Anna St. Ives Part 71

Why ay! He who opens the flood-gates of mischief is necessarily in most danger of being swept away by the torrent!--I have drunken deeply of ruin, and soon shall have my fill!

You warned me to beware of this raven: you told me he scented carrion!--I laughed at your prophecy!--It is fulfilled!--I am a gull!--The fleeced, cheated, despicable gull of the infernal villain Mac Fane!

It was right that I should be loaded with every species of contempt for myself. I have been the fool, the gudgeon, the ineffable a.s.s to lose a sum of money to him, which to pay would be destruction!--I begin to hate myself with most strange inveteracy! Could I meet such another fellow, I would spit in his face--Fairfax, it is true--By h.e.l.l I hold myself in most rooted and ample antipathy!

I find I have strangely mistaken my own character and talents--I once thought to have driven the world before me, and to have whipped opposition into immediate compliance: but it seems I am myself one of the very sorry wretches at whom I was so all alive and ready to give, and spurn! These are odd and unaccountable things! And it appears that I am a very poor creature! A most indubitable driveller! The twin-brother of imbecility! Ay, the counterpart and compeer of Edward St. Ives, and the tool of the most barefaced of cheats, as well as his familiar!--Well! I have lived long enough to make the discovery; and it is now high time to depart!

I wrote to you but yesterday: but events hastily tread on each other's heels, and if I do not relate them now I never shall. I told you I expected the gambler to supper, by my own invitation--Ay, ay!--I am a very Solomon!

I dined at home. I knew not indeed to what extremes the St. Ives hunters might proceed: or whether they would make accusation upon oath, sufficient to authorise a magistrate in granting a warrant, to bring me before him; but the attempt must have been impotent and abortive, I therefore determined to brave them: however I heard no more of them or their suspicions.

As I sat ruminating on past events, on my sister and her epistle, and particularly on the zeal with which Anna St. Ives appealed to the letter written by her, which I had received from Laura, my curiosity was so far excited that at last I determined to read them both. I own, Fairfax, they both moved me--This sister of mine, enraged as I am against her, has somehow found the art of making herself respected. Her zeal has character and efficacy in it: I mean persuasion. I could not resist some of the sensations she intended to inspire. She cited pa.s.sages from the letters of her friend that were daggers to me! At the very time I was seeking to quarrel with Anna, she angel-like was incessant in my praise!--And such praises, Fairfax--! There was no resisting it!--She thought generously, n.o.bly, ay sublimely of me: while my irascible jealousy, false pride, and vindictive spirit were eager only to find cause of offence!

And yet I know not!--I cannot keep my mind to a point! Surely _I had cause of offence_: real cause?--Surely the retribution I sought had justice in it?--She could not be wholly blameless?--No!--That would indeed be distraction!

I then ventured to read the letter of Anna--On paper or in speech she is the same: energetic, awful, and affecting!

While I was reading this last Mac Fane entered, and soon put an end to my meditations. Did I tell you I had been fool enough to invite him to supper?--He had not been with me half an hour before I was most intolerably weary of his company!

After having vapoured of the feats of himself and the scowling rascal his colleague, to remind me of my high obligations to them, and talking as usual with most bitter malevolence against Henley, he soon began to descant on the old subject; gaming--To ask a madman why he is mad were vain! I was importuned by his jargon--'He had been pigeoned only last night of no less than seven hundred pounds!' Repet.i.tions, imprecations, and lies, all of the same kind, succeeded as fast as he could utter them!

I know all this ought to have put me upon my guard; and I know too that it did not. I believe I had some lurking vanity in my mind; a persuasion that I could beat him at picquet. I was weary both of myself and him; was primed for mischief, and cared not of what kind. If you ask me for any better reason, why, knowing him as I did, I suffered myself to be the tool of this fellow, I can only say I have none to give!

I ordered my own servant to fetch half a dozen packs of cards, and imagined this precaution was some security. What will not men imagine, when their pa.s.sions are afloat and reason is flown?

To give you the history of how I was led on, from one act of idiotism to another, or how after having lost one thousand I could be lunatic enough to lose a second, and after a second a third, and so on to a tenth, is more than my present temper of mind will permit. It is quite sufficient to tell you that I have ruined myself; and that there is not, upon the face of the earth, a fellow I so thoroughly despise as c.o.ke Clifton; no not even Mac Fane himself! Below the lowest am I fallen; for I am his dupe, nay his companion, and what is worse his debtor! It is time I were out of the world--So miserable a being does not crawl upon its surface.

It is the very heyday of mischief, and I must abroad among it. The exact manner of the catastrophe I cannot foresee, but it must be tragical. I have something brooding in my mind, the outlines of a conclusion, which rather pleases me. I have sworn to avenge myself of Anna, disinherit my sister, and never to pay Mac Fane. These oaths must be kept. Anna must fall! If she will but deign to live afterward, she shall be my heir. And for myself, I know how to find a ready quietus!

My mind since this last affair is better reconciled to its destiny, and even less disturbed than before: for previous to this, there seemed to be some bare possibility of a generous release, on my part, and a more generous forgetfulness of injuries on theirs. But now, all is over! I have but to punish my opponents a little, and myself much, and having punished expire.

C. CLIFTON

P.S. I have not paid the scoundrel his thousand pounds. He proposed a bond for the whole, on which he said he could raise money. This I was determined not to give, and told him he must wait a few days, till I had consulted my lawyer and looked into my affairs, and I would then give him a determinate answer. He was beginning to a.s.sume the contemptible airs of a bully; but I was in no temper to bear the least insult. The real rage of my look silenced the mechanical ferocity of his. I bade him remember I could hit a china plate, and that I should think proper to take my own mode of payment. He then changed his tone, and began to commend his soul to Satan, in a thousand different forms, if he had ever won a hundred pounds at a sitting in his whole life before. I sneered in his face, shewed him the door, and bade him good night; and he walked quietly away.

