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THE 
 
 MAN OF FORTUNE, 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER TALES. 
 
 BY MRS GORE, 
 
 AUTHORESS OF * MRS ARMITAGE,' * STOKESHILL PLACE,' ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, 
 
 GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED BY CHARLES REYNELL. 
 LITTLE PULTENEY STREET. 
 

 »•' THE MAN OF FORTUNE, 
 
 I 
 
 r 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 *' For solitude to virtue proves a grave ; 
 A sepulchre in which the living lie. 
 Till all good qualities grow sick and die." 
 
 T COWPER. 
 
 ^ Sir Giles Cressingham, in his youth a spend- 
 
 thrift and a roue, had become in his age some- 
 p thing almost amounting to a miser. Not merely 
 J as regarded money ; — nay, according to general 
 interpretation, not as regarded money at all ; for 
 ^ he was liberal in his house-keeping, and scru- 
 A pulous that his old family mansion at Stoke 
 § Paddocks should exhibit all the state, if not all 
 
 V ^^? VOL. I. ^ ,^^ . .,.. f^ B 
 
A THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 the hospitality, which it displayed under the 
 dominion of his ancestors. 
 
 But the old gentleman was chary of his con- 
 versation, chary of his affections; miserly with 
 his mind, miserly with his heart. The hollow- 
 ness of the world, the superficiality of mankind, 
 had inspired him with general mistrust, by 
 the influence of egotism, creating a complete 
 egotist. 
 
 " They never cared much for me,*' mused Sir 
 Giles, " when I was young, cheerful, and good- 
 looking. How can they be attached to me, now 
 that I am old, infirm, and pecA^ish ? No, no ! 
 their civilities are addressed to my strong box. 
 My relations pay their court to me only because 
 they want to figure in my will. We shall see, 
 we shall see! — In the meantime, I shall take care 
 ^tV it they do not figure at Stoke Paddocks." 
 
 The fine old gardens of the place were con- 
 sequently kept up for the recreation of the chaf- 
 finches and sparrows. It was only occasionally, 
 on a very serene July afternoon, that the old 
 gentleman could bear his Bath chair to be rolled 
 out upon the lawn, to be stationed under a 
 drooping beech-tree; under which he enjoyed 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 3 
 
 precisely tlie same reveries he would Lave en- 
 joyed by the fire-side. As a youth. Sir Giles had 
 been remarkable for his shyness, — as a man, for 
 his absence of mind ; — and now, in his decrepi- 
 tude, cold, proud, selfish abstraction had taken 
 place of all other faculties. His feeble spirit, 
 within the intrenchments of an equally feeble 
 body, was keeping up a perpetual warfare and 
 defiance against the mass of mankind. He was 
 always on his guard against them; always in- 
 wardly intent upon the unobserved discomfiture 
 of their stratagems and manoeuvres. 
 
 Surrounded by venerable servants, whose 
 life had been a system of deference, as his of 
 despotism, a perpetual Ko-too waited upon his nod. 
 — There was no hope of his extending his sphere 
 of virtue or enjoyment. — There was no one to 
 suggest that so rich a man as Sir Giles might be 
 wiser or happier. When he issued his decrees, 
 his household obeyed in breathless submission. 
 A simultaneous bow actuated the whole brigade 
 whenever he was pleased to express an opinion. 
 It was clear enough to others besides the vicar of 
 the parish, that it w^ould be easier for a camel to 
 
 I 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 go through the eye of a needle, than for such a 
 man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 It is probable that, had the splendid property of 
 Sir Giles Cressingham been entailed, a vast dif- 
 ference would have been operated in his character. 
 As a life enjoyment, he would have prized his 
 fortune only as he prized the food that ministered 
 to his hunger, or the garments that preserved him 
 from the cold. But absolute power creates the 
 absolute prince. To dispose of Stoke Paddocks 
 and his other fine estates after his death, had been 
 the grand consideration of his life — the great 
 object of his reveries under the beech-tree and by 
 the fire-side. Had it formed an agreeable object, 
 this would not have signified. But unluckily it 
 was a source of pain and anguish to the narrow- 
 minded Sir Giles. In addition to the usual 
 jealousy of his successor, he was disturbed by 
 pe<juliar misgivings and antipathies in his choice. 
 
 His nearest relatives were cousins, the sons of 
 uncles who had tormented him with advice and 
 interference in his youth. He hated the whole 
 pack of them. They were the Master Goodchilds 
 who had been set up as examples to his boyhood. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 5 
 
 Of their children he knew nothing, he wished to 
 know nothing, chiefly because their injudicious 
 parents were always tormenting him with letters 
 concerning their merits and proficiencies ; insult- 
 ing him with a sight of their copy-books, their 
 themes, their school-prizes, and college distinc- 
 tions. Sir Giles resented all this, less as a legacy- 
 trap than as a personal insult, intending to twit 
 him with his folly in having refrained from luatri- 
 mony ; and his destitution, in his having no son of 
 his own to write Latin exercises, and take honours 
 at the University. 
 
 By degrees, his dislike assumed the morbid 
 virulence of animosity. He could keep his 
 troublesome relations out of his house, by ceasing 
 to invite them. But even his absolutism was 
 unavailing against the intrusions of the post. 
 They could write to him when they pleased; 
 and write they did, with a pertinacity that seemed 
 expressly intended to harass and annoy. As he 
 never answered them, he was in hopes that his 
 dogged silence would in the end wear out their 
 perseverance. By no means ! — They only wrote 
 the more, to inquire why he never wrote. At 
 length, in his feverish irritation, he ceased to open 
 
 B 2 
 
6 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 their letters. He was familiar with their several 
 hand-writings. He had an intuitive perception 
 of a cousinly letter, by the very manner of its 
 folding; and there was a large drawer in his 
 old-fashioned secretaire, to which, for the last 
 ten years, he had consigned every note and 
 epistle that bore evidence of emanating from 
 any branch or offset of the family of Cressingham. 
 He almost allowed himself to rejoice on the ar- 
 rival of one of these family missives, written on 
 black-edged paper, and closed with a mourning 
 seal. 
 
 Meanwhile, the last will and testament re- 
 mained unengrossed, and the lands and tenements 
 of Stoke Paddocks undevised. Sir Giles Cres- 
 singham appeared to conceive, that, by evading 
 the question of inheritance, he might baulk his 
 inheritors ; — thus, though the most absolute of 
 men, waiving his own right of disposal over his 
 property, in favour of that of the law ! It is recorded 
 of one of the proudest of modern aristocrats, that 
 when the approach of death was announced to him 
 by his physicians, he caused his carriage to be 
 ordered, went out airing, and died on the road, 
 as if from a sort of vague conviction that the King 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 7 
 
 of Terrors might be conquered by defiance, that 
 it was possible to be " not at home " to Death ! — 
 In the same spirit. Sir Giles appeared to imagine 
 that the non-appointment of an heir secured him 
 from a successor to his property. 
 
 There were moments, however, when announce- 
 ments in the newspapers of the decease of his 
 contemporaries, seemed to shake his nerves and 
 excite his anxieties, by reminding him that even 
 so rich a man was merely mortal. At such 
 periods, his reveries under the beech-tree became, 
 if not of a more sorrowful, of a more sullen com- 
 plexion. He seemed to grudge the succeeding 
 generation, manifested through the vista opened 
 by those insolent obituaries, their enjoyment of 
 the verdant lawns and noble woods around him. 
 Every year added something to the beauties of 
 Stoke. Money did much, and nature more, to 
 enhance the glories of the scenery. The timber 
 grew more majestic; fresh springs, bursting into 
 the lake, perfected its margin ; and rare exotics 
 were added to the conservatory, and finer fruits 
 to the garden, by the operation of horticultural 
 art. It was only the master of all these enjoy- 
 ments who was declining; it was only Sir Giles 
 
8 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 who found himself the worse for the lapse of suc- 
 ceeding years. 
 
 Whenever all this occurred to him, he could 
 have found it in his heart to exterminate every 
 cousin of them all. As a last effusion of malice, 
 he would have adopted some low-born stranger, in 
 order to disappoint his expectant kith and kin, had 
 his household dependency presented any youthful 
 scion certain to survive him. But the abject 
 slavishness to which he reduced those connected 
 with him, had prevented all idea of matrimony 
 from entering even his steward's room. His old 
 housekeeper was a spinster, and his butler a gay 
 bachelor of sixty-two. The whole establishment 
 was as lonely, selfish, and discontented as himself. 
 
 It happened that one morning, in the midst of 
 one of these fits of gloomy moroseness on the part 
 of the old man, his peculiar appetite for the pe- 
 rusal of that grievous department of newspaper 
 intelligence, headed "Accidents and Offences," 
 broucrht under his notice the aifliction of a widow 
 lady of the name of Blair, whose only child, a boy 
 about four years of age, had fallen out of a window, 
 to the endangerment of life and limb. Mrs Blair 
 (it appeared from the paragraph in the ' Courier ' 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 9 
 
 wliicli described the sad event) resided at Readinjr ; 
 and Sir Giles, remembering that the seat of his 
 cousin Richard Cressingham, whose only daughter 
 had run away with a Captain Blair, was situated 
 within a mile of that town, had reason to suppose 
 that a real family affliction had overtaken one of 
 the objects of his antipathy. 
 
 In the listlessness of his leisure, he even opened 
 the drawer containing the denounced Cressing- 
 hamian epistles ; and having selected those which 
 bore the postmark of " Reading," proceeded 
 carelessly to break the seal, anxious to ascertain 
 for a certainty that Richard Cressingham was 
 visited by misfortune. 
 
 His amiable solicitude was rewarded. The 
 letters in question, a hoard conglomerating for 
 the last six years, contained the whole history of 
 his kinsman's domestic vexations ; first, in the 
 refusal of his only daughter to give her hand to 
 his near neighbour and friend, the Earl of Ash- 
 leigh ; secondly, in her elopement with a penni- 
 less captain in the Guards ; and, thirdly, in the 
 death of the bridegroom within a year of tlic 
 marriage, leaving an infant son to his portionless 
 widow. Had Sir Giles previously conjectured 
 
 B 3 
 
10 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 for a moment that the correspondence of his as- 
 piring cousin conveyed intelligence of so many 
 personal mortifications, the letters would not have 
 been allowed to remain so long unopened ! 
 
 " I have resolved, and I have communicated 
 my resolutions to Sophia," said Mr Cressingham's 
 last letter, " never to receive her again into my 
 house, unless she consent to remit the child to 
 his father's relations ; — who, it appears, are willing 
 to burthen themselves by its adoption. To a 
 childless widow, twenty years of age, it is far 
 from improbable that Lord Ashleigh might be 
 tempted to renew his addresses. At present, she 
 remains as obstinately attached to the child as she 
 was to its father. But I am not without hope that 
 the severe distress to which she is reduced, will 
 eventually prevail over her obstinacy. Purely to 
 annoy me (though she pretends to talk about 
 attachment to the scenes and friends of her youth), 
 Mrs Blair has thought fit to take up her abode 
 in lodgings at Reading. But as you may suppose, 
 my dear sir, this does not accelerate, by a single 
 step, her reception under my roof, except upon 
 the terms I have proposed to her acceptance." 
 
 " Unnatural brute ! " was the ejaculation of one 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 11 
 
 of the least amiable of the human race, at the con- 
 clusion of his cousin's letter. " I always detested 
 Dick Cressingham, even more than his brother. 
 Had it not pleased God to remove the child, it 
 should be all the better for its grandfather's dis- 
 gusting inhumanity." 
 
 It was so long since the old man's feelings had 
 been touched by anything beyond the limit of the 
 park-palings of Stoke Paddocks, that he could not 
 forbear reverting again and again to the subject, 
 till he began to interest himself seriously in the 
 fortunes of Mrs Blair and her boy. He recon- 
 sulted the Accidents and Offences, and even 
 the obituary of the Courier, for further intelli- 
 gence concerning the unfortunate child ; and 
 at length worked himself up into such a state of 
 nervous excitement, as to resolve upon despatch- 
 ing one of his grey-headed confidentials secretly 
 to Reading, to ascertain the sequel of the event. 
 It was only a journey of forty miles. A journey 
 of forty miles was nothing for the chance of an 
 opportunity of thwarting Richard Cressingham. 
 
 The old butler, to whom absence from Stoke 
 was an event as rare and almost as exhilarating 
 as tidings of family mischance to his master, re- 
 
12 , THE INIAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 turned in a couple of days so cheered and gratified 
 by his journey, that all he had seen and all he 
 could imagine of the widow Blair and her off- 
 spring, was painted in the most glowing colours. 
 The relief he had experienced in emancipation 
 from the thraldom of his tyrant, was attributed to 
 admiration of so fine an example of maternal de- 
 votion and patient resignation, as the lovely Mrs 
 Blair; and of the promising little Reginald, of 
 whom the newspapers had exaggerated the dan- 
 ger, but of whom it was impossible to exaggerate 
 the spirit and beauty. Old Matthews vowed he 
 had never beheld so fine a little fellow. He even 
 added certain arabesque touches to the picture as 
 to the resemblance borne by little Reginald to one 
 of the ancestral portraits of the Cressingham fa- 
 mily, in which a likeness had always been found, 
 by his flatterers, for their present representative. 
 
 " It was very prettily thought of in Mrs Blair, 
 to name her son after her great grandfather, 
 Cressingham ! " muttered Sir Giles, who, but for 
 the idea that this selection on the part of the 
 young widow was probably most unacceptable to 
 her father, would certainly have liked the boy the 
 less for so presumptuous a manifestation of his 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 13 
 
 family connexion. — " ' Reginald Blair !* why not 
 ' Reginald Cressingham ? ' — nothing would be 
 easier than to effect the change of name, if I 
 should find, hereafter, that the old fool Matthews 
 has not bamboozled me by his account of these 
 people." 
 
 The first step taken by the old man towards the 
 verification of his butler's statements, was to fit 
 up, with simple elegance, a small house situated 
 on the outskirts of his park, which, in the time of 
 his father. Sir Reginald, had been the residence 
 of a favourite sister. By the beginning of sum- 
 mer, The Wilderness presented the very type of 
 "a cottage of gentility;" and already the scheme 
 so far prospered, that the interest excited in his 
 mind by the progress of improving and furnishing, 
 had considerably abated the habitual hypochon- 
 driacism of the peevish Sir Giles. Every day, 
 he proceeded in his garden chair, at a snail's pace, 
 from the Hall to The Wilderness, to ascertain that 
 the new carpets were put down and the gravel 
 walks properly rolled ; and by the time the butler 
 was despatched a second time to Reading, no 
 longer incognito, but as bearer of authentic ere- 
 
li THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 dentials and harbinger of the family coach and 
 four that was to arrive the following day, Sir 
 Giles Cressingham was at least ten years younger 
 in health and temper than he had been ten weeks 
 before. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " He gave him, first, his breeding ; 
 Then showered his bounties on him like the hours 
 That, open-handed, sit upon the clouds, 
 And press the liberality of heaven 
 Down to the laps of thankful men." 
 
 Ben Jonson. 
 
 Let it not be inferred that, because the cousinly- 
 epistle conveyed by Sir Giles Cressingham's 
 butler to Mrs Blair, drew tears from the eyes of 
 the widow, it contained the remotest allusion to 
 his projects for the benefit of little Reginald. — 
 The prudent baronet, anxious to judge for 
 himself of the dispositions of both mother and 
 child, simply expressed his regret that, in the 
 period of distress following the untimely decease 
 of her husband, she had not made known her 
 troubles to one so nearly connected with her as 
 himself; and proposed that she should spend a 
 
16 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 month or two at Stoke Paddocks, by way of 
 change of air for the little invalid. 
 
 The tears of Mrs Blair were produced by the 
 bitter reflection that, had the letter addressed by 
 her early in her widowhood to Sir Giles, not 
 asking pecuniary aid — of that she was incapable — 
 but imploring his intercession with her father, 
 reached its destination, she might perhaps have 
 been spared the sufferings of three years of 
 sorrow and destitution. It was impossible for 
 her to guess that, so far from missing its desti- 
 nation, that very letter lay unopened among fifty 
 others, in a drawer of the old man's secretaire ; 
 or that, even if the touching appeal had met his 
 eye, not all the eloquence of all the best 
 epistolary authorities in Europe, would have 
 induced him to address a syllable of conciliation 
 to his cousin Dick. 
 
 Gratefully, meanwhile, did she accept the 
 baronet's friendly invitation to Stoke. Change of 
 air had in truth been ordered for the boy, who was 
 slowly recovering from the effects of his accident ; 
 and it touched her to the soul that while, in her 
 cruel visitations, her own father had not deigned 
 to testify the slightest sympathy, though con- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. IT 
 
 stantly passing the door of her humble lodging, 
 a kinsman, comparatively a stranger, should 
 exhibit such generous compassion towards the 
 little suiFerer. Sir Giles's invitation came with 
 a double grace that it seemed more especially 
 directed to her child. 
 
 Mrs Blair, severely humbled by the bitter woes 
 of adversity, was more overpowered than gratified 
 by the demonstrations of respect with which the 
 head of the house of Cressingham chose to dig- 
 nify her removal to his family seat. It was his 
 pleasure that Richard Cressingham should hear 
 of the family coach and outriders filling the narrow 
 back street inhabited by the widow, with the 
 glare of their liveries ; but it was far from hers 
 that her poorer neighbours should be dazzled by a 
 spectacle of such undue magnificence. Even the 
 little boy was more amazed than delighted by the 
 multitude of strange faces that clustered round 
 him by way of escort to his new abode. 
 
 That new abode appeared, however, an earthly 
 paradise both to the mother and her child. 
 Poverty is never more oppressive than when 
 endured in the confinement of a town. The 
 infancy of little Reginald had been spent in a 
 
18 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 close lodging-house, the abode of poor Sophia's 
 old nurse, who officiated as their only servant; 
 and to possess a garden of his own, — a garden 
 where he might play or work at his own good 
 pleasure, — a garden full of flowers and fruit, — a 
 garden where the sun shone and the birds sang, — 
 was happiness enough for the boy ! 
 
 His mother's enjoyments at The Wilderness 
 were of a still higher order. Books and musical 
 instruments awaited her there, — her^ so long 
 estranged from the habits of refinement derived 
 from birth and education. While the boy won- 
 dered in silence that his mother should weep to 
 find herself proprietress of an elegant drawing- 
 room, lavishly adorned with the minor luxuries of 
 life, he little thought she was grieving anew for 
 his father, as on the day of his death. — It was 
 precisely in such a house she had indulged the 
 girlish dream of passing her life in the society of 
 Harry Blair ! And they had been fated to spend 
 only a few needy harassed months together, — 
 persecuted by the animosity of those who called 
 themselves their friends ! 
 
 It was surprising how complete a regeneration 
 of nature was wrought in old Sir Giles by the 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 19 
 
 concoction of the first project of his long life not 
 exclusively relating to himself. As some gnarled 
 and twisted old thorn-tree sends forth leaves and 
 blossoms in the sunshine, he had found taste, he 
 had almost found poetry, in his soul, for the 
 embellishment of a home destined to the 
 enjoyment of youth and beauty. In that fair 
 widowed cousin and her young child, he beheld 
 objects so differing from himself, that he seemed 
 to understand the necessity of providing pleasures 
 for them utterly foreign to his powers of enjoy- 
 ment ; and had taken pains and pride in the 
 prodigality of his arrangements for their comfort. 
 
 All the money, all the time, all the thought, 
 however, which he bestowed upon these prepa- 
 rations, were a thousand-fold repaid by pleasure 
 derived from their arrival. They were the first 
 living things, both young and beautiful, that, for 
 many years past, had embellished the desolation of 
 Stoke Paddocks; — and the old man and all his 
 inmates regarded them with something of the 
 admiration due to celestial beings. 
 
 The child, more especially, became an object of 
 idolatry in the house. All his little expressions 
 were cited as wonderful, — all his movements 
 
20 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 noted as admirable. He was a plaything to the 
 second childhood of the old people, — an idol for 
 their worship. No son and heir was ever more 
 devoutly welcomed in a childless house ! Toys, 
 pets, — a pony, — a miniature gun, were provided 
 for him ; and when he only ran impetuously 
 across the lawn of The Wilderness to greet Sir 
 Giles, or sported carelessly upon the banks of 
 the lake, the hitherto listless baronet became 
 convulsed with alarm lest any evil should betide 
 the lovely boy. 
 
 " You should be more careful with him, 
 madam ; — you ought to observe stricter discipline 
 w^ith him, my dear Mrs Blair," — he would 
 peevishly exclaim to the tender mother. " After 
 the great peril to which he has been alread 
 exposed by want of proper vigilance, you cannot 
 be too much on your guard." 
 
 At the expiration of the two months specified 
 for their sojourn at Stoke, instead of sanctioning 
 their departure. Sir Giles Cressingham made a 
 formal proposition to Mrs Blair to abandon her 
 residence at Reading, and adopt The Wilderness 
 as her future home ; and if he did not at present 
 more distinctly allude to his intentions in favour 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 21 
 
 of Reginald, it was only because he was now 
 becoming sufficiently acquainted with Sophia's 
 peculiar delicacy of mind, to fear that mistaken 
 notions of duty towards her father might determine 
 her to refrain from unduly promoting the interests 
 of her son at the expense of those who had nearer 
 claims upon the property. 
 
 Even at the close of a year, even at the 
 close of two, Sir Giles had not committed himself 
 by positive engagements. Already he exercised 
 over Mrs Blair the sort of quiet tyranny which 
 made slaves of all depending upon him. — Though 
 far from anticipating, or even desiring, the 
 adoption of the child to the exclusion of the 
 lawful heir, the fortunes of the portionless boy 
 were solely dependent on the caprice of his 
 wealthy kinsman, and she was consequently 
 patient under his fractious tyranny. Her father's 
 resentments were redoubled by the favour shown 
 her at Stoke. Other members of the Cressingham 
 family were yet more bitter and even scandalous 
 in their interpretations. But she bore their 
 animadversions without repining. The boy was so 
 well, so happy, so beloved at Stoke, and so averse 
 to seek for aflfection and kindness elsewhere, that it 
 
22 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 scarcely needed an exercise of philosophy to 
 enable her to submit unmurmuring to the injus- 
 tice of the world. 
 
 At length, three years after her establishment 
 in Buckinghamshire, Lord Ashleigh, as if roused 
 to a new sense of her attractions on finding 
 them appreciated elsewhere, renewed by letter 
 his proposals of marriage. But they were 
 declined without a moment's hesitation by Mrs 
 Blair. — No need to address a word upon the 
 subject to Sir Giles Cressingham. She wanted 
 no advice — she wanted no encouragement; all it 
 required was, to express in courteous terms her 
 positive disinclination to become Countess of 
 Ashleigh. 
 
 About a week after dispatching her letter, she 
 began to notice that her cousin's daily visits were 
 discontinued; and fearing that the old gentleman 
 might be indisposed, she hastened to the Hall, 
 which, except at the dinner-hour on Sundays, or 
 by special invitation, she seldom entered. She 
 soon found that he was not ill, — that he was only 
 angry. On learning her renewed rejection of his 
 friend the earl, her father had addressed a most 
 indignant letter of remonstrance to the baronet; 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 23 
 
 and Sir Giles, who no longer threw into his rubbish 
 drawer the letters bearing the Reading postmark, 
 and Was eager to vent upon some third person his 
 rage at being reprim.anded by Dick Cressingham, 
 — now addressed a furious apostrophe to poor, 
 patient Mrs Blair. He reproached her as bitterly 
 for her ingratitude, in not having referred herself 
 to his opinion in a crisis so nearly involving her 
 welfare, as he could have done had she accepted 
 the propositions of Lord Ashleigh, and quitted 
 The Wilderness to become his wife. Nay, certain 
 of his 'expres^ons were so humiliating, and so 
 nearly approached a menace of dismissal from his 
 favour, that Sophia, whose spirit was for the first 
 time roused by his harshness, took the opportunity 
 of their quarrel to announce a long-promised visit 
 to a friend at East Bourne, and was off with 
 Reginald on the following day for the coast. 
 
 Had this proceeding been a matter of policy 
 instead of instinct, it could not have been more 
 adroitly planned to bring the old gentleman to 
 reason. After four-and-twenty hours' separation 
 from the child and its mother, he began 
 to discover how ill he could dispense with their 
 presence. All the sunshine of his life was 
 
24. THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 lost ! Again and again did lie write to implore 
 their return. He talked of illness — he became 
 indisposed in right earnest ; and threatened them 
 with immediate dissolution unless the mother and 
 son placed themselves instantly in the carriage 
 which he dispatched once more to bring tliem 
 home in ceremony to the hall. 
 
 The poor mother dared not persist in her re- 
 fusal. She only stipulated that, since Reginald 
 was to become a sort of state prisoner at Stoke 
 Paddocks, proper care should be taken of his edu- 
 cation ; and as he was now ^.jore than seven years 
 old, in addition to the pony and gun, a tutor and 
 masters were provided for his use. 
 
 Rendered desperate by the impertinent sugges- 
 tions of his cousin Richard, Sir Giles now spoke 
 openly of the boy as his future heir. Though he 
 never expressly announced it to Mrs Blair, it be- 
 came known, through the indiscretion of his man of 
 business, that a will in favour of young Reginald 
 had been signed and sealed. Already, the servants 
 treated him with the deference due to their future 
 master; and already his relations spoke of him with 
 the contempt due to their successful rival ; and 
 he was toadied by the dependents of the family. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 25 
 
 and flattered by the country neiglibours, as heir to 
 one of the noblest estates in the county. 
 
 There was no need to toady, no need to flatter 
 him. The boy's dispositions were as conciliating 
 as his personal charms were remarkable. He was 
 handsome enough for an heir apparent, even to a 
 throne. His mother often grieved to note the 
 false indulgence and pernicious adulation sur- 
 rounding him ; not only as fatal to the character of 
 the future master of Stoke Paddocks, but because 
 nothing could be more uncertain than his hold 
 upon the affections of Hhe capricious old man. A 
 fit of peevishness or conscientiousness, to attacks 
 of both which seizures old age is peculiarly 
 liable, might at any moment determine him to 
 fling his will into the fire, and allow the estates to 
 devolve upon the heir at law. Reginald was still 
 too young to be apprised of the nature of his 
 position. All she could do in the way of palliative 
 was to make him as good and reasonable as she 
 could. 
 
 But the virtues and wisdom of eight years old, 
 more especially when possessed of a gun, a pony, 
 and a tutor required by his employer to teach the 
 Latin grammar upon his knees, are not much to 
 
 VOL. I. c 
 
26 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 be relied on. Reginald grew a little flighty, a 
 little imperious. It was only towards his gentle 
 yet often reproving mother, that he maintained 
 the docility of his natural character. With the 
 old baronet, above all, he became an absolute 
 tyrant. Consciousness of power is a dangerous 
 latitude for children and numskulls ; and the boy 
 of eight became a despot precisely on the same 
 instigations as his cousin at eighty. He was 
 perfectly aware that, if dismissed from the draw- 
 ing-room in disgrace. Sir Giles could so little 
 live without him, that, penitent or impenitent, he 
 should be summoned back again, even sooner than 
 he wished to come. 
 
 Mrs Blair, though by no means a woman of ex- 
 tended intelligence, became at length painfully 
 alive to these perils and dangers ; her perceptions 
 being singularly quickened by the officious advice 
 of Dr Chaffles, the Vicar of Stoke. Chaffles was a 
 well-intentioned man, who, aware that his mission 
 in this world was that of a counsellor, was as fond 
 of interposing his wisdom in the temporal as 
 the spiritual concerns of his parishioners. Without 
 courage, however, to exercise his functions on the 
 leader of his flock, to whom he manifested all the 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 27 
 
 blind devotion due to a patron saint, lie consoled 
 himself by besetting the fair lady of The Wilder- 
 ness with assurances that her boy would be irre- 
 trievably spoiled by the weak indulgence of his 
 patron, and her own reputation irrevocably injured 
 by her equivocal position at The Wilderness. 
 
 For some time Mrs Blair replied to the latter 
 insinuation with a smile ; — the sullen decrepitude 
 of Sir Giles vindicating his character as a seducer, 
 as completely as her own depressed condition 
 with respect to him, her own as a sultana. But 
 by degrees the bitter drop insinuated day by day 
 into her portion, acquired strength; and in the 
 solitude of her isolated life, she assig:ned some im- 
 portance to the insinuations of the vicar. She 
 began to fancy herself slighted in the neighbour- 
 hood. She grew nervous whenever some accidental 
 visit placed her in the presence of strangers. Dr 
 Chaffles's object was attained. He had produced 
 an impression, and a very disagreeable one it was ! 
 
 The tactics of poor Mrs Blair, whose destiny it 
 seemed to be ever the victim of persecution, were 
 not of a very comprehensive nature. Again, as 
 before, she betook herself to her friend at East 
 Bourne ; and again Sir Giles, on finding the 
 
28 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 shutters of The Wilderness closed, and the nose 
 of Reginald's pony thrust inquiringly over the gate 
 of the meadow, as if wear3'ing for the return of 
 its young master, pronounced himself to be the 
 worst used of mankind. 
 
 Just as the great despot of Versailles, on the 
 retirement of Louise de la Valliere to the convent 
 of Chaillot, dispatched a noble confidant with his 
 equipages and sign-manual to bring her back to 
 his arms, did the despot of Stoke now expedite 
 old Matthews a second time to the Sussex coast. 
 But the fair Sophia, like the lovely Louise, was 
 inflexible. She had promised, she said, to spend 
 a month wdth her friends, and afford Reginald 
 the advantage of sea-bathing, and must adhere to 
 her enj^affement. 
 
 On the return of his messenger and his family 
 coach unsuccessful, the baronet became as furious 
 as Roland the brave. He spent three sullen hours 
 under his favourite beech tree — an alternative to 
 which he had not been reduced since the tenancy 
 of The Wilderness. An evil spirit had entered into 
 him, as into Saul of yore, which there was no sooth- 
 ing harpist to dislodge. For several consecutive 
 days, did he grumble and growl ; — chiding the ser- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 29 
 
 vantSj cuffing liis favourite dog, which, paralyzed 
 like himself, was laid every day at the foot of his 
 Bath chair to endure his caprices ; and enacting 
 the ejectment of tenants and the prosecution of 
 trespassers and defaulters. Three disastrous law- 
 suits, which afterwards tended to impoverish his 
 successors, had their rise in the resolutions of 
 those days of contrariety. 
 
 On the fourth, Dr Chaffles called in, wwcalled 
 for ; and, almost for the first time, tendered advice 
 to his patron nearly as uncalled for as his visit; 
 assuring him, in the strictest confidence, that the 
 feelings of Mrs Blair had long been severely hurt 
 by the equivocal position of her son, and the 
 slights produced towards her in society by her 
 very questionable situation at The Wilderness. 
 
 Sir Giles stared with amazement ; first, at the 
 gratuitous loquacity of his vicar, who, saving in 
 the pulpit, was scarcely held entitled to speak 
 in his presence, unless when spoken to ; and 
 secondly, at a suggestion which his most discur- 
 sive flights of fancy had never conjectured. He 
 endanger a lady's reputation — he ? — It was not till 
 he had mused three hours more under the beech 
 tree, that the astonished old gentleman had ex- 
 
 c 2 
 
30 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 hausted the various gradations of surprise, horror, 
 indignation, mirth, and satisfaction, arising from 
 so preposterous a notion. 
 
 The last sentiment, as was not unusual with him, 
 retained the ascendancy. The poor infirm octo- 
 genarian chuckled inwardly at the notion of being 
 considered dangerous. Danger implied attraction. 
 It was clear that many persons still supposed him 
 capable of charming a lady's eye. In the midst 
 of his yellow flaanels, he drew up his crippled 
 form with a smile of terrible exultation. 
 
 Recollecting that he had cut short the eloquence 
 of Dr Chaffles, without giving time for the coun- 
 sels which were to have followed his exposition, 
 he sent a messenger to the vicarage, requesting 
 the pleasure of his company, with a view to the 
 termination of his gratuitous discourse. It oc- 
 curred to him, and he weis not mistaken, that the 
 church would suggest reparation of his wrongs. 
 It also presented itself to his mind, that Dr 
 Chaffles would constitute a more dignified ambas- 
 sador extraordinary than old Matthews, to bear to 
 his cousin, Richard Cressingham's daughter, the 
 extraordinary proposition, purporting to convert 
 the widow into a wife, on the sole temptation of 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 3^1 
 
 becoming a widow again ! even Sir Giles being 
 perfectly aware that a jointure constituted the 
 sole palliative to the innumerable disagreeables 
 of the match. 
 
 No one who has not lived in a state of sub- 
 jection to a person of bad temper and ignoble 
 mind, can surmise the strength of aversion 
 generated by such a position ! — Mrs Blair dis- 
 liked the tyrant of Stoke as much as she was 
 capable of disliking any human being ; — and the 
 mere notion of his aspiring to fill the place of 
 Reginald's father, converted her distaste into 
 loathing. — Still, the interests of her son demanded 
 that her negative should be phrased in measured 
 terms. Sir Giles offered, in the event of receiving 
 her hand, to make a formal adoption of her son, 
 and confer on him, by act of parliament, his name 
 and arms ; while, on the other hand, though not 
 absolutely expressed in his letter, it was pretty 
 clear that her refusal would exile both child and 
 mother from Stoke Paddocks for evermore. Dr 
 Chaffles hinted as much while offering his strenu- 
 ous advice that she should smile upon the suit of 
 which he was the special pleader. 
 
 But there was a duty to be performed to the 
 
32 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 dead as well as the living ; and Mrs Blair would 
 not hear of compromising a sentiment so sacred as 
 that which bound her to the memory of her 
 lamented husband. She refused; — gratefully, — 
 respectfully, — but in words so decided as to leave 
 to Sir Giles Cressingham not the slightest hope 
 of her relenting in his favour. 
 
 " You will repent it, madam; you will repent it 
 the longest day you have to live !" cried the vicar, 
 on receiving her letter, and an intimation of its 
 contents. " Sir Giles Cressingham, of Stoke 
 Paddocks, forty-seven thousand a year, thirty of 
 which v/ithin a ring fence, — is a man not to be 
 trifled with ! A wilful woman must have her 
 way ; but I beg leave confidentially to assure you 
 that I would not be in your place, my dear 
 madam, or in that of your son V* 
 
 If the truth must be told, the vicar did not at 
 that moment consider his own particularly inviting. 
 It was on Ins devoted head that the wrath of the 
 baronet, on perusing the mortifying document, was 
 likely to fall ; and in spite of his cloth, he was 
 almost as little able to evade the explosion of his 
 patron's indignation, as the poor, paralytic Chloe, 
 trembling at his feet ! 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 33 
 
 But even Dr Chaffles, versed as he was in the 
 intemperate egotism of the old man, had not pre- 
 pared himself for the violent outburst of passion 
 with which Mrs Blair's rejection was received. 
 The vindictiveness of Sha.kspeare',s Richard was 
 not more ferocious. It was the first serious disap- 
 pointment Sir Giles had received in the course 
 of eighty years' experience ! Happy, or rather 
 unhappy man ! — such an impunity tending chiefly 
 to prove the narrowness of the sphere of his affec- 
 tions. 
 
 Furious at having been betrayed into a step pro- 
 ductive of such deep humiliation ; conscious that, 
 but for the injudicious interference of his pastor, 
 he should as soon have thought of applying to 
 government for a mitre as to a pretty young 
 woman of six-and- twenty for her hand ; the old 
 man indulged in such wild and wanton upbraid- 
 ings as drove even the subservient Chaffles out 
 of his house. The day was by no means a 
 pleasant one for those who had no alternative but 
 to remain under the same roof with the proudest 
 of proud men, who found himself for the first time 
 set at nought. 
 
 c 3 
 
34 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " I will be sudden, 
 And she shall know Love, in extreme abused, 
 Knows no degree of hate !" 
 
 Massinger. 
 
 The following day, Athanasius Docket, the man 
 of business who had executed the former will of 
 the baronet, was summoned anew to Stoke Pad- 
 docks. The instructions issued to him were secret 
 and confidential as they were peremptory; and this 
 time, he dared not open his lips to friend or foe 
 touching the testamentary intentions of his patron. 
 
 On his departure, the mind of Sir Giles ap- 
 peared considerably relieved. It was summer time. 
 He caused himself to be rolled out once more 
 upon the lawn ; and was guilty even of a grim smile 
 as he mused under the beech tree, satisfied that the 
 work of vengeance was in progress ! He indulged 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 35 
 
 in no further demonstrations of irritability. He 
 attempted no overt tokens of displeasure against 
 the lady of The Wilderness, but brooded over 
 his malicious projects as silently as the assassin 
 brews his cup of poisons ; waiting in patience like 
 the whirlwind of the poet, 
 
 Which, hushed in grim repose, expects its evening prey. 
 
