CHAPTER 27

THE REPLY.

Thou bear’st a precious burden, gentle post,
Nitre and sulphur—See that it explode not!

Old Play.

“I have received your two long letters, my dear Etherington, with
equal surprise and interest; for what I knew of your Scottish
adventures before, was by no means sufficient to prepare me for a
statement so perversely complicated. The Ignis Fatuus which, you
say, governed your father, seems to have ruled the fortunes of your
whole house, there is so much eccentricity in all that you have told
me. But n’importe, Etherington, you were my friend—you held me up
when I was completely broken down; and, whatever you may think, my
services are at your command much more from reflections on the past,
than hopes for the future. I am no speechmaker, but this you may
rely on while I continue to be Harry Jekyl. You have deserved some
love at my hands, Etherington, and you have it.

“Perhaps I love you the better since your perplexities have become
known to me; for, my dear Etherington, you were before too much an
object of envy to be entirely an object of affection. What a happy
fellow! was the song of all who named you. Bank, and a fortune to
maintain it—luck sufficient to repair all the waste that you could
make in your income, and skill to back that luck, or supply it
should it for a moment fail you.—The cards turning up as if to
your wish—the dice rolling, it almost seemed, at your wink—it was
rather your look than the touch of your cue that sent the ball into
the pocket. You seemed to have fortune in chains, and a man of less
honour would have been almost suspected of helping his luck by a
little art.—You won every bet; and the instant that you were
interested, one might have named the winning horse—it was always
that which you were to gain most by.—You never held out your piece
but the game went down—and then the women!—with face, manners,
person, and, above all, your tongue—what wild work have you made
among them!—Good heaven! and have you had the old sword hanging
over your head by a horsehair all this while?—Has your rank been
doubtful?—Your fortune unsettled?—And your luck, so constant in
every thing else, has that, as well as your predominant influence
with the women, failed you, when you wished to form a connexion for
life, and when the care of your fortune required you to do
so?—Etherington, I am astonished!—The Mowbray scrape I always
thought an inconvenient one, as well as the quarrel with this same
Tyrrel, or Martigny; but I was far from guessing the complicated
nature of your perplexities.

“But I must not run on in a manner which, though it relieves my own
marvelling mind, cannot be very pleasant to you. Enough, I look on
my obligations to you as more light to be borne, now I have some
chance of repaying them to a certain extent; but, even were the full
debt paid, I would remain as much attached to you as ever. It is
your friend who speaks, Etherington; and, if he offers his advice in
somewhat plain language, do not, I entreat you, suppose that your
confidence has encouraged an offensive familiarity, but consider me
as one who, in a weighty matter, writes plainly, to avoid the least
chance of misconstruction.

“Etherington, your conduct hitherto has resembled anything rather
than the coolness and judgment which are so peculiarly your own
when you choose to display them. I pass over the masquerade of your
marriage—it was a boy’s trick, which could hardly have availed you
much, even if successful; for what sort of a wife would you have
acquired, had this same Clara Mowbray proved willing to have
accepted the change which you had put upon her, and transferred
herself, without repugnance, from one bridegroom to another?—Poor
as I am, I know that neither Nettlewood nor Oakendale should have
bribed me to marry such a —— I cannot decorously fill up the
blank.

“Neither, my dear Etherington, can I forgive you the trick you put
on the clergyman, in whose eyes you destroyed the poor girl’s
character to induce him to consent to perform the ceremony, and have
thereby perhaps fixed an indelible stain on her for life—this was
not a fair ruse de guerre.—As it is, you have taken little by
your stratagem—unless, indeed, it should be difficult for the young
lady to prove the imposition put upon her—for that being admitted,
the marriage certainly goes for nothing. At least, the only use you
can make of it, would be to drive her into a more formal union, for
fear of having this whole unpleasant discussion brought into a court
of law; and in this, with all the advantages you possess, joined to
your own arts of persuasion, and her brother’s influence, I should
think you very likely to succeed. All women are necessarily the
slaves of their reputation. I have known some who have given up
their virtue to preserve their character, which is, after all, only
the shadow of it. I therefore would not conceive it difficult for
Clara Mowbray to persuade herself to become a countess, rather than
be the topic of conversation for all Britain, while a lawsuit
betwixt you is in dependence; and that may be for the greater part
of both your lives.

“But, in Miss Mowbray’s state of mind, it may require time to bring
her to such a conclusion; and I fear you will be thwarted in your
operations by your rival—I will not offend you by calling him your
brother. Now, it is here that I think with pleasure I may be of some
use to you,—under this special condition, that there shall be no
thoughts of farther violence taking place between you. However you
may have smoothed over your rencontre to yourself, there is no doubt
that the public would have regarded any accident which might have
befallen on that occasion, as a crime of the deepest dye, and that
the law would have followed it with the most severe punishment. And
for all that I have said of my serviceable disposition, I would fain
stop short on this side of the gallows—my neck is too long already.
Without a jest, Etherington, you must be ruled by counsel in this
matter. I detect your hatred to this man in every line of your
letter, even when you write with the greatest coolness; even where
there is an affectation of gaiety, I read your sentiments on this
subject; and they are such as—I will not preach to you—I will not
say a good man—but such as every wise man—every man who wishes to
live on fair terms with the world, and to escape general
malediction, and perhaps a violent death, where all men will clap
their hands and rejoice at the punishment of the fratricide,—would,
with all possible speed, eradicate from his breast. My services
therefore, if they are worth your acceptance, are offered on the
condition that this unholy hatred be subdued with the utmost force
of your powerful mind, and that you avoid every thing which can
possibly lead to such a catastrophe as you have twice narrowly
escaped. I do not ask you to like this man, for I know well the deep
root which your prejudices hold in your mind; I merely ask you to
avoid him, and to think of him as one, who, if you do meet him, can
never be the object of personal resentment.

