _perfection_ of
mankind, but in their progressive _perfectibility_. He thought that
improvement was indefinite; but he did not place its advance more under
Republican than under Monarchical forms. "Provided," he was wont to say,
"all our checks to power are of the right kind, it matters little to
what hands the power itself is confided."
"AEgina and Athens," said he, "were republics--commercial and
maritime--placed under the same sky, surrounded by the same neighbours,
and rent by the same struggles between Oligarchy and Democracy. Yet,
while one left the world an immortal heirloom of genius, where are the
poets, the philosophers, the statesmen of the other? Arrian tells us of
republics in India, still supposed to exist by modern investigators;
but they are not more productive of liberty of thought, or ferment of
intellect, than the principalities. In Italy there were commonwealths
as liberal as the Republic of Florence; but they did not produce a
Machiavelli or a Dante. What daring thought, what gigantic speculation,
what democracy of wisdom and genius, have sprung up amongst the
despotisms of Germany! You cannot educate two individuals so as to
produce the same results from both; you cannot, by similar constitutions
(which are the education of nations) produce the same results from
different communities. The proper object of statesmen should be to give
every facility to the people to develop themselves, and every facility
to philosophy to dispute and discuss as to the ultimate objects to be