 Docket had assured him that a week would 
 be requisite for the preparation of the deeds, 
 and precisely to that stretch of time did he 
 extend his provision of patience. 
 
 An old man tottering on the brink of the grave, 
 yet concocting projects of earthly vengeance, 
 is always a terrible spectacle ; still more so 
 when, like a rattlesnake coiled in the midst of 
 some smiling and flowery Savannah, we find him 
 surrounded by the most lavish gifts of nature, — 
 the best blessings of Providence. There, under 
 the spreading tree of his own fair lawn, sat the 
 man who for eighty years had enjoyed a super- 
 abundance of the good things of this world, — its 
 marrow and fatness, — its purple and fine linen ; — 
 for which he had never experienced one grateful 
 emotion, — one thankful thought; for he believed 
 
36 THE MAN OF FORTUKE. 
 
 tliem to proceed less from the vouchsafing of 
 Providence than from his own inherent right and 
 title as representative of the Cressinghams of 
 Stoke Paddocks. 
 
 And now, it was also as the representative of 
 the Cressinghams of Stoke Paddocks that he 
 was about to revenge himself upon one who had 
 presumed to suppose that his feebleness of mind 
 and body, his unsightly aspect, his wearisome 
 companionship, were an inadequate exchange for 
 the sacrifice of her youth and self-respect. The 
 good gifts which had inspired him with no 
 feelings of gratitude, conveyed at least facilities 
 for working evil; and he was resolved that the 
 contumacy of the fond mother should be punished 
 with a refinement of malignity worthy the 
 devising of a grand inquisitor. 
 
 He counted the days, he counted the hours. 
 He dispatched messenger after messenger to 
 Docket's office for re-assurances of his punc- 
 tuality; and in the interim, consigned to that 
 tomb of all the Cressinghams, the fatal drawer of 
 the secretaire, a letter bearing the East Bourne 
 post-mark, and Dr Chaffles to Coventry. He 
 waited. He took pleasure in waiting. Autici- 
 
 I 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 37 
 
 pation seemed to prolong the pleasures of 
 vengeance. 
 
 At length the happy clay approached ; and had 
 it been appointed for his bridal, he could not 
 have hailed it with a warmer welcome. Already 
 he had written to Mrs Blair, — written to her for 
 the last time ; not in a strain of upbraiding, but in 
 friendly and complacent terms, as if acquiescing 
 in the wisdom of her decision ; begging that the 
 past might be obliterated from her memory, and 
 solicitin-r her return to The Wilderness on the 
 25th of June, about a week sooner than the time 
 originally fixed : — arrangements nearly regarding 
 the future welfare of her son, rendering it 
 desirable that she should be present to witness 
 the execution of some family papers. 
 
 Enchanted to find the old man thus benign and 
 lenient, poor Sophia almost reproached herself for 
 the dryness of the terms in which she had 
 conveyed her rejection. She assured him of her 
 ready compliance with his wish; — and on the 
 evening of the 24th, drove into the gates of The 
 Wilderness with exemplary punctuality. Dazzled 
 by the variegated hues of its gay flower-beds, 
 fragrant at that moment, with thousands of mid- 
 
38 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 summer roses, she almost wondered how she had 
 found courage to renounce the favoured spot so 
 long, for the arid environs of the sea. At the 
 door, she found a message from Sir Giles, pleading, 
 indisposition, and requesting her to defer her 
 visit to the Hall till the morrow at one o'clock ; — 
 a delay affording no small relief to her terrors, 
 which were powerfully excited by the prospect 
 of their first meeting. 
 
 Next day she felt re-assured. She had rested 
 after her journey. Her heart was cheered by the 
 joyous prattle of the boy exulting in all the 
 pleasures of home, — all the raptures of rejoining 
 the pony and Dash, the keepers and old nurse 
 Adams, after three weeks' separation ; and taking 
 him fondly by the hand, she proceeded on foot to 
 the Hall. 
 
 A midsummer day in a fine old English park 
 is a glorious thing. The deer taking refuge 
 under the shade of its majestic avenues, — the song 
 of birds bursting from the thickets, — the hum of 
 insects vivifying the pastures enamelled by a 
 thousand wild flowers — impart a tone of gladness 
 and population even to its solitudes. Mrs Blair 
 had never felt more alive to the beauties of 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 39 
 
 Stoke, than now when enhanced by the monotony 
 of the South Dow^ns; — just as the elegance of her 
 cheerful home acquired a new charm in her eyes 
 from the discomfort of the country parsonage in 
 which she had been a guest. She felt doubly 
 grateful to Sir Giles Cressingham that she had 
 such a home to return to. 
 
 As they traversed a narrow path at the head of 
 the lake, within a few hundred yards of the old 
 mansion-house, a pair of swans, ancient sovereigns 
 of the waters, sailed majestically toward them, 
 descrying their benefactor Reginald, and hoping 
 to be fed. 
 
 " Everything and everybody knows and loves 
 me here, mother !" — cried the happy child. " Never 
 let us leave Stoke again ; — I have not a moment's 
 pleasure when we are away from Stoke ! " — 
 
 On entering the drawing-room, Mrs Blair w'as 
 startled to perceive preparations for some extraordi- 
 nary ceremonial. The gilded armchairs, covered 
 with Gobelins tapestry, were moved from the wall 
 to form a circle round a table ; at the head of which 
 was placed a reading-desk, and a salver containing 
 a decanter of water and a single glass, evidently 
 intended for the refreshment of the reader. But 
 
40 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 before Mrs Blair had leisure to indulge in surmises, 
 the turret clock struck the appointed hour; 
 when the door of the drawing-room, leading from 
 the suite of inner apartments, was thrown open, 
 and in came a solemn procession, headed by old 
 Matthews, preceding, in guise of chamberlain, 
 the armchair of his august master, rolled by two 
 footmen into the room. 
 
 Agitated by a thousand disagreeable anticipa- 
 tions, Mrs Blair hastened towards him; little 
 suspecting that, great as was her emotion, the 
 inward perturbation of the old man was a thousand 
 times more overpowering. Every pulse in his 
 attenuated frame was throbbing with rage and 
 hatred, at sight of the only living being who had 
 dared openly to avow that personal distaste which 
 hundreds had found it difficult to suppress; and 
 not the less painfully, because, in pursuance of his 
 w^ell-digested plans, he received her greeting with 
 almost more than his accustomed courtesy of the 
 old school. He even extended his hand to the 
 boy, with the tender familiarity of a parent; till 
 his generous forbearance brought tears into the 
 eyes of Sophia. 
 
 Too deeply absorbed by the kindly demeanour 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 41 
 
 of her friend and benefactor to take heed of the 
 train by which he was followed into the room, she 
 continued to answer his inquiries concerning her 
 visit and her journey; till, on turning from his 
 chair, which was placed next to that appropriated 
 to the reading-desk, she saw that every seat was 
 occupied, save those intended for herself and her 
 son. 
 
 Beside Sir Giles Cressingham, sat Docket, 
 supported by his two clerks; all three being 
 occupied by the arrangement of certain rolls of 
 parchment, each of which consisted of a multi- 
 plicity of skins. The huge silver standish adorned 
 in relief with the family arms, which stood at 
 hand, seemed as judiciously matched in proportion 
 with these weighty documents, as the tremendous 
 sword of the Castle of Otranto, with its helmet of 
 gigantic dimensions. 
 
 But on glancing beyond the chair placed at the 
 right hand of Athanasius Docket, the cheeks 
 of the gentle Sophia became suddenly crimsoned, 
 to subside into deathly paleness ; for, lo ! for the 
 first time for nine years past, she found herself 
 in the presence of her father ! — A momentary 
 impulse urged her to rush forward and throw 
 
42 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 herself into his arms. But the stern and formal 
 salutation of Richard Cressingham seemed to mark 
 the limits he chose to assign to their intercourse ; 
 and the next moment, Sopliia congratulated herself 
 that she had not given way to the instincts of filial 
 tenderness, so long and so repeatedly outraged. 
 The stony gaze with which her father fixed his 
 eyes upon a grandchild whom he saw for the first 
 time, recalled forcibly to her mind the contempt 
 lavished by her family upon her ill-fated husband. 
 
 In the harsh countenance of Mr Cressingham, 
 she now beheld only the persecutor of poor Blair. 
 She even noticed that, although his head was now 
 silvered and his face furrowed by the progress of 
 years, its expression was more than ever obdurate 
 and defying. She had not only lost a father in 
 the stern and remorseless man before her, but had 
 gained an enemy. Quailing under his chilling 
 recognition, she felt persuaded that his presence 
 in that room boded no good to her or hers. 
 
 Next to her father, came Doctor Chaffles, who 
 was insinuating in whispers to Docket that his 
 desk was placed in the worst possible position as 
 regarded the light, and trying to persuade him to 
 derange Sir Giles and the whole party for the 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 43 
 
 gratification of his officious zeal. Side by side 
 with the Doctor sat his tender helpmate, Mrs 
 Chaffle^, who never entered the gates of the Hall 
 save for an annual dinner of ceremony on the 
 birthday of the proprietor ; but who was especially 
 invited on the present occasion by Sir Giles, his 
 cruel cunning suggesting that the mortification 
 of a woman is never so complete as when endured 
 under the scrutiny of persons of her own sex. 
 
 Behind these conscript authorities were ranged 
 a row of minor seats for the reception of the lower 
 house, or steward's room? assembled as if for 
 family prayers ; — while, fidgetting between the two 
 orders, stood a certain little man, arrayed, even at 
 that early hour, in sticking-plaister shorts, black 
 silk stockings, and silver shoe-buckles, who might 
 have incurred suspicion as a dancing-master, but 
 that he was only too well known to all present as 
 the pet apothecary of the valetudinarian of Stoke 
 Paddocks, the professional torturer of the esta- 
 blishment. 
 
 The circle consisted, in short, of pretty nearly 
 the same individuals who would have been assem- 
 bled in that very room to witness the nuptials 
 projected by Sir Giles Cressingham with the 
 
44 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 woman who sat tliere pale and trembling, foresee- 
 ing some impending anathema ; and as the baronet 
 gazed searchingly around him, to ascertain that 
 every human being was present to whom he wish- 
 ed to exhibit her downfall, — triumph glared in 
 his eyes, and flushed his withered cheeks with a 
 hectic altogether unnatural. It was easy to per- 
 ceive that the long stagnant current of his blood 
 was strangely stimulated by the excitement of his 
 unusual emotions. Before the sitting opened its 
 proceedings, he even proposed, albeit unaccus- 
 tomed to confront th-e contact of the external 
 atmosphere even at midsummer, that one of the 
 drawing-room windows should be opened for the 
 refreshment of air ; and great indeed was the re- 
 lief of all present when a current of the warm, 
 balmy breath of summer swept through the dreary 
 saloon. 
 
 " I believe we are all ready, Mr Docket, — you 
 may proceed to explain the business of the day," 
 observed Sir Giles, in a voice less tremulous and 
 more shrill than usual; whereupon the family 
 solicitor, rising from his seat and ceremoniously 
 taking off his spectacles, pompously announced to 
 his auditors that they were assembled to become 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 45 
 
 witnesses of tlie execution of the last will of Sir 
 Giles Cressingham then and there present; — that 
 honourable gentleman having been apprized by 
 certain of his nearest of kin that his infirmities and 
 decrepitude were of a nature to prove that his days 
 were drawing to a close. 
 
 As Docket gave utterance to this last insinua- 
 tion, a malignant glance from the twinkling eyes 
 of his patron towards poor Sophia, conveyed their 
 exposition. But the taunt was unheeded by Mrs 
 Blair. The fortunes of the noble boy who stood 
 heedless by her side, were too deeply concerned 
 in the passing scene, to admit of her referring one 
 detail of its pomp and circumstance to herself. 
 Had she been less absorbed, she must have noticed 
 her father's air of exultation. It was clear that 
 Richard Cressingham was fully aware of the nature 
 of her oifence towards the head of the family, as 
 Avell as of the retribution by which it was about to 
 be visited. 
 
 The smile of triumph had not subsided from his 
 paternal face, when Docket, in a sonorous voice, 
 began to recite the contents of one of the rolls of 
 parchment; the preamble of which announced it 
 to be " the last will and testament of Giles Marma- 
 
46 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 duke Cressingham, Baronet, of Stoke Paddocks, 
 ill the county of Buckingham," and a vast number 
 of other places in a number of other counties, 
 " now residing in the above-named, his principal 
 seat, and in a sound state of body and mind." 
 
 The mummy in the yellow flannels, whose mind 
 was at that moment distracted by evil passions 
 enough to have filled a whole penitentiary with de- 
 linquents, or a whole lunatic asylum with patients, 
 bowed complacently on hearing the usual form, as 
 if it conveyed a certificate of mental and bodily 
 sanity, yet immediately proceeded to give proof to 
 the contrary; for when Docket, about to enter into 
 the WHEREAS department of the will, in which, in 
 order to increase the amount of his own profits, he 
 had introduced verbatim the title-deeds of certain 
 estates, as well as several original grants and char- 
 ters, judiciously suggested that it would suffice 
 the purpose of the Baronet and the patience of the 
 company to run over the few first words of every 
 clause, Sir Giles insisted that every syllable should 
 be inflicted upon himself and his friends. 
 
 The enumeration of his wealth and splendour 
 purported to strike repentance into the soul of the 
 graceless Sophia. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 47 
 
 But the first blow conveyed in the words 
 "'hereby cancelling and annulling all former wills 
 or codicils of wills," had sufficed to render her 
 callous to all that was to follow. — She had sense 
 enough to perceive that Sir Giles Cressingham 
 would not cancel and annul the will made in 
 favour of her boy, merely to indulge his lawyers 
 with the profit of drawing up another of similar 
 purport ; — and feeling that all was lost for 
 Reginald, cared as little to learn the amount of 
 the baronet's enormous property, as the name of 
 the devisee. She sat there as one stupified; her 
 indisposition as clearly manifest as the innocence 
 of Doctor Chaffles of all share in his patron's plan 
 of vengeance ; for, on seeing her turn so pale, the 
 vicar officiously whispered her to change her seat 
 for one nearer to the window, while the vicar's 
 lady obligingly offered a bottle of salts ; and both 
 knew better than to have interfered in her behalf, 
 had they been apprized of her approaching exile 
 from the court of Stoke. Declininof their inter- 
 position, however, the young widow seemed to 
 derive some relief from motioning the boy, who 
 was leaning against her, to a seat. It was too 
 trying to look upon the handsome, animated 
 
48 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 countenance of the injured Reginald at such a 
 moment ! 
 
 Doctor Chaffles nodded approvingly, conceiving 
 the change to be suggested by the extreme heat 
 of the room. The progress of the morning had 
 brought the summer sun full upon the windows ; 
 yet such was the awe in which Sir Giles was held 
 by his dependents, that till he was pleased to find 
 the brightness oppressive, no one ventured to hint 
 that the Venetian blinds had better be closed. 
 Like the King of Spain, whom the etiquette of his 
 court compelled to be stifled by a brasier, they 
 bore without a murmur the increasing fervour of 
 the atmosphere, aggravated by the presence of 
 eight-and- twenty persons, rather than presume 
 to feel differently from the Ali Pacha of the county 
 of Bucks. Each whispered to his neighbour that 
 there was thunder in the air, — that a heavy storm 
 was approaching. Every face was flushed, — 
 partly with the heat, partly with the excitement of 
 the hour ; — the lawyers from the ardour of their 
 task, — Richard Cressingham with the earnestness 
 of an heir presumptive, — the Chaffles's with the 
 pride of having been invited to assist at a family 
 solemnity at the Hall, — and aU the domestics 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 49 
 
 with the idea that the ceremony of signing a will 
 on the part of Sir Giles, must announce some sort 
 of intention of betaking himself to a better or 
 worse place than Stoke Paddocks. They seemed 
 to anticipate that their own most welcome emanci- 
 pation was approaching, — accompanied, of course, 
 with decent mourning and annuities for life. 
 
 But the person most heated, both by inward and 
 external excitement, was the pompous testator 
 presiding over the assembly ! The veins in his 
 forehead were swollen, — his eyes bloodshot, — his 
 lips compressed, as by the labouring of his lungs. 
 Yet the glare of those bloodshot eyes increased in 
 earnestness, and the scowl of that brow in tri- 
 umphant malignity, at every fresh recital of the 
 vastness of his earthly possessions, by way of 
 taunt to the woman and child about to be driven 
 forth from his Garden of Eden. It seemed as if, 
 till that moment, even he had never been fully 
 aware of his own consequence as lord of so many 
 manors, and sultan of so many pachalics. He 
 appeared to expand with the detail. His pride 
 was growing too big for his body. His aristocratic 
 blood was boiling too ardently in his enfeebled 
 veins. Nearly three hours had been expended in 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
50 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 reading the magniloquent will, every moment of 
 wliicli served only to stimulate the morbid eager- 
 ness of the vindictive testator. 
 
 As yet, only the names of the trustees had been 
 disclosed; no allusion had been made to that of 
 the " sole heir and residuary legatee," for whose 
 benefit that trust was created. But as Docket 
 approached the two last skins of parchment which 
 were to crown the work of vengeance, and point 
 out the fortunate individual about to supersede 
 young Reginald Blair as inheritor of one of the 
 finest landed properties in the kingdom, a peculiar 
 glance of intelligence was exchanged between one 
 of the black-suited aid-de-camps of Mr Athanasius 
 Docket and Richard Cressingham; after which, 
 the latter assumed an air of listless unconcern, 
 like a country actor exaggerating in his part the 
 assumption of indiiference. 
 
 Far greater exaggeration, however, was per- 
 ceptible in the looks and gestures of one who was 
 no actor in the business, — one whose emotions 
 on the occasion were cruelly real. The wasted 
 hands of Sir Giles Cressingham became invo- 
 luntarily clenched as he listened; — and his eyes 
 were fixed with the intensity of a beast of prey 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 51 
 
 upon those of Mrs Blair. His dress, usually 
 motionless as the shroud enfolding the dead, 
 seemed to heave and quicken with the agitation 
 of his feelings. It was his turn to triumph. She 
 was about to learn that he was omnipotent, and 
 she an alien and a beggar. 
 
 Just as the fatal words were about to be 
 pronounced by Docket, whose husky voice seemed 
 to clear itself, and whose weary visage to brighten 
 as he approached the climax of his work, a shriek 
 burst from the lips of Mrs Blair, which suspended 
 the decree. 
 
 Fascinated as by the glance of a rattlesnake, 
 her eyes had been fixed on those of Sir Giles ; and 
 she w^as the only person present who discovered 
 that they had become suddenly glassy, — that his 
 face was livid, — his jaw fallen, — his whole form 
 motionless. 
 
 Unable to move or speak, she pointed in silent 
 agony to his chair. In a moment the parchments 
 lay disregarded on the table. All present were 
 crowding round the corpse ! — 
 
THE HAN' OF FORTUNE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " He dies and makes no sign ! 
 Oh ! God — forgive him ! " 
 
 Henry IV. 
 
 That was a solemn evening at The Wilderness. 
 On re-entering her home, Mrs Blair could not but 
 feel that an especial interposition of Providence 
 had prevented her and her son from becoming 
 shelterless. She regarded the events of the da)^, 
 to others a source of horror and consternation, 
 with sentiments of humble veneration, charac- 
 teristic of her gentle nature. 
 
 A thunderbolt falling from heaven to smite to 
 the dust some impious tyrant of old, could scarcely 
 have exhibited a more fearful instance of Divine 
 judgment than the fate of Sir Giles Cressingham, 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 53 
 
 howbeit arising purely from a combination of phy- 
 sical causes, llie menials of tlie house decided, 
 of course, that he died of a fit produced by the fear 
 of death, at the moment of signing his will; the 
 lawyers, of the perturbation consequent upon 
 mental excitement; the vicar and vicaress, of 
 the oppression of an overheated chamber ; the 
 apothecary (ashamed of not having interfered 
 to demand freer ventilation), because the term 
 of a long-exhausted constitution was arrived ; 
 Richard Cressingham, because the devil would 
 have it ; and Mrs Blair, because the hand of 
 Providence had protected the fortunes of the 
 widow and the orphan ! — 
 
 Whatever the instrument by which the curse 
 was signified, he was gone ! The tyrant was 
 stripped of his power, the miser of his gold, the 
 angry man of his will to usurp the attributes of 
 God. The right arm about to perpetuate an act 
 of revenge, was already nerveless; the fevered 
 frame moistened by the chilly damps of death; 
 the scowling eye overfilmed : the despot shrivelled 
 into a senseless lump of clay ! His servants, 
 who had waited upon his whims with submission 
 in their voices, but hatred in their hearts, satisfied 
 
 D 2 
 
54 THE MAN OF FORTUNE, 
 
 by an ejaculation of the lawyers on the first 
 verification of his decease, that the new will was 
 inoperative, but that, the old one remaining 
 uncancelled, their legacies were still valid, were 
 at very little pains to disguise their indifference 
 to the event. Within a few hours after the 
 decease of Sir Giles Cressingham, voices were 
 heard in cheerful colloquy under his roof, which 
 had been wont to speak in peevish whispers ; 
 and there was laughter in the offices, and every- 
 where a sensation of relief. Reversing the usual 
 order of things, the house of death proved any- 
 thing but a house of mourning. 
 
 Although the blinds, so providentially neglected 
 in the morning, were now carefully closed, the 
 Hall itself had acquired an air of cheerfulness 
 from the catastrophe. The double windows of 
 the baronet's chamber, the very hinges of which 
 had grown rusty from want of use, were thrown 
 open. A greater stir than had prevailed at the 
 Hall for years arose from the assembling of a 
 jury, which the wantonness of the law chose to 
 summon together to record the stereotyped 
 verdict of '* Died by the visitation of God ;" 
 just as they would have inflicted one of «* Found 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 55 
 
 DROWNED," upon the body of some pauper thrust 
 into a horsepond by her husband. 
 
 Could any doubt, meanwhile, have arisen in 
 Richard Cressingham's mind as to his own 
 position with regard to the property, it must 
 have evaporated on noting the nature of Mr 
 Athanasius Docket's address to Mrs Blair, the 
 very moment Drench the apothecary pro- 
 nounced that all was over; and the respectful 
 bow which qualified his mode of seizing the 
 hand of little Reginald. — His condolences on 
 the death of their cousin were, in fact, eager 
 congratulations upon their accession to a princely 
 fortune. — Of both wills, the said Athanasius 
 was appointed acting executor. No one, there- 
 fore, was more competent to judge their powers 
 and intentions; and he made it as plain as if 
 revealed by that first of truth-tellers, the Gazette, 
 that the instrument which associated Mrs Sophia 
 Blair, widow, with him in the executorship, 
 was that which was to put money in his own purse 
 as well as into that of her son. 
 
 At that moment, had Sophia been cognizant of 
 anything that was passing around her, she would 
 have hurried towards her father with overtures for 
 
56 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 reconciliation; nay, in the agitation of her soul, 
 would probably have flung herself into his arms or 
 at his feet, and implored his blessing. But her 
 feelings were paralyzed with horror. She saw 
 nothing, — she understood nothing, — she even 
 fancied that animation might yet be restored to 
 the lifeless corpse, — repeated but infructuous at- 
 tempts having been made by Drench to open the 
 jugular vein. 
 
 It was not till many hours afterwards, — it was 
 not till, tranquillized by the hush of evening in her 
 own quiet home, — that the awe-struck woman be- 
 came fully conscious of the great changes -that had 
 taken place, and in some degree aware of her posi- 
 tion. But when she then despatched a messenger 
 to the Hall with a letter to her father, it appeared 
 that Mr Cressingham had already departed for his 
 family seat; unwilling to remain at Stoke Pad- 
 docks, to exhibit the vexation and disappointment 
 of his heart. The overtures of reconciliation, which 
 would have come w^ith so good a grace from the 
 mother of the heir, consequently arrived too late. 
 
 It was perhaps the extravagant outburst of grief 
 with which poor Sophia received back from the 
 hands of Docket the missive thus fruitlessly for- 
 
THE -MAN OF FORTUNE. 57 
 
 warded to the Hall, which revealed to the lawyer 
 the amiable weakness of the character over which 
 his position enabled him to assume an important 
 influence. Conjoined with her in the execution of 
 the will, as joint-guardians and trustees of the 
 fortunate heir, it would be hard but a minority of 
 ten years would enable the lawyer to lay aside all 
 other professional cares, and enrol himself at some 
 later period among the landed gentry of the county 
 of Bucks. 
 
 Twenty years of continual intercourse with Sir 
 Giles Cressingham, had not tended to the mollifi- 
 cation of his heart or the strengthening of liis 
 principles ; and Docket's first notion, on recovering 
 from the stunning shock of finding the castle in 
 the air he had been building up with pounce and 
 parchment for Richard Cressingham vanish into 
 the clouds, was to construct one for his own pur- 
 pose, on earth, of more solid materials. The 
 Stoke estates seemed to lie at his all but absolute 
 disposal. 
 
 During the preparations for the funeral, nothing 
 could exceed the consequentiality of the attorney 
 in the assumption and manifestation of his new 
 functions. The establishment at the Hall already 
 
 D 3 
 
58 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 looked up to him rather than to the minor, as lord 
 of the ascendant. He was to pay the bills, he was 
 to discharge the legacies ; for many years to come 
 he was to be all in all at Stoke Paddocks. 
 
 Sophia, long debased by a life of dependence, 
 and just then peculiarly enfeebled by the recent 
 shock upon her spirits, unconsciously assisted to 
 magnify the increasing prerogative of the executor; 
 while Reginald, a shy, gentle boy, was only too 
 ready to submit to the authority of one who seemed 
 inclined to exercise it for the promotion of his 
 pleasures. 
 
 It was amusing to see how instantaneously the 
 dirty dog of Sir Giles Cressingham expanded into 
 a man having authority; — issuing commands to 
 menials, and inditing despatches, in the imperative 
 mood, to bankers and stockbrokers. Not only did 
 his manners attain a sort of instantaneous polish, 
 but his mind appeared to have acquired preter- 
 natural consistency from the mere reaction of his 
 unprecedented position. People might have in- 
 ferred from his lofty bearing that it was he, 
 Athanasius Docket, and not young Reginald, the 
 kinsman of Sir Giles Cressingham, who was come 
 into possession of seven-and-forty thousand a year. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 59 
 
 A very short space was allowed for pomposity ; 
 the tenure of both being equally equivocal. 
 Scarcely was Sir Giles laid in the grave, when 
 bills were filed in Chancery, and processes served 
 on the executors, and all sorts of grievances and 
 aggravations attempted on the part, on one side, of 
 Sir John Cressingham, as heir at law ; and on the 
 other, of Richard Cressingham, Esq., who con- 
 tended for the execution of a nuncupative will in 
 his favour. 
 
 Troublesome and expensive litigation, in short, 
 constituted, as in many other cases, the first fruits 
 of inheritance. Poor Mrs Blair, who had flattered 
 herself, or rather who had been flattered by Docket, 
 that the fortunes of her son were now secure, and 
 who had already taken the preliminary steps for 
 sending him to Eton with a private tutor and 
 establishing herself at the Hall, was overwhelmed 
 by a state of things almost more painful to bear 
 than her original dependence. Familiar by hear- 
 say, like all the rest of the world, with the uncer- 
 tainties of the law and the ruinous delays of 
 Chancery, to find herself, without money and 
 without protection, suddenly launched upon this 
 sea of troubles was a trial almost beyond her forti- 
 
60 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 tilde. Her sole consolation lay in a woman's un- 
 failing and unavailing solace — tears ; and instead of 
 bestirring herself to seek advice, she wept over her 
 own and Reginald's destinies, without forming a 
 conjecture how they were to be amended. Like 
 some victim of the days of fable, exposed to the 
 jaws of a devouring monster, she beheld the fiery 
 dragon Law advancing with extended jaws towards 
 her, too much overwhelmed to hazard a single 
 effort in her defence. 
 
 This was pretty nearly such a position of affairs 
 as Docket had anticipated. When disappointed 
 in his expectations of converting the Cressing- 
 ham executorship into a quiet farm, to be enjoyed 
 and managed at his own good liking, it afforded 
 some comfort that costly proceedings would 
 eventually secure to his hands, as attorney, the 
 profits of which he was for the present defrauded 
 as trustee. Though a receiver was appointed for 
 the property, and though both the litigating parties 
 had petitioned to have the Hall shut up and th 
 expensive establishment reduced, till the hearing of 
 the cause, Docket, as guardian of the minor and 
 acting solicitor to the will, foresaw so vast an 
 outlay in the way of pounce and parchment, as 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 61 
 
 insured a liberal inheritance, for the eventual 
 apportionment of an incontestable will and testa- 
 ment of his own. Meanwhile, the depression of 
 Mrs Blair placed /per, and consequently the 
 estate, almost at his disposal. It w^as through 
 him she had to obtain the funds necessary for 
 carrying on the suit: — it was from him she must 
 seek the counsels indispensable for carrying on the 
 suit : — his kindness and advice were to be all in 
 all to the widow and orphan. 
 
 To a poor widow and needy orphan kindness 
 and advice would, perhaps, have been cautiously 
 administered by so shrewd a man. But " the 
 mother of the heir of his patron Sir Giles was 
 entitled to his utmost sympathy;" and nothing 
 could be more diffusely pompous than his assur- 
 ances to Sophia that she might rely upon him 
 through all extremities. He advised, meanwhile, 
 that Eton should be given up for the present; 
 and affected to obtain the sanction of the Court 
 of Chancery to her continued sojourn at The 
 Wilderness, and retain, at his own risk, the 
 attendance of the tutor originally procured for 
 Reginald by his intervention with Sir Giles. 
 
 An absolute monarchy was consequently once 
 
62 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 more established at The Wilderness. Fixing her 
 devout faith upon the advice of one who, in the 
 absence of natural protectors, was her only friend, 
 — all she knew of the nature of her claims, — all she 
 understood of her probabilities of success, were 
 derived from this troubled and turbid source of 
 information. Sophia was shy and timid. Most 
 people admire shyness and timidity in women. 
 Some go so far as to cultivate them, as virtues, in 
 their wives and children ; little reflecting how 
 dangerously such qualities, however ornamental 
 to the female character, conduce to place a woman 
 at the mercy of designing persons, whether 
 brilliant seducers or humdrum attorneys ; — or how 
 thoroughly they may invalidate the best qualities 
 of the heart. 
 
 The daughter of Richard Cressingham had been 
 brought up in mental subjection, — utterly ignorant 
 of the value of money, or the realities of life ; 
 every one calling her that pretty, artless creature, 
 Sophia Cressingham ; — and the consequence was, 
 an imprudent elopement. 
 
 Oppressed still more grievously by the patronage 
 of the kinsman who affected to have stepped 
 forward chivalrously in her behalf, she gradually 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 63 
 
 lost all energy of mind, all power of self-reliance ; 
 and at length, hunted by persecution, reviled by 
 her father and family as an artful designer, and 
 stigmatized by Chancery documents which, in 
 her ignorance of business, she fancied as public 
 as if recited at Charing cross, she was harassed 
 by the dread of appearing over-solicitous for the 
 things of this world, even in her interviews with 
 her co-executor. 
 
 She dared not propose referring her case to 
 higher councils. She was assured in so autho- 
 ritative a tone by Docket her business was safe 
 in his hands, that she resigned herself to stifle 
 her anxieties during his absence; and when he 
 came, to accept such information of the progress 
 of her affairs as he chose to vouchsafe. 
 
 Poor Reginald, meanwhile, found little alteration 
 in his position. He was not a whit more adored 
 by his mother and nurse Adams, as the proprietor 
 of the Hall, nor a whit less snubbed by his tutor. 
 All accesses to The Wilderness were closed, saving 
 those under the authority of the attorney; who 
 was careful to circulate in the neighbourhood an 
 opinion that the claims of the heir-at-law were 
 
64- THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 tenable, and the infirmity of mind of Sir Giles 
 only too likely to be established. 
 
 In such uncertainties passed the first tedious 
 winter succeeding the death of Sir Giles. 
 
 " I am sure I wonder what people meant by 
 congratulating me after the poor old gentleman 
 died," observed the boy, one day, to the good old 
 nurse, the only person not to be debarred from 
 treating him with the deference due to the head of 
 the family. " The Hall is shut up. Half the 
 keepers are sent away ; and in their place, there 
 is a set of surly, ill-conditioned fellows, who 
 molest me by their interference every time I set 
 foot in the park. I don't understand it all. If I 
 am to be master at Stoke, it seems strange that I 
 am so much less kindly used there, than while Sir 
 Giles was alive ! Nobody comes here now, but 
 that tiresome creature, old Docket, whose visits 
 always leave mamma in tears ; and who makes her 
 believe that I am better here, plodding on with 
 Mr McAvoy, than at Eton, — but that I must not 
 run about the village, or play with poor little Jus- 
 tina Chaffles, as I used to do. I don't want to be 
 a rich man. I don't care to be master at the Hall. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 65 
 
 But I do wish we had a nice, comfortable cottage 
 of our own, — with cheerful, pleasant people to talk 
 to ; and that I might never hear the name of 
 a lawyer, or see the sour face of old Docket 
 again." 
 
 It was not often that the boy was allowed leisure 
 for such colloquies as these. Docket had suc- 
 ceeded in persuading the anxious mother that a 
 boy with such wonderful prospects ought to be 
 wonderfully learned; and that twice as much 
 Latin and Greek would be required of him as of 
 other young men. Study, therefore — laborious 
 study — was the order of the day; and even when 
 Reginald was released, in the evening, from the 
 documentations of his pedagogue, it w^as only to 
 find his mother, harassed and careworn, musing 
 beside her solitary hearth, and unapt for conver- 
 sation. 
 
 Her solitary meditations, on the other hand, 
 became daily more perplexing, as her situation 
 grew more and more complicated. Scarcely a 
 cheering ray was allowed by Docket to reach the 
 heart upon which he had fastened his bat-like 
 clutch. Invariably, his first movement on entering 
 the drawing-room at The Wilderness was to shake 
 
66 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 his head. His first communication was sure to be 
 the recital of some fresh proceeding on the part of 
 Sir John Cressingham, or some new and cruel 
 misrepresentation on the part of her father; till 
 poor Sophia actually trembled to confront the eye 
 of a stranger, so persuaded was she that the im- 
 puted turpitude of her conduct had steeled all 
 hearts against her and her son. 
 
 Mistrust and anxiety, by increasing her natural 
 shyness, at length produced the evil of which she 
 stood in dread. Her reserve began to pass for 
 pride with the vicar's lady and the few other 
 country neighbours who found it worth while to 
 frequent a house in which sounds of feasting 
 and rejoicing were unknown. Some went so far 
 as to decide that Mrs Blair, under the influence 
 of her prodigious expectations, was growing tho- 
 roughly disagreeable ; and amid the mutual dissa- 
 tisfactions thus engendered, the poor aggrieved 
 woman found relief in closing her doors altogether, 
 save against the visitations of her faithful Amadis, 
 Athanasius Docket. The attorney, as he antici- 
 pated, had it completely his own way. 
 
 Meanwhile the Chancery suit went on. Chan- 
 cery-wise. Though, whenever he saw her sinking 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 67 
 
 into positive despondency, the attorney renewed 
 his attestations that the cause was safe ; — that the 
 proceedings were inevitably slow, but that the 
 opinion of the profession was in her favour, the 
 mole-like working of her adversaries was con- 
 tinually throwing up fresh obstacles under her 
 feet; and so vehement and so active became the 
 rival claimants of the Cressingham estates, that, 
 as far as regarded the public mind, the rights 
 of her son appeared to have lost their tena- 
 bility. 
 
 Under such circumstances, her pecuniary diffi- 
 culties increased daily. A distringas had been 
 placed upon the property. Every arrangement 
 for an allowance to the minor was negatived or 
 traversed; and poor Reginald was perpetually 
 saddened by the sight of his mother's despondency, 
 and the discussion of necessities and expedients 
 such as ought never to have come to the know- 
 ledge of his young mind. Money was the constant 
 theme of Sophia's conversation. She fancied the 
 shy, gentle boy heedless of what was passing. 
 But, in the rare intervals of his studies, his ears 
 were drinking in terrible lessons of the omnipo- 
 tence of riches as an instrument of human happi- 
 
68 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 ness, and as connected with domestic sorrows 
 peculiarly his own. 
 
 Darker still, however, were fated to be the 
 prospects of the widow. At the close of two years 
 and a half, Docket himself, whose misgivings on 
 the subject of the great cause of Cressingham 
 versus Cressingham had hitherto been affected, 
 grew really anxious on the subject. Things were 
 taking an unfavourable turn. A change of ministry 
 had produced a change in the legislative wisdom 
 of the land ; and rumours were afloat that a new 
 light was likely to operate a decision fatal to the 
 minor. 
 