LETTER CXXIV

_Louisa Clifton to Mrs. Wenbourne_

_Grosvenor Street_

Dear Madam,

As I have taken upon myself the painful duty of informing you of all that pa.s.ses, relative to this unhappy affair, it becomes me to be punctual. It is afflicting to own that our agitation and distress, instead of abating, are increased.

Finding it impossible to gain a sight of my brother, I determined to attempt to question his valet. Mr. Webb received my instructions accordingly, watched him to some distance from the house, and delivered a message from me, that if he would come to me I would present him with ten guineas.

He made no hesitation, but followed Mr. Webb immediately.

Either he is very artful or very ignorant of this affair. One circ.u.mstance excepted, he appears to know nothing.

I promised him any reward, any sum he should himself name, if he could but give us such information as might lead to the recovery of our lost friends: but he protested very solemnly he had none to give; except that he owns having been employed, by his master, to inveigle the lad away, who wrote the anonymous letter, and whom Mr. Clifton, by practising on the lad's credulity and grat.i.tude, sent to France.

The valet indeed acknowledges his master is exceedingly disturbed in mind; that he does not sleep, nor even go to bed, except sometimes tossing himself on it with his clothes on, and almost instantly rising again; and that he has sent for his attorney, to make his will.

I will not endeavour to paint my sensations at hearing this account. I will only add that another incident has happened, which gives them additional acuteness.

I believe, madam, you have heard both my brother and my Anna speak of and describe a young French n.o.bleman, who paid his addresses to her, and who was the occasion of the rash leap into the lake, by which Mr.

Clifton endangered his life? This gentleman, Count de Beaunoir, is arrived in London; and has this morning paid a visit to Sir Arthur St.

Ives.

He enquired first and eagerly after my friend; with whom, like all who know her, he is in raptures. Sir Arthur, forgetting his character, and the apparently rodomontade but to him very serious manner in which he had declared himself her champion, told him the whole story, as far as it is known to us; not omitting to mention Mr. Clifton as the person on whom all our suspicions fell, and relating to him the full grounds of those suspicions.

The astonishment of the Count occasioned him to listen with uncommon attention to what he heard; and he closed the narrative of Sir Arthur by affirming it was all true. He was convinced beyond contradiction of its truth, for he had himself brought over the lad, whom Mr. Clifton had sent, with pretended dispatches, to a friend of his in Paris.

The lad it appears, suspecting all was not right, and finding no probability of returning, but on the contrary that he was watched, and even refused a pa.s.sport, had applied to the Count through the medium of his servants, with whom he had formerly been acquainted, to protect and afford him the means of returning to England.

The lad was sent for, his story heard, and he was then questioned concerning Anna St. Ives; and he had heard enough of the affair from Mr. Abimelech Henley, and from the servants, to know that the proposed match, between Mr. Clifton and Anna, was broken off; and that she refused to admit his visits. When Count de Beaunoir last saw Sir Arthur, at Paris, he had a.s.sured him very seriously that, should ever Anna St. Ives find herself disengaged and he knew it, he would instantly make her a tender of his hand and fortune: and he had no sooner heard the lad's story than he determined immediately to make his intended journey to England.

My heart shudders while I relate it, but I dread lest it should be a fatal journey, for him or my brother, or both! For he declared to Sir Arthur, without hesitation, he would wait on Mr. Clifton directly, and oblige him either to produce Anna St. Ives, or meet him in the field.

Wretched folly! Destructive error! When will men cease to think that vice and virtue ought to meet on equal terms; and that injury can be atoned by blood?

The Count had left his address with Sir Arthur, and the moment I heard what had pa.s.sed I flew to his lodgings. He was not at home, and I waited above an hour. At last he came, and I attempted to shew him both the folly and wickedness of the conduct he was pursuing.

He listened to me with the utmost politeness, paid me a thousand compliments, acknowledged the truth of every thing I said, but very evidently determined to act in a manner directly opposite. I very a.s.siduously laboured to make him promise, upon his honour, he would not seek redress by duelling; but in vain. He answered by evasion; with all possible desire to have obliged me, but with a foregone conclusion that it could not be.

Pardon me, madam, for writing a narrative so melancholy: but sincerity is necessary; intelligence might have come to you in a distorted form, and might have produced much worse effects. For my own part, I have no other mode of conduct but that of writing and of speaking the simple truth; being convinced there is no shade of disguise, artifice, or falsehood, that is not immoral in principle, and pernicious in practice.

I have been very busy. I have sent for the lad whom the count brought over with him, and have made enquiries. The answers he gave me all tend to confirm our former suspicions. He has related the story, at length, of the manner in which he was inveigled away, and prevailed on to go to France.

I next questioned him concerning his aunt; and he knows nothing of her, has never heard from her, and is astonished at what can have become of her. He means, however, to go this evening to a relation's house, where he thinks he is certain he shall hear of her; and has then promised to come and let me know--But to what purpose? We shall find she has been sent out of the way by Mr. Clifton: and what further information will that afford? None, except to confirm what needs no confirming; except to shew the blindness, craft, and turpitude of his mind!

I am, dear madam, &c.

L. CLIFTON

LETTER CXXV

_c.o.ke Clifton to Guy Fairfax_