“On these conditions, I will instantly join you at your Spa, and
wait but your answer to throw myself into the post-chaise. I will
seek out this Martigny for you, and I have the vanity to think I
shall be able to persuade him to take the course which his own true
interest, as well as yours, so plainly points out—and that is, to
depart and make us free of him. You must not grudge a round sum of
money, should that prove necessary—we must make wings for him to
fly with, and I must be empowered by you to that purpose. I cannot
think you have any thing serious to fear from a lawsuit. Your father
threw out this sinister hint at a moment when he was enraged at his
wife, and irritated by his son; and I have little doubt that his
expressions were merely flashes of anger at the moment, though I see
they have made a deep impression on you. At all events, he spoke of
a preference to his illegitimate son, as something which it was in
his own power to give or to withhold; and he has died without
bestowing it. The family seem addicted to irregular matrimony, and
some left-handed marriage there may have been used to propitiate the
modesty, and save the conscience, of the French lady; but, that any
thing of the nature of a serious and legal ceremony took place,
nothing but the strongest proof can make me believe.

“I repeat, then, that I have little doubt that the claims of
Martigny, whatever they are, may be easily compounded, and England
made clear of him. This will be more easily done, if he really
entertains such a romantic passion, as you describe, for Miss Clara
Mowbray. It would be easy to show him, that whether she is disposed
to accept your lordship’s hand or not, her quiet and peace of mind
must depend on his leaving the country. Rely on it, I shall find out
the way to smooth him down, and whether distance or the grave divide
Martigny and you, is very little to the purpose; unless in so far as
the one point can be attained with honour and safety, and the other,
if attempted, would only make all concerned the subject of general
execration and deserved punishment.—Speak the word, and I attend
you, as your truly grateful and devoted

“HENRY JEKYL.”

To this admonitory epistle, the writer received, in the course of post, the following answer:—

“My truly grateful and devoted Henry Jekyl has adopted a tone, which
seems to be exalted without any occasion. Why, thou suspicious
monitor, have I not repeated a hundred times that I repent sincerely
of the foolish rencontre, and am determined to curb my temper, and
be on my guard in future—And what need you come upon me, with your
long lesson about execration, and punishment, and fratricide, and so
forth?—You deal with an argument as a boy does with the first hare
he shoots, which he never thinks dead till he has fired the second
barrel into her. What a fellow you would have been for a lawyer! how
long you would have held forth upon the plainest cause, until the
poor bothered judge was almost willing to decide against justice,
that he might be revenged on you. If I must repeat what I have said
twenty times, I tell you I have no thoughts of proceeding with this
fellow as I would with another. If my father’s blood be in his
veins, it shall save the skin his mother gave him. And so come,
without more parade, either of stipulation or argument. Thou art,
indeed, a curious animal! One would think, to read your
communication, that you had yourself discovered the propriety of
acting as a negotiator, and the reasons which might, in the course
of such a treaty, be urged with advantage to induce this fellow to
leave the country—Why, this is the very course chalked out in my
last letter! You are bolder than the boldest gipsy, for you not only
steal my ideas, and disfigure them that they may pass for yours, but
you have the assurance to come a-begging with them to the door of
the original parent! No man like you for stealing other men’s
inventions, and cooking them up in your own way. However, Harry,
bating a little self-conceit and assumption, thou art as honest a
fellow as ever man put faith in-clever, too, in your own style,
though not quite the genius you would fain pass for.—Come on thine
own terms, and come as speedily as thou canst. I do not reckon the
promise I made the less binding, that you very generously make no
allusion to it.

“Thine,
“ETHERINGTON.

“P.S. One single caution I must add—do not mention my name to any
one at Harrowgate, or your prospect of meeting me, or the route
which you are about to take. On the purpose of your journey, it is
unnecessary to recommend silence. I know not whether such doubts are
natural to all who have secret measures to pursue, or whether nature
has given me an unusual share of anxious suspicion; but I cannot
divest myself of the idea, that I am closely watched by some one
whom I cannot discover. Although I concealed my purpose of coming
hither from all mankind but you, whom I do not for an instant
suspect of blabbing, yet it was known to this Martigny, and he is
down here before me. Again, I said not a word—gave not a hint to
any one of my views towards Clara, yet the tattling people here had
spread a report of a marriage depending between us, even before I
could make the motion to her brother. To be sure, in such society
there is nothing talked of but marrying and giving in marriage; and
this, which alarms me, as connected with my own private purposes,
may be a bare rumour, arising out of the gossip of the place—Yet I
feel like the poor woman in the old story, who felt herself watched
by an eye that glared upon her from behind the tapestry.

“I should have told you in my last, that I had been recognised at a
public entertainment by the old clergyman, who pronounced the
matrimonial blessing on Clara and me, nearly eight years ago. He
insisted upon addressing me by the name of Valentine Bulmer, under
which I was then best known. It did not suit me at present to put
him into my confidence, so I cut him, Harry, as I would an old
pencil. The task was the less difficult, that I had to do with one
of the most absent men that ever dreamed with his eyes open. I
verily believe he might be persuaded that the whole transaction was
a vision, and that he had never in reality seen me before. Your
pious rebuke, therefore, about what I told him formerly concerning
the lovers, is quite thrown away. After all, if what I said was not
accurately true, as I certainly believe it was an exaggeration, it
was all Saint Francis of Martigny’s fault, I suppose. I am sure he
had love and opportunity on his side.

“Here you have a postscript, Harry, longer than the letter, but it
must conclude with the same burden—Come, and come quickly.”