 Trembling for the advances he had made, and 
 foreseeing a barbarous taxation of his professional 
 demands, Docket vented his disappointment upon 
 his unhappy client; setting before her, in the 
 darkest colours, the extremities to which she would 
 be reduced should the general opinion prove cor- 
 rect ; till Sophia began to look back to her gloomy 
 lodging at Reading, and her heavy maternal 
 labours, as a blessed and peaceful existence com- 
 pared with the load of debt and shame under which 
 she must labour when ignominiously ejected from 
 The Wilderness by Sir John Cressingham. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 69 
 
 " We have not one friend on earth to afford us 
 shelter or succour ! " was her exclamation to nurse 
 Adams, when the attorney took his departure 
 after these pleasing announcements ; and all that 
 Reginald could do, in token of sympathy, was to 
 creep silently to his mother's side and moisten her 
 hand with his tears. 
 
70 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Full little does thou know who hast not tried 
 What Hell it is in suing, long to hide, 
 To speed to day, — to be put back to-morrow,— 
 To feed on hope, — to pine with care and sorrow. 
 
 SrENSER. 
 
 Had such a measure as compromise been 
 possible between the minor and the heir-at-law, 
 Docket would not, at that moment, have hesitated 
 to recommend it, or Mrs Blair to give it her 
 sanction. But luckily, the improvidence of timid 
 natures was frustrated by the peculiar bearings 
 of the case. All that remained for Sophia was 
 to endure with patience the fluctuations of the 
 attorney's expectations and temper. She was 
 not aware of those of her own ; she did not 
 know how often poor Reginald had to suffer 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 71 
 
 from the total absence of method and system in 
 a house supported by expedients, having no 
 plans for the future, and very little enjoyment 
 of the passing day. He found no sympathy. His 
 impulses of youthful joy were checked by the 
 sadness of those by whom he was surrounded. 
 The progress of his mind was unheeded; the 
 bent of his nature unexamined; he was an 
 object of almost painful solicitude to his mother, 
 whether as the heir to fifty thousand a year, or 
 as a beggar. She felt that she was either doing 
 too much or too little for him ; and above all, 
 she had not a single easy, unoccupied hour in 
 which to clasp him to her bosom, and glory in 
 him as her child. Nothing was done to cheer 
 him — nothing to cultivate his affections. 
 
 " I'm sure it's a melancholy sight to meet 
 the poor lad moping about from hill to dale with 
 that priggish-looking tutor of his," was Mrs 
 Chaffle's confidential lamentation to her husband. 
 " Cressingham, or Blair, or whatever he is to 
 be called, it would have been a blessed thing for 
 him had the old gentleman left him, instead of 
 a visionary fortune, two or three comfortable 
 hundreds a year, and to know where to look 
 
72 THE MAN or FORTUNE. 
 
 about him for it. Mrs Blair's bill at Milham's 
 is running up to more tban I choose to say ; 
 and as to the lad, he hasn't a comfort or a play- 
 fellow in the world ! It would make your heart 
 ache to see how he colours up, and how the 
 tears come into his eyes whenever Tina runs 
 up to kiss him, as she is sure to do when we 
 meet him parading over the meadows with his 
 tutor, as prim as if they were following a funeral." 
 "I fancy his prospects are not likely to 
 brighten," observed the vicar cheerily, in reply ; 
 " that poor woman would never take my advice ! 
 I could have put her in the way of managing 
 Sir Giles so as to secure the boy's succession. 
 And now, could put her in the way of 
 settling her Chancery affairs without further liti- 
 gation, — which will not leave the estate a leg 
 to stand upon. Even as it is, why can't she 
 give the poor boy a plain, manly, sensible edu- 
 cation? — But that, you see, is her pride, poor 
 woman ! She was going to send him to Eton, 
 when she found out that the will was as good 
 as null and void ; and now she can't afford that, 
 forsooth, nothing less will content her ! — There's 
 Randsley Grammar School. A youth may get 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 73 
 
 his learning quite as well, and his morals better, 
 at Randsley Grammar School than at Eton." 
 , " I must say, it's a great misfortune to the 
 neighbourhood to have the business dragging on 
 in the way it does, the estate going to rack, 
 and the house shut up as it is," murmured Mrs 
 Chaffles. — " It will be the ruin, too, of poor 
 Mr Docket, who will never be able to remain 
 here after all the provocations that have been 
 going on, when once Sir John has taken 
 possession of the property, as is most likely, 
 and most to be desired; for he has sacrificed 
 all his other business, and been maintaining this 
 foolish woman and her son, and will only lose 
 his money at last, and be laughed at for his 
 pains. Why couldn't he manage like us f We 
 have taken part with no party. Let the cause 
 be decided as it may, the Hall must always re- 
 main open to us." 
 
 The opinions thus freely canvassed between 
 the vicar and his wife, were tolerably general in 
 the parish. The Wilderness was in complete 
 disfavour. People nodded their heads contemp- 
 tuously, in alluding to Mrs Blair ; and had 
 scarcely the civility to touch their hats to the shy 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
74 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 hoy, when they met him musing in the green 
 lanes or fishing in the solitary stream. They 
 wished him well out of his law proceedings, — and 
 they wished him further. It was all the fault of 
 the Blairs that the circulation of ten thousand 
 a-year was lost to the neighbourhood; — and the 
 Stokeites spoke of the Chancery suit as if it were 
 simply an injury done to them by poor Sophia. 
 
 Such was the melancholy state of affairs when, 
 just at the close of term, about four years after the 
 sudden death of Sir Giles, and the commencement 
 of tli^se harassing litigations, Athanasius Docket, 
 Esq., found himself suddenly summoned to town 
 by the London solicitors in his employ. Appre- 
 hending further demands for retaining fees or 
 advances, or he knew not what, Athanasius took 
 care to call at The Wilderness previous to his 
 departure, to express, for the thousandth time, his 
 bitter regret at having ever been involved in 
 aifairs so onerous and unsatisfactory ; winding 
 up with the usual clause of " not that I mean to 
 blame you^ my dear Madam, or my young friend ; 
 only I must say it is rather hard that the whole 
 weight and responsibility of a suit in which I am 
 no wise concerned, should fall upon myself. — I 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 75 
 
 am off to London again ! — another useless and 
 expensive journey ! However, we must carry it 
 through — we have no choice — we must carry it 
 through. To-morrow, Madam, I hope to be able 
 to report progress." 
 
 On the morrow, however, as far as the post was 
 concerned, no progress was reported. In reply to 
 Mrs Blair's inquiries at Docket* s office, it appeared 
 that no news had arrived from him : and all she had 
 to do was to submit to another day of suspense, 
 galled by pressing applications for money, and 
 deriving new terrors from a recommendation she 
 had just received from her medical attendant to 
 remove her son from The Wilderness for change 
 of air, — the evident depression of his spirits pro- 
 bably proceeding from incipient indisposition. 
 
 "Ill — seriously ill — the air of this place 
 disagreeing with him — yet unable to stir ! — My 
 poor, poor boy ! — I am sick at heart, — sick of my 
 very life," — mused the afflicted mother, as she 
 sauntered that evening along the now weedy walks 
 of her garden. " And all this heartburning, — all 
 this mortification — all this alarm — to proceed from 
 that which I once so little estimated, the influence 
 of money ! — I cannot enjoy the company of that 
 
76 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 darling fellow, — I cannot look his tutor or Mr 
 Docket in the face, — I dare not walk through the 
 village, or accost my humble neighbours — for 
 want of the means of doing justice to them and 
 myself. The poor come here to be relieved, and 
 I am forced to deny them. My tradesmen come 
 here to be paid, and I am obliged to meet them 
 with excuses. My neighbours shun me — my 
 family despise me. I have not one happy hour — 
 one easy moment ! — And yet I have done no 
 wrong ! — I am all I was when the world regarded 
 me so kindly. Why — why — was I never made to 
 estimate, in my youth, the omnipotence of mam- 
 mon in this cold-blooded world?" — 
 
 Tears flowed from her eyes as she reflected 
 upon Reginald and his precarious prospects. 
 
 It was a clear spring evening ; one of those 
 cheerless evenings in April, when a chilly twilight 
 makes one apprehend that the spring flowers and 
 early leaves will be blighted if left out for the 
 night. Everything was dispiriting. The birds 
 seemed to want shelter, — all nature to want 
 geniality. It was too early to return to the 
 house, — too late to remain in the air. Mrs Blair 
 inquired anxiously for Reginald. He was out 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 77 
 
 with his tutor. He was probably in the park. 
 She accordingly opened the gate of communi- 
 cation leading into it from The Wilderness (the 
 source in Sir Giles's time of so much evil 
 interpretation), in order to go in search pf him 
 and persuade him to come into the house. When 
 lo ! ere she had proceeded many paces, she 
 descried a postchaise and four, gallopping furiously 
 along the grand avenue, which, as it drew nearer, 
 appeared to be covered with laurels, while the 
 postboys had ribbons streaming from their hats. 
 
 " Can there be an election going on ?" — was 
 Sophia's first ejaculation — " 1 have not heard of 
 one — But no one is at the trouble of bringing us 
 news of the county now^ 
 
 At that moment, an idea glanced into her mind 
 which caused every drop of blood in her veins to 
 stagnate ! If the cause should be decided ! If 
 this should be Sir John Cressingham coming 
 to take possession, — coming to drive Reginald 
 from his home ! — Unable to support herself, she 
 tottered back to the gate, and stood leaning there 
 with her eyes fixed haggardly upon the chaise. 
 But it had now passed the turn leading to the 
 Hall ; and came dashing up towards The Wilder- 
 
 E 2 
 
78 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 ness. The wheels struck fire from the flinty road. 
 The boys huzzaed; and as they drew nearer, an 
 arm waving a white handkerchief was seen pro- 
 truding from the open window. 
 
 Mrs Blair had lost all self-possession or power 
 of speech when at length the carriage stopped at 
 her door, and Docket leapt out. His eager con- 
 gratulations, his noisy demonstrations of triumph, 
 however, scarcely arrested her attention. Regi- 
 nald, whom he had met at the entrance of the 
 park and forced into the chaise, was now in his 
 mother's arms; and in spite of the attorney's 
 outcries of joy, a still small whisper reached her 
 amid all her convulsive sobs, of — " Thank God, 
 dearest mother, your troubles are over ! — Nothing 
 but peace and comfort for the remainder of your 
 days!" 
 
 All was safe ! A decree of the Lords had de- 
 cided irrevocably in favour of young Cressingham ; 
 and though Docket loudly protested he had never 
 a moment doubted that such would be the result, 
 it was clear from his obstreperous joy, which 
 defied for a time the control of even his cautious 
 discretion, that he was quite as much taken by 
 surprise as either of his clients. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 79 
 
 After the first necessary explanation, Sopliia 
 longed eagerly for his departure. She wanted to 
 be alone with her son. She wanted to fall on his 
 neck and weep. For some time past, she had 
 almost dreaded to be alone with him. He had 
 been a source of as much pain as pleasure to her. 
 She had learned to tremble for him ; to fear that lie 
 might come to pain — to humiliation ! And noxo! 
 Yes ! — she yearned to be alone with him, — to fold 
 him in her arms — to own how deeply she had suf- 
 fered now that her suiferings were over, — and to 
 whisper to him as he had whispered to her, " Re- 
 joice greatly — henceforward all around us is to 
 be comfort and peace \ " 
 
 Poor Sophia ! The influence of mammon had 
 done its w^ork even upon her. Her very heart ex- 
 panded in the artificial sunshine produced by a 
 shower of gohl. The improvident girl who had 
 fled from her prosperous home to become the 
 drudge of a penniless soldier, had learned to bow 
 the knee to the molten calf among the servile 
 multitudes of mankind. 
 
 Within an hour, the gardens of The Wilder- 
 ness were crowded with the whole population of 
 the village of Stoke ! On the following day the 
 
80 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 house itself would scarcely contain the obliging 
 neighbours who hastened, with singular alacrity, 
 to offer their congratulations to the happy family. 
 Everybody shook hands with everybody. Every- 
 body smiled in the face of everybody ; everybody 
 seemed eager to admit that this accession of for- 
 tune, on the part of mother and son, was all that 
 had been wanting to complete the happiness of 
 everybody. The Reginald Blair they had found 
 it so easy to overlook, was become gigantic as 
 Reginald Cressingham. Reginald Blair had been 
 voted dull and moping, — Reginald Cressingham 
 was shy and interesting. They had been angry 
 with Sophia for not sending Reginald Blair to a 
 grammar school ; while, as to Reginald Cressing- 
 ham, they could scarcely bear to have him torn 
 away from them, even to go to Eton ! 
 
 The atmosphere of The Wilderness, so long 
 stagnant with solitude, or disturbed only by mur- 
 murs of discontent, was now astir with cheerful 
 voices and sounds of exultation. The musicians 
 of Stoke came carolling to the gates, with their 
 serpent and bassoon. The ringers nearly brought 
 down the belfry of the old church, with their bob 
 majors. The old Hall was thrown open at the 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 81 
 
 suggestion of Docket, and the people drank the 
 health of the Heir of Stoke Paddocks in hogs- 
 heads of his own ale ; and condescended to de- 
 monstrate their joy by roasting and devouring the 
 sheep and oxen of his flocks and herds. It was 
 impossible to be too much rejoiced at his triumph 
 over his enemies ! — 
 
 The boy, meanwhile, was more embarrassed 
 than gratified by this prodigious accession of po- 
 pularity. A week before, the little merry girl at 
 the vicarage was the only living being, save his 
 mother and nurse Adams, who troubled her head 
 concerning him ; and though, at little more than 
 thirteen, his philosophy, or his curiosity, did not 
 extend so far as to inquire circumstantially into 
 the motives of their sudden enthusiasm, there was 
 nothing in it to excite his own. 
 
 For the immediate result of this brilliant trans- 
 formation of his destinies was to sink him into 
 a school-boy ! His mother was relieved from a 
 thousand evils. His mother was released from 
 the moral nightmare called debt; and the still 
 bitterer visitation of dependence upon the will 
 and pleasure of Athanasius ; for though seven 
 years of minority were still to elapse, she was too 
 
 £ 3 
 
82 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 equally associated with him in the guardianship, to 
 admit of his harassing her by further contrarieties. 
 
 But the heir had no such consciousness of 
 release. All he had to do was to take his depar- 
 ture for the " antique towers," in company with 
 the pedagogue who had so belaboured him with 
 learning at home ; and the shy boy, who, so long 
 as the consummation seemed impossible, desired 
 nothing so earnestly as the companionship of 
 Eton, traditionally dear to him as the place where 
 his father had received his education, became 
 appalled beyond measure now that he found him- 
 self on the eve of encountering the quizzing and 
 hoaxing of a public school. 
 
 When, after an affectionate parting from his 
 mother, he bade adieu for the first and last time to 
 The Wilderness, Reginald would willingly have 
 given half the rent-roll of his estate, for the privi- 
 lege of remaining planted among the oaks of 
 Stoke Paddocks, safe from the bantering and ex- 
 amination of this wicked world, and able to 
 saunter away the fine weather in the woods, and 
 the rainy days with a book in his hand, or in a 
 game of play with Justina. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 83 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Thus all-accomplished, ere he yet begin 
 To show the peeping down upon his chin." 
 
 COWPER. 
 
 It was a great trial to Sophia to part from 
 her darling son. Even she, disinterested as is 
 the natural tenderness of a mother, found 
 herself setting a higher value upon Reginald 
 now that he was become of such immense 
 importance to other people ; and nothing but 
 her recollection of her husband's prejudices in 
 favour of Eton, and the incessant harangues of 
 Athanasius Docket (who found the leisure of 
 his ward hang heavy on his own hands) 
 concerning the necessity of a public education 
 to the career of an English gentleman, would 
 
84 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 have determined her to part from the idol of her 
 affections. — What would become of her apart 
 from Reginald ? — No sooner, however, was he 
 gone, than she found her time fully disposed of. 
 Engagements poured in upon her; the news- 
 papers, which took sucl^fond delight in record- 
 ing every particular respecting the interesting 
 youth, in whose favour was decided the great 
 cause of Cressinsrham versus Cressinpham had 
 reminded of her existence hundreds of friends of 
 her youth, to whom she had become as one 
 dead ; and thousands of Blairs and Cressinghams, 
 who beset her with letters from almost every 
 county in Great Britain. 
 
 Between the arrangements of her pecuniary 
 affairs and a sort of tacit reconciliation with the 
 neighbourhood, which no longer thought her 
 sulky or voted her proud, she had not leisure 
 to regret the company of her son more than 
 twenty times a day. 
 
 All her care was to effect the restoration of 
 Stoke Paddocks to its pristine state. — She had 
 set her heart upon seeing the Hall restored 
 to the same dignified condition as when -it had 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 85 
 
 first produced so strong an impression upon her 
 imagination; and while thus occupied in the 
 reorganization of house and household, it was 
 easy for Docket to become once more lord of the 
 ascendant in more important instances. The 
 despotism of former days was all but renewed. 
 Long debarred from the free use of her faculties, 
 Mrs Blair had almost forgotten how to use them. 
 She was thankful to Docket for the assiduous zeal 
 that spared so much trouble to her indolence ; 
 for under his active auspices all the disarray of an 
 estate, racked and tortured by a Chancery^ suit as 
 by the possession of a devil, was disappearing, 
 and order and magnificence resuming possession 
 of the throne. 
 
 " At present, dear Reginald is indifferent to 
 such matters," was Sophia's secret reflection, as 
 the Christmas holidays approached. " Simple 
 in his tastes as he is reserved in his manners, he 
 has not an ambition beyond the chimney corner 
 of The Wilderness ! At nearly fourteen, he is 
 still a child. It is not his fault, however, poor 
 fellow, that the retirement in which he was 
 brought up should have confirmed the reserve of 
 
86 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 his sensitive nature ! How overjoyed will he be 
 to find himself in his own quiet home again ! 
 — What a relief the seclusion of this place ! I 
 only trust our good friend, Mr Docket, will not 
 come and wear down his spirits by reference to 
 business, as he does mine ; or exercise too much 
 authority over his pursuits. Reginald's timid 
 nature would give way under the interference 
 to which I have learned to submit." 
 
 Never had she taken such delight in the 
 renovated beauty of The Wilderness, as now 
 that she was on the point of welcoming home 
 her child. His unsophisticated tastes were likely 
 to pass unheeded a thousand details of luxury 
 and comfort; but even the careless and almost 
 slovenly boy would be pleased to find the gardens 
 restored to all their primitive pride ; — the new 
 winter shrubbery of evergreens and well-rolled 
 walks exhibiting all the care of a skilful gardener. 
 His own favourite garden alone had been scrupu- 
 lously left untouched, that he might enjoy, as in 
 former times, the pleasure of operating his own 
 improvements. Beside it, however, a little hovel 
 had been erected, to contain the new tools and 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 87 
 
 horticultural implements prepared for him by the 
 forethought of his mother, against the return of 
 Spring. 
 
 It was after surveying these preparations, and 
 visiting his own old room, newly and commo- 
 diously furnished, that Sophia hurried down, about 
 the hour appointed for Reginald's arrival. For 
 one so sensitively shy, it would be a trial to 
 meet even herself and Adams, after four months' 
 separation : and when the carriage stopped, she 
 was already on the door-steps, prepared to wel- 
 come the little fellow, now almost a stranger at 
 The Wilderness. 
 
 Mrs Blair was scarcely less struck on beholding 
 Sir Giles lifeless in his arm-chair, than at the first 
 aspect of her son ! — Young Cressingham advanced 
 to do the honours to her with the ease of a fine 
 gentleman. He had left her an awkward boy, — 
 he was come back a miniature man. There were 
 tears in his eyes, indeed, more manifestly than 
 became his manly dignity, when pressed to the 
 heart of his mother, and earnestly saluted by the 
 old nurse. But he quickly recovered himself, — 
 took his place authoritatively on the hearth-rug, — 
 informed her that, unwilling to trouble her with 
 
8a THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 the company of Mr McAvoy, he had despatched 
 his tutor, at once, to spend the vacation in the 
 North, — and inquired after Docket much in the 
 same patronizing tone he asked after the house- 
 dog. 
 
 Sophia no longer wondered that, for the last 
 two months, he should have become remiss in his 
 correspondence. She felt that she should scarcely 
 have understood him, had he written in the style 
 he was talking. While gazing with pride upon 
 his growth and personal improvement, she could 
 enter into the share of a fashionable London tailor 
 in his transformation. But who had effected the 
 marvellous revolution in mind and morals ? Who 
 had given breadth of spirit, as well as breadth 
 of shoulders? Who had inspired self-reliance? 
 Who had fortified the unstrung nerves ? Who 
 had converted poor Blair's timid orphan irto the 
 spirited heir of the house of Cressingham ? Was 
 it still the power of Mammon? Was it in tl/is 
 instance the worship of the multitudes bowed 
 down in breathless adoration around the golden 
 calf? 
 
 She did not so much as venture to advert to the 
 hovel and garden-tools, or the new pony-chair, 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 89 
 
 in which she had intended to solicit his aid as 
 charioteer. — Already he was giving hints about 
 battues, and talking of a tandem ! — 
 
 It was almost a comfort to her when, after 
 applying a series of saucy epithets to his guardian 
 and inquiring after the various families of the 
 neighbourhood in terms far from complimentary, 
 — after talking of hunters and greyhounds, neat 
 turn-outs, and clever hacks — he condescended to 
 allude to Justina and the old pony ! — He asked 
 after them, however, rather in the tone of a patron 
 than a friend. 
 
 '' I suppose, mother, you don't see much of 
 that horrible old Chaffles woman?" said he ; " but 
 my little pet, — how is she ? — I was very near 
 bringing her a macaw, which I saw in Windsor as 
 we drove through ! Justina had always such a 
 passion for birds. I suppose we need not trouble 
 ourselves with the old bores at the Vicarage. 
 But surely Tina might be brought to see me ? " 
 
 Mrs Blair resolved to defer to some moment 
 less interesting than the first evening of their 
 meeting, her entreaties that he would render to 
 the Vicarage the respect due to the Vicarage; 
 and soon forgot her vexation in delight at his 
 
90 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 affectionate inquiries after the pony and one or 
 two of his old pensioners in the village. 
 
 Eton, however, soon burst forth again ! 
 
 " I have promised Morton and Holmeswell to 
 give them a week's shooting at Stoke during the 
 holidays," said he ; "I suppose you can manage 
 to put them up for me ?" 
 
 " And who are Morton and Holmeswell ? " 
 inquired his mother, in some surprise. 
 
 " Don't you know Morton and Holmeswell ? 
 I thought every one knew Morton and 
 Holmeswell. Morton is the best dressed fellow 
 at Eton ; and Holmeswell one of the finest riders 
 in England, — both capital fellows. We dined 
 together at the Christopher the night before I 
 came off. Capital fun, I assure you. Holmeswell 
 was regularly floored ! " 
 
 The consternation of Mrs Blair knew no 
 bounds. Even her serenity was beginning to 
 be disturbed on finding strangers, even though 
 schoolboys, invited to her house without consult- 
 ing her inclinations on the subject. But maternal 
 partiality prevailed; and she soon began to make 
 allowances for the young dandy, by assuring her- 
 self that he was merely showing off for the 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 91 
 
 astonishment of an over-fond mother. The mor- 
 row would restore him to reason. The morrow 
 would bring Docket in all his glory of guardian- 
 ship. A few words from Docket would place 
 everything straight. The grave authority under 
 which she lay crushed would probably work mi- 
 racles equal to those of Eton. 
 
 The morrow did bring Docket — and the mor- 
 row witnessed the working of more miracles ; — but 
 not of the nature anticipated by Mrs Blair. Un- 
 willing to witness the humiliation of Reginald on 
 receiving a reprimand, she had judged it better to 
 leave him tete-a-tete with the executor, and dis- 
 creetly left the room. 
 
 In about half an hour, she returned ; expecting 
 to find the man of the law, as usual, laying down 
 the law, and looking as hard as a bronze statue. 
 She even trembled to look at Reginald, lest the 
 blush of ingenuous shame, produced by merited 
 reproof, should burn too brightly on his cheek. 
 
 No need of alarm ! — The blushing cheek was 
 that of Docket. The subdued demeanour was 
 that of Docket. It was Reginald who had been 
 laying down the law, and who looked as lofty as 
 the statue. Reginald had been quizzing his guar- 
 
92 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 dian unmercifully on the cut of his coat; and, in- 
 stead of resenting his impertinence, the attorney- 
 was all obsequiousness — all courtiership ; — quite 
 ready to varnish the boots of his ward, whenever 
 occasion needed. 
 
 " I have been talking^ to Mr Docket, mother,'* 
 said he, too politic to drop the Mr with him as 
 with others, lest it should encourage so vulgar a 
 man to take liberties, " I have been talking to 
 Mr Docket about the shooting, and he promises 
 me excellent sport for Morton and Holmeswell. 
 But we have been agreeing that it will be as well 
 for them to stay at the Hall." 
 
 " By no means, my dear boy!" said Mrs Blair, 
 fearing that her surprise of the preceding even- 
 ing might have been unkindly interpreted. " I 
 assure you they will be no inconvenience to me 
 here. There is Mrs McAvoy's room ; and I can 
 easily put up a bed in the blue dressing room." 
 
 " Yes, certainly, but I am afraid that sort of 
 thing would scarcely do. You see, Morton is ac- 
 customed to — a — a — and Holmeswell is deuced 
 particular. By the way, it will be quite impos- 
 sible, mother, for you to remain here long ; this 
 house is so detestably inconvenient. Mr Docket 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 93 
 
 agrees with me, that you ought to remove next 
 summer to the Hall, with a suitable establishment. 
 We must petition Chancery for an additional 
 allowance on pretence of keeping up the place. I 
 shall then be fourteen, and shall have some voice 
 in the business. In the mean time, Mr Docket 
 will be delicrhted to favour our wishes. It is 
 settled, therefore, that while Holmeswell and Mor- 
 ton are here, we take up our abode pro» tern, at 
 the Hall. I should not like them to find my 
 mother lost in the pokiness of this citizen's villa ! " 
 The heart of Mrs Blair swelled within her. 
 She longed to give him a lesson. She longed to 
 recall to his mind his boyish delight, when the 
 needy widow and child were first transferred to 
 that happy retreat ! But she forbore — forbearance 
 had long been habitual to her gentle nature. Be- 
 sides, she had promised herself never to estrange 
 the confidence of that only son by severity. Her 
 selfishness, under the form of maternal aflfection, 
 Lad not courage to do him justice. She saw, too, 
 that she should find no support in her co-trustee. 
 When she raised a few objections to the new plan, 
 Docket laughed away her scruples, — the first time 
 the priggish attorney had ever seen fit to laugh at 
 
94 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 a scruple ! — and assured her that Reginald's views 
 and habits differed in nothing from those of other 
 young men of his age and degree. He even ex- 
 pressed himself pleased that " the shy boy should 
 at once have associated himself with companions 
 so desirable, as Viscount Holmeswell, only son of 
 the Earl of Maunderwell ; and Sir Henry Morton, 
 who, on attaining his majority, would come into 
 a very pretty property in Leicestershire." 
 
 Between the authority of Docket and the as- 
 sumptions of Reginald, Sophia found that her 
 influence would be speedily superseded; and in 
 the indolence of a crushed spirit, gave up the 
 field without fighting a blow. She had soon oc- 
 casion to improve her acquaintance with " a neat 
 turn out" and "clever hacks;" for Docket was 
 careful to provide, against the arrival of the threat- 
 ened guests, precisely such accommodation as was 
 voted necessary by his Etonized ward. A small 
 suite of rooms was fitted up at the Hall, and a 
 couple of grooms, with several horses, suddenly 
 made their appearance in the stables ; Mrs Blair 
 being forced to subscribe to Docket's opinion 
 that, since Reginald already exhibited the tastes 
 of a man of pleasure, it would be safer for them to 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 95 
 
 make his home so pleasant to him, as to leave him 
 no pretext for seeking such indulgences elsewhere. 
 To appease the alarms of the mother, he even un- 
 dertook to preside at the Hall, during the visit of 
 the young Etonians, upon condition that she agreed 
 to her son's proposition, and installed herself 
 permanently at the Hall, in the course of the en- 
 suing summer. 
 
 It is a startling trial to a parent to find the 
 child — the weakling — over whom he has been 
 wont to exercise tender protection, suddenly shoot 
 up into independence. Sophia found that, ac- 
 cording to the system of the present day, she had 
 lessons to receive from her son. She, a woman, 
 knew nothing of the world, as now constituted; 
 he, a boy, was comparatively better instructed. 
 Certain it was that he was more versed in the 
 usages of the day, than the amiable recluse of The 
 Wilderness. The accession of fortune which 
 seemed to have increased her diffidence by aug- 
 menting her responsibility, had inspired him with 
 courage and purpose. 
 
 But had it not given too much courage for his 
 strength — too much purpose for his discretion ? 
 Was it not the result of the stimulus of flattery ? 
 
96 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Had not the boy Croesus been surrounded with 
 parasites? Did not his advancement, in short, 
 resemble the precocious growth of a plant, over- 
 forced by artificial heat ? Sophia was too fond of 
 him — too proud of him — to exercise much judg- 
 ment on the case. Whether as a shy boy or a 
 microcosmic man, the only son was still the ob- 
 ject of her adoration. 
 
 There was but one person who exercised 
 sounder discretion. Justina, who, though ad- 
 vanced to the dignity of white frocks, retained at 
 eight years old all the fearless naivete of infancy, 
 openly scouted the pretensions of the fine gentle- 
 man of Stoke Paddocks. 
 
 " You told me Reginald was coming home," 
 cried she to Mrs Blair, seizing her by the hand 
 as they met one day at the church door of Stoke, 
 " and I w^as so glad ! — I did love him so dearly ! 
 But I don't care a bit for Mr Cressingham. He 
 came one day to see grandpapa, and talked about 
 nothing but hunting and shooting. He took no 
 notice of me. But 'tis no great matter; for he 
 is not near such a nice little boy as he used 
 to be!" 
 
 Poor Tina, however, was the only person within 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 97 
 
 twenty miles round, of tlie same opinion. The 
 neighbourhood had been so long accustomed to 
 regard Stoke Paddocks as a Paradise Lost, that 
 the promise afforded by the gay young heir of 
 the house of Cressingham, was hailed with delight. 
 The world pronounced that law and equity had, 
 for once, united wisely in favour of the handsome 
 junior, instead of the decrepit Sir John, or his 
 surly brother. 
 
 All looked forward to brighter days at the Hall. 
 The sportsman foresaw battues, — the young la- 
 dies, balls. Mr Cressingham was making an 
 admirable beginning. Young as he was, lords 
 and baronets already congregated around him. 
 Though hampered by a vulgar 'attorney and quiz- 
 zical mother, the boy had evidently the instincts 
 of a gentleman, and Eton was doing its best to- 
 wards their development. At fifteen, he might 
 almost have stood for the county. 
 
 Athanasius Docket, meanwhile, though scarcely 
 less surprised in the first instance than Mrs Blair, 
 had sufficient ductility of mind to bow with- 
 out hesitation to the force of circumstances. As 
 promptly as when, at his patron Sir Giles's com- 
 mands, he perused the instrument transferring the 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
98 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 inheritance of Stoke from Reginald to his grand- 
 father, did he now determine to win by subser- 
 vience where he had intended to sway by autho- 
 rity. Perceiving that, in his ward, he had a very 
 different disposition to cope with from the anx- 
 ious, timid Sophia, his own interests might still be 
 served by the propensities of the young roue. If 
 he proceeded as he begun, there was every proba- 
 bility that, before the attainment of his majority, 
 the amount of its savings would be forestalled; 
 and that, instead of increasing the rent-roll of the 
 estate by new purchases, it would be diminished 
 by the prodigality of a spendthrift. Should this 
 prove true, it became the duty of a guardian to 
 modify the injury, by keeping him out of the 
 hands of the Jews by private accommodation. 
 Were young Cressingham to die a minor, his 
 property would fall to his mother, from whom the 
 attorney knew that he had nothing to fear in the 
 way of scrutiny. The far-sighted attorney ac- 
 cordingly permitted himself to become the ame 
 damnte of one whom he was resolved to render 
 an ante damnte of his own. On casting up ac- 
 count with the future, he found that his best 
 mode of insuring a balance in his favour, was 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 99 
 
 by installing himself the Mephistopheles of the 
 young Faustus. If Satan can quote scripture for 
 his purpose, a clever attorney is equally capable of 
 " taking all shapes and bearing many names ;" — of 
 preaching, whenever to " do the decent" is the 
 order of the day, and practising, in very antithe- 
 " tical style, wherever it be safe to let the cloven 
 foot peep out, undisguised by a gouty shoe. 
 
 He accordingly instituted himself perpetual 
 president of the orgies of the Hall, till Sir 
 Henry Morton assured Reginald that, if old 
 Docket were not quite such a curse of a quiz, 
 he would be a capital good fellow ; while Holmes- 
 well was never weary of assuring his friend 
 Cressingham, that he had got a " trump of a 
 guardian." He wished he could give him as an 
 example to his own father; swearing that he 
 " would not only exchange the Earl against him, 
 but throw something into the bargain." 
 
 With these views in perspective, it was not 
 surprising that Athanasius should support the 
 determination of Mrs Blair to remain at I'he 
 Wilderness, instead of removing to the Hall. A 
 thousand slight but important indications con- 
 vinced her that she would do well to entrench 
 
100 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 herself at once in a home of her own, — the home 
 assigned to her by the baronet, — and to the sup- 
 port of which, her income of three thousand a- 
 year was fully equal. Her son's assumption of in- 
 dependence rendered it necessary that she should 
 have some regard for her own. 
 
 Her explanations with him, however, weie 
 neither peevish nor resentful. She had not 
 courage or inclination to oppose any desire 
 expressed by her son ; but simply assured him 
 that her presence would one day become a 
 painful restraint ; and that should he then make 
 this apparent to herself, painful estrangements 
 between them must necessarily ensue. She pro- 
 mised, meanwhile, to exercise her taste and judg- 
 ment in the renovation and refurnishing of the 
 Hall, upon which he had insisted ; and even to 
 preside there whenever the reception of company 
 made her presence desirable. 
 
 Again did Sir Henry Morton interfere, to 
 assure Cressingham that he had the most judicious 
 of mothers, as well as the most discreet of guar- 
 dians; — while Lord Holmeswell vowed to 
 the gods that, could he have changed the 
 worldly, selfish Lady Maunderwell for the gentle, 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 101 
 
 disinterested Sophia, this time, lie would have 
 flung the family diamonds and the home-farm 
 into the lighter scale. 
 
 Reginald had no leisure to listen to all these 
 praises. His life, both at Eton and at home, was 
 a round of recreations. He had been too well 
 crammed by McAvoy in his boyhood to find 
 severe application necessary; and between row- 
 ing, sailing, cricketing, fishing, hunting, shooting, 
 and a variety of other diversions unsuitable to his 
 years, found life far too pleasant a pastime to 
 take heed of the morrow, or even the afternoon of 
 the passing day. 
 
 " Morton and Holmeswell were no doubt right. 
 He did not find either his mother or his guar- 
 dian much of a bore, — except, the former, when 
 nervous about restive horses, — or the latter, when 
 prosing about the disposal of his borough interest. 
 Old Docket was not so bad a judge of claret, after 
 all. As to his mother — but she was his mother, 
 and that was enough ! " 
 
 As time progressed, the Christmas parties at 
 the Hall became extended in numbers, if not im- 
 proved in quality. Nothing can be more absurd 
 than to assert the prevalence of a levelling prin- 
 
 F 2 
 
102 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 ciple in our public schools. Lord Mauuclerwell's 
 son was, of course, called " Holmeswell," and 
 fagged in his turn. But when advancing towards 
 the head of the school, he held his aristocratic 
 place in the little community far more decidedly 
 than in after-life at his club. Neither tutors nor 
 chums forgot for a moment that he was the only 
 son of the Earl of Maunder well; and quite as 
 little were they disposed to overlook the fact, that 
 his friend Cressingham was in the enjoyment of 
 fifty thousand a-year, good church preferment, 
 and a family mansion where the preserves were 
 excellent and the cellars of high reputation. 
 
 The influence and popularity of both was pro- 
 digious. It was not without just grounds that 
 Reginald attained at Eton the nickname of the 
 "Heir and many friends." Time was still to 
 prove w^hether the parody were to hold good 
 throughout ; and the unfortunate hare of the fable 
 to find a human representative in the popular 
 young Man of Fortune. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 103 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 '• Lord of himself — that heritage of woe ! 
 Tliat fearful empire, which the human breast 
 Holds but to keep the soul within from rest." 
 
 Byron. 
 
 From that period Reginald Cressingbam, like 
 tlie often-quoted swan of " still St Mary's Lake," 
 floated double. He became Reginald Cressing- 
 bam and shadow. The parvenu guardian, aware 
 that his future consequence must emanate from 
 his ward, strove, by every means in his power, to 
 amalgamate his own existence with that of Regi- 
 nald ; and as in the case of other parasite plants, 
 this intimate junction was of course at the cost of 
 the nobler tree. 
 
 Young Cressingbam was as rarely to be seen 
 without Athanasius at his heels, as Don Juan 
 without his Leporello. In any other instance, 
 
104 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 such intimate companionship might have boded 
 improvement to the younger. But Athanasius 
 was the disciple rather than the master. He 
 knew nothing, except vulgar fractions, more than 
 Reginakl; while Reginald, though a school-boy, 
 knew a thousand things that were heathen Greek 
 to the attorney. 
 
 The factitious atmosphere and soil engendered 
 by enormous wealth, was bringing forth the usual 
 result. From his infancy the boy had been the 
 sport of fortune ; and his faculties, long repressed 
 by her chilling power, were now starting up into 
 exuberant and barren verdure. The branches 
 were wild and fanciful, but fruit was wanting. 
 As little Justina, the orphan grandchild of the 
 vicar of Stoke, was once reproved by grand- 
 mamma for her audacity in remarking — " There 
 always seemed to be something make-believe 
 in Reginald." 
 
 Nevertheless, four years after his accession of 
 fortune, Cressingham of Stoke Paddocks was pro- 
 nounced to be the finest gentleman at Oxford. 
 Fine gentlemanism, in its vulgar acceptation, is a 
 fluctuating accomplishment ; uncertain as every 
 other mere matter of fashion. To dandyism sue- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 105 
 
 ceeds slang, — and from slang, the world of block- 
 heads recurs to dandyism ; the turf, the field, the 
 road, cigars, whiske}'-, or Champagne, being the 
 exceedingly right thing one term, and the ex- 
 ceedingly wrong one, the next. 
 
 Even scholarship has its turn. When, by rare 
 accident, the popular young Duke or Marquis of 
 Christchurch happens to be marked for an Honour, 
 dunces fall in general estimation ; and the fine 
 gentleman for once allows himself to be seen in 
 the livery of the Muses, instead of a bang-up by 
 Stultz, or a paletot of Blin. 
 
 Some such auspicious influence proved of sin- 
 gular advantage to Reginald Cressingham. Cle- 
 ver men happened to be the order of the day. 
 Two or three young Oxonians had recently dis- 
 tinguished themselves in Parliament, or by writing 
 tolerable verses, or as men of wit and pleasure ; 
 and the man who aspired to pleasure luithout wit 
 had consequently fallen in the market. Books 
 were the pet folly in vogue. 
 
 Not that there was much danger of such pre- 
 tenders to literature working their way into very 
 severe pedantry. Classical scholarship was too 
 high an aim for these young aspirants. On Cres- 
 
 F 3 
 
106 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 singham's table lay piles of poetry and romance^ — 
 of llglit memoirs and heavy histories ; just as, 
 when roueism was in vogue, his Havannahs had 
 arrived in bales, and his Maraschino in hampers ; 
 the wealth which entitled him to play the fool 
 more splendidly than his neighbours, having 
 enabled him to order from a London bookseller a 
 consignment of everything new that came out. 
 
 Next, perhaps, to a course of solid reading, 
 under the guidance of a wise preceptor, the most 
 advantageous thing for an intelligent mind is a 
 course of indiscriminate reading, under its own, — 
 as a young dog is best taught to swim by throw- 
 ing it from a bridge into a current. Cressingham 
 was a young man of excellent if not distinguished 
 abilities. The noise of dissipation was beginning 
 to lose its charm. He had seen almost enough of 
 horses and grooms, — tandem racing and jollifica- 
 tion. A serious illness, brought on by excesses 
 of every kind, had confined him to his rooms six 
 dreary weeks ; during which he found, enlight- 
 ened by the failure of his usual reckless and 
 deceptive spirits, the selfish levity of Morton, 
 Holmeswell, and Co., grow insupportable. On 
 his recovery, he became almost as much disgusted 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 107 
 
 with his previous habits of life, as with the friends 
 from whom they had been imbibed. 
 
 Convalescence, meanwhile, inspired a new pas- 
 sion as onerous, if not so perilous to life and limb 
 as a hunting stable. Incapacitated for boisterous 
 enjoyments, he became addicted to whist. — Whist 
 happened to be the thing in vogue ; and the 
 capital fellows infesting Cressingham's room, con- 
 ceiving the young man of fortune entitled to enjoy 
 the thing in vogue in its most costly shape, 
 assured him that a few months' practice would 
 render him the best player at Ch. Ch. Athana- 
 sius had no reason to infer, from the demands upon 
 his private account, that the minor had renounced 
 two or three most expensive pursuits, in order to 
 devote himself exclusively to a pleasure, which he 
 had be^n enjoying for years at the modest mulct 
 of half-a-dozen shillings per week ! 
 
 Such was the origin of Reginald's devotion to 
 study, — if study it could be called. He was now 
 devoted to a sedentary life ; drank green tea 
 instead of claret, and took a quiet airing, instead 
 of declaring war upon all the fences in the county. 
 He lived in what he called "a little quiet set of 
 his own," and the intervals of the academic tor- 
 
108 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 ture indispensable even to Cressingliam of Stoke 
 Paddocks, were divided between " What are 
 trumps?" and the hot-pressed literature of St 
 James's street. Precisely such works as my 
 reader has now in his hand, lay heaped, in their 
 Quaker-coloured covers, upon his table, to be 
 lounged over in his dressing-gown, or dozed over 
 upon his damask sofa. 
 
 A sort of hero-of-romance existence was ac- 
 cordingly beginning to develop itself to his imagi- 
 nation. He was now nineteen, and singularly 
 good-looking ; fair, and scarcely above the com- 
 mon height, yet possessed of so elegant a physiog- 
 nomy and air, as to merit the appellation of " dis- 
 tinguished," applied in England almost exclusively 
 to the tall and dark; and on the continent, to a 
 pigmy or Albinos, if endowed with nobility of 
 countenance and gesture. There was every 
 reason to anticipate that the Heir with many 
 friends, would shortly become the Heir with many 
 loves. 
 
 But it was not alone with reference to his 
 present or future conquests, that Reginald began 
 to find a dangerous delight in the pages of fiction. 
 He was beginning to muse with earnest considera- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 109 
 
 tion Upon the peculiarities of his situation. Re- 
 versing the usual order of things, the circumstances 
 which had converted the boy into a man, were 
 now converting the man into a boy. He was 
 actually bewildered by the discrepancy between 
 his prominent position in the world, and his im- 
 perfectly developed sentiments and feelings. 
 
 No parallel presented itself for his singular 
 fortunes. There were just then at Oxford one or 
 two contemporaries, in the enjoyment of prospects 
 as brilliant as his own. But these had been the 
 fruit of inheritance, — soberly descending from sire 
 to son, and shackled by the usual impediments of 
 aristocratic connection, — formal dowagers, — and 
 the adamantine fetters of pedigree and pride. 
 Not one of them but was a slave to duties 
 arising out of the Crusades. Not one of them 
 but was a mere link of the human chain 
 extending from the Norman Conquest to the 
 last dying speech of English monarchy, whose 
 destiny probably resembles that of the phoenix; — 
 to expire only that a brighter bird of the same 
 species, of more brilliant plumage and greater 
 force of pinion, may arise from its ashes. Not 
 one of them was free, like him, to choose a 
 
110 THE MAX OF FORTUNE. 
 
 wife, — to choose a party, — to choose a destina- 
 tion. 
 
 His position was unique, in short, save in the 
 pages of the novelist ; and it was there accordingly 
 that young Cressingham sought for sympathy and 
 precedent. It was there he read of heroes sinking 
 under the gifts of fortune, — young, handsome, 
 accomplished, — (and discontented) — as himself. 
 It was there he introduced himself to ideal he- 
 roines, Matildas or Geraldines, fancying himself 
 alternately a Pelham or a Vivian Grey, — a 
 Granby or a Gerfaut; — the Lord Glenmore or 
 Clarence Hervey of Miss Edgeworth, or the 
 Arthur of the alcoholic pages of Balzac, Frederic 
 Soulie, or Eugene Sue. 
 
 Reginald could not forbear smiling when it one 
 day presented itself to his mind that, for once, he 
 had distanced the emulation of Docket. Hitherto, 
 at an humble distance, Athanasius had trod in all 
 his footsteps. Since the epoch of the establish- 
 ment of the will and the re-organization of the 
 household at the Hall, the wily guardian had 
 instinctively become knowing in horseflesh, dis- 
 criminating in wine, an epicure, a connoisseur, 
 — nay, almost a dandy, for the jeers of Morton and 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. Ill 
 
 Holmeswell had induced him to change the cut of 
 his garments just as the habits of Reginald com- 
 pelled him to alter his stake from sixpenny points 
 to pounds. But the angular Beau Shatterley of 
 fifty-five was scarcely likely to fancy himself into 
 a Sir Charles Grandison, or to interfere with the 
 loves and graces of his ward. But though he 
 had distanced the attorney, he was far from 
 being alone in his glory. There were still Mor- 
 tons and Holmeswells neck and neck with him in 
 the career of romanticism, as formerly in that of 
 sportsmanship and dissipation. So long as a 
 young man in his position chose to become the 
 founder of a school, no likelihood of any want of 
 disciples. A genteel melancholy a la Cressing- 
 ham became the right thing; — a genteel melan- 
 choly enlivened by fits and starts of artificial wit. 
 Because Cressingham of Stoke Paddocks 
 fancied himself satiated, at nineteen, with the 
 pleasures of life, the youth of Ch. Ch. assumed an 
 air of picturesque languor, and tried to subdue 
 their joyous impulses of health and spirits to the 
 elegant philosophy of a Jacques in his teens, in the 
 enjoyment of fifty thousand a year; — till Gottin- 
 gen or Jena would have been puzzled to produce 
 
112 THE MAX OF FORTUNE. 
 
 a more dreamy race of illiiminati than those who 
 filled up the intervals of Cressingham's nightly 
 whist, by prating mysticism and mouthing verses 
 to imaginary Mignons. 
 
 " And what was Cress doing when you left 
 Oxford?" inquired Morton, of Lord Holmeswell, 
 — the former of whom had six months the start of 
 Reginald at Eton and Oxford, and the latter a 
 year. 
 
 " Not much worth speaking of, I fancy. But 
 I have not been near him this winter. Cress is 
 grown a regular spooney. Oxford is not what it 
 was in your time. But Cress is the curse dest 
 spooney of them all." 
 
 " He was getting tolerably soft before / left," 
 resumed Morton ; " had sold oiF his hunters, and 
 was setting up for a reading man ! Now 'pon my 
 soul one can't stand a man in Cress's position 
 dwindling into a reading man ! Very well for 
 such fellows as Percy, — (Percy of Maudlin I 
 mean.) Percy is a younger son, without a guinea, 
 and has his way to make in Parliament. I can 
 forgive Percy." 
 
 " I fancy it was he who first bit Cress with 
 this sentimental turn," observed Holmeswell. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 113 
 
 " Cress, you know, never had an idea of his 
 own ! Don't you remember what a mammy-sick, 
 apron-string animal it was, when it came to Eton ? 
 You took him in hand, and / did what I could 
 with him ; but if it had not been for us, he would 
 have continued to ride like a tailor and dress like 
 a tailor's apprentice to the day of judgment. — By 
 heaven, I have still on my conscience that mul- 
 berry-coloured coat with silver buttons of the 
 old attorney's, which you chose Cress to 
 adopt — after you had figured in one at the boat- 
 race till laughed out of countenance, and which 
 the guardian copied from his ward, as the right 
 thing." 
 
 " After all, what an absurd mishmash it all was, 
 down at that place of Cressingham's !" — added 
 Morton, laughing. " Such cursed roads and such 
 a detestable neighbourhood." — 
 
 " And then the housekeeper-mother and Lawyer 
 Endless of a guardian ; — and Cress, with all the 
 vulgar tastes and ambitions of a parvenu. For 
 after all, he is a parvenu. He inherits his estate 
 from the mother's side, who, quizzy as she is, 
 has gentle blood in her veins. But the father 
 was a nothing, I fancy, — neither family nor 
 
114 THE MAN OP FORTUNE. 
 
 fortune. Old Cressingham, the grandfather, never 
 saw her again, you know, after the match." 
 
 " Yet Cress is as proud as a peacock," observed 
 Morton. 
 
 " Purse proud," added Lord Holmeswell, 
 shrugging his shoulders. " If there be a thing on 
 earth incomprehensible to me, it is purse pride 1" — 
 
 Sir Henry Morton, though secretly of opinion 
 that there were many things on earth equally in- 
 comprehensible to the young Viscount, and that 
 there was little merit in not being proud of a purse, 
 containing less than a groat, readily assented. 
 They agreed in voting Cress a sad, silly, con- 
 ceited, vulgar fellow, who would never possess 
 a real friend, or come to good in the world; 
 though neither thought it necessary to admit 
 to the other the amount of I. O. Us. bearing his 
 signature, deposited, among other family archives, 
 in Reginald's deed-chest at Stoke Paddocks, — as 
 completely dead letters as the correspondence 
 amassed by his predecessor. 
 
 It was, perhaps, some suspicion of these weighty 
 obligations which induced Mrs Blair to give a 
 decided preference to the new order of associates 
 who thronged to Stoke Paddocks during the fol- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 115 
 
 lowing vacation. They were at least quieter in 
 their deportment and more decent in their habits 
 than the routs, whose excesses were still the 
 wonder of the country round. Under these 
 auspices, the library became the favoured region 
 of the house. Just as the cultivation of the 
 stables and cellars distinguished the reign of 
 Morton and Holmeswell, did the appointment of 
 a librarian and the rescue of a family collection 
 of the highest order, attest the more enlightened 
 influence of Percy of Maudlin. 
 
 " I am heartily glad that Sir Henry Morton 
 has ceased to come here," observed his mother 
 to Reginald, one day, when the departure of his 
 guests had left him, for a single day at the mercy 
 of The Wilderness. " There was an insolence 
 in his manner which I always wondered how you 
 could endure ?" 
 
 " Not insolence, — the mere sangfroid of 
 fashionable life, my dear mother," replied Regi- 
 nald. " Harry Morton felt towards me as a 
 brother, and used as little ceremony." 
 
 " I do not know how you may understand the 
 feelings of a brother," persisted Mrs Blair with 
 a smile, " but I can assure you that Mr Docket 
 
116 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 once overheard him in the billiard room mimicking 
 and quizzing you to Lord Holmeswell, in the most 
 unhandsome manner." 
 
 " A man capable of listening to conversation 
 not intended for him to hear, is quite as capable 
 of misrepresenting it afterwards," observed Regi- 
 nald, drily. 
 
 " It was only in your interests, my dear boy, 
 that he noticed to me the duplicity of these pre- 
 tended friends," added Mrs Blair, repenting her 
 indiscretion. 
 
 " Docket is a very obliging person, and, I be- 
 lieve, attached to us," said Cressingham haughtily, 
 after a pause ; " but the last person in the world 
 to institute himself a judge of anything connected 
 with the habits and manners of the world. If I 
 find him making impertinent remarks upon my 
 friends (for Morton and Holmeswell are my 
 friends, — I may have chosen to see less of them 
 lately, but I have the greatest regard for both), I 
 shall take an early opportunity of requesting him 
 to find some other residence than Stoke." 
 
 " I was much to blame to say a syllable to you 
 on the subject," faltered Mrs Blair. " He spoke 
 confidentially. I had no right to repeat what was 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 117 
 
 intrusted to me. I intreat you, therefore, to think 
 no more on the subject." 
 
 In her eagerness to avoid the part of a mis- 
 chief-maker between Reginald and his guar- 
 dian, she resolved to seal her lips for the future. 
 Could she have convicted young Percy and his 
 clique of even caricaturing their partial host, upon 
 the attorney's showing, she woukl have been cau- 
 tious of disclosing their treachery to her son. 
 
 As usual, therefore, in his situation, he was left 
 to rock himself in the happy dream of being an 
 object of intense affection to all surrounding him. 
 With pleasing credulity, he believed that the 
 favoured individuals whom he had so long supplied 
 with horses, dogs, and cigars, cherished for him 
 the same disinterested attachment as those who 
 assured him that his verses were Byronic, and his 
 aspirations as sublime as they were original. 
 
 As Mrs Blair observed, however, the habits 
 derived from this new ascendancy were less pre- 
 judicial to his purse, health, and reputation, than 
 those of the roues. Both guardian and mother 
 promoted his present refined pursuits, and ap- 
 plauded the change as a reformation ; and whatever 
 Docket gave forth was as religiously echoed by 
 
118 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 the subordinates of Stoke Paddocks, as a psalm 
 from the singing gallery of Stoke church re- 
 sponded to the giving out of the parish clerk. 
 
 Dr Chaffles, who, as little daring to beset young 
 Cressinghani with advice as his former patron, Sir 
 Giles, had invariably crept to The Wilderness 
 with a chapter of lamentations in his pocket the 
 day after Reginald's departure for Eton or Ox- 
 ford, now appeared with congratulations on the 
 exquisite graces of mind and manners developed in 
 his young friend. It was only little Justina who 
 presumed to express, not to Mrs Blair, but to 
 Reginald himself, her complete disapproval. 
 
 " Grandpapa has given me a pony," said she 
 one day, when they met accidentally in the vil- 
 lage. " Some day or other, you must take me 
 out with you. I want you to teach me to leap. 
 Jasper is a frisky little thing, and goes over a 
 grip famously." 
 
 It was, perhaps, because unambitious of offi- 
 ciating as esquire to a Dulcinea of twelve years 
 old, that Reginald coolly informed her he had 
 almost given up riding, and had scarcely a saddle 
 horse in his stables. 
 
 " Just like you !" — retorted the laughing girl. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 119 
 
 ''You have always begun at the wrong end of 
 everything, and you always will ! — When you were 
 a boy and ought to have been playing cricket, 
 nothing would do but horses, nothing but battues ! 
 — Now you are a man and strong enough to enjoy 
 a sportsman's pleasures, you have turned book- 
 worm. Good bye, Mr Cressingham ! — I wonder 
 whether it will ever suit you to turn a reasonable 
 being ! " — 
 
 More than once did this random and saucy 
 remark of a mere child, recur to the recollection 
 of Reginald Cressingham. 
 
 " Well, well ! I fancy I am not much more in- 
 consistent than others of my age," was his secret 
 conclusion, after having meditated one day with 
 serious self-reproaches upon his infirmity of pur- 
 pose. " It is only my power of realizing the 
 whims and fancies conceived by other men that 
 renders my versatility so conspicuous. Tina is 
 right, however. As Voltaire says, people who 
 scorn to enjoy the pleasures of their age, are pretty 
 sure of a double portion of pains ! " 
 
120 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Where the red wine-cup floweth, there art thou ! 
 
 When luxury curtains out the evening sky; 
 Triumphant mirth sits flush'd upon thy brow, 
 
 And ready laughter lurks within thine eye. 
 
 Mrs Norton. 
 
 Even had Reginald's instances to his mother 
 to become an inmate of his new residence in 
 Hamilton place been of a very eager nature, Mrs 
 Blair would have resisted. Of an inert dis- 
 position, her constitution, enfeebled by early anx- 
 ieties, had fallen into premature decay. She was 
 now a confirmed invalid — the slave of old Drench 
 the apothecary ; who, with wary foresight, assured 
 her that the atmosphere of London would be fatal 
 to her impaired health, and that she could not 
 do better than remain a fixture at Stoke. 
 
 But young Cressingham was not particularly 
 anxious that she should accept the presidency over 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 121 
 
 liis new establishment. He was aware that her 
 habits of life fitted her better for the country; and 
 that his own were incompatible with domestic sub- 
 servience. — Early independence had worked its 
 usual evils. — He was capricious, inconsistent, and 
 wayward, and though his natural intelligence ren- 
 dered him fully conscious of his own caprice, 
 waywardness, and inconsistency, he regarded them 
 as a portion of the pleasures of youth and pros- 
 perity allotted to his enjoyment, not as faults to 
 be amended by time. 
 
 Though four months were still to elapse pre- 
 vious to the attainment of his majority, he was 
 nearly as much the master of his property as if 
 already of age. The rein was held so lightly by 
 Docket and his mother, that, with the exception 
 of knowing that his accounts were not to be looked 
 over till the ensuing month of August, he had no 
 reason to suppose himself a minor. Money was 
 always forthcoming on his demand ; ^- bills or 
 creditors, never. 
 
 It was this, perhaps, which imparted to the 
 nominal fifty thousand a year of young Cres- 
 singham, a value almost ideal. — He was spending 
 at the rate of twice that amount, yet experienced 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
122 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 no inconvenience from the excess ; — till lie 
 uas beginning to feel, if not to think himself in 
 possession of Fortunatus's purse. — A sovereign on 
 the throne would scarcely have had a more unli- 
 mited command of money. 
 
 " What a lucky dog you are, Cress, to have 
 brought up your governor so well !" — observed 
 Sir Henry Morton, who lounged in with Holmes- 
 well to breakfast with Reginald, one fine May 
 morning, in order to inspect his new household, 
 and ascertain what good was to be extracted out 
 of their quondam friend. — " My blackguard kept 
 me on bread and water all the time I was at col- 
 lege ; — an allowance of eight hundred a year, 
 while your people seem to let you do as you 
 like."— 
 
 " To be sure," observed Lord HolmeswelL — 
 " What has the old attorney to gain by thwarting 
 him ? Your guardian was your nearest of kin. — 
 Had you died in your minority, the savings would 
 have gone to him.^* 
 
 " That was something, perhaps. But the deuce 
 of it was, that instead of keeping them in a float- 
 ing sum, to grease my wheels at starting in life, 
 my uncle Francis chose to invest them every year 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 123 
 
 in land. — What did I want with more land ? — To 
 be sure, he improved my income. But wliat sig- 
 nifies a few hundreds a year, compared with the 
 command of twenty thousand pounds on first en- 
 tering the world?" — 
 
 Lord Holmeswell, stinted to an allowance of 
 five hundred a year, sighed at these allusions to 
 thousands of pounds ; an aggregation which, for 
 years to come, he was very little likely to compass, 
 unless through the hands of the Jews. 
 
 " Ay, ay ! — you are both lucky dogs," said he. 
 " If you were kept down and kept close as I am, 
 you would no longer wonder at having heard 
 me express my regret at Oxford that men could 
 not be born orphans. By the way, Cress, what 
 has become of Mrs Blair?" — 
 
 " My mother spends the season in the country," 
 replied Reginald, gravely. " She is neither 
 young nor gay enough for London life." 
 
 " By heavens, I never heard of so exemplary a 
 woman," cried Morton; "you must have had her 
 built on purpose for you ! — By the way, this Cres- 
 singham man, who is going to stand for Wilsbury, 
 must be a nephew of hers, I think ?" — ■ 
 
 "What Cressingham man?" 
 
124 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 " They are people with a place near Reading.'* 
 
 " My grandfather lived at Manny Park," ob- 
 served Reginald, with a rising colour, for a thou- 
 sand painful reminiscences had long caused all 
 mention of the name to cease at Stoke Paddocks ; 
 the infirm health of Mrs Blair having, in fact, ori- 
 ginated the shock of learning that the decision in 
 favour of her son's succession to the family pro- 
 perty had been the source of loss of reason to her 
 father. 
 
 " But surely this young fellow cannot be your 
 uncle?" persisted Morton, not noticing Cres- 
 singham's disinclination to talk upon the subject. 
 
 " My uncle's son, I should imagine. My mother 
 had an only brother, who died young, in some 
 dragoon regiment in India. He left children. A 
 son of his is in the enjoyment, I fancy, of the 
 family estate. I know nothing of any of them. 
 There have been law-suits and family feuds. I 
 was not aware that my cousin was old enough to 
 enter into public life." 
 
 " I was staying with Ned Finch, near Wilsbury, 
 when Cressingham wrote to canvass him, in the 
 event of a general election." 
 
 «'Well?" 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 125 
 
 <* The name struck me — and his priggish style 
 of writing still more. I asked if he were a rela- 
 tion of yours ; — nobody seemed to know more of 
 him than that he had property in Berkshire, and 
 was an out-and-out Tory." 
 
 " They all behaved infamously to my mother," 
 said Reginald, " and would have cut my throat 
 could they have done so within limit of the law. 
 I trust we may never meet, that I may be spared 
 the trouble of showing them how thoroughly I 
 despise them." 
 
 " Some day or other, you may chance to cough 
 each other down in parliament," observed Holmes- 
 well. " Are you as red-hot a radical as ever ? " — 
 
 " Time enough to trouble myself about politics 
 a year or two hence," replied Cressingham, not 
 choosing perhaps to be catechised by one so ill- 
 qualified for the task of catechisation. 
 
 His curiosity, however, was painfully excited 
 by this allusion to a man bearing his name and 
 owning his blood, to whom he was to be as a 
 stranger. — Already, Reginald had begun to be 
 alive to the value of connexion in London life. 
 Notwithstanding the flippant allusions of his gay 
 associates, he saw that those whose families, 
 
 G 2 
 
126 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Strengthened by a thousand aristocratic ramifi- 
 cations, formed the ground-work of fashionable 
 society, hekl a place there unattainable by the 
 mere force of wealth. — Wherever Holmeswell and 
 Morton showed their fastidious faces, they were 
 surrounded by their own people. — Hands were 
 extended towards them, which not even the force 
 of their impertinence could alienate. If unpunc- 
 tual in their engagements, or ungracious in their 
 allusions, among the Countesses in diamond neck- 
 laces, and Lady Helens in garlands of roses, their 
 aunts and cousins, towards whom Cressingham 
 felt compelled to use the ceremonious courtesies- 
 of life, there was always an apology for them, — 
 " It was just like Holmeswell !" — or " it was only 
 Harry's way ! " — 
 
 When Cressingham, on the contrary, entered a 
 room, he felt it to be arrayed in severe judgment 
 against him. No indulgent aunt — no affectionate 
 cousins — no influential kinsman to bespeak indul- 
 gence for the new man ! — With the exception of 
 half-a-dozen young roues, who found it convenient 
 to have a monied friend who could mount them and 
 give them dinners at the Clarendon, not one to 
 say " God save him !" and amid the stir and 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 127 
 
 animation of London life, he felt indescribably- 
 more lost than in his isolated country house. — 
 He was surprised to find himself of so little con- 
 sequence. — Having been taught by Docket to 
 imagine that his Oxford popularity and Stoke 
 Paddocks importance must pursue him into the 
 haunts of the great world, he could scarcely 
 understand how he came to be a grain of sand, 
 though a golden one, in the wilderness. 
 
 London is a sad leveller of exorbitant pre- 
 tensions, — and sturdy must be the self-conceit 
 which can stand out against its millions of batter- 
 ing rams ! — In London, no supremacy can be really 
 supreme. Persons of great wealth or eminent 
 birth command a noble position as regards the up- 
 gazing multitude. But to their equals, or all but 
 equals, there infallibly exists some qualifying 
 circumstance of personal defect, or ancestral dete- 
 rioration, some crack or flaw, some blot, moral or 
 physical, which keeps down undue hauteur and 
 causes the malice of the envious to triumph. 
 
 Vain-glorious people should content themselves 
 with the pomposity of their country seats. — 
 Reginald Cressingham, monarch at the Hall of 
 all he surveyed, and arbitrary as a Persian Prince, 
 
128 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 if he did not exactly expect in London the 
 deference tendered to him in his servile neigh- 
 bourhood, was not prepared for the thousand 
 modes in which his boyish vanity would have to 
 suffer. — After all, he was but the " rich Cressing- 
 ham," — a well-born man — yet still qualified only 
 by the voice of the world as the " rich Cressing- 
 ham.'* — He had no prudence, no pride of place. 
 — A late noble and eccentrece gourmand 
 used to say, that the only advantage of being a 
 peer, was being helped first to fish. — There are 
 a thousand similar distinctions to which his lord- 
 ship's age probably rendered him insensible, but 
 to which Reginald was painfully alive. His 
 rare distinctions of fortune had placed him 
 in a rank of society where it was impossible for 
 him to be foremost ; nay, it frequently happened 
 that he was the only man in a dinner party 
 unprivileged by birth. — He could not help fancy- 
 ing, with the soreness of self-sufficiency, that, 
 on such occasions, certain of the young lordships 
 and poor honourables over whom, in every other 
 time and place, his opulence assigned him such high 
 pre-eminence, triumphed in the occasion of seeing 
 him bring up the rear, alone, while they were 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 129 
 
 pairing oiF with smiling beauties. — Though in all 
 probability his want of social rank never occurred 
 to a single person among those with whom habit 
 rendered such honours a matter of course, he sus- 
 pected that Holmeswell and Morton, and more 
 especially a certain Gerald Langley, the younger 
 brother of the Earl of Ashleigh, who now repre- 
 sented the former suitor of his mother, delighted 
 in pomposing over his head. 
 
 In the latter instance, perhaps, he was not 
 wholly mistaken ; for Langley was a striking 
 specimen of the saucy boy engendered by a pre- 
 cocious introduction into London life ; and the 
 Earl his brother, an amiable unaffected young 
 man, seemed to have assigned to him, among the 
 other labours of cadetship, that of giving himself 
 airs. Sprightly and malicious, no sooner did he 
 discover the foible of Cressingham, than he paid 
 him off all his old Eton and Oxford grudges, by 
 practising upon his infirmity. 
 
 " Believe me, I am most unaffectedly sorry to 
 hear of this disagreeable business," said he, taking 
 Reginald familiarly by the arm, as they issued 
 from the Opera-house the first night of the 
 season. 
 
 G 3 
 
130 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 " What business?" demanded Cressingliam, in 
 some surprise — having flattered himself that with 
 Athanasius and his mother at a distance of forty- 
 miles, so nauseous a word might be effaced from 
 his vocabulary. 
 
 ^^ What business? — Oh! — I am very sorry I 
 mentioned it — I did not think it would annoy 
 you." 
 
 " I have not the most remote idea of what you 
 are talking," interrupted Reginald, in utter sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " Then we will say no more about the matter." 
 
 " Indeed I hope you will, for you leave me in 
 the greatest perplexity," persisted Reginald. 
 
 " I mean about this blackballing. Pray for- 
 give me for the allusion. But as a friend " 
 
 " What blackballing? — Who has been black- 
 balled?" demanded Reginald. 
 
 Gerald Langley stopped short, and affected to 
 stare at his companion. 
 
 "You seem very much amazed," resumed 
 Cressingham. " Surely you can have no objec- 
 tion to explain yourself?" 
 
 " None in the world, if you reallT/ desire it. 
 The fact is, that the whole house was talking to 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 131 
 
 me of your having been blackballed at the Tra- 
 vellers, and politely declined by the Omnibus/* 
 
 " The Travellers ? — I have not been even put 
 up yet at the Travellers ! With respect to the 
 Omnibus, as you are aware that I have a box 
 of my own for the season " 
 
 " That was considered confirmation of the 
 report. No young man, they fancied, would do 
 so tigerish a thing as have a sulky of his own, 
 if he were able to get into either of the Omni- 
 bus sets. Somebody consequently reported that 
 you had applied for Harry Gordon's place (who 
 does not return from Naples this season), and 
 that there had been a general veto." 
 
 " I should be very glad to discover who has 
 presumed to take so great and unwarrantable a 
 liberty with my name ! " cried Cressingham, 
 firing up. 
 
 " My dear fellow, when you are a little more 
 used to London, you will discover that every- 
 body takes liberties with everybody's name, 
 particularly with that of a new man, like your- 
 self. Your splendours have taken people by sur- 
 prise. They were not prepared for you. Your 
 family not having resided in town " 
 
132 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 " They will find themselves mistaken if they 
 fancy that, new to London as I may be, I shall 
 pass over any impertinence of the kind," inter- 
 rupted Cressingham, earnestly. 
 
 " My dear Cress ! " interrupted Gerald Lang- 
 ley in his turn — enchanted to find that the young 
 lion was chafed to his satisfaction — " allow me to 
 take the privilege of a friend, and give you a 
 word of advice. Beware how you betray this 
 kind of susceptibility, or you will bring these 
 false rumours actually to pass. Nothing so gene- 
 rally detested as a touchy man. No one in good 
 society troubles himself about the on dits of the 
 world. On the contrary, such attacks, like bird- 
 pecks on fruit, are accepted as an evidence of 
 personal merit. A man who has no enemy is one 
 who does not deserve to have a friend. Give and 
 take is the order of the day; and unless you can 
 bear badgering, you will do well to go and bury 
 yourself at once at Stoke Meadows, with that 
 attorney fellow of yours, and be toadied from one 
 end of the year to the other " 
 
 " Stoke Paddocks," emended Cressingham, in 
 an under tone. 
 
 " Ay — Maddox ; I forgot the name of your 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 133 
 
 place, — though I have not forgotten the capital 
 Burgundy you gave us when Ashleigh and I 
 came over to shoot with you at Christmas." 
 
 " But what could possibly have given rise to 
 the report that I had been rejected where I never 
 had the least idea of making an application ? I 
 know none of the Omnibus set." 
 
 " Precisely ; which is so singular a thing, that it 
 was naturally supposed you might wish to make 
 your way among them." 
 
 " For what purpose, when I can enjoy a box 
 of my own ? " — 
 
 "Oh ! oh ! — a box of your ow^n compared with 
 the company of the best fellows in town ! " 
 
 " I have no doubt I might be one of them the 
 very first vacancy," cried Cressingham, beginning 
 to feel dreadfully ashamed of the excellent box 
 for which he had paid five hundred guineas for the 
 season. 
 
 " For heaven^s sake, don't say that,^^ said 
 Gerald earnestly, "or a party will be made 
 against you immediately ! The fact is, that neither 
 you nor I could do anything of the kind. There 
 are too many pre-existing claims." 
 
 Cressingham flinched at the " you or /," 
 
134 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 assuming a parity of pretensions between himself 
 and Lord Aslileigh's younger brother. 
 
 "I am but a boy," added Gerald, perceiving 
 his annoyance. " This is only my second season 
 in town ; and I am too much in fear of being 
 snubbed and getting unpopular, to thrust myself 
 into places where I know I am not wanted. As 
 to you " 
 
 " Well ! — as to me 1 " — demanded Reginald, 
 finding his companion stop short. 
 
 " As to you, then, since you will have it, — all 
 those fellows about town — but why trouble our- 
 selves about them ? — Do you think it will rain to- 
 night?"— 
 
 " With this frost? — absurd ! — What about these 
 fellows, as you call them, about town ? " — 
 
 " Only that I am afraid they are rather shy of 
 you." 
 
 " And why pray ?" — 
 
 " Because they have an idea that you are book- 
 ish. Your Oxford reputation had the start of you 
 here, — and there was no one to take your part. 
 It is a deuced bad thing for a man who happens 
 not to be at all known, to come out in London 
 with the name of being serious, or a pedant, or 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 135 
 
 a prig, or anything of that kind. Percy of 
 Maudlin, was a regular bookworm, and people 
 were afraid — but it is no use talking about it. I 
 dare say you will do something, some day or other, 
 to convince the world that you are not dunced by 
 too much learning, or starched by too much pro- 
 priety. Meanwhile, if you never were put up at 
 the Travellers, or proposed for the Bus, of course 
 the blackballing story falls to the ground." 
 
 Cressingham, with a husky voice, now began in 
 his turn to talk of the weather. He was inexpres- 
 sibly provoked. The vast personal importance 
 ascribed to him by his guardian had not prepared 
 him for slights so wholly unprovoked. He felt 
 convinced that Gerald Langley had not told him 
 all. He was beginning London life with the 
 reputation of being a bore. — What was the use of 
 having forty thousand a year, if it did not preserve 
 him from the reputation of being a bore ! — 
 
 " Justina was right I — I am too grave for my 
 age," mused he. " For the last year, I have read 
 too much. Reading incapacitates a man for society, 
 and gives him an awkward pre-occupied air, which 
 these people have mistaken for pedantry. They 
 fancy I pride myself on my acquirements, — when, 
 
136 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 in fact, no man living can think less highly of 
 himself. Well ! sooner than pass for a rustic, I 
 suppose I must do at Rome as Romans do." 
 
 Now the doings of Romans at Rome, that is, 
 of fashionables in London, though apparently as 
 ostensible as the sun at noonday, were a mystery 
 to Reginald. — He attached too much importance 
 to the outward shows of things. To keep up a 
 splendid establishment in a fashionable quarter of 
 the town, was, he fancied, almost enough. When 
 presented to the families of the Earl of Maunder- 
 well, and a few others of his intimates, he had 
 not the remotest idea how to make himself 
 acceptable among them. His manners were shy, 
 without being diffident; and in trying to conceal 
 his gaucherie he often lapsed into ill-breeding; 
 for the moment people cease to be natural, they 
 incur the hazard of becoming vulgar. 
 
 He was stung to the quick by the hint thrown 
 out by Gerald Langley, that his personal conse- 
 quence was not very highly appreciated. The 
 often-repeated lesson of the attorney, to beware of 
 the attentions likely to be forced upon him in the 
 world, as evidence of the evil designs of marrying 
 young ladies and borrowing young men, had 
 
THE 31AN OF FORTUNE. 137 
 
 prepared him for a very different position. He 
 saw that there was not quite so much occasion 
 as he had expected for placards against trespassers, 
 either on his time or purse. — With the excep- 
 tion of obsequious shopkeepers seeking his 
 custom, no one invaded his premises. Nobody- 
 proposed to him, — nobody spunged upon him. 
 His dinners were voted a bore by those whose vote 
 was worth having; and his fashionable young 
 friends had horses and cabriolets of their own. 
 
 Apprehensive that people scarcely understood 
 the extent of his fortune, he now began to over- 
 act his part, with a view of bringing down the 
 plaudits of the galleries ; — mounted equipages on 
 a vulgarly brilliant scale, and bought off the 
 French cook of a fashionable club. A dangerous 
 attempt! — When it was discovered how many 
 people had been inquiring the name of the man 
 in the park whose harness was so gorgeous, and it 
 was rumoured by Morton and Langley that, in 
 spite of the merits of the new chef, there had been 
 two vacant covers at Cress's last dinner, further 
 whispers arose that " it was a sad pity poor Cress 
 was likely to prove such a failure ! " 
 
138 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Like a feeble sing-er rendering his debility ap- 
 parent by the exaggeration of his efforts, Regi- 
 nald, vexed and restless with labouring to put 
 a good face upon the matter, fell into further gri- 
 maces. — Resolved that his dinners should succeed 
 and his house be voted a pleasant one, he invited 
 persons renowned for their agreeability, with 
 whom the extent of his acquaintance did not war- 
 rant so great a liberty ! 
 
 The man who places himself in a position to 
 have his advances rejected by another, becomes 
 his inferior. Two of the leading fashionables of 
 the day were known to have refused Mr Cres- 
 singham's invitations in a tone of supercilious 
 surprise, and from that time, the parasites of 
 fashionable life spoke of him slightingly; — 
 found fault with his taste, and by the scarcely 
 perceptible shrugs and smiles which say so much 
 and so little, begat a general impression that the 
 man whose tastes were thus gaudy, and whose 
 disregard for the conventional forms of society 
 arose from no superiority of genius, must have the 
 instincts if not the condition of a parvenu, 
 
 *' Yes ! I believe he is a man of good family. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 139 
 
 But I know nothing about him. Nobody knows 
 anything about him," was a sufficient sentence of 
 disparagement when uttered at a dandy club, by 
 men without one qualification of intrinsic merit, 
 either of heart or head, to impart value to their 
 condemnation ! and inflict humiliation on the 
 condemned ! — 
 
140 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Wouldst thou be singled out by partial Heaven, 
 The One to whom a cloudless lot is given ? 
 Look round the world, and see what fate is there 
 Which justice can pronounce exempt from care. 
 
 Hon. Mrs Norton. 
 
 Poor Reginald ! — Poor ricli man ! — The 
 kindlier qualities of his nature were gradually dis- 
 appearing. He had been taught Greek, Latin, 
 and French, mathematics and rhetoric. He had 
 been sent to church on Sundays, and to school and 
 college the year round. But not one single lesson 
 that really strengthens the understanding, refines 
 the taste, or warms the heart, had ever been 
 imparted ; — Nurse Adams was the last person 
 who, in his days of dependency, had inculcated 
 precepts of humanity ; and those of the attorney 
 had since so effaced that better influence, that 
 his egotism was a mere matter of submission to 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 141 
 
 tliose in authority over him. His heart had 
 become indurated by maxims of worldly wisdom. 
 — If any interstices existed, they were becoming 
 inflated by the puffing up of worldly vanity. — 
 
 But vanity does not imply self-reliance; and 
 the susceptibility which exposed him to the rubs 
 of the envious was sufficiently galled to render 
 him wretched. Among those by whom his 
 invitations had been rejected, was Lord Ashleigh, 
 — a man who, having nothing to obtain from 
 the addition of a wealthy man to his acquaint- 
 ance, saw no inducement to throw himself into a 
 circle so uncertain in its composition as that of 
 the rich Cressingham. 
 
 The earl belonged to an order of people 
 peculiarly steadfast and regular in their social 
 orbit. The son of a country-gentleman-peer, a 
 rigid conservative, a squire in all but his patent, 
 young Ashleigh had been habituated from early 
 boyhood to see the same faces, and hear the same 
 subjects treated with the same consideration, 
 arising from undeviating principles and firmly- 
 rooted prejudices. Himself both intelligent and 
 enlightened, he was satisfied to take the pleasures 
 of life in an easy w^ay, and the duties of life in an 
 
U2 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 earnest; seeking no excessive excitements, — 
 regarding society as a gentle and improving 
 relaxation after much study or much business. — 
 He was not fond of being startled by the new 
 or strange, but preferred the company of people 
 whose persons and connexions were known to him, 
 to the showy set which lent its forced vivacity or 
 exuberant fashion to the dinner-table in Hamilton 
 Place. 
 
 No suspicion, however, would have crossed the 
 mind of Reginald that Lord Ashleigh's plausible 
 excuse of a prior engagement was a supposititious 
 one, but for the bitter insinuations of Gerald. — 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me you were going to 
 invite Ashleigh ?" said he ; "I would have spared 
 
 you the vexation of . Oh ! he was engaged, 
 
 he said he was engaged, did he ? — Well, no 
 matter ! — But once for all, believe ?Jie, Ashleigh 
 is quite impracticable. — He lives in his otnti set, 
 with people of his own kind with those antece- 
 dents he is familiar. He won't mix with 
 strangers !" 
 
 Reorinald felt his cheeks burn and his ears 
 tingle, but was at a loss for a retort to put an end 
 to the vexatious commentaries of his companion. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 143 
 
 " Ashleigh is only to be tempted out of liis own 
 circle by a great reputation. I don't mean flashy 
 fellows like Growlingford, or men who trade upon 
 their learning like your friend Percy; — I mean a 
 man promising to be efficiently useful in public 
 life. Our Berkshire neighbour, for instance, 
 your cousin, the clever Cressingham; Ashleigh 
 enjoys nothing better than a ttte-d-tite dinner 
 with him and a dumb waiter in the Albany." — 
 
 The arrow struck home as it was intended. 
 Reginald saw that his cousin was called the 
 " clever Cressingham" to distinguish him from 
 the " rich Cressingham," and the name of the 
 " rich Cressingham" became hateful to him. 
 
 " Lord Ashleigh is perfectly right," said he, 
 affecting a tone of candour. " Nothing so plea- 
 sant as a friendly sociable dinner, and I trust no 
 one is more alive to the charm than myself. But 
 I enjoy a sociable dinner with a friend. It is only 
 men like Lord Ashleigh with whom I Lave not an 
 opinion in common, that I ever wish to see en 
 masse under my roof, at a set dinner party." 
 
 " Ay, but that was precisely where you failed. 
 Had you invited him with men who share his 
 
144 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 habits and opinions, en masse, as you describe, he 
 would probably have come. But such fellows as 
 Growlingford ! — Such people as Sir Henry 
 Morton and Lord Robert Leigh ! — a noisy vul- 
 gar fellow like Robert Leigh, who, were he not 
 the son of a Marquis " 
 
 " Well, well, — we will say no more on the sub- 
 ject," interrupted Cressingham, with a heightened 
 colour. " Robert Leigh and Morton are my 
 friends. We shall, I trust, survive our disap- 
 pointment of the honour of Lord Ashleigh's 
 compan}'." 
 
 " And the more so as you are sure of my 
 majesty's; — who, I flatter myself, am twice as 
 amusing," cried Gerald, trying to laugh off the 
 irritation he had wantonly stirred up. '* By the 
 way, there is a cousin of mine always boring me 
 to introduce him to you, — Courtfield, — I dare say 
 you know him by sight ? — " 
 
 " Courtfield ?" repeated Reginald, looking grave 
 and ignorant, — preparing to decline the acquain- 
 tance as some sort of retaliation upon the slight 
 shown him by Lord Ashleigh. " Courtfield ? — 
 No, — I knov/ nothing about him." — 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 145 
 
 " I thought you probably knew him, because 
 the Duke of Granton, his father, has property in 
 3^our county." 
 
 " The Duke of Granton, of course, I know 
 perfectly by sight and reputation," replied Cres- 
 singham, at once annoyed and gratified. " I was 
 not aware that his son was in the world. I shall 
 be delighted to make his acquaintance. He is 
 almost a neighbour of mine. Pray invite him to 
 come on Thursday, in the place your brother has 
 left vacant." — 
 
 Gerald bit his lip to conceal a smile ; and when 
 Lord Courtfield accompanied him to Cressing- 
 ham's dinner party, he turned oilt to be a West- 
 minster boyl — For this, however, he did not feel 
 accountable to Cress. It was the business of the 
 host to have been fully aware of the fact. 
 
 By one or two more blunders of this description, 
 a ridicule began to be attached to Cressingham's 
 parties. It was said that he had nothing about 
 him but " a pack of boys." Established London 
 men will not compromise themselves by appearing 
 among " a pack of boys." The boys, left to 
 themselves, out-boyed their boyishness; and 
 without the smallest taste for disreputable orgies 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
146 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 or vulgar sprees, Reginald found himself more 
 than once disgraced by the consequences of frolics, 
 which distinguished the " rich Cressingham" from 
 the " clever Cressingham" more disadvantage ously 
 than ever. 
 
 The newspapers, bribed to discretion, became 
 of course unbribably indiscreet. The young man 
 of fortune was now and then admonished in italics 
 that there was one law in moral England for the 
 rich and for the poor; — and the great world, 
 on finding the handsome young man whose equi- 
 pages were so gaudy, thus painfully reproved, 
 expressed its fastidious regret that a man of Cres- 
 singham's fortune should have fallen into so bad 
 a set. 
 
 To be in a bad set, in the world in which it was 
 his weak ambition to shine, is as fatal an impu- 
 tation as the impress of the branding iron. From 
 almost any other stigma he might have redeemed 
 himself. But for a man to all appearance able to 
 exercise an independant choice to have chosen so 
 ill, could only arise from the instincts of a vulgar 
 taste ; few people being magnanimous enough 
 to make allowance for the force of circumstances 
 in the destinies of others. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 147 
 
 While Reginald was experiencing these un- 
 locked for mortifications, and discovering that the 
 draught of hyssop is not the less bitter from being 
 quaffed in a golden chalice, Mrs Blair, in the 
 languid intervals of indisposition, was becoming 
 impatient of his absence, and eager for further 
 insight into his proceedings than could be ob- 
 tained from notices of his dinner parties in the 
 Morning Post. 
 
 But not even from his guardian, could she 
 extract a word of intelligence concerning him 
 whose infancy had been so dear to her, — whose 
 boyhood so anxious. — 
 
 Mrs Chaffles and one or two other country 
 neighbours, in their occasional morning visits, 
 attempted in vain to vary their inquiries after her 
 aches and pains, real and imaginary, with ques- 
 tions concerning the pleasures of London, and the 
 part taken in them by him whom they considered 
 its leading personage. The gentle invalid had 
 nothing to relate. Reginald's letters made no 
 allusion to balls or drawing rooms. She knew no 
 more of what are called the gaieties of the season, 
 than little Justina. The utmost she was able to 
 report, a mere echo of steward's-room gossip, 
 
148 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 regarded the extent and splendour of the estab- 
 lishment in Hamilton place. 
 
 " I suppose, ma'am, we shall soon be having a 
 lady at the Hall ?" was one of the favourite in terror 
 gations of the Vicaress. — " Surely so handsome a 
 young man as Mr Cressingham, and so great a 
 match, will scarcely be let alone by the London 
 chaperons ! '* 
 
 " I trust he will wait. He has plenty of time. 
 My son has seen nothing of the world," was the 
 evasive reply of Mrs Blair, who did not care to 
 acknowledge how totally she was in the dark as to 
 his projects or predilections. — "At present, he can 
 scarcely know his own mind on such subjects." 
 
 *' He never will know it," murmured Justina, 
 who was turning over the leaves of a gorgeously 
 bound Annual on the table near them, one of the 
 unmeaning, valueless gifts of Reginald to his 
 mother — " because he knows nothing that is not 
 told him by other people." — 
 
 No one listened — no one replied to the little 
 girl's suggestion; and her elder but less intelli- 
 gent companions concluded she was muttering 
 words of kindness to the spaniel nestling at her 
 feet. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 149 
 
 " To own the truth, my dear ma'am, I was in- 
 quiring of Mr Docket, when he came back from 
 town the other day, what likelihood there was of 
 Mr Cressingham's settling," added the Vicar's 
 lady, with a half-confidential air. " But not a 
 word could I get out of him ! — He could talk 
 only of Mr Cressingham's French cook, Mr Cres- 
 singham's Opera-box, and Mr Cressingham's new 
 chariot and curricle. To be sure it does seem odd 
 to hear a man of poor Mr Docket's age and 
 education giving his opinion upon such matters ; 
 and quite as much out of the way as my inquiry 
 if there was anything like matrimony in the wind, 
 which made him so angry." 
 
 " Mr Docket considered, perhaps, that during 
 Reginald's minority, the less such things are dwelt 
 upon the better. Besides, however valuable a 
 friend, he is not exactly the confidant a young 
 man like my son would choose on such an occa- 
 sion." 
 
 " Mr Cressingham is never likely to choose a 
 confidant," again muttered Justina. — " He will 
 always fancy he is choosing, and submit to be 
 chosen. He does not understand the meaning of 
 independence." 
 
 H 2 
 
150 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Mrs Blair was not sorry, meanwhile, to perceive 
 that her son's guardian had been as little commu- 
 nicative with others as herself on the chapter of his 
 observations in London. From a certain air of 
 reserve assumed by Athanasius on his return home, 
 she had apprehended that he was in possession of 
 some secret concerning Reginald : — that more had 
 been confided to him than he had authority to 
 relate. 
 
 It was not likely that a man so artful as the 
 attorney should admit, either to others or herself, 
 that his visit to the " rich Cressingham" in Ha- 
 milton place, was a very diiFerent thing from 
 his visits to his ward at Stoke Paddocks ; that 
 in London, the power of his wand had departed. 
 At the Hall, Docket was the fountain head of 
 Reginald's pleasures and pursuits. In London, 
 he was only an artful attorney, by whose guar- 
 dianship the wealthy minor was grievously ham- 
 pered. Such persons as Lord Robert Leigh and 
 Sir Henry Morton had not been slow in in- 
 structing the " rich Cressingham" in the usual 
 ruinous modes of circumventing the authority of 
 a guardian ; and Reginald, whose heart was now 
 thoroughly divested of any amiable weakness that 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 151 
 
 might have blinded him to the want of principle 
 of his guardian, now treated him with the disre- 
 gard sure to arise from disrespect. Conscious 
 that no small portion of his social disadvantages 
 arose from the want of consideration of those in 
 authority over him, he visited upon Docket the 
 slights he was receiving. It was a relief to the 
 evil feelings engendered by the unfair usage of 
 society, to vent upon a self-sufficient inferior the 
 fastidious impertinence he was acquiring in so bad 
 a school. 
 
 The attorney had not a foot of ground on which 
 to make a stand against the aggressions of his 
 ward. To obtain an influence over the boy, he 
 had flung aside all pretension to the dignities of 
 virtue, and the young man profited by the frailties 
 thus left exposed. Docket's authority was now 
 nominal. Reginald had learned the secret of 
 obtaining money without his concurrence; and 
 the guardian who, for his own purposes, had been 
 so long indulgent, could not suddenly assume the 
 severe privileges of virtue. 
 
 There was consequently covert war between 
 them. Though the same familiarity existed, on the 
 side of Reginald it was tempered by scarcely dis- 
 
152 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 guised jeers; while, on that of the guardian, it 
 assumed the agonised ease with which the keeper 
 at a zoological show thrusts his head into the 
 mouth of the lion, or fondles the paw of the hyena, 
 as an exhibition to strangers. 
 
 Cressingham was more amused than he had 
 been during the last few months of noisy orgies 
 or laborious festivities, by the unaffected amaze- 
 ment of Athanasius at the luxurious splendour of 
 his domestic arrangements. 
 
 For the last few years, intercourse with fash- 
 ionable tradesmen had, in some degree, familiarized 
 the attorney with the progress of such matters; 
 and he had consequently affected to give bis 
 opinion, if not the law, to his ward. But he was 
 now startled into an admission of utter ignorance. 
 He knew not either by name or nature the innu- 
 merable objects of luxury, — the rare wines, — 
 the curious dishes, — paraded before him. To 
 take refuge in disparagement, according to the 
 system of Gerald Langley, was out of the ques- 
 tion ; nor would he affect to spartanize against 
 effeminacy and enervation, for it was he who, by 
 cultivating such frivolous tastes in Reginald, had 
 striven to entangle him in the golden meshes of 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 153 
 
 liis own fortune. But he came back from London 
 to Stoke, irritated and mortified at finding himself 
 of such small account ; and the contempt he had 
 ever entertained for the feeble purposes and vacil- 
 lating mind of his ward began to take the form of 
 dislike. From the first, the interests of Reginald 
 had been secondary to his own ; but he no longer 
 cared to what extent the welfare and happiness of 
 the callous young man might be compromised by 
 his prodigality. 
 
 " What on earth can this boy mean," was 
 Docket's secret reflection, while riding leisurely, 
 a few days after his return to the Hall, through 
 the fine woods of Stoke, " what on earth can he 
 mean by the sudden interest he is pretending to 
 take in county politics ? I have never heard a 
 question from him concerning his influence or in- 
 terests ; — and now, one might fancy he had nothing 
 so much at heart as to stand for the county ! — 1 
 suspect one of the first acts of his majority will 
 be to get into parliament. He will not be happy 
 till he has made a fool of himself in some public 
 capacity. He stand for the county, — he ! — a reed 
 shaken by the wind ! — Does he suppose that the 
 county would submit its interests to the care of a 
 
 H 3 
 
154 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 boy without habits of business, of knowledge of 
 men or things ? — a boy who spends his days among 
 opera dancers and buffoons, — who pretends only 
 to be a man of pleasure, and does even that 
 badly ? — No ! — they want an active and efficient 
 man, Master Cressingham : — not a jackanapes 
 who, because he scribbles halting verses at the 
 university, fancies himself a man of genius, — oi^ 
 because he boasts of fanciful carriages and a 
 French cook, conceives himself to be a man of 
 fashion. However, I will attend to his injunctions 
 by brushing up to the utmost the Cressing- 
 ham influence. There will be an opportunity 
 for a speech at the tenants' dinner next week, 
 and I will place a few irons in the fire in other 
 directions. The time may come for turning all 
 this to account." 
 
 It was not to Athanasius Docket that Regi- 
 nald was likely to confide that the motive of his 
 ambition was envy of the growing renown of his 
 cousin Richard. The clever Cressingham had 
 succeeded. — The clever Cressingham had made a 
 hit in parliament ; so great a hit, that he was no 
 longer called the " clever Cressingham," but Cres- 
 singham only. — He was the Cressingham. When 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 155 
 
 people in society talked of Reginald, it was still 
 as the rich Cressingham for distinction sake ; but 
 the name of the other sufficed. 
 
 " Yes, — one of the most rising men of the 
 day," they would reply to inquiries concerning 
 the young member; — "a distant relation, 1 be- 
 lieve, of the Cressingham in Hamilton place, who 
 is said to have cut him out of his fortune rather 
 unhandsomely. The money came from a mutual 
 cousin." 
 
 A further slur cast upon Reginald ! Indifferent 
 persons are satisfied to take such rumours upon 
 hearsay ; and half the world was ready to believe 
 that Cressingham, the member, had been inju- 
 riously supplanted by the vulgar fellow who 
 sported the showy vis-d-vis. 
 
 The impertinent and groundless suggestion of 
 Gerald Langley was now verified. Reginald was 
 realli/ blackballed at two fashionable clubs. — Of a 
 man less noted, such a circumstance would have 
 been related without exciting much interest or 
 surprise ; but for the rich Cressingham to be 
 mortified, was a topic of grand interest for the 
 prattlers of the world of gossip. 
 
 To himself, the disappointment was fraught 
 
156 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 with bitterness. — Though he carried his head 
 higher than ever in consequence of his vexation, 
 he would willingly have changed places with one 
 of the popular younger brothers whom he saw 
 courted in society for their family connections or 
 personal charms. 
 
 " You have done too much to conciliate these 
 ungrateful people," was Langley's exposition of 
 the business. " Because they saw you in awe 
 of them, they thought they had you hollow. — 
 Pray observe that Holmeswell and Morton, in 
 spite of their obligations, have done nothing for 
 you in society." — 
 
 " I did not want them to do anything for me,'' 
 retorted Cressingham, at once anxious and afraid 
 to discuss the matter. 
 
 " Oh ! yes, you did ; — you are not aware 
 of it,— but you did. — The fact is, you ought to 
 have waited to make your debut in town till you 
 -were in possession of your fortune ; or, if not dis- 
 posed to remain in eclipse so long, you should 
 have at least come out in the full tide of the 
 season, when a man of your fortune, a perfect 
 stranger, would have been swallowed alive as a 
 parii by the ball-giving and match-making 
 
THE MAX OF FORTUNE. 157 
 
 women. But to throw off, as you did, before the 
 season began, at a time when you ought not to 
 have been in town at all, unless you were in 
 parliament, — at a time when you should have 
 been at Melton or Paris, — anywhere, in short, but 
 in London, was a sad blunder, — a blunder it 
 required immense tact to get over. — You were 
 seen, in the first instance, in a bad set; and such 
 people as Lady Gwenlyn and the Duchess of 
 Penzance could not, of course, take you up after 
 that:'— 
 
 " What in the world do I care about such 
 people as Lady Gwenlyn and the Duchess of 
 Penzance ?" cried Cressingham, with undisguised 
 indignation. — " Fine ladies are my utter abhor- 
 rence. — I resolved from the first never to put 
 myself up as a target for their impertinence.'* — 
 
 " In that case, you are more in the wrong than 
 I fancied," said Langley coolly; **for had you 
 insinuated yourself among them, you would have 
 been safe from their attacks. It is only persons 
 out of the pale of their society of whom they ever 
 make a target. — You are in much greater danger 
 of being: shot at as a foe than as a friend." — 
 
158 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 " To a man who does not dance and hates 
 scandal," persisted Reginald, "such parties as 
 those of Lady Gwenlyn and the Duchess are a 
 mere nuisance." 
 
 " It is a pity you should not dance, however," 
 rejoined Gerald, — " it would have got you on. — 
 Besides, since you do go to balls, it would have 
 been better to be seen at the best, instead of 
 starring it among such people as these." 
 
 And, with a careless hand, he proceeded to 
 throw over a stand of invitation cards, containing 
 a variety of highly respectable names that were 
 nothing more than highly respectable. 
 
 " I have not been to a ball since Easter," said 
 Cressingham sturdily. " I tried the thing, and 
 found it a bore. As to Lady Gwenlyn and the 
 Penzance woman, so little attraction do I find in 
 them that, only yesterday, Holmeswell offered to 
 ask for an invitation to the Duchess's ball to-mor- 
 row night, and I declined." — 
 
 " You did perfectly right," replied Langley 
 gravely. " It would have been disgusting to be 
 refused. I know her list is full, and that nothing 
 would induce her to have people presented to 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 159 
 
 her on sucli an occasion. — It must have been be- 
 cause Holmeswell knew you would decline, that he 
 made the offer." — 
 
 " He could know no such thing, for it might 
 have suited me to go,'' replied Reginald fiercely. 
 
 Gerald Langley replied by a provoking smile. 
 
 " I bet you a hundred guineas that I go to the 
 Duchess's ball, if I think proper,'' retorted Cres- 
 singham. 
 
 " A poor devil like me does not bet in hun- 
 dreds," was the cool rejoinder of the cool younger 
 brother. — 
 
 " A pony then ?" — 
 
 " A pound, if you will ; — but of even that I 
 am unwilling to rob you, for I know that the 
 Duchess will refuse." 
 
 "We shall see !" — said Reginald, satisfied that 
 the heavy obligations of Lord Holmeswell would 
 insure his utmost efforts to secure so simple an 
 object. — A total want of the tact arising from 
 fashionable experience, caused him to rate the 
 value of invitations to balls on too level a scale. — 
 He did not fully appreciate the difference of 
 importance between one duchess and another. — 
 Having refused numberless invitations from per- 
 
160 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 sons of the same rank, tlie possibility of being 
 refused in his turn did not present itself. — 
 
 He was refused. — On requesting Holmeswell to 
 press the point with the Duchess, who was a 
 relation of the Maunderwells, he was even perti- 
 naciously refused ; and the nature of the bet caused 
 the refusal to transpire. — The Duchess had, of 
 course, the best of the story. — " She had not the 
 honour of knowing Mr Cressingham, and having 
 a very large acquaintance, did not wish to increase 
 it." — No one blamed her. — The Duchess of Pen- 
 zance was an authority in such matters. The 
 Duchess of Penzance could do no wrong. 
 
 Had Reginald been rash enough to adventure 
 now a similar application in less distinguished 
 quarters, he would have been equally unsuccess- 
 ful. The man whom the Duchess of Penzance 
 had refused to know, must be a tiger. 
 
 So far, however, from renewing his attempts to 
 make himself acceptable to the line ladies whom 
 he professed to hold in abhorrence, Cressing- 
 ham affected to laugh oiF his rejection as the mere 
 matter of a bet, protesting that he had asked for 
 the invitation only for the pleasure of refusing it; 
 and, with boyish levity, he set no bounds upon his 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 161 
 
 sneers at the coterie whose imperceptible barriers 
 had thus successfully kept him at bay. — But the 
 usual grounds for such attacks were in his case 
 wanting. He could not descant upon the venality 
 of match-making mammas ; since even the golden 
 key he brandished so ostentatiously, had not 
 availed to open to him the ivory portals of the 
 sanctuary of fashion. — 
 
 Such was the real position of the rich Cressing- 
 ham towards the close of his first season in town ! 
 — So rapidly varied had been the objects of his 
 vain ambition, that he had not yet cast up the 
 sum total of his disappointments. That more solid 
 portion of society over which he had affected 
 superiority, and which enters little into the thin- 
 skinned susceptibilities of fashionable life, still 
 regarded him as the fortunate young man in the 
 enjoyment of so fine an estate, who was lamentably 
 squandering it away by anticipation ; or descanted 
 at their sober dinner tables upon his service of 
 gold plate, or the costly pictures .and horses, in 
 every purchase of which he was said to be so 
 complete a dupe ; while the second-rate fashion- 
 ables were never weary of relating anecdotes of 
 his luxurious habits, and dashing excesses. 
 
162 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 His princely establishment was still the marvel 
 of the vulgar. — Everything that was rarest in the 
 arts or manufactures was tendered in the first 
 instance to the rich Cressingham. — Fruit was 
 forced for him a month sooner than for other 
 people ; and not a picture dealer, coach maker, or 
 jeweller wanting a victim, but was sure to cringe 
 his way to the favour of one who felt that it was 
 at least in his power to dazzle ; — that if he could 
 not command estimation, he might excite envy 
 and wonder. 
 
 With the false judgment created by the influ- 
 ence of money on an uncultivated head and heart, 
 instead of perceiving that mere fortune had not 
 sufficed to insure consideration, he fancied that 
 his failure arose rather from a deficiency of for- 
 tune ; that he had not done enough ; that people 
 expected to see the man of fortune more pro- 
 fuse in his habits ; and he consequently lavished 
 thousands upon thousands, in pursuit of the roc's 
 egg wanting to his collection, — the gorgeous 
 charm which he fancied would bring the world to 
 his feet. 
 
 It was not till the first check of his extrava- 
 gance, by a difficulty in raising a considerable 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 163 
 
 sum of money, lost at play, which his guardian 
 had declined advancing, that Reginald had be- 
 gan seriously to inquire of himself what advantage 
 or what satisfaction he derived from his showy 
 and disreputable modes of life. It was a rainy 
 day. His magnificent drawing room was quite as 
 cheerless as any other sunless abode on a rainy 
 day. A few hours' solitude produced by the state 
 of the weather, compelled him to reflection. He 
 saw that after the expenditure of a sum more 
 nearly amounting to a hundred and fifty thousand 
 pounds than he cared to own, he had achieved 
 nothing in London, but being bored and laughed 
 at. With all the carriages in his coachhouse, all 
 the horses in his stable, all the books in his 
 library, all the finicalities in his house, he enjoyed 
 himself no more than Gerald Langley, with his 
 one cabriolet, one hack, and a lodging in May 
 Fair; — nay, far less, — for Langley's proceedings 
 were not spied upon, nor his place in society 
 questioned, nor his conduct scoffed at by the 
 Sunday papers. 
 
 The philosophy of a narrow heart and narrow 
 mind, did not, of course, reach so far as the dis- 
 covery that he had scattered his riches like smoke, 
 
164 THE MAN OF FORTUNE, 
 
 and nearly to as much purpose ; — that he had done 
 things to be vain of, nothing to be proud of; — 
 that he had accomplished no great or generous 
 action; — and that the egotism generated by ex- 
 cessive riches, is a false appetite, a fiendish 
 craving, wliich defeats its selfish desires by an 
 inherent incapability of gratification. 
 
 " I am only come in for a moment, my dear 
 Cress !" cried Sir Henry Morton, putting a close 
 to his solitary cogitations by a slap on the back, 
 having entered the drawing-room unperceived. 
 " It is turning out a fine afternoon. Beacons- 
 field's drag is at the door. We are on our way to 
 Lord Maunderwell's for Goodwood races, and 
 mean to coach it the first stage. I got him to 
 stop, that I might beg you not to wait dinner for 
 me on Friday, — for I scarcely fancy I shall be 
 back in time." 
 
 " Goodwood races ? Why couldn't you tell me 
 you were going when you accepted my invita- 
 tion ? " inquired Reginald ; surmising, and with 
 truth, that he had been purposely kept in the 
 dark, lest he should resent not having been in- 
 vited to join the party. 
 
 " I thought of course, you knew it — I settled it 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 165 
 
 with Holmeswell the day we dined at the Tra- 
 vellers. Oh ! by the way, I forgot that you were 
 not with us." 
 
 "You are quite aware that I do not belong to 
 the Travellers," said Cressingham, stiffly. " But 
 if you do not wish to keep to your engagement 
 with me on Friday, of course I shall not 
 press it." 
 
 " I am taking down Beaeonsfield to old Maun- 
 derwell's, near Goodwood," said Morton, looking 
 somewhat awkward, " and as we have promised to 
 remain there for the race-week, it would break 
 up the party if '* 
 
 " If you were to adhere to your engagements 
 with me, so as not to break up mine," persisted 
 Cressingham, still more angrily. 
 
 " Nay, nay, — you totally mistake the matter ! " 
 cried Morton, trying to put a good face on his 
 discomfiture. " The truth is, my dear Cress (and 
 I know you are too good-natured to wish to spoil 
 sport) — the truth is that the Maunderwells are wild 
 to catch my friend Beaeonsfield for Lady Adelaide; 
 and they could not well have him staying at 
 Maunderwell Court after Holmeswell and I were 
 gone. However, I will throw over the thing 
 
166 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 with pleasure, if you have any object in my dining 
 with you that particular day." 
 
 Feeling himself now really aggrieved, Cressing- 
 ham affected to be perfectly satisfied with the 
 excuse ; and hurried off his friend to the impatient 
 set whose drag was waiting in Piccadilly, attract- 
 ing the admiring notice of the throng as the 
 neatest turn out of the season, and a credit to the 
 taste of the young Marquis of Beaconsfield, who 
 was driving it in the dress and with the air of that 
 rare anomaly in fashionable nature, a sporting 
 gentleman. 
 
 But no sooner had Morton quitted the room, 
 than the repressed ire of his friend burst forth. Lord 
 Beaconsfield was precisely; one of the men who 
 had fought shy of his acquaintance ; and Holmes- 
 well's sister. Lady Adelaide North, the only 
 girl in London to whom he had felt desirous to 
 render himself acceptable as a suitor. The 
 Earl of Maunderwell was not a wealthy man. An 
 alliance with the heir of Stoke Paddocks was one 
 which he had no pretension to despise ; and from 
 the attention she received from the family, Cres- 
 singham flattered himself that his attentions were 
 not only perceived, but courted. Albeit his habits 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 167 
 
 of life, for fashion's sake rather than from disso- 
 lute propensities, were freer than might have 
 been supposed likely to recommend him to so 
 sober a family as the Maunderwells, he was con- 
 stantly invited to their house, — constantly wel- 
 comed as the intimate associate of Lord Holmes- 
 well; and if he had not actually hazarded his 
 proposals, it was chiefly reluctance to place so 
 proud a man as the Earl in collision with a 
 vulgar fellow like Athanasius Docket, which had 
 determined him to defer the offer of his hand till 
 the attainment of his majority. 
 
 But he had reason to suppose that his pre- 
 ference was sufficiently manifest to be pro- 
 tected by Lady Adelaide's brother. He had said 
 a thousand times in Holmeswell's presence that 
 she was the only woman in England whom a man 
 in his senses would choose as a companion for life ; 
 and though Holmeswell usually selected the mo- 
 ment of such declarations to settle his cravat in 
 the glass, or adjust his waistcoat, Cressingham 
 found sufficient encouragement in his manner to 
 believe himself acceptable as a brother-in-law ! 
 
 And now, to be thus treacherously thrown over. 
 A party at Lord and Lady Maunderwell's for 
 
168 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Goodwood races, including all the intimate 
 friends of their son, saving the rich Cressingham, 
 was in itself an affront ; but a party made ex- 
 pressly by Holmeswell, to give to the Marquis of 
 Beaconsfield an opportunity of paying his ad- 
 dresses to Lady Adelaide, was an "ungrateful 
 injury," beyond the reach of patience ! Holmes- 
 well, to whom he had lent his money, his horses, 
 his carriages, his dogs, his guns, — Holmeswell, 
 who would not so much as lend him his counte- 
 nance in return, — Holmeswell was a double-dyed 
 traitor ! — 
 
 Till now, with the irresolution common to 
 feeble characters, he had been uncertain as to the 
 amount of his admiration for Lady Adelaide North. 
 — If fully alive to her merits as a well-born, 
 well-bred girl, — admirably brought up and pe- 
 culiarly qualified to preside over a noble estab- 
 lishment, — with the fastidiousness of a disposition, 
 if not naturally cold, iced by the artificial chill 
 of fashionable life, he had sometimes allowed him- 
 self to doubt whether she were pretty enough to 
 do honour to his taste ; and whether, in the 
 Penzance and Gwenlyn coterie there might not 
 exist metal more attractive. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 169 
 
 But from the moment that he was compelled to 
 regard her as the future Marchioness of Beacons- 
 field, and wife to the man who had not considered 
 him good enough to dine with, the lovely mortal 
 rose into a divinity. 
 
 He had no further hesitation in perceiving that 
 he was desperately and irretrievably in love with 
 Lady Adelaide. It was his passion for her that 
 had been the secret cause of his recent languor 
 and ennui. It was her presence that had been 
 wanting to complete the attraction of the house 
 wherein so much damask and ebony, and such 
 fine pictures and sculpture, were lavished in vain. 
 It was her affection that had been necessary to his 
 happiness. It was her influence which, unsus- 
 pected by himself, had been gnawing at his heart ; 
 and the day of her marriage with Beaconsfield 
 would render him a wretch for life. 
 
 The moment a man makes up his mind to 
 admit to himself that he is in love, it is amazing 
 what confirmation he finds in circumstances, pre- 
 viously irrelevant, to strengthen his passion. The 
 preceding day, he would scarcely have driven his 
 cab so far as the gate of Kensington Gardens for 
 the certainty of a walk there with Lady Maun- 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
ITO THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 derwell and Lady Adelaide North. Now that he 
 conceived her on the point of being lost to him 
 for ever, he would willingly have yachted to 
 Egypt for the chance of a meeting. 
 
 After a severe struggle with despondency, 
 it occurred to him that an interview might 
 still turn the scale in his favour. There wanted 
 only a month to the attainment of his majority. 
 No obstacle need prevent his offering his hand 
 to Lady Adelaide; and from the graciousness 
 with which she had always received the atten- 
 tions of her brother's friend, he had good 
 right to infer the possibility of her acceptance. 
 She might entertain no projects upon the Mar- 
 quisate of Beaconsfield, though her parents pro- 
 moted the match. In fact, he owed it to her to 
 give her an opportunity of making her elec- 
 tion. 
 
 But how was this to be effected ? To address a 
 letter to the Earl or Countess, in the very teeth 
 of his knowledge of their present views, would 
 have been absurd ; to address one to the young 
 lady herself, contrary to the usages of a family so 
 formal. A personal interview was difficult to 
 accomplish, since it was impossible for him to 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 171 
 
 intrude into the house with a party staying in it 
 which he felt he ought to have received an invita- 
 tion to join. 
 
 Goodwood, at least, was neutral ground. There 
 was no reason he should not go down to the races, 
 and take the chance of an opportunity. He had 
 declined two invitations to houses in the neigh- 
 bourhood; one from Sir Giles Snaffle, a man 
 better known on the turf than elsewhere, who had 
 a noisy party staying with him at Bognor ; — 
 the other, from Sir Carnaby and Lady Riddle- 
 mere, whose family place was at no great distance 
 from Lord Maunderwell's, and who, having three 
 daughters to marry, were civil to the rich Cres- 
 singham, both on Lord Holmeswell's account and 
 his own. To appear at the races, would be an 
 act of ungraciousness towards all these people; 
 and it was only by making it a lark, and going 
 down with Gerald Langley at an early hour on 
 the morrow, as fast as a britschka-and-four would 
 carry them, to return at night, that the thing 
 appeared practicable. — 
 
 Practicable it certainly was, as far as money 
 could make it. Langley, an idle guardsman, was 
 well content to get rid of a vacant day, towards the 
 
172 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 close of the season, at the expense of Cressing- 
 ham's company ; and unaware of the motives and 
 object of his companion, it was not his business to 
 suggest that their sudden appearance, uncon- 
 nected with the parties at Goodwood or in the 
 neighbourhood, might appear to require expla- 
 nation. 
 
 The weather, however, in a July previously 
 devoted to St Swithin, proved so propitious as 
 apparently to justify their exploit, in spite of the 
 early hour at which it had forced them from their 
 pillows ; and had not Reginald been feverishly 
 anxious as to the result, he might really have 
 found pleasure in a journey smoothed and accele- 
 rated by the spell which rendered his journeys 
 all but imperceptible. The two young men 
 enjoyed each other's society as most young men 
 enjoy each other's society on such occasions, by 
 sleeping one half the way, and smoking the other ; 
 when, lo ! on arriving a few miles from Goodwood, 
 it suddenly occurred to Gerald Langley to exclaim 
 against the strangeness of Cressingham's not 
 being at Maunderwell Court. — 
 
 " Holraeswell was aware that I had refused 
 Snaffle and the Riddlemeres," was Reginald's 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 173 
 
 embarrassed reply, — " so that it would have been 
 an idle compliment to ask me." — 
 
 " But it would not have been an idle excuse to 
 Sir Giles and the Riddlemeres, if you had been 
 able to say that you were previously engaged 
 to Lord Maunderwell," persisted Langley. — • 
 " I don't understand those Maunderwell people. 
 They seem to me to be acting a double part 
 towards you." — 
 
 " Or rather no part at all," replied Reginald 
 in a tone of pique. " Their conduct with me has 
 been as simple as mine with them. — I am one of 
 the numerous college friends of their son, and 
 Holmeswell one of mine. Neither of us is all-in- 
 all to the other, and we treat each other accord- 
 ingly." 
 
 " But you certainly don't treat Lady Adelaide 
 as if she were only one of your numerous friends 
 or acquaintances," rejoined Gerald with a smile ; 
 " and from something I saw at the Opera on Satur- 
 day night, I strongly suspect Holmeswell has 
 been deucedly false in that quarter. I have seen 
 him encourage your attentions to her on a 
 thousand occasions. At that Richmond party 
 
 I 2 
 
174 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 last week, for instance, you must recollect that it 
 was he who pushed you into the boat with his 
 mother and sister, when you proposed driving 
 home with Morton.- — I was surprised at his con- 
 duct at the moment, because I own it seemed to 
 me unlikely that Lord and Lady Maunderwell 
 would ever consent to — however, it is all plain 
 enough now. I am convinced they were play- 
 ing you off against Beaconsfield, to draw him 
 on."— 
 
 Thrown off his guard by his usual susceptibility 
 to taunts of this description, Reginald vehemently 
 protested that Langley was mistaken, — that he 
 liad no views upon the hand of Lady Adelaide 
 North, and the Maunderwells none upon that of 
 the Marquis of Beaconsfield. 
 
 " With all my heart, since you choose to have 
 it so," cried Gerald, — again taking out his cigar- 
 case, as if determined to close all conversation 
 between them for the remaining few miles. 
 " Indeed I am heartily glad to hear you deny it; 
 for should any one attack me on the subject at 
 Goodwood (as will probably be the case with 
 Lady Adelaide and yourself on the course, and 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 175 
 
 the report so prevalent), I shall answer that I have 
 your own authority for declaring your perfect 
 indifference." 
 
 Reginald was puzzled. He saw to what mis- 
 chief such a protestation on the part of one of his 
 intimates might expose his courtship, and tried to 
 back out of the dilemma. — 
 
 " The less said upon such subjects the better !" 
 said he. " Lord and Lady Maunderwell would 
 have every right to be displeased if they found me 
 making gratuitous declarations of indifference to 
 their daughter." 
 
 " Since that is the case, I will be as discreet as 
 you please," replied Langley, with a significant 
 smile. — " But if Lady Adelaide North is to 
 have no share in our expedition to-day, may I ask 
 what makes you so much more on the qui vive 
 about Goodwood races, this year, than you w^ere 
 about Epsom or Ascot ?" 
 
 " Ascot perhaps inspired me with a taste for 
 Goodwood," replied Cressingham evasively ; *' for 
 I have one or two heavy bets. — In fact, I am 
 beginning to feel a considerable interest in the 
 turf."— 
 
 " The deuce you are !"— was Langley's re- 
 
176 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 joinder ; *' I am truly sorry to hear it!" added he, 
 a moment afterwards, with an air of hypocritical 
 sympathy ; " and I beseech you to beware, my 
 dear Cress, how you make such an admission 
 before Snaffle or his set, or you will be snapt up 
 in a mouthful ! — To be attempted with safety, the 
 turf requires as steady an education as the 
 church ! You have been brought up out of the 
 line of such things, and at present are not the 
 least fit to be trusted among all those knowing 
 fellows.'*— 
 
 In the act of retorting, Reginald was silenced by 
 a cloud of dust ; and lo ! from a beautiful by-road, 
 overshadowed with lofty elms as if leading towards 
 the gates of some fine seat, emerged a train of 
 carriages containing a joyous, laughing, chatting 
 party, headed by Lady Maunderwell's barouche, 
 in which sat the Countess and her daughter, 
 Morton and Beaconsfield. The Marquis, placed 
 auspiciously opposite to Lady Adelaide, was bend- 
 ing towards her as they passed; and a smiling 
 blush avouched the happy intimacy already estab- 
 lished between them. 
 
 Reginald saw at a glance, even without the 
 malicious interpretation of Langley to guide his 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 177 
 
 observations, that Beaconsfield was a favoured, if 
 not an accepted lover. — To press his attentions 
 under such circumstances, could only tend to 
 further mortification. He had clearly travelled 
 his sixty miles in vain ! 
 
 Instead, therefore, of joining the Maunderwell 
 party, he attached himself at once to that of Sir 
 Giles Snaffle,— affected the most eager interest in 
 the sport of the day ; and in the dead of night 
 returned to town, stupified by he knew not exactly 
 how many bottles of champagne, to wake the next 
 morning with an excruciating headache, and the 
 agreeable certainty of having paid for his footing 
 on the turf to the amount of he knew not exactly 
 how many thousands of pounds ! — • 
 
 I 3 
 
178 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Faults in the life breed errors in the brain, 
 And these reciprocally those again. 
 
 COWPER. 
 
 "Look here!" was the first exclamation of Ge- 
 rald Langley, when they met in the afternoon at 
 Croekford's, the only fashionable club into which, 
 over a bridge of gold, Reginald had made his way. 
 And on examining the paper held out by his 
 officious friend, the first paragraph that met the 
 eye of Cressingham was an announcement of his 
 approaching marriage with Lady Adelaide North ; 
 all the usual editorial arabesque of " amiable and 
 accomplished," and " hymeneal altar," being pro- 
 fusely lavished in honour of the nuptials of the 
 Man of Fortune. 
 
 " How absurd, but how annoying !" exclaimed 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 179 
 
 Reginald, for once startled into frankness, — 
 "doubly annoying just now, too, when — I wonder 
 what steps I ought to take on such an occasion ? " 
 — said he, suddenly interrupting himself. 
 
 " None, I should imagine. The best way of 
 dealing with such reports is to let them die as 
 easily as they were born ; and you will, at least, 
 enjoy the satisfaction of laughing in your sleeve 
 at the multitude of blockheads by whom you will 
 be pestered with congratulations." 
 
 So far, however, of laughing, either openly or 
 inwardly, Reginald was stung to the quick by 
 the good wishes poured in upon him on the occa- 
 sion. Everybody assured him that they had long 
 perceived his attachment to Lady Adelaide ; tliat 
 they heartily wished him joy of the success of his 
 suit ; that it was a choice which did honour to his 
 taste, and that he was about to become the hap- 
 piest of men. The cruel eligibilities of the 
 match were pointed out with circumstantial perse- 
 cution. In vain did he deny the soft impeach- 
 ment; he was assured that such negatives went 
 for nothing. Everybody was resolved to be aware 
 that he was desperately in love ; and everybody 
 enchanted that Lady Adelaide North should have 
 
180 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 consented to reward his attachment. Thoroughly 
 harassed and annoyed, Reginald was beginning 
 to devise some means of terminating the erroneous 
 impressions of his friends, when another formal 
 paragraph took justice into its hands. The 
 Morning Post was " empowered by authority to 
 deny the report of an approaching marriage be- 
 tween Lady Adelaide North and a certain wealthy 
 commoner ! " 
 
 Now, as the " wealthy commoner" had given 
 no "authority" for the denial, it was clear that 
 the refutation must proceed from Lord Maunder- 
 well's family; and though privileged to declare 
 the truth on such an occasion, Reginald felt un- 
 reasonably sore at the promptitude with which 
 they had flung off the imputation. He fancied 
 that people smiled significantly when they begged 
 his pardon for having been so premature in their 
 felicitations ; and was quite certain of the signi- 
 ficance of their smiles when, the following week, 
 further "authority" enabled the morning papers 
 to announce that the marriage of " the Marquis 
 of Beaconsfield with the Lady Adelaide North, 
 would take place early in the month of August." 
 This time, newspaper intelligence conveyed the 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 181 
 
 truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
 truth. If anything could have aggravated his 
 irritation at such a moment, it would have been 
 the apparently frank and friendly letter by which 
 Lord Holmeswell announced the approaching 
 event. 
 
 " I am sure you will sympathise in Addy's hap- 
 piness," wrote his obliging and obliged friend. 
 " Beaconsfield has long been the man of her 
 choice; but there have been family objections, 
 which are now happily removed. By the way, my 
 dear Cress, as the period of your coming of age is 
 approaching (when I suppose a general settlement 
 of your afifairs is to take place), pray do me the 
 favour to send the mems. of the money you 
 kindly lent me at Oxford, to my father's solicitor, 
 who has orders from him to settle them. I could 
 not remember the exact amount, or would have 
 forwarded a cheque ; for the governor is just now 
 in such famous good humour at Addy's marriage, 
 that he has agreed to book up for me. I am 
 consequently almost as happy a dog just now as 
 Beaconsfield, who is over head and ears in love, 
 and appears a capital good fellow." 
 
 Though Reginald's bankers had been looking 
 
182 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 very glum for the last ten days, and had even 
 ventured a slight hint that they would prefer 
 postponing further advances till the attainment of 
 their constituent's majority should render his 
 signature legal, gladly would he have dispensed 
 with the repayment of the eighteen hundred 
 pounds forwarded to him shortly afterwards by 
 the man of business of the Earl of Maunderwell, 
 and retained Holmeswell in a state of obliga- 
 tion. — He saw through the insolence of the 
 case. — The man they had injured was to be 
 paid oif. — All friendship between the parties 
 was at an end ! — 
 
 In a worldly mind mortification is sure to 
 beget recklessness. Reginald's irritation of soul 
 rendered him desperate, — that is, desperately 
 gay, noisy, and prodigal. — It was a time of 
 year when few people remain in town but those 
 wedded to the dissipations of the season by 
 undomestic habits; people who adhere to the 
 parks, the clubs, and the opera, after the better 
 frame of society is broken up. Among these, it 
 was easier for the rich Cressingham to obtain 
 notice, than in the soberer congregation of the 
 Maunderwell world ; and the orgies of his house. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 183 
 
 and wildness of his exploits, acquired a still 
 increasing notoriety. 
 
 When the gaieties of London were at an end, 
 he was to hurry to the Highlands, where a capital 
 moor had been engaged for him for the season ; 
 and Lord Robert Leigh, Gerald Langley, and half 
 a dozen of the noisy boys with whom he delighted 
 to surround himself, had promised to meet him at 
 Loch Maylan, and accompany him back to Stoke 
 for partridge-shooting. In the interim, the attain- 
 ment of his majority was to be celebrated. But 
 it would be as easy to close his accounts with 
 his guardian in September as in August; and 
 Docket could preside over the tenants' din- 
 ner, and superintend the roasting of oxen and 
 ringing of church bells. No other duty occurred 
 to him which might not be performed by deputy. 
 That on such an occasion anything was due to his 
 mother, utterly escaped his recollection. 
 
 While Reginald Cressingham accordingly, on 
 pretence of grouse-shooting, was inflaming his 
 blood with whiskey, after losing his money at 
 hazard to the friends who had consented to sacri- 
 fice their time to share his expedition to the 
 Highlands, Athanasius was recommending himself 
 
184? THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 to the favour of the neighbourhood by his hos- 
 pitality, courtesy, and consideration. The tenantry, 
 to whose interests he had ever paid the most 
 scrupulous attention, talked of subscribing for a 
 piece of plate in his honour; and the cool decision 
 of his conduct on many occasions of county emer- 
 gency, so favourably contrasting with the feeble 
 indolence of his last patron and the boyish levity 
 of his present, caused more than one gentleman 
 of the county to regret that his kingdom as guar- 
 dian was about to be taken from him, and that 
 they should shortly have to co-operate with the 
 thriftless young man, whose follies they ascribed 
 to the weak indulgence of his mother rather than 
 to the artful encouragement of his guardian. 
 
 The infirm health of Mrs Blair was a bar to 
 all intercourse with the neighbourhood ; and the 
 mutual position of Athanasius and his ward had 
 consequently only been exposed to the observa- 
 tion of a few parties of dissipated young men, not 
 likely to exercise much judgment on the case; 
 who saw in the attorney the most blameless, be- 
 cause the most acquiescent of Mentors. Even 
 the Drench and Chaffles tribe had been so assi- 
 duously propitiated by the neighbourly offices of 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 185 
 
 Docket, and so cruelly alienated by the insolent 
 slights of the haughty young man to whom they 
 had shown kindness when a neglected boy, that 
 they were far readier to sympathise with the enor- 
 mous amount of trouble and anxiety which the 
 dashing ward had occasioned to the excellent 
 guardian, than to surmise what amount of pecu- 
 niary advantage might have accrued to the excel- 
 lent guardian from the follies of his profligate 
 ward. 
 
 It was edifying to perceive with what submis- 
 sion Athanasius Docket received the officious 
 advice mumbled into his ears by the old Vicar 
 touching the order of the festivities about to 
 commemorate the coming of age of their patron. 
 It might have been supposed that the guardian 
 was purposely proposing an impossible site for 
 the construction of the grates that were to roast 
 the oxen, in order to stand corrected by Dr 
 Chaffles ; and that his arrangements for doles to 
 the poor were intentionally absurd, in order that 
 the Vicar might originate a more appropriate 
 scale. 
 
 Even to Drench, he was condescendingly con- 
 ciliating ; the only petition of the family apothe- 
 
186 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 cary being that the rejoicings and tumults of the 
 day should be kept as far as possible out of 
 hearing of The Wilderness; — his poor nervous 
 patient being now apothecaried into so deplorable 
 a condition of body and mind, that her sole anxiety, 
 on occasion of an event for the accomplishment 
 of which her best days had been sacrificed, was to 
 escape the noise of platoons and bob majors ! — 
 
 With the co-operation of the other "profes- 
 sional advisers of the Cressingham family," Docket 
 took care that the demonstrations usual on such 
 occasions should far exceed even those which had 
 commemorated the close of the law-suit; and 
 there was twice as much shouting, and quite as 
 great an effusion of strong beer, as if the shouters 
 and drinkers had cared a straw whether the young 
 squire were to be hanged on the morrow. 
 
 Of all who surveyed the festivities of the 
 day, little Justina alone noticed that the only 
 people who seemed to regard the 28th of 
 August with utter unconcern, were the man 
 to whom it assigned independence for life, 
 and the woman whose only son it invested 
 with the dignities of manhood. It was not for 
 her to surmise that the mind of the woman 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 187 
 
 thus pensively secluded from observation, might 
 be wandering back with regret to the time when 
 the babe which that day bestowed upon her, 
 was her only earthly joy; when there was less 
 gilding upon her furniture, but more sunshine 
 in her heart ; and that one such whisper as that 
 of the shy, gentle boy on the gaining of their law- 
 suit, — " Thank God, dearest mother, your troubles 
 are over ! " — would have created greater exulta- 
 tion in her bosom than all the congratulations of 
 her neighbours on his imaginary engagement with 
 the daughter of an Earl, or the discharge of can- 
 non that announced his being at full liberty to 
 play the fool. 
 
 For though ungifted to argue sagely on the 
 changes wrought in the nature of her son by 
 the hardening sunshine of prosperity, Mrs Blair 
 was sufficiently observant to perceive how slight 
 her hold upon his affections ; that he had learned 
 to consider her rather as one of the trees upon 
 the estate, than as his sole remaining link of 
 union with his kind; that he had not a thought 
 or feeling in common with one whom it was 
 his first duty to love and honour ; — and more 
 of her peevish valetudinarianism than the neigh- 
 
188 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 bourliood supposed, was attributable to the silent 
 consciousness of having a thankless child. 
 
 So limited, indeed, was now the intercourse 
 between them, that she was indebted to Docket 
 for information that Reginald was to be at home 
 on the 1st of September, to open the shooting 
 season ; and almost trembled at the idea of his 
 re-appearance at Stoke with uncontrolled freedom 
 of action, backed by companions as reckless, if 
 not as potential as himself. 
 
 He came at last ; — and the increased hauteur of 
 his manners, and coarseness of his pleasures, indi- 
 cated that the mother's fears were not altogether 
 groundless. Sanctioned by the encouragement of 
 Lord Robert Leigh, Gerald Langley, and the rest 
 of his rout associates, he affected to treat with his 
 ex-guardian as with a pettifogging attorney, a 
 money-lending usurer ; and had any but the noisy, 
 witless crew of Reginald's hangers-on witnessed 
 the Shylock-like submission of Anastasius to the 
 contumely of his ward, they would have perceived 
 that there was mischief brewing under so smooth 
 a surface. 
 
 The accounts of the wily guardian had passed 
 triumphantly through the hands of the Master in 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 i8d 
 
 Chancery ; and all that met the eye being sound 
 and reasonable, he had nothing to fear. It only 
 remained for him to obtain a general release from 
 his ward; who, unable to controvert the evidence 
 of his own signatures of receipt for monies levied 
 in his behalf, and appalled by the terrible array of 
 figures through which he was compelled to wade 
 in the course of the two mornings in which, after 
 hurrying up to town, he was passed, like a brief, 
 from lawyer to lawyer, was right glad to confirm 
 the documents prepared for him, and slink away 
 from the disagreeable consciousness of having 
 forestalled three years' income, and having no one 
 but himself to blame for it ! — 
 
 Disgusted as people are sure to be with the 
 instruments who have ministered to their vices, 
 his only agreeable anticipation on coming of 
 age was that of breaking all further connexion 
 with Docket. Even through the scrupulous ob- 
 sequiousness of Athanasius, Reginald discerned 
 the dislike engendered by his insolence ; and so 
 far from accusing himself as the originator of a 
 resentment so natural, sought refuge in the 
 triumph of flinging him oiF for ever. 
 
 The most vindictive monarch, premeditating the 
 
190 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 dismission of an obnoxious minister, never more 
 eagerly waited his opportunity than Cressingham 
 for signifying to Athanasius that he was in no 
 further need of his professional services. The 
 man of fortune intended to do an ungracious thing 
 in the most ungracious way. He meant to con- 
 vey the intimation through his steward by a 
 formal letter, to be delivered to the ex-guardian 
 on his re-appearance at the Hall; and scarcely 
 could he repress the avowal of his intentions when, 
 after executing the formal deed of release upon 
 their private accounts, Athanasius somewhat hur- 
 riedly withdrew from his presence. 
 
 No sooner had Docket left the room than the 
 solicitors in whose hands the deeds were deposited, 
 placed in his own an open letter, which he pro- 
 ceeded mechanically to peruse, as probably con- 
 nected with the plagues of the day. It contained, 
 however, the formal resignation of Athanasius as 
 man of business to the Cressingham family! — 
 Foreseeing his project, the attorney was before- 
 hand with him ! — 
 
 In no very pleasant temper, therefore, did 
 Cressingham return home, where his visitors had 
 been making merry during his absence. He felt 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 191 
 
 that he had been outwitted ; and that coming of 
 age was a less agreeable epoch in a spendthrift's 
 life than the world is apt to esteem it. The hateful 
 evidence of his impoverishment had passed before 
 him, phantasmagorically, in the shape of parchments 
 and papers without end ; and now he had to con- 
 fide his misdoings and miscalculations to a new 
 man of business, by whom he should be still fur- 
 ther plundered and tormented. 
 
 Averse to all moral exertion, he resolved at all 
 events to defer as long as possible the nuisance of 
 developing these perplexities. Bob Leigh and 
 the rest of the party were to remain with him 
 another week, to attack the remainder of his 
 preserves ; and on their departure he would return 
 to town, and select a proper person to receive 
 from Docket the family accounts and papers still 
 in his custody. 
 
 Hitherto, not a care of this description had been 
 allowed to molest him. At Stoke, everything had 
 passed through the hands of Docket ; and unless to 
 sign receipts for the sums provided for his prodi- 
 gality, he was scarcely in the habit of putting pen 
 to paper. But now, day after day, the post brought 
 down piles of letters from unsatisfied claimants, 
 
192 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 and demands from money-dealers with whom the 
 recent London season had brought him acquainted, 
 demanding immediate attention, till he began to 
 curse the epoch of independence which rendered 
 him dependent on himself. A succession of im- 
 portunities and appeals to his honour and sense of 
 justice, compelled him to pay away the whole of 
 the ready money in his banker's hands. Follies 
 to which he had scarcely given a moment's thought 
 in the perpetration, came back to him in the 
 shape of goldsmiths' bills, picture-dealers' ac- 
 counts, and horse-dealers' promissory notes ; and 
 few but those who have had occasion to examine 
 the affairs of a wealthy minor, would give credit 
 to the nature of some of these records of extrava- 
 gance. 
 
 Paid, however, they must be ; and ignorant of 
 the nature of his property or the exact mode in 
 which it was hampered, Reginald felt ashamed at 
 the idea of commencing his intercourse with his 
 new man of business by a confession of such gross 
 absurdities ; and when, shortly afterwards, he was 
 apprised by his steward that the period for the 
 payment of Mrs Blair's annual allowance had been 
 some days past, and that for weeks to come he 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 193 
 
 should not have in his hands the means of satisfying 
 the demand, Reginald, after exploding into impre- 
 cations infinitely terrifying to an old man accus- 
 tomed to more formal habits of business, began to 
 feel that his rupture with his factotum had been, to 
 say the least, inopportune. Harassed by appli- 
 cants, who, finding their letters unattended to, 
 came in person ta remind him that he was now of 
 age, Reginald gave tokens of the perturbed state 
 of his mind by scarcely concealed impatience of 
 the noisy profligacy of his companions. 
 
 " What on earth is the matter with you. Cress?" 
 said Gerald Langley, who was the first to take 
 leave, on discovering Reginald's spirits begin to 
 flag. — " Is your digestion failing ? or are you fret- 
 ting at not being invited to this famous hattue at 
 Beaconfield's ? — I swear I believe you have never 
 got over Lady Adelaide's marriage ! But pluck 
 up, my dear fellow ! — One ball in Hamilton Place 
 next season, and you will have all the girls in 
 London at your feet. You can get some one to 
 ask the company for you, and the pretty Mar- 
 chioness to preside. She owes you that after 
 throwing you over so shamefully." 
 
 VOL. I. -^ 
 
194 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Still more impertinent were the surmises of 
 Lord Robert Leigh. 
 
 "You seem monstrously hipped, old fellow. 
 What has set your teeth on edge ? Has Cressing- 
 ham's clever speech at the Liverpool dinner put 
 your nose out of joint ? — or have you been feeling, 
 your way with Langley about getting invited to 
 Ashleigh Park for the holidays, where they have 
 resolved not to have you?" 
 
 To admit the truth of his situation to associates 
 so devoid of sympathy, was out of the question ; 
 and it was no small relief to Reginald when the 
 last of the party took leave, and he was released 
 from their galling interrogations. 
 
 His first impulse, on finding himself alone, was 
 to go and spend the evening with his mother. It 
 was very long since he had attempted an evening 
 at The Wilderness ; and his conscience smote him 
 as he walked thither across the park, now cheer- 
 less with falling leaves and a November fog, 
 towards the little domain once so dear to him, 
 which he had of late shunned as the refuge of all 
 that was depressing. 
 
 After the wild excesses of the last eight months. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 195 
 
 there was something almost preternatural, some- 
 thing that acted on his feelings like a charm, in 
 the aspect of his mother's quiet sitting room, 
 nothing in which had varied by the breadth of a 
 hair during his absence. His morning visits were 
 always as hurried as possible ; and little had he 
 anticipated so great a need of human sympathy as 
 now conveyed him to his mother's quiet tea-table 
 for the solace of companionship. At that moment, 
 he was more in want of an affectionate heart, how- 
 ever simple, however ignorant of the world, to be 
 interested in his cares, than of all the wit, wisdom, 
 or fashion of fastidious London life. 
 
 Mrs Blair, though unable to abstain from the 
 custom of invalids, of inflicting upon him the prolix 
 details of her sufferings, was silenced the moment 
 she discerned in his absent looks that he had suf- 
 ferings of his own. A mother's eye is not to be 
 deceived ; and the first suspicion that he was 
 unhappy, made him her son again. 
 
 But the tenderness of her inquiries rebuked his 
 conscience, and reduced him to silence. Con- 
 scious that it was the difficulty of doing justice to 
 a claim of hers which at that moment produced his 
 greatest perplexity, he assured her that he had 
 
196 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 notliing on Lis mind, — that the loss of his friends 
 had perhaps put him out of spirits ; and he began 
 to talk of London and its gaieties, in a tone of 
 joyousness that might have satisfied anything but 
 the craving of a parent's ear. 
 
 " I am sure there is something the matter, 
 dearest Reginald," said she. — "You are looking 
 quite ill. — I am sadly afraid the gay friends who 
 have been staying with you have led you into 
 excess. Do see Drench to-morrow, my dear son ; 
 I am persuaded Drench would be able to set you 
 up again." — 
 
 " I am rather afraid not, mother," retorted he, 
 with a smile, touched by a tone of anxiety to 
 which he was so little accustomed. — 
 
 " Then I am sui^e you have something on your 
 mind ! Some attachment perhaps ? — I am afraid 
 the marriage of the young lady to whom the news- 
 papers announced your engagement, has vexed 
 you?" 
 
 " On the contrary, my dear mother, I consider 
 myself fortunate to have escaped offering my hand 
 to a girl who evidently had not a shadow of regard 
 for me." — 
 
 " Then what can be the matter?" exclaimed 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 197 
 
 Mrs Blair. — " Ah ! my dear Reginald, if, rolling 
 in riches as you are, you still find cause for 
 discontent, who can expect to be happy ! — With 
 such a fortune as yours — " 
 
 " Even such a fortune as mine may be impaired 
 by such extravagance and ignorance of business 
 as mine,*' said Reginald hastily. 
 
 " Impaired ? — your fortune impaired ?" — re- 
 torted Mrs Blair, with a smile. "You do not 
 know what you are talking of! — Mr Docket has 
 often told me that your rentroU will be little less 
 than fifty thousand a-year ! " 
 
 " My rentroll, perhaps. But the times are bad. 
 A man is lucky who can reckon on two-thirds of 
 his rentroll. — If, however, mine were safe in full, 
 I have bespoken it shamefully ; and money is not 
 so easily raised as you may fancy." — 
 
 " Money raised f " — repeated Mrs Blair, who, 
 among the evils she had conjectured for her son, 
 certainly never anticipated deficiency of means 
 — " My dearest Reginald, if you are in any 
 want of money, for goodness* sake apply to the 
 bankers for my half-year's allowance, which must 
 have been paid in a fortnight ago, and which I 
 have never touched." — 
 
 K 2 
 
198 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Reginald's colour rose. The generous promp- 
 titude of his mother conveyed a cruel reproof. 
 
 " But why allow yourself to be annoyed by 
 such matters, my dear boy?" persisted Mrs Blair, 
 unwilling, even for the assuagement of her fears, 
 to dwell upon a topic evidently distasteful to Re- 
 ginald. " Why not refer everything to Docket ? 
 — Docket is so ready in every emergency !" — 
 
 " Mr Docket has ceased to act as my agent," 
 was Reginald's cold reply. 
 
 " The report was true then ! — It was men- 
 tioned to me by Mrs Chaffles, but I could not 
 believe it. Oh ! my dear Reginald ! — Docket 
 may not be a man of polished manners, but so 
 old a friend — so faithful a servant of the family — 
 How could you dismiss him !" — 
 
 " My dear mother, he dismissed me. Mr 
 Docket has grown too great a man for busi- 
 ness." — 
 
 " Apply to him, then, for his advice as a 
 friend."— 
 
 " I suspect he would make no answer to such 
 an appeal. Either he took affront at some 
 imaginary slight; or, aware of the perplexities 
 about to beset me, threw up the tangled skein just 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 199 
 
 at the moment it was getting too involved for 
 him." 
 
 Still, however, Mrs Blsiir persisted in her 
 entreaties to him to appeal to the counsels of the 
 only man familiar with the nature of his property 
 and resources. 
 
 '^ I agree with you that the fellow is the only 
 man likely to get me out of all these cursed 
 scrapes," said Reginald. " In fact, I am begin- 
 ning to feel that he is an inevitable eviL But I 
 cannot commit my own dignity by courting him 
 back." 
 
 Having succeeded in persuading Reginald, it 
 was easy for his mother to indulge the surliness 
 of his false pride, by extending an olive branch 
 in his name. A letter purporting to bring back 
 Docket to Stoke Paddocks, was instantly indited 
 by Mrs Blair. — 
 
 But alas ! the missive was unsuccessful. — Mr 
 Docket was absent from home. — Mr Docket was 
 gone on business into Wales. — His servants could 
 give no certain intelligence of his return. 
 
 Mrs Blair persisted, however, in her advice to 
 her son to refrain from intrusting his affairs to the 
 hands of strangers. Docket could not very long 
 
200 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 absent himself. — For a few days, matters might 
 
 remain as they were. 
 
 Little did she suspect to what painful importu- 
 nities her dear Reginald would be exposed in the 
 interim; — little did she imagine how thoroughly 
 Athanasius had calculated and foreseen the conse- 
 quences of his prolonged absence ; — and still less 
 was she prepared for the eager self-gratulation 
 with which her haughty son would hail the arrival 
 of the new travelling carriage which brought back 
 in triumph to the Hall, the man whom, from 
 the moment of his refusing further advances, Cres- 
 singham had sworn, in the presence of Lord 
 Robert Leigh and Sir Henry Morton, should 
 never enter the gates of his dwelling after the 
 attainment of his majority ! — 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 201 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " The vanities that play their part, 
 Uncheck'd in every worldly heart, 
 In the child's breast the spark began, 
 Grows with his growth, and glares in man." 
 
 Cotton. 
 
 A CASUIST might have found means to justify the 
 inconsistency of young Cressingham, on the 
 grounds that the grave gentleman who now 
 accosted him, presented scarcely a grain of affinity 
 with the smirking attorney on whom he had been 
 in the habit of venting his boyish insolence. It 
 would have been utterly impossible for Reginald 
 to take liberties with him now ; an air of cold 
 defiance on the part of the abdicated potentate, 
 kept his ungrateful ward thoroughly at bay. 
 
 Mrs Blair, indeed, in whose presence the in- 
 terview took place, could not recover her surprise 
 at the altered demeanour of the attorney suffici- 
 
 K 3 
 
202 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 ently to explain the motives of her summons, or 
 the embarrassments of her son ; and even when 
 she flattered herself of having made all clear, so 
 cold and brief was his reply, that she felt "under 
 the necessity of re-commencing her explanations. 
 Still, Athanasius knit his brows and said nothing. 
 At length, piqued by his impracticability, Regi- 
 nald took justice into his own hands, and in an 
 off-hand way attempted to place matters in an 
 intelligible light. But even he found himself 
 embarrassed by the steadfast self-possession of the 
 man he had offended. 
 
 " I fear it will be out of my power to be of use 
 in this emergency. I have, as I had the honour 
 of informing you by letter a month ago, deter- 
 mined to renounce all professional business," was 
 at length his answer. " At my time of life, and 
 a single man, I have no object in increasing the 
 competence for which I have worked so long. I 
 should otherwise have been happy to lend my aid 
 in freeing you from entanglements which I had 
 hoped your confidence in me, and my indulgence 
 as a guardian, must have rendered impossible." 
 
 Reginald was provoked to find himself looking 
 extremely foolish at this rebuke ; more especially 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 203 
 
 as he had a thousand times promised himself to 
 avail himself of the first opportunity to upbraid 
 his unprincipled guardian with the very indul- 
 gence which had laid the foundations of his 
 improvidence. But the pompous serenity of 
 Athanasius imposed upon him. 
 
 " As a friend, however, — as an old and valued 
 friend of the family,— let me entreat your advice 
 and assistance for Reginald," interposed Mrs 
 Blair, not hesitating to sacrifice her sense of 
 dignity to the hope of conciliating one whose 
 services were valuable to her son. 
 
 Mr Docket bowed ; not gratefully, however, — 
 scarcely even deferentially ; but as if to acknow- 
 ledge a tribute lawfully due. Want of head in 
 the mother, and want of heart in the son, relieved 
 him from sentiments of respect or regard sucli 
 as might have proved an obstacle to the cold- 
 blooded line of conduct he had traced out for 
 himself. He was essential to them, and conse- 
 quently their master ; and it might be permitted 
 even to a better man to triumph in the conscious- 
 ness of superiority over those who had beset him 
 with undeserved humiliations. 
 
 Even when he consented to overlook, as a 
 
204 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 friend, the accounts which presented such a 
 Daedalian mystery to the spendthrift, and to sug- 
 gest such arrangements as might satisfy the more 
 pressing of his claimants, it was with unabated 
 dignity and coldness. 
 
 In a fit of folly, arising from irritation of mind 
 at finding himself unable to carry all before him 
 by a stroke of the pen, as during his minority, 
 Reginald had quarrelled with his family banker ; 
 and the first step proposed by Docket was to 
 visit London, and adjust this untoward difference 
 wdth the respectable firm, who had resented the 
 hauteur and ignorance of business of their boy- 
 client. 
 
 In the course of a day or two, accordingly, he 
 was able to forward to Reginald a credit suffi- 
 cient to meet all immediate demands ; and while 
 he still declined suggesting the name of a solicitor 
 to undertake the management of the Cressingham 
 property, on the grounds that among Reginald's 
 numerous friends he could be in no want of advisers, 
 he pressed him to make an immediate choice, such 
 as might enable him to surrender the papers in 
 his custody into authorized hands previous to his 
 retirement into Wales; where, in the vicinity 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 205 
 
 of his birth - place, he had purchased a small 
 estate. 
 
 All this was a cruel mortification to Reginald. 
 He had never surmised that Docket's services 
 would prove beyond his reach. He had fancied 
 that the attorney was coquetting with him, as he 
 had coquetted with the attorney. That one 
 whom he had recently regarded as little better 
 than a menial should have achieved independ- 
 ence, while he, the rich Cressingham, was in 
 embarrassed circumstances, appeared a mockery of 
 their relative position ! — 
 
 In the desperation of his perplexity, he now 
 flung aside even the lion's skin of self-love, and 
 hastened to offer to his ex-guardian terms of pre- 
 posterous amount, to engage him again in his ser- 
 vice. In vain ! — The plans of Athanasius were 
 grounded on other calculations. The position to 
 which he aspired in the world was incompatible 
 with any permanent connexion with a man so 
 unstable ; and though the rich Cressingham 
 scouted the idea of a man like Athanasius 
 Docket asserting political opinions of any kind, 
 the new landed proprietor did not hesitate to 
 cite, among the numerous discrepancies between 
 
206 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 them, the secession of his quondam ward from the 
 wisdom of his ancestors, — the hereditary toryism 
 of Stoke Paddocks. 
 
 Again therefore, and in phrase still more dig- 
 nified than before, did he reiterate his refusal. 
 But this time, his letter contained the disagreeable 
 intelligence that certain reversionary clauses in 
 the will of the late Sir Giles, bequeathing his 
 estates to public charities in the event of the 
 death without issue of his youthful heir, would 
 render it peculiarly difficult to raise money on the 
 property; and that in consideration of the em- 
 barrassments already existing, which for years to 
 come must operate a severe diminution of his 
 income, he suggested to Reginald the propriety 
 of reducing his London establishment, selling off 
 his yacht, giving up his villa, and devoting himself 
 exclusively to a country life. 
 
 " Unless I am misinformed," wrote Athanasius, 
 " you have found your career in the fashionable 
 world less satisfactory than you expected. Pre- 
 suming, therefore, upon the privileges of my age, 
 I would suggest that an early marriage, by 
 securing the reversion of your property to off- 
 spring of your own, and settling you at once in 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 207 
 
 the tranquil enjoyment of home, might more 
 permanently secure your honour and happiness 
 than persistence in excesses which, I regret to 
 find, have made your name somewhat notorious, 
 and eiFected a serious injury to your property and 
 prospects." 
 
 " Impertinent old puppy !" — was the first out- 
 burst of Cressingham's indignation, on receiving 
 this lecture at the hands of the man whom his own 
 weaknesses had elevated so strangely above his 
 head. 
 
 " Marry and settle in the country forsooth — 
 ay ! probably as he is about to do on his Welsh 
 farm ! — marry, and become an example to the 
 neighbourhood — edified by the sermons of his 
 friend Chaffles, and fortified by the draughts of 
 his friend Drench ! — Bury myself at Stoke, in 
 the hope that the birth of a son may render 
 'me master of my estate ! — I am much obliged to 
 him!"— 
 
 Released from pecuniary restriction, already 
 were reviving in his heart those impulses of selfish- 
 ness and mistrust, which had their origin in the 
 predominant influence of his fate — the influence 
 of Mammon ; and never had he been so impatient 
 
208 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 of the advice of Docket, as now that it was 
 wise and reasonable. He almost lent an ear 
 to the suggestion of Lord Robert Leigh, who 
 happened to be breakfasting in Hamilton Place 
 when the letter arrived, that he should either 
 horsewhip or call out the man who troubled him 
 with advice instead of assistance. 
 
 " For heaven's sake, my dear fellow,*' cried he, 
 " don't submit to be preached down in this sort 
 of way. If you want a lawyer, I have a capital 
 fellow to recommend to you, who has settled no 
 end of awkward affairs for me, and has money at 
 command instead of sermons. Come with me to 
 Gray's Inn, and you will find a man of the world, 
 instead of a sneaking fellow who, after fleecing 
 you to the skin, is the first to turn round upon 
 you. My friend Snapper will take all manner 
 of trouble off your hands ; and it would not much 
 surprise me if he should discover that this imper- • 
 tinent guardian of yours has been feathering his 
 nest famously at your expense." 
 
 In the heat of his resentment against Atha- 
 nasius, accordingly, Reginald hurried with Lord 
 Robert to the capital man of capital who wa"^ 
 to steer him into smooth water from the midst of 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 209 
 
 billows and breakers, and whose smiling alacrity 
 certainly presented a most agreeable contrast to 
 the resentful impracticability of Docket. The 
 acquisition of such a client as the rich Cressing- 
 ham, was the gaining of a prize in the lottery to a 
 bill-discounting lawyer; ^and it seemed impos- 
 sible to welcome him in terms too accommodating, 
 or on knees too bended. Messrs Snapper and 
 Co., in short, undertook everything, made large 
 advances, and promised more ; and within a week 
 after his introduction to them, Reginald was with 
 Bob Leigh at Newmarket, losing more money 
 and signing more bills than even his own impro- 
 vidence could contemplate without anxiety. 
 
 Young Cressingham was now fairly launched 
 in a career which, though it might have witnessed 
 so many wrecks, presents illusions capable of de- 
 ceiving every new adventurer into a belief that 
 there can be no danger from rocks and shoals 
 known to all navigators, and marked for avoidance 
 in every chart. With the vagueness of percep- 
 tion common to persons on whom exactitude has 
 never been inculcated as a duty, he kept assuring 
 himself that a man of his fortune could afford to 
 exceed ; that he might at times experience a want 
 
210 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 of ready cash ; but that, being still the rich Cres- 
 singham, it was unnecessary to perplex himself by 
 entering into the petty details of his affairs, which 
 with skilful management must speedily come 
 round. He was not yet reduced to the cruel 
 duty of self-denial. 
 
 He accordingly persisted in his habits of 
 lavish expense, and kept a fair face upon the 
 matter. As regarded the world, the great ambi- 
 tion of his superficial nature was to avoid being 
 thought a bore; as regarded himself, to escape 
 being bored. He fancied he must have neglected 
 himself if he felt a moment out of his four-and- 
 twenty hours hang heavy on his hands. The 
 object of a fortune like his, was to provide such 
 a succession of excitements as might supersede 
 the necessity of thinking, feeling, or becoming 
 cognizant of the commonplaces of life. The 
 grand privilege of the rich Cressingham was to 
 commit all the follies committed by others of his 
 class, on a more extended scale. 
 
 Though still smarting under his losses at New- 
 market, accordingly he allowed himself to be 
 persuaded by Bob Leigh that there was no ex- 
 istence during the winter months elsewhere than 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 211 
 
 at Melton. He had got tired of hunting at Ox- 
 ford, — but it was because it was hunting at 
 Oxford. Melton was a very different thing ; and 
 with the aid of the ever ready "capital fellow 
 in Gray's Inn," he was soon proprietor of one 
 of the costliest hunting stables that ever asto- 
 nished the annals of Leicestershire. All men 
 of his fortune hunted; and just as, at Oxford, he 
 had been namby-pambyed into affecting polite 
 literature, he was now spurred on to affect sports- 
 manship, by those who perceived his sensitive 
 anxiety not to fall below the level of a fashionable 
 man of fortune. 
 
 With the exception, however, of Mrs Blair, 
 who, in this new mania of her son found a 
 source of cruel disquietude for her sick room, no 
 one passed a more disagreeable winter than the 
 rich Cressingham. He was an indifferent rider ; 
 and his prodigal habits having supplied him with 
 horses of the highest spirit, and in an abundance 
 which not even the abundance of his hangers on 
 could keep in proper exercise, he was constantly 
 exposing himself in the field ; and Gerald Lang- 
 ley having taken care to inform him that Bob 
 Leigh had been heard to declare him the worst 
 
212 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 seat in Leicestershire, while Morton was known 
 to have whispered that he rode like a tailor, 
 Reginald thought proper to vindicate himself by 
 attempting exploits, the evil issue of one of which 
 laid him on his back for the last two months of 
 the hunting season. 
 
 The friends who kindly consented to make use 
 of his horses during his illness instead of com- 
 forting his sick room, were not, of course, slow to 
 hint that the accident was no more than might 
 have been expected ; that Cress was just as awk- 
 ward on horseback as when he was the laughing 
 stock of Ch. Ch. ; and the next number of the 
 Sporting Magazine contained, in addition to a 
 piquant account of the Melton disasters of the 
 rich Cressingham, a most free and easy exhor- 
 tation to him to put himself into training (if he 
 intended to persist in hunting), under hands which 
 might perhaps enable him to ride his own horses. 
 
 Reginald was furious. Though scarcely able 
 to crawl about, he began agitating himself in 
 all directions to discover the authors of these 
 attacks, — sport to them, but death to him ; — and 
 before he could be induced to cede to the 
 assurances of Bob Leigh and Langley, to whom 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 213 
 
 his accident had proved so providential, that to 
 fight against this sort of bantering would be to 
 confirm his unpopularity for life, the sporting 
 world found out that the rich Cressingham was a 
 touchy blockhead, who would neither give nor 
 take, and must be badgered into better humour. 
 
 It was lucky, perhaps, for Cressingham that his 
 long confinement to his sofa, at the behest of sur- 
 geons summoned from town at an immense cost 
 to declare that he would be safer under the care 
 of the medical attendants of the place, afibrded to 
 him the same welcome relief from the necessity of 
 hunting six days in the week, which a hard frost 
 affords to half the fashionable Meltonians ; for, 
 had he ridden again, he would probably have seen 
 fit to vindicate himself from the imputation of bad 
 riding, at the risk of his life. — 
 
 His days, meanwhile, passed heavily enough. 
 His mind was out of tune for even the slight lite- 
 rary recreations in which he had taken refuge from 
 himself after his illness at Oxford ; and, though he 
 had dispatched an interdiction to his mother 
 against coming to nurse him, in terms which 
 an ancient Roman might have thought severe, 
 lest a maternal visit should expose him to the 
 
214. THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 ridicule of his sporting friends, before the sixth 
 week of his confinement was at an end, it occurred 
 to him more than once to sigh for home, and to 
 wish that his affectionate friends were not quite 
 so keen in the field all the morning, or quite 
 so noisy over their claret at night. — He knew, 
 however, that he should be equally neglected 
 elsewhere. Bob Leigh, Morton, Holmeswell, 
 Langley, all his London associates, were at Mel- 
 ton. There was nothing to be gained by a 
 removal to Hamilton Place. 
 
 The position of his affairs was not calculated to 
 brighten his hours of sickness. So far from being 
 able to detect a flaw in the accounts surrendered 
 by Docket, Snapper and Co. were forced to 
 admit, nay, almost to admire, their professional 
 regularity ; nor was it compatible with their own 
 position relative to their young client to indulge 
 in diatribes upon the culpability of the guardian, 
 who had not forcibly restrained the premature 
 extravagance of his ward. — 
 
 Ashamed, perhaps, of falling so far short of 
 their undertakings in this particular, they made 
 new show of zeal by suggesting, after due exami- 
 nation of the preposterous claims against him. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 215 
 
 resistance against the keeper of a Brighton hotel, 
 where the rich Cressingham had thought it good 
 for his health to retain apartments twelve months 
 in the year, which he visited occasionally for a 
 week ; and, though the nature of the charges in 
 the disputed bill was such as to excite roars of 
 laughter in court, the skilful cross-examination of 
 the plaintiffs attorney brought to light such gross 
 acts of folly and extravagance on the part of the 
 young gentleman, who now refused to pay eleven 
 guineas for a dish of pine-apple fritters, that all 
 the world agreed it would have been worth Regi- 
 nald's while to throw away thrice the amount of 
 the sum claimed, rather than incur for life the 
 stigma of such an exposure. 
 
 No sooner had the press laid hold of the affair, 
 as a fertile source of profitable abuse and witty 
 inuendoes, than the friends previously eager in 
 their advice to him " not to be done by a rascally 
 innkeeper," whispered in all directions, that " It 
 was a pity a man of Cress's fortune had not thrown 
 the money into the fellow's face, and said nothing 
 more about the matter, and a sad mistake to have 
 allowed himself to be so shown up : — the name of 
 
216 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 '^Pine-apple fritters Cressingham ' being likely 
 to stick to him for life ! " — 
 
 Unluckily, it stuck to him in a time and place 
 where his credit as a reasonable being was more 
 than usually important. During his confinement 
 at Melton, one of the many sources of bitterness 
 by which he had striven to make the solitude to 
 which he was assigned by fashionable friendship 
 as irksome as possible, was the newspaper repu- 
 tation of the " clever Cressingham." A great 
 political crisis was at hand ; and Reginald seemed 
 to interest himself in the parliamentary debates, 
 chiefly for the purpose of studying, period by 
 period, cheer by cheer, the reports of his speeches, 
 as if bent upon discovering the secret of his cousin's 
 eloquence. It seemed hard, indeed, that a man 
 educated in obscurity, who had passed through 
 college without notice, should have thus suddenly 
 blossomed into fame. 
 
 Recalling to mind the praise lavished upon his 
 own efforts at the spouting club by Percy and 
 other worshippers of his literary aurora bo- 
 realis, he felt satisfied that opportunity alone 
 was wanting to place the name of another Cres- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 217 
 
 singham in the muster roll of fame. Withdrawn 
 for a time from the noisy orgies of his dissolute 
 companions, he began to perceive that he had 
 been unconsciously, if not reluctantly, drawn into 
 the vortex; and flattered himself that because 
 the contemptible sphere in which he had sought 
 a level afforded him no real enjoyment, he pos- 
 sessed aptitude for higher things; — and deter- 
 mined to buy his way into parliament, where 
 nature would do the rest. 
 
 Not even the repeated disappointments and 
 personal thwartings which might have been 
 expected to modify his confidence in the royal 
 road to learning, or golden road to success, — 
 could inspire Reginald with wisdom. — He still 
 imagined that gold would buy golden opinions; 
 and that the rich Cressingham need only avow the 
 pretensions of being called the clever Cressing- 
 ham to achieve a great reputation. 
 
 It was his own fault if he had failed in minor 
 pretensions. He might have been blackballed at 
 White's by the malice of envious younger bro- 
 thers ; rejected by the patronesses of Almack's, 
 whose daughters he had not chosen to invite to 
 dance ; quizzed at the moors as a bad shot, and 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
218 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 at Melton as a bad seat, or vilified by the Sun- 
 day papers as a stingy fellow after the expen- 
 diture of two hundred thousand pounds ; but it 
 was only because, to achieve such trifles, he had 
 not chosen to apply the full force of his faculties. 
 And if, after compassing his entrance into the 
 House, he thought proper to get up the steam and 
 attain parliamentary distinction, he entertained 
 little doubt that the new clever Cressingham 
 would very shortly eclipse the old. 
 
 These ambitions, and the irritability arising 
 from their neglect of his sick room during the 
 hunting season, produced inevitable estrangement 
 between Reginald and his noisy associates. — Un- 
 accustomed to self-restraint, he allowed his dis- 
 gust to become sufficiently apparent. — The state 
 of his health forbad all possibility of a renewal in 
 Hamilton Place of the intemperate orgies of 
 his hunting box ; and no sooner had he declared 
 his intention of dispensing with an opera box, — 
 giving up his team, — disposing of his villa, and 
 renouncing divers other expensive superfluities 
 of dandy life, than Bob Leigh began to whisper 
 at Crockford's, that, after all, he was afraid he had 
 been mistaken in Cress; — that Cress was not the 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 219 
 
 right good fellow lie had fancied ; that Cress had 
 a knack of always thinking himself imposed upon ; 
 — that Cress would never make, or, at all events, 
 never keep a friend; — and all this because Cress 
 was of opinion that he had been " keeping" his 
 friends long enough, and that it was time he 
 should think of himself — nay, even think for 
 others ! 
 
 For, lo ! the general election so long antici- 
 pated was at hand ; and placards of " Cres- 
 siNGHAM, THE Friend OF THE People," already 
 clothed all the blank walls within forty miles of 
 Stoke Paddocks ! — 
 
220 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 In politics pray let's be staunch, 
 Arm'd cap-a-pie against the French, — 
 Abstain from plots, and only drive at 
 The public welfare or our private. 
 For England's sacred glory try 
 Turks, Jews, and Jesuits to defy. 
 And keep our places till we die. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 " I AM sure I don't know any one who lias a 
 better right to represent the county than a young 
 man of my son's property," was Mrs Blair's re- 
 joinder to the lamentations of Mrs Chaffles, by 
 whom the first intimation of his intentions was 
 brought to The Wilderness. 
 
 " But, my dear ma'am— such a county as this !" 
 persisted the Vicar's lady. " So very young a 
 man to attempt a contest with our old and vene- 
 rated members ! In the teeth, too, of the long 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 221 
 
 established Conservative principles of the Cres- 
 singham family." 
 
 ** My son has no such close relationship to his 
 predecessors as to bind him to their political 
 principles in opposition to his conscience," — re- 
 torted Mrs Blair. 
 
 '^ His conscience!" murmured Justina, who had 
 accompanied her grandmother. 
 
 " And as to Conservatism, the very name is 
 scarcely ten years old," added Mrs Blair, resent- 
 ing anything that sounded like an imputation 
 upon her son. 
 
 " Oh ! certainly, ma'am — certainly. Far be it 
 from me to find any fault with Mr Cressingham 
 for asserting his independence. Only, between 
 ourselves, the Doctor is greatly distressed at 
 foreseeing the vast sum of money about to be 
 expended by his young patron, — and the defeat 
 certain to ensue." 
 
 " But why certain to ensue ? " — demanded Mrs 
 Blair, in a nervous tone. 
 
 " Because Mr Cressingham has put forward 
 addresses at variance with the interests of the 
 county and with his own. Was not that what Mr 
 
 L 2 
 
222 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Drench was saying at our house this morning, 
 grandmamma ? " observed the young girl. 
 
 " Don't talk about what you don't understand, 
 Tina," said the old lady ; while Mrs Blair mur- 
 mured, in a tremulous voice — " Why, certainly, if 
 Mr Drench is of opinion that Reginald has acted 
 rashly, I fear it is all over with him. I dare say 
 Drench was afraid of hazarding his real opinion 
 to me. He certainly seemed to insinuate yester- 
 day that it was impossible to guess the result of 
 the poll." 
 
 "You see, my dear ma'am," rejoined Mrs 
 Chaffles, cheered by the growing despondency of 
 the invalid, "both Mr Drench and the Doctor 
 are placed in a most painful and embarrassing 
 situation by Mr Cressingham's manifestation of 
 opinion. Mr Cressingham has certainly a right 
 to count to the utmost upon their support in his 
 canvass. But just consider what a figure they 
 will cut ! — All the folks, gentle or simple, in 
 these parts, are out and out Tories. Sir Giles 
 Cressingham, ma'am, was a stiff Tory, — Mr 
 Docket, ma'am, was a stiff Tory ; and the poor 
 dear Doctor has been preaching and praying for 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 223 
 
 the good cause for the last eight-and-thirty years. 
 At all the tenants' dinners, at every meeting at 
 Stoke, — in private and in public, ma'am, — 
 assizes, bible-meetings, races, and what not, — 
 wherever there was a speech to be made, it was 
 made in favour of Church and State. And now 
 to have to go and swallow these words will, at 
 the Doctor's age more particularly, be exceed- 
 ingly disagreeable." 
 
 " But why is grandpapa to swallow his words?" 
 demanded Justina. " Mr Cressingham's addresses 
 talk of nothing but civil and religious liberty all 
 over the globe. He cannot want grandpapa to 
 make a slave of himself because he happens to 
 be patron of the living of which he is the in- 
 cumbent." 
 
 " Nonsense, nonsense ! " interrupted her grand- 
 mother. — "You don't suppose that the Doctor 
 intends to run counter to the interests of the 
 family to which he has been attached for eight- 
 and-thirty years ? — No, my dear ! — Your grand- 
 papa is a man of higher principles ! Only he 
 feels his situation to be a delicate one ; and is, of 
 course, impatient that Mr Cressingham should 
 make his appearance to give him instructions 
 
224 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 about putting out tlie addresses. The London 
 solicitors did not even pay the Doctor the compli- 
 ment of consulting him about the deputation that 
 was got up to solicit Mr Cressingham to stand." — 
 
 But though the old Vicar, now nearly in his 
 dotage, was willing to accept proprietorship of 
 Stoke Paddocks as sufficient evidence of fitness to 
 be the county representative, less enlightened 
 men were less persuadable. — It may be an advan- 
 tage in a ballot at a fashionable club for the 
 aspirant to be little known, so as to excite neither 
 envy or malice ; but, in the case of a county mem- 
 ber, it was held essential by its leading gentlemen 
 that something more should be apparent in their 
 future representative than the extent of his estates. 
 A certain number of men of liberal opinions, 
 indeed, impatient of the subjection in which the 
 county had long been held, voted for Reginald 
 rather as a notification of their own opposition 
 than with any desire for his success ; and, in the 
 sequel, all that money could effect was attempted 
 in vain, in order to bring him within even respect- 
 able distance of the men he was desirous of 
 unseating. 
 
 Even among the people, a saucy cry arose of 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 225 
 
 " Who is Cressingliam, of Stoke Paddocks ? " 
 They all knew vStoke Paddocks — they none of 
 them knew Cressingliam ; nay, they none of them 
 wanted to know him. He was a man who drew his 
 income from the county, and spent it in London. 
 He was a man whose name was unconnected with 
 county charities or county improvements. He 
 had done nothing for them — he probably would 
 do nothing. He was not even born among them. 
 He was not a true Cressingham. He was a 
 changeling, — an alien, — a nobody. — 
 
 As the polling proceeded, and the money scat- 
 tered by Messrs Snapper and Co. as lavishly as 
 if it had not cost fifteen per cent, in the raising, 
 excited momentary uneasiness in his opponents, 
 other civilities besides rotten eggs and dead cats 
 were flung in the face of the indignant Regi- 
 nald. 
 
 " Who ate the pine-apple fritters and then 
 refused to pay for them ? — Cressingham the 
 fubble!" was paraded on sundry placards before 
 his flashing eyes. 
 
 " Who pays his French cook the maintenance 
 of sixteen poor families?" — was another of the 
 queries addressed to him ; and by degrees a thou- 
 
 L 3 
 
226 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 sand anecdotes of his dissolute and prodigal career 
 evoked the hooting and execrations of the fickle 
 throng. 
 
 But this was not the worst. Though deeply- 
 mortified at finding himself indifferently supported 
 by the county gentlemen of liberal opinions, — 
 though enraged at being called to account for his 
 pleasures and pursuits, the thing that touched 
 him most was the absence of a considerable 
 number of his more respectable tenants from the 
 mounted procession got up in his honour. They 
 chose to be steadfast in their opinions. They 
 had no clever cousin in the House, on the Tory 
 interest, to pique them into opposition. The 
 honourable member for Wilsbury was nothing to 
 them ; and to the utter mortification of the poor 
 old Vicar, a considerable number declined giving 
 their votes to their landlord. A few, from motives 
 of respect, abstained from voting at all; but it 
 was observed that all those who had subscribed 
 for the piece of plate for Athanasius Docket, 
 which had given such offence to his ward, pre- 
 sumed to record their votes against " Cressingham 
 the friend of the people," albeit proprietor of Stoke 
 Paddocks. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 227 
 
 It was a stormy contest. The supporters retained 
 by the emissaries of Messrs Snapper and Co., were 
 far short of the most respectable condition; and 
 an aiFray that signalized the course of the second 
 day's poll ended in a loss of life, which added new 
 blackness to the evil renown of the junior candi- 
 date. 
 
 The young gentleman " who ate the pine-apple 
 fritters and then refused to pay for them," was 
 made accountable for all ; nay, even the liberal 
 party affected to consider that young Cressingham 
 had injured their cause by making his unpopu- 
 larity and incompetency pass for the weakness 
 of their party. — Deeply mortified by the revival 
 of the pine-apple fritters affair, he had made an 
 indifferent speech, and was felt to have broken 
 down on the hustings ; and when, at the close of 
 the contest, he became aware that he had expended 
 six thousand pounds for the simple pleasure of 
 being pelted, vilified, and pronounced incompetent 
 by all sides of the question, he had, indeed, some 
 cause to wish that his first flight in public life had 
 been of a less aspiring nature. 
 
 Respectability was the word which had been 
 most advantageously arrayed against him. The 
 
228 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 respectability of the old members, tlie respect- 
 ability of the conservative cause, the respectabilty 
 of his predecessors at Stoke Paddocks, the respect- 
 ability even of the Tory guardian who had retired 
 in disgust from the management of his affairs, 
 were cited in black, white, and grey, in contra- 
 distinction to all that he had ever done at Oxford, 
 Melton, London, or left z^wdone at Stoke Pad- 
 docks. And all this in presence of the Duke of 
 Granton and Lord Ashleigh, who had proposed one 
 of the sitting members ; to say nothing of the 
 Marquis of Beaconsfield, who was nephew to the 
 other; — " Earl Percy saw his fall." 
 
 In town, the news of his defeat excited no 
 surprise. The Reform Club had not judged its 
 support necessary to the rich Cressingham, who 
 pretended to stand forth as champion of their 
 cause ; and at Crockford's and elsewhere, where 
 politics excite about the same interest as any 
 other game at hazard, scarcely a man had been 
 found to back "poor Cress" with a bet. His 
 young contemporaries had long decided that in all 
 his undertakings " Cress would put his foot into 
 it." 
 
 One of the unkindest cuts of all hazarded 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 229 
 
 against him on the hustings was, that in spite of 
 the extent of his rent-roll, the rich Cressingham 
 was in difficulties such as rendered a seat in par- 
 liament peculiarly desirable ; nor was his resent- 
 ment of the imputation diminished when he had 
 grounds to surmise that intelligence of the 
 derangement of his affairs had been circulated by 
 the personal friends of his ex-guardian. That 
 Docket should consider it worth while to cabal for 
 the political interests of a county from which he 
 had retired for ever, and with such flying colours, 
 appeared, indeed, scarcely probable ; and though 
 Messrs Snapper and Co., by whom the chain of 
 evidence was traced link by link, protested that 
 the assistance afforded by the extensive personal 
 influence of Athanasius to the conservative cause,' 
 was a mere repayment of the sterling aid of the 
 Carltonians, which had caused him, — him, the 
 attorney, — him, the rebuffed of the rich Cressing- 
 ham, — to be returned by the worthy and inde- 
 pendent electors of Llanstephen, the borough 
 immediately adjoining the seat in Wales which 
 he had modestly termed a farm, Reginald could 
 scarcely believe in so deeply laid a scheme of 
 political intrigue. 
 
230 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 The result, at least, was indisputable. Athana- 
 sius Docket was returned to Parliament, and 
 Reginald signally defeated. — Athanasius was now 
 his superior. — Athanasius was in a position to 
 achieve the laurels by which he had hoped to out- 
 triumph the honourable member for Wilsbury ! — 
 
 Under this new mortification, to whom was he 
 to turn for sympathy ? — Messrs Snapper and Co., 
 who had earnestly dissuaded him from a contest, to 
 provide the funds for which they had been forced 
 to ruinous extremities, now shook their heads 
 despairingly, if not rebukingly; while poor 
 old Chaffles found himself too bitterly upbraided 
 with his apostasy by his clerical brethren and 
 Tory neighbours, to find the election a plea- 
 sant topic for discussion. Nay, he almost dreaded 
 the idea of entering his pulpit, lest peradventure 
 the grim visage of his patron. Sir Giles, should 
 thrust itself forth from the family vault, to revile 
 him for desertion of the sacred banner. 
 
 Reginald was consequently alone in his sullen- 
 ness. On proceeding from Stoke Paddocks to the 
 election, so sanguine were his expectations of 
 triumph, so earnest his reliance on the potency of 
 the golden charm, upon which, from his youth 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 231 
 
 upwards, he had been taught to rely, that he 
 had all but bespoken festivities to signalise 
 liis return to Parliament; and it struck him, 
 as his travelling carriage re-entered the park, 
 that he discerned traces of the recent removal 
 of a wooden framework purporting to form 
 the foundation of a triumphal arch; and though 
 the head gardener protested that certain stu- 
 pendous faggots of laurels which he found tied 
 up in the shrubberies, had been prepared to grace 
 the carriages conveying voters to the poll, Regi- 
 nald had only too shrewd a guess at their real 
 destination. 
 
 It was summer time. A glorious sunset was 
 brightening the scene, over which the disappointed 
 man cast his eyes in disgust. While waiting for the 
 dinner bell, instead of proceeding to The Wilder- 
 ness to visit his mother, according to his wont when 
 he had nothing else to do, by some inexplicable 
 force of sympathy he betook himself to the shade 
 of the beech-tree under which it was the custom 
 aforetime of Sir Giles Cressingham to sit and muse, 
 when equally out of sorts with the world; and, as 
 if influenced by some local spell, his moody 
 thoughts gradually concentrated themselves into a 
 
232 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 most Cressinghamian thirst for revenge. Baffled 
 in his dearest ambition, his ears still tingling, and 
 his heart still smarting, under the buffets and 
 insults he had endured, the man of fortune was not 
 long in finding objects whereon to exhaust his 
 vengeance. The following day, notices of eject- 
 ment were served by his steward upon the refrac- 
 tory tenants who had withheld their support from 
 their landlord; and the following week, the 
 County Chronicle, supported by the money and 
 influence of the Duke of Granton and the Earl of 
 Ashleigh, contained a bitter article upon the 
 tyranny of the self-styled Liberal candidate, which 
 the Conservative press judged worthy of being 
 transferred to the London papers. 
 
 A contest in which the interests of the people had 
 scarcely the shadow of a share, — a contest origi- 
 nating, on one side, in love of notoriety, and, on 
 the other, in love of place, — was now made the 
 groundwork of a series of splendid bursts of news- 
 paper eloquence ; in the course of which the word 
 Freedom, repeated nine hundred and ninety-nine 
 times, produced the necessity for increasing the 
 printer's supply of upper-case F's, and the burn- 
 ing in effigy of the rich Cressingham, or, as he was 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 233 
 
 now termed, the tyrant of Stoke Paddocks, in liis 
 county town, and divers villages and hamlets 
 attached to the Granton interest, and consequently 
 peculiarly conservative ; — which, had they pre- 
 sumed to vote against the Duke of Granton's 
 member, would have undergone precisely the 
 same sentence as the recalcitrants of Stoke. 
 
 Meanwhile, finding himself braved and threat- 
 ened on his own territories, Reginald renounced 
 his intention of quitting home for a time, and 
 stood his ground manfully at the Hall for the cul- 
 tivation of his disgusts ! There was no one whom, 
 under circumstances so disagreeable, he could 
 invite to bear him company ; and, with the excep- 
 tion of unacceptable letters by the post, no change 
 or incident enlivened his solitary days. It was a 
 desolate season for a man who discerns no charm 
 in the aspect of nature. There was no shooting, — 
 no hunting, — and the rich man had neither sim- 
 plicity nor philosophy to qualify him for a brother 
 of the angle. The country was consequently de- 
 testable. The woods were green, — the fields 
 glorious, — the gardens bright with flowers. Har- 
 monious sounds and sights abounded on every side ; 
 — but there was a deficiency of all which, to per- 
 
234 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 sons wedded to the artificialities of society, con- 
 stitutes the charm of country life. There was too 
 much sunshine of a morning, — too much daylight 
 of an evening; and Cressingham consequently 
 found his beautiful place utterly insupportable. — 
 Nearly ten years had elapsed since, on coming 
 into possession, the Hall was placed in complete 
 order ; and, compared with the luxuriousness of 
 his over-furnished town mansion, it now seemed 
 dingy and old-fashioned. He was weary of every- 
 thing around him. Unattached to the place by 
 early associations, all became a blank when com- 
 pelled to trust for enjoyment to its resources. 
 
 Moreover, there is something that weighs like 
 lead upon the spirits in the routine of a noble 
 establishment, when the proprietors know that 
 though its splendours proceed as if by mechanism, 
 the master spring is every moment in hazard of 
 breaking. The same number of servants in the 
 household, — the same quantity of plate on the 
 table, — the same banquet, — the same illumination ; 
 — yet ruin silently and invisibly hovering over all ! 
 
 The tyrant of Stoke Paddocks began to fancy 
 that he discerned significant smiles upon the faces 
 of his attendants ; — that they peered into the con- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 235 
 
 tents of his disagreeable letters, — that they per- 
 used the newspapers which vilified his character ; 
 that they were laughing in the servants* hall and 
 steward's room over the caricatures of Pine Apple 
 Fritters Cressingham and the strictures of the 
 press. In vain did he betake himself to a 
 dumb-waiter to get rid of their attendance. He 
 could not ring the bell without feeling that they 
 had the advantage over him ; and was forced to 
 confess that if no man can be a hero to his valet- 
 de^chambre, there is no difficulty in being a 
 coward. 
 
 Mrs Blair, when he sauntered occasionally into 
 her close room, to find fault with the atmosphere, 
 and wonder at the patience of little Justina, who 
 devoted a portion of every day to comfort and 
 read to the invalid to whom she was indebted for 
 many a serious act of kindness, noticed with 
 regret that his countenance was beginning to 
 be worn with the premature cares of life. But she 
 had not courage to attempt to obtain his confi- 
 dence. It was only her young companion who 
 ventured openly to attack him. 
 
 " How wrong you are to come and make your 
 mother anxious by your long face, Mr Cressing- 
 
236 THE MAN or FORTUNE. 
 
 ham ! " said the fearless girl one day, when he 
 overtook her in the park, on her way to visit The 
 Wilderness. — " In her lonely room Mrs Blair has 
 nothing to do, after you are gone, but suggest 
 causes for your being so out of humour. She 
 fancies you crossed in love ;— she fancies you ill — 
 unhappy — a thousand things; instead of simply 
 perceiving that you are disappointed at not find- 
 ing yourself so great a man as you expected." 
 
 " I thank you ! " replied Reginald, in a bitter 
 tone ; — " I sincerely thank you.'* 
 
 " Yes, do thank me, — you are quite right to 
 thank me, — for I am the only person who dare tell 
 you a little wholesome truth. If other people had 
 given you as much cause to thank them for plain 
 speaking, you would not be moping alone here 
 at Stoke, accomplishing no good purpose, boring 
 every one as much as you are bored yourself." 
 
 " So far from being bored, — " Reginald was 
 beginning, — 
 
 " Do iiot deny it ! " interrupted his little friend. 
 " You do not derive one particle of pleasure from 
 the place which strangers cannot pass on the road 
 without admiration. When we were chiklren 
 here, you were as fond of it as I was. As its 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 237 
 
 master, you see in the estate only a place where 
 timber may be cut down to defray your London 
 expenses. What has become of Annesley hanger, 
 where I used to find the first violets every spring ? 
 — Gone ! — What has become of the woodlands 
 which used to clothe yonder naked hill, above 
 Upham ? Upon my word, I do not wonder at your 
 disliking a spot so fraught with disagreeable re- 
 proaches !" — 
 
 " I dislike a place where there is no society, — 
 no neighbourhood," said Reginald, nettled by her 
 presumption. " Who is there at Stoke, pray, with 
 whom a gentleman can associate ? " 
 
 " With your fortune, you should secure gentle- 
 manly associates in your own house. Where are 
 your friends ? — Where are even your com- 
 panions ? — such companions as they were — when 
 you did think proper to fill the old Hall with 
 company ! " 
 
 " What temptation could I offer to people of the 
 world to come and stay with me ? Not a creature 
 within ten miles round whom I could invite to 
 meet them ! " 
 
 "There is the Duke of Granton's family at 
 Haxington, and Lord Beaconsfield only a few 
 
238 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 miles further, who fill their houses from a much 
 greater distance," replied Justina, coolly. " As 
 to the immediate neighbourhood, if it boast of no 
 very fine people to do you honour, you have done 
 nothing to improve its sociability ; — for our little 
 circle — a circle that satisfied us — is broken up 
 by the discords of the late contest, which has 
 done nothing but spend your money, make you 
 ridiculous, and my poor old grandfather — but of 
 that I must not allow myself to speak." 
 
 " You seem to allow yourself to speak of most 
 things with very little ceremony, Justina," said 
 Reginald, less angrily than might have been 
 expected. 
 
 " To you, — because you will never be more to 
 me than when we were playmates. Had you 
 grown up into the great man we all expected, 
 perhaps I might have learnt to forget I had known 
 you as a good-natured boy. As it is, I sincerely 
 pity you, Mr Cressingham ; for I look upon a man 
 like you, blest with the power of doing so much 
 good in the world and doing none, even to your- 
 self, to be as great a criminal as many who are 
 on the treadmill." 
 
 This boldness on the part of one whom he had 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 239 
 
 dearly loved as a child, but whom his worldly eye 
 now regarded only as the humble companion of 
 his mother, — whose business it was to wind worsted, 
 ring for coals, and hold her tongue, — effected no- 
 thing for Reginald but to keep him away from 
 The Wilderness. Conscious of the truth of Jus- 
 tina's accusation that he never made the smallest 
 sacrifice to his mother's happiness or comfort, he 
 amended the matter by absenting himself alto- 
 gether. 
 
 The truant gained nothing in peace of mind, 
 however, by his removal to town. Though the 
 expedients of his men of expedience had arranged 
 such terms with his creditors as relieved him from 
 immediate anxiety, his mind was not quite so 
 secure as his person. The evil day of general 
 settlement, though deferred, could not be deferred 
 for ever; and between the impertinent taunt of 
 little Justina, — " if you want companionship 
 at Stoke, why not look out for a wife ?" — and the 
 grave hint of Snapper — " if you want fifty thou- 
 sand pounds, why not look out for an heiress ?" — 
 he felt at times almost disposed to exchange the 
 noble jointure conveyed by the Stoke Paddocks 
 
240 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 title-deeds, for a hundred thousand pounds, or so, 
 in the way of dowry. 
 
 Heiresses are seldom wanting in money-making 
 London, more particularly in those secondary 
 circles with which he had been scoffed by Gerald 
 Langley for making himself familiar ; and he re- 
 membered having presented his friend, Lord 
 Robert, with malice prepense, to the only daughter 
 of a rich brewer, who was said to be eager to con- 
 nect his overgrown inheritance with the empty 
 title of ladyship. She was an ugly girl, if he re- 
 collected rightly — but what then ? — In the choice 
 of an heiress, people must not be too fastidious. — 
 Provided the gilding be thick enough, it will 
 cover any amount of defect or infirmity, personal 
 or ancestral. The young lady in question, how- 
 ever, was what is called " not so very ill-looking 
 for an heiress." — There was nothing absolutely 
 loathsome in her features — nothing positively 
 repellent in her figure ; and Reginald, more at 
 his ease in the circles of Portland Place than in 
 that of the Duchess of Penzance, did not find the 
 courtship to which shortly afterwards he addressed 
 himself, half so irksome as Lord Robert Leigh, 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 24-1 
 
 who, by seeming to plead privilege of peerage to 
 " come, see, and conquer," had incurred as rapid 
 a defeat. 
 
 Had the fashionable season been in progress, 
 Reginald might, perhaps, have experienced more 
 reluctance. But the great world was in its country 
 houses; the rout world in its hunting boxes; 
 and London given up to the sobriety of family 
 coaches and parties to the play. — Not a coronet 
 was astir to distract the vain mind of the spend- 
 thrift from its purpose ; and day after day did he 
 submit with decreasing disgust to the operation of 
 morning visits to the work-table of Miss Florence 
 Worts. 
 
 That a young man like the rich Cressingham, 
 handsome in his person, choice in his dress, fami- 
 liar with the light literature of the day, and plea- 
 sant enough in his manners when he felt at ease, 
 should prove a welcome visitor, was only natural. 
 Of the numerous pretendants, past and present, 
 to the hand of the heiress, Reginald was certainly 
 the most distinguished; nor was he slow to re- 
 mark that his arrival was always greeted with a 
 smile, and that significant looks were exchanged 
 as he entered the room between the fair Florence 
 
 VOL. I, M 
 
242 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 and a certain Miss Pettigrew, ex-governess and 
 toady regnant, who officiated as her chaperon. 
 The influence of the favour he thus enjoyed was 
 remarkable ; and the guest, so awkward and silent 
 at Maunderwell House, became graceful and elo- 
 quent in Portland Place. 
 
 He could not help feeling, however, that Flo- 
 rence was somewhat relentless in her inflictions of 
 vulgar uncles and cousins upon his acquaintance. 
 He had found himself compelled to acknowledge, 
 within hail of Crockford's windows, the bow of a 
 Mr Bartholomew Worts, a wholesale druggist in 
 Lothbury ; and to endure the hand-kissing of a 
 blue coachful of Misses Worts, of Bedford Square, 
 who, on more than one occasion, fairly drove him 
 out of the Park. 
 
 But such sacrifices were not to be put in com- 
 petition with a hundred thousaml pounds in hand, 
 and three hundred thousand in the bush. The free 
 use of money had taught him the value of money ; 
 and he accordingly redoubled in attentions, even 
 while the Christmas dinner parties of the Worts 
 family were monopolizing whole cartloads of 
 turkeys and chines. He was not apprehensive, 
 on this occasion, of premature disclosures in the 
 
 i 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 243 
 
 Morning Post. Burrowed in the hyperborean 
 circles of Portland Place, he defied even the most 
 acute terriers of the fashionable world. 
 
 Time drew on, and the well applied spur and 
 thong of his knowings-friend in Gray's Inn, at 
 length brought Reginald to the proposing post. 
 By degrees, he had become personally desirous 
 of the match. With very little tutoring, and the 
 ard of the Cressingham diamonds, he fancied that 
 Florence would preside with honour over his 
 establishment in Hamilton Place. Clever and 
 lively, her conversation amused him ; and he be- 
 gan to fancy that the following winter at Stoke 
 Paddocks would pass far more agreeably than the 
 present one in Hamilton Place. 
 
 For, with the exception of the moments devoted 
 to courtship, there was very little ta reconcile him 
 to the four hours of daylight in the twenty-four, 
 of a London winter. The new parliament was 
 assembled. The honourable member for Elan- 
 stephen was scudding about Whitehall in a 
 cabriolet of unimpeachable propriety, looking 
 grave, spruce, and assiduous, as became a new 
 member; while the morning papers once more 
 enlightened their great letters with extracts from 
 
244 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 the luminous speeches of the honourable member 
 for Wilsbury. 
 
 " I wish you would bring your cousin here some 
 morning, Mr Cressingham," said Florence one day, 
 when her fashionable suitor, with flushing cheek 
 and flashing eye, was actually awaiting an oppor- 
 tunity for the proposal he had so long meditated. 
 
 " I regret that you should have hit upon one of 
 the only requests with which it is not in my power 
 to comply," observed Reginald, his countenance 
 overclouded in a moment. 
 
 " And why not ?" persisted Florence ; and with- 
 out waiting for an answer, she burst forth into a 
 violent panegyric on the member for Wilsbury, to 
 which the ex-governess chaunted forth a second, 
 strictly in tune. — " My father is a devoted admirer 
 of your cousin's talents and principles," said she. 
 " My father swears by Mr Cressingham, does he 
 not, Miss Pettigrew ? So does my uncle Bartholo- 
 mew; so do all our city connexions. Such 
 eloquence, — such decision, — such consistency in 
 all his speeches ! — We always read them aloud, 
 and sometimes more than once, — do we not, Miss 
 Pettigrew ?" 
 
 The ex-governess was smilingly confirmative. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 245 
 
 '• Papa considers him the leading man of the 
 day, does he not, Miss Pettigrew ? and my 
 uncle Bartholomew has betted a hundred guineas 
 with my uncle John, that if ever the Tories come 
 in, he will have a seat in the cabinet !" 
 
 While Florence was making her usual appeal to 
 Miss Pettigrew, Reginald imperceptibly shrugged 
 his shoulders. 
 
 " I trust, therefore, that you will not deny us 
 so great a pleasure as your cousin's acquaintance," 
 added his intended bride. "I assure you he 
 will be welcomed here on bended knees. Will 
 he " 
 
 " Not upon my introduction, certainly," hastily 
 interrupted Reginald ; " for I myself have not the 
 honour of his acquaintance." — 
 
 " Not acquainted with your own cousin ?'* ex- 
 claimed Miss Worts, — warm with all the humanities 
 of kith and kinship with the families of uncle 
 Bartholomew and uncle John ; — " how very extra- 
 ordinary ! — Is it not. Miss Pettigrew?" « 
 
 "My mother was extremely ill-used by her 
 brother, the father of Mr Cressingham of Manny 
 Park," replied Reginald, gravely ; " a coldness 
 
 M 2 
 
2^6 THE 3IAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 ensued; nor have I any object in seeking a 
 reconciliation." — 
 
 " How very provoking !" exclaimed Florence. — 
 " Is it not, Miss Pettigrew ?'* 
 
 " Very provoking, my dear." 
 
 " To own the truth," said she, again turning to 
 Reginald, "when I was introduced to you last 
 year at the Caledonian Ball, we thought you were 
 the clever Cressingham — did we not, Miss Petti- 
 grew ? — and even after finding out my mistake, I 
 always flattered myself that, through you, we 
 mio^ht still come to know him." 
 
 " I am sorry you should have been disap- 
 pointed," observed Reginald drily, not a little 
 piqued ; adding, in a tenderer voice — " I, at least, 
 have found in you all that I anticipated at our first 
 meeting; that is," he continued, perceiving that 
 Miss Pettigrew had betaken herself into the 
 other room in search of Burke's * Landed Gentry,' 
 to look out for Cressingham of Manny Park, 
 'i all that can promise happiness in domestic life 
 to the man whom you favour with your choice." 
 
 " I am sure I hope my virtues may keep their 
 word," retorted Florence, with a saucier laugh 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 247 
 
 than Reginald thought altogether becoming so 
 critical a moment. 
 
 " May I be permitted to add « amen' to your 
 wish?" — demanded he, drawing a little closer to- 
 wards the work-table. 
 
 " Certainly, if you have any interest in the 
 affair," replied Florence, still smiling, but with- 
 out casting down her eyes, or blushing, as he 
 expected. 
 
 "^wy interest?" reiterated Reginald, his breath 
 coming short, and his countenance assuming a still 
 more earnest expression, when he saw, through 
 the folding doors, that Miss Pettigrew was busy 
 with vol. I, of Burke, unaware that letter C is 
 included in vol. II. " Any interest? — When the 
 hopes dearest to my heart are " 
 
 " My dear Mr Cressingham ! — recollect your- 
 self ! — What are you saying ?" cried Florence, still 
 perfectly self-possessed. 
 
 " I am saying what I trust my conduct for the 
 last two months has fully prepared you to hear," 
 replied he, really breathless with emotion, " that 
 if the offer of my hand and heart " 
 
 " You cannot be serious ! " again ruthlessly 
 interrupted the young lady. — " You cannot intend 
 
248 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 to propose to me ? — you surely are aware that I 
 am engaged." 
 
 ^'Engaged I" cried Reginald, sinking into a 
 cliair. 
 
 " To my father's partner, Mr Jeremiah Jones, 
 whom we are daily expecting home from his 
 estates in Jamaica." 
 
 " I have certainly heard you allude to the 
 arrival of a Mr Jones," faltered Reginald ; " but 
 after all the encouragement you have given me, 
 how was I to conjecture " 
 
 " Encouragement?" repeated Florence, scarcely 
 repressing a smile. " Have I not admitted to 
 you our ulterior object in making your acquaint- 
 ance ? " 
 
 " In making it, perhaps. But when you saw 
 my growing attachment — when you became aware 
 that it was my intention to offer you my hand " 
 
 " How was I to surmise anything of the kind ? 
 I know that I am plain, — that I have no attrac- 
 tions of family or person. Your friend. Lord 
 Robert Leigh, proposed to me, I admit ; but, as 
 he made no secret among his friends, only as 
 a more agreeable alternative than the Bench. 
 From you, however, — from the rich Mr Cressing- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 249 
 
 ham,— from Mr Pine-apple Fritters Cressingham, 
 I thought I could not be exposed to a similar 
 insult. You could not be blinded to the frightful- 
 ness of the ugly heiress by the derangement of 
 your affairs. With you I thought myself safe ; and 
 consequently assumed the ease and frankness of a 
 friend." 
 
 Involuntarily Reginald started at this allusion 
 to the interested nature of his views. 
 
 " I am quite aware of my position," added 
 Florence, more sternly ; — " I am a brewer's 
 daughter, — a sallow, ill-featured girl, from whose 
 appearance, when announced among strangers, 
 people turn away with indifference or dislike. 
 The man I am to marry has been accustomed from 
 childhood to all this ; and those who, not thus 
 familiarized, affect blindness, can only be actuated 
 by motives which expose them to my utmost con- 
 tempt. Is it not so. Miss Pettigrew ? " 
 
 " Certainly, my dear ! " responded the gover- 
 ness, who was now poring over vol. II in search 
 of ' Cressingham of Manny Park,' right opposite 
 to Cressingham of Stoke Paddocks; — who, per- 
 ceiving that he had been played upon, to divert 
 the winter dulness of a house in Portland Place, 
 
 M 3 
 
250 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 by a young lady capable of becoming a Mrs 
 Jeremiah Jones, and whose betrothed was visiting 
 his plantations in Jamaica, made so hasty and 
 angry an exit, as scarcely allowed time for Miss 
 Pettigrew to curtsey him out, and ring the bell 
 on his departure. 
 
 Three days before, Reginald had instructed his 
 capital friend in Gray's Inn to prepare his rent- 
 roll for being laid before his future father-in-law, 
 the wealthy Worts, of Liquorpond Street and Port- 
 land Place. Three days afterwards, he wrote from 
 Paris, to require such a credit on Rothschild as 
 would enable him to make an extended tour on 
 the continent. Snapper was far more taken by 
 surprise by this proposal than Florence by hers. 
 But it was too late to remonstrate. His victim 
 was for the present safe out of his clutches. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 251 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Now there is nothing gives a man such spirits. 
 Leavening his blood, as cayenne doth a curry, 
 As going at full speed — no matter where its 
 Direction be, so 'tis but in a hurry. 
 
 Byron. 
 
 Poor Reginald made but a single rush from 
 London to Paris. On quitting Portland Place, he 
 had ordered his superfine valet to prepare for a 
 journey, and for remaining behind; and started 
 at once in the steam-packet, without carriage or 
 attendants. 
 
 All his object was to get away, — no matter how, 
 no matter whither. He seemed to fancy it written 
 in his face that the rich Cressingham had wanted 
 to sell himself to an heiress, — had been refused in 
 favour of a Mr Jeremiah Jones, — had been made 
 mockery for the Philistines by the daughter of 
 Worts the brewer ! To quit the country was the 
 
252 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 only means his fancy suggested of wiping oif so 
 vile a stain. He could not go too soon, or too far, 
 or with too little regard to his own comfort. For 
 once, he would rough it, like other men who were 
 not men of fortune. 
 
 Long before he reached Paris, however, the 
 self-conceit, so long and dearly cherished, had re- 
 ceived a thousand shocks that made him doubtful 
 of the discretion of his project. It was not his 
 sense of nicety that was offended — it was his self- 
 conceit. Accustomed, wherever he went, to have 
 his consequence bruited b/ the vulgar boasting of 
 his servants, hitherto he had flattered himself that 
 the deference paid to the long purse of the rich 
 Cressingham, was tendered to his personal dis- 
 tinctions; and could scarcely brook the familia- 
 rity which slapped on the back and cross-ques- 
 tioned the young traveller who spoke such 
 villainous French. The shabby old caleche 
 offered to him at Calais as an appropriate travel- 
 ling carriage, appeared, to eyes accustomed to 
 the equipages of Adams and Houlditch, a positive 
 insult ; and when thrust, as a solitary traveller of 
 little consequence, into the worst room of the inn, 
 and advised to dine at the table d'hote^ as more 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 253 
 
 convenient to the waiter, his wrath exploded. 
 The postillions greeted him with the dogged 
 familiarity of all French subordinates paid by the 
 tariff; while the beggars to whom he scattered 
 his coin saluted him with a grin as " Monsieur 
 Goddam ! " The ugliness of the country, the 
 ugliness of the people, and, in spite of all this, his 
 own utter insignificance among them, disgusted 
 him with his journey in the very outset. 
 
 Even in Paris, matters were scarcely more aus- 
 picious. The bankers refused to cash the bills 
 of a stranger ; and, till his letters of credit arrived, 
 he was obliged to content himself with the mode- 
 rate sum he had brought away in his pocket, 
 and abstain from the immoderate pomps and vani- 
 ties of a fine gentleman. — People consequently 
 treated him as they would have treated Gerald 
 Langley, or any other good-looking younger bro- 
 ther of tolerable address. — Nobody stood aside 
 for him, — nobody waited till he was served, — 
 nobody gave up their seat at the play or place in 
 the restaurant^ because it was coveted by the rich 
 Cressingham ; — and whereas, in revolutionized 
 France, civility has become an obsolete weak- 
 ness, he was more hustled, pushed, shoved, trod 
 
2ol THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 upon, and sworn at, during his first week in Paris, 
 than in the course of all the years that had elapsed 
 since he was a fag at Eton. 
 
 So much the better for him ! These petty 
 grievances effaced the trace of deeper evils. In 
 a month's time he had almost forgotten there was 
 a street in London called Portland Place, or that 
 he had a cousin and a cast-off attorney seated in 
 parliament. 
 
 With all his dissatisfaction, however, at the cava- 
 lier habits of the citizens, he was enchanted with 
 the city. The buoyancy of the atmosphere, the 
 hilarity of the population, the brightness of the 
 shops, the sprightliness of the women, the variety 
 of public amusements, afforded a welcome re- 
 lief after the unspeakable dulness of Stoke, and 
 the oppressive formalities of London. — But, above 
 all, he was un pursued there by a painful notoriety. 
 If nobody performed Ko Too to him, nobody 
 knew that he had been blackballed at White's, 
 rejected at Almack's, defeated in a county elec- 
 tion, refused by an heiress, caricatured as Pine 
 Apple Fritters Cressingham, and served as 
 minced meat, one day in seven, to the curious in 
 newspaper scandal. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 255 
 
 Comforted by finding himself regarded with 
 perfect indifference, after having fancied himself 
 a mark for the jests of all around him, he became 
 almost as light of heart as if he had not been the 
 rich Cressingham. He was compelled indeed to 
 exert his faculties, intellectual and physical, to 
 place himself on a par with other people; but, 
 rendered at his ease by the independence of his 
 isolation, exertion became less irksome. By 
 the arrival of the credit on Rothschild, which 
 amounted only to a third of the sum he had de- 
 manded, he had got into the habit of being civil, 
 and of not expecting to find himself an object 
 of deference to all the world. 
 
 The further he went, the rougher and the more 
 efficacious his schooling. After spending the 
 remednder of the spring in Paris, brightened in 
 spirits and health by the excitement of its popular 
 diversions, he proceeded to the Rhine; — and while 
 visiting the baths of the Taunus, and mingling 
 with the throng of princes and swindlers at Baden 
 Baden, — frequenting table d'hotes and public 
 rooms, — and adding a smattering of bad German 
 to his indifferent French, he was gradually sinking 
 by cubits in his self-created stature. 
 
256 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Reginald could scarcely forbear smiling as he 
 recalled to mind how, at Oxford, after perusing 
 the sparkling pages of ' Vivian Grey,' he had 
 dreamed of just such a rough-and-ready tour, and 
 regarded it as a pleasure denied to a man of his 
 consideration; — boyishly imagining it as impos- 
 sible for the rich Cressingham to preserve his 
 incognito as for the Duke of Wellington. In- 
 stead of which, he now readily perceived that it 
 would have been far more difficult to persuade the 
 simple Rhinelanders that a plain Mr Cressingham 
 — not ennobled — not a place-holder — not a decore — 
 not a chamberlain to any sovereign under the sun — 
 could be entitled to dip in the dish with the smallest 
 Baron of the empire, or least whiskered of the 
 Russian generals frequenting their watering places. 
 
 The lesson was worth learning. It was some- 
 thing to have become aware that, in the esti- 
 mation of a few billions or trillions of the conti- 
 nental population, he stood little higher than 
 an Elbeuf clothier, or, at best, some country 
 gentleman of Alsace or Lorraine. From the wan- 
 dering hordes of English travellers, meanwhile, 
 he scrupulously kept aloof. He hated their super- 
 cilious faces, — he hated their listless habits, — he 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 25*7 
 
 hated their notion that nothing good enough to eat, 
 drink, or visit, is to be met with out of England. 
 
 While he was thus storing his mind with that 
 best of wisdom called self-knowledge, the usual 
 consequences ensued at home from his abrupt 
 departure for the continent. The tailors, of whom 
 he no longer ordered two coats and a dozen 
 waistcoats per month, — the coach-makers, who 
 had no longer thirty pounds' worth of repairs to 
 furnish to his various carriages, — the silversmiths, 
 where he had ceased to exhaust his invention on 
 rainy days by projecting fanciful soup-tureens, — 
 all the army of Bond street martyrs, in short, in 
 whose books the name of the rich Cressingham 
 headed page after page, and who were content 
 that it should do so while there was a prospect of 
 its heading pages and pages to come, began to 
 ask angry questions of his man of business, and 
 cross-question the servants in Hamilton Place ; 
 and so far from being satisfied, as heretofore, with 
 the grandiloquent answer — "Good God, sir! — 
 you surely cannot entertain any uneasiness con- 
 cerning the solvency of a man of Mr Cressing- 
 ham's fortune ? " — ventured to reply, that a 
 gentleman of Mr Cressingham's fortune quitting 
 
258 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 England at ten minutes' notice, tcte-d-tete with his 
 portmanteau, had very much the air of a gentle- 
 man who had met with Tw^sfortune. 
 
 Suspicions, like bats, flit about with wondrous 
 activity in the dusk. A cloud once overshadow- 
 ing the destinies of the absentee, it was easy to 
 set in movement the most injurious reports. The 
 waiters at the clubs and coffee-houses, to whom 
 he had been in the habit of flinging five-pound 
 notes, whispered far and near the imputations 
 cast upon the prodigal ; and with the speed usual in 
 such matters, scandals which, like sorrows, " come 
 not single spies, but in battalions," begat further 
 falsehoods with monstrous haste of propagation. 
 
 " So poor Cress is regularly done up at last!" 
 observed Sir Harry Morton to Gerald Langley, 
 as they were smoking together on the steps at 
 Crockford*s, one fine night in May. 
 
 " At last ? — at Jirst you mean ! — I sometimes 
 fancy he was born ruined, as children are some- 
 times still born. Never was there a fellow who 
 bungled away his money so confoundedly ! — 
 What did he ever get for it, — except, indeed, 
 being laughed at ? " — 
 
 " That," interrupted Lord Robert Leigh, who 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 259 
 
 was Standing near them, " was because he never 
 was a really good fellow. There was nothing 
 warm or cordial in Cress. He couldn't drink, — 
 he couldn't play, — he couldn't ride, — he couldn't 
 dress, — he couldn't do anything that became the 
 position he wanted to shine in. Men hated him 
 because he was a prig ; — women because, relying 
 on his fortune, he took no pains to be agreeable." 
 
 " How was a man to be agreeable who was 
 never at his ease, even in his own house ? " cried 
 Langley. " Sometimes, when Cress wanted to do 
 grand at the head of his own table, and was 
 giving himself airs, by a single word I swear I 
 have made him look as if he were sitting upon 
 thorns !"— 
 
 " That was remarkably kind of you, my dear 
 fellow," coolly observed Morton, taking his cigar 
 from his mouth. 
 
 " Who could help it ? — When did Cressingham 
 spare any one it was in his power to show up ? — " 
 
 " I never imagined his powers of sarcasm to be 
 very alarming," retorted Morton. " At least he 
 was good-natured." 
 
 " There are other modes of showing up besides 
 quizzing. He knew, for instance, that I pique 
 
S60 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 myself on my billiards, — that I am considered 
 second best player in the Guards. — Well, he never 
 got me down to that stupid place of his — (where, 
 by the way, the table is a showy affair, but detes- 
 table !) — without matching me against Vardyne, 
 who happens to be the only man able to give me 
 a point or two. It was pure spite of Cress, — 
 nothing but spite. Then to Holmeswell, as you 
 may remember, he behaved shamefully ! When 
 Lady Adelaide North was going to marry Bea- 
 consfield, after having refused Cress (just as if 
 the Maunderwells would have heard of her mar- 
 rying Cressingham — a fellow without rank or 
 connexion), he insisted upon Holmeswell's book- 
 ing up a few hundreds he owed him (a loan forced 
 upon him by Cress at Oxford) ; and poor Holmes- 
 well had the deuce's own work to make up the 
 sum, without calling upon his father ; — who just 
 then, you know, marrying his daughter, and so 
 forth, would not have found it agreeable to 
 stump up." 
 
 " How blackguard ! " cried JLord Robert Leigh, 
 not troubling himself to recollect the real version 
 of the affair, of which he had been a witness. 
 " Well ! I'm afraid one must give Cress up. It's 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 261 
 
 a monstrous pity, — for really that house in Ha- 
 milton Place was pleasant enough at times, and 
 very near being the right thing." 
 
 " Ay ! but that, a peu prh, is what spoils all 
 that is not the right thing in this world ! " re- 
 torted Gerald. " Cress wanted tact, — the one 
 thing needful to a man like him, — and his house 
 wanted ton. Cress thought that a man's way, if 
 paved with gold, was as sure as the North road ; 
 and so, you see, he laid it on so plaguy thick, 
 that he left none for the man who was to walk 
 over it — no uncommon case. And after all, you 
 know, Cress was not a man of fortune. I don't 
 call an estate worth having, in which one has only 
 a life interest." 
 
 " I saw from the first he was in a fair way to 
 be ruined ; but I never thought he would turn out 
 a shirking fellow !" — was the Parthian blow of 
 Morton, who was many hundreds in debt to the 
 absentee ; while for Lord Robert Leigh, Cres- 
 singham had engaged his name in bill transactions 
 to an amount that had still to be determined. 
 
 Such was the fate of the Heir with many 
 friends, and thus was the good name of the 
 prodigal whispered away ! — The fashionable world 
 
262 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 talked of him as an extinct meteor — the foolish 
 fellow who had done so many preposterous things 
 last season, and was now gone to the dogs ; and 
 the sentence once circulated, was final. The 
 fashionable world thinks, feels, and acts in cote- 
 ries, as regularly as troops are manoeuvred in 
 regiments and brigades ; — and had Cress even 
 possessed a friend, his single protest would have 
 gone for nothing. 
 
 The secluded life led by poor Mrs Blair, 
 meanwhile, fortunately prevented her from be- 
 coming cognizant of his disgrace. It was sufficient 
 mortification for the mother of that only son, that 
 every day, the newspapers rang with the name of 
 her nephew, while the closed up windows and 
 weedy lawn of the Hall attested the nothingness 
 of his cousin. He was away. He was over the 
 sea. Mothers of less fortunate sons were so 
 happy as to enjoy the presence of their offspring; 
 while her hours of solitary suffering were fated to 
 be unsoothed by the hand of affection. But of 
 the few who shared with her servants the task of 
 varying her monotonous day, there was no one 
 cruel enough to repeat the rumour circulated 
 in the neighbourhood of Stoke Paddocks by 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 263 
 
 the neighbours still honoured by the notice of 
 the honourable member for Llanstephen, that 
 Reginald had found it convenie/it to leave the 
 country. 
 
 Justina, who, though scarcely more than fifteen 
 in age, w£is a woman in reason, noticed with plea- 
 sure, that in Reginald's letters from abroad, which 
 she was admitted to the privilege of reading to 
 his mother, he was careful to dwell upon the im- 
 provement of his health from the early hours and 
 sober habits of continental life, as the surest 
 means of reconciling her to his absence. For she 
 knew that such an argument would suffice. After 
 all, nothing was so natural as his tour; and Mrs 
 Blair might be pardoned her implicit belief that 
 her son was improving himself by a survey of 
 foreign countries, and would soon return to settle 
 permanently in his own. With her usual amiable 
 faculty of finding all things for the best, on learn- 
 ing that Reginald was to pass the winter at Na- 
 ples, she actually decided that it was just as well he 
 should absent himself from Stoke during the pre- 
 valence of the unpopularity produced by his elec- 
 tion despotism; which had produced such injurious 
 results, that no one could be found to take the 
 
264 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 vacant farms of the tyrant of Stoke Paddocks, and 
 they consequently remained on the hands of his 
 steward, who was little prepared to turn them to 
 account. 
 
 Justina did not gainsay the opinion of the poor 
 deceived mother. But she, poor girl, heard enough 
 at the vicarage of Reginald's crimes and misde- 
 meanours ! — The absentee was made accountable 
 for the illness and discontent of the poor old man, 
 who, moping by his fireside, lamenting over the 
 estrangement of his country neighbours conse- 
 quent upon his obsequious devotion to his patron, 
 ascribed the fault to Reginald rather than to 
 himself; while the melancholy Drench seemed 
 to consider that the abstraction of Athanasius 
 Docket from his whist club was equally attribut- 
 able to the nefarious proceedings of the young 
 Man of Fortune. 
 
 In a neighbourhood so unincidental, two such 
 events as the closing of the Hall and the emigra- 
 tion of the attorney were fertile topics of discus- 
 sion ; and, as if it were necessary to espouse the 
 partisanship of either the ward or guardian, as 
 Athanasius was now a man in authority, an 
 M. P., nay, a valuable, active, plodding, work-a- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 265 
 
 day member, — one of the darlings of the Carlton 
 Club, while Reginald was nothing, — an absentee, 
 — a ruined man, — likely to sell his livings and 
 neglect his apothecary's bill, — they were all but 
 unanimous in elevating their worthy friend Docket 
 to the seventh heaven, and depressing his victim to 
 its antipodes. 
 
 There was, indeed, much to command the 
 admiration of the vulgar in the steady ascent of 
 the attorney. Like the mob, who, though they 
 have witnessed the gradual inflation of a balloon, 
 cannot restrain their wonder on seeing it mount 
 into the clouds, they were full of surprise to find 
 their quondam cater-cousin figuring at levees and 
 dining at political dinners, like any other pillar 
 of the senatorial temple. They would have been 
 still more amazed could they have been made to 
 understand the influence exercised by his acti- 
 vity of mind and body, his habits of business, and 
 steadiness of deportment. If not somebody, he 
 was something; — for a man conversant with the 
 law, who comes into public life in the full matu- 
 rity of his talents, unhampered by public antece- 
 dents or family connexions — who has given no 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
266 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 pledges and accepted no favours, — is inestimable 
 to a party. 
 
 The name of Athanasius Docket, Esq., M.P., 
 already figured as governor of divers charitable 
 and scientific associations, as well as in tlie Court 
 Guide as owner of a town mansion in Duke 
 Street, Westminster, and a country seat called 
 Grove House, Llanstephen, N. W. He was 
 understood to possess considerable property in 
 mines ; and a man possessed of property in mines, 
 is regarded as a sort of Fortunatus whose riches it 
 is useless to compute. Difficult, it certainly is; 
 and such had probably been his cautious motive 
 for investing in a manner so inostensible, the 
 accumulation of his thrifty servitude to the suc- 
 cessive tyrants of Stoke Paddocks. — No one w^as 
 able to point out the extent of his possessions, so 
 accurately as to excite surmises concerning the 
 honesty of their origin. 
 
 All that the world discerned in him was a steady, 
 plodding, hard-headed lawyer, toryfied by the 
 possession of landed property, who had been driven 
 from the agency of the Cressingham estates by 
 his abhorrence of the profligacy, personal and 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 267 
 
 political, of the young crocodile so strangely 
 hatched under his barn-yard wing ; and so useful 
 was he on committees, so undauntable by files 
 of papers or the thick-headedness of country gen- 
 tlemen, so unshackled by private engagements, 
 and so willing and able to do every one's business 
 as well as his own, — that in the course of his first 
 session, not a leading man of the party but soli- 
 cited his acquaintance, gave him dinners and all 
 the trouble in their power ; and it was impossible 
 to be more surely in the way to a baronetcy and 
 the hand of some decayed spinster of quality. 
 
 If anything were wanting to confirm his odour 
 of sanctity in his old neighbourhood, it might 
 have been found in the increasing disorder of the 
 Stoke Paddocks estates. For some time, the old 
 steward and his subordinates had laboured to keep 
 matters together, and fight against the unpopu- 
 larity and disorderliness of their young master. 
 But when such people as Snapper and Co. were 
 set in authority over them, — when the extortions 
 practised upon them rendered it impossible to do 
 justice to the estate, ^-when the most ruinous levies 
 were made upon the timber, and all seemed de- 
 voted to waste and ruin, they retreated in shame 
 
268 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 and disgust, to make way for the disreputable 
 successors provided by the capital fellow in Gray's 
 Inn. 
 
 All was now riot and abuse. Messrs Snapper 
 and Co. seemed to consider it absurd that, be- 
 cause the penniless Man of Fortune was amusing 
 himself with sailing in the Bay of Naples, his 
 pheasants should remain unshot, his rivers un- 
 fished, his venison uneaten; — and if there were 
 increased difficulty in finding tenants for his 
 farms, there was none whatever in wasting the 
 substance they provided. 
 
 Could the ghost of Sir Giles Cressingham have 
 surveyed, from beneath his favourite beech-tree, 
 the goings on at Stoke, the ignominious race of 
 retainers which supplied the place of his respect- 
 able janissaries, and the wild and shaggy con- 
 dition of his beautiful seat, he would probably 
 have lamented the ill-judging perversity which 
 had caused him to alienate his inheritance from 
 his legal successor, in favour of a boy whose 
 childhood he had taken no pains to surround with 
 efficient advisers. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 269 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A form of light, like some good influence 
 Haunting the precincts of that sad old place. 
 
 Va n e 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine anything more 
 closely resembling the field of the sluggard, than 
 was now presented by the domain of Stoke Pad- 
 docks. The only implement busy there was the 
 axe. Its fine timber lay cumbering the ground ; 
 while the weeds in the ill-farmed fields seemed 
 towering to supply the place of the fallen oaks 
 and elms of more provident centuries. 
 
 Still, nature protects her own ; and whether the 
 park-keepers were few or many, the old thorn 
 trees persisted in blossoming in their appointed 
 season, and the gorse and broom around them 
 were as golden, and the herbage as thy my, as 
 
 N 2 
 
270 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 ever. Though the closely shuttered windows of 
 the hall imparted a ghastly look, as though the 
 owner lay dead, nothing could exceed the loveli- 
 ness of the fair landscape. 
 
 The few strangers who visited the spot to 
 admire the beauty of sites whose charm was un- 
 alienable, even by the folly of the owner, used 
 to note meanwhile with wonder, amid those soli- 
 tary glades and broomy knolls, a fair girl ever 
 wandering there, as if without aim or object, like 
 some Hamadryad left shelterless by the destruc- 
 tion of her verdant home. Amid those lonely 
 scenes, gathering beauty and wisdom into her soul 
 from so intimate an inter-communion with the 
 works of nature, Justina, whose life at the vicarage 
 was a weary one, spent the greater share of her 
 summer hours in strolling about the venerable 
 place, endeared by a thousand early associations. 
 
 The poor old Vicar, peevish and infirm, was 
 often so impatient of the presence of his grand- 
 daughter, that his wife promoted more than ever 
 her daily visits to The Wilderness, where they 
 were so truly acceptable ; and as the vicarage lay 
 at one extremity of the park, and the garden gate 
 of Mrs Blair at the other, nothing was easier than 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 271 
 
 for Justina to loiter by the way, prolonging her 
 ramblings through every quarter of the extensive 
 park. In her simple white gown, — her pure 
 young face beaming with intelligence, — her move- 
 ments replete with natural grace, — she might have 
 been mistaken for the guardian genius of the 
 place, — albeit its condition showed little to attest 
 the providence of her guardianship. 
 
 Justina was now just entering her sixteenth 
 year ; — and but for the solitary and studious 
 nature of her life, would have been light-hearted 
 as other girls of that happy age. But everything 
 to which she was attached was fated to convey 
 saddening impressions. An orphan from her in- 
 fancy, the old people of whom she was the only 
 surviving relative, thought they were doing- 
 enough for her by laying up three-fourths of their 
 income for her sake, without conceiving that a 
 more enlivening existence than their dull parlour 
 might be advantageous to her mind and health ; — 
 and though this early seclusion was so far advan- 
 tageous that it compelled her to have recourse for 
 companionship to books, and books of a nature 
 more grave than usually fall into the hands of 
 girls not brought up in an old-fashioned country 
 
272 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 parsonage, it produced a singular influence upon 
 her mind and disposition. But for those grave 
 and ripening studies, the girl would have become 
 a visionary ; but for her lonely rambles among 
 the venerable groves and musky gardens of the 
 Hall, too severely matter-of-fact. She knew no- 
 thing of what is called the world ; for the ten or 
 twenty persons of her acquaintance were almost 
 as distinct from that well-drilled assemblage as 
 if belonging to another sphere ; and the deer, to 
 whom the voice and step of their daily visitant 
 were now so familiar that, forgetting their wildness, 
 they came to her to be caressed, were far more 
 of companions to the high-minded girl than such 
 people as the twaddling apothecary of Mrs Blair, 
 or even his feeble patient. 
 
 Still, there were qualities in the invalid at The 
 Wilderness that greatly endeared her to Justina. 
 Her gentle voice and lady-like manners had been 
 the first indication of a world more refined than 
 that of her humdrum circle ; and to admiration, 
 in process of time, gratitude succeeded. As .a 
 child, the little orphan of the vicarage had been 
 accepted as a plaything; and as she advanced in 
 girlhood, a thousand acts of womanly kindness, — 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 2T3 
 
 gifts of books, — instruction in music and drawing, 
 — attached her to the mild recluse who, in the 
 recreation of her company, strove to forget the 
 absence of her son. 
 
 And still, amid all their lessons, their talk was of 
 Reginald. If Mrs Blair had a good trait to relate 
 of him, she confided it to Justina ; or whenever the 
 little girl indulged in reminiscences of those early 
 days, when the schoolboy had been so fond of the 
 child, she seemed to feel that it was only his 
 mother who would deign to believe that the rich 
 Cressingham of Stoke Paddocks was the same 
 Reginald Blair who had printed alphabets for her 
 instruction, or made cowslip balls for her delight. 
 
 By degrees, Justina became almost as a 
 daughter to the sick woman, whose shyness and 
 debility of nature brought her down almost to 
 the level of her youthful companion. Both 
 profited by the connexion ; the girl, in acquiring 
 elegance of manners beyond what even the refine- 
 ment of nature imparted by her peculiar life and 
 studies, might have attained ; — the woman, in the 
 gentle sympathy of one who loved her as the 
 nearest approach to anything she had ever known 
 of a mother. For the good lady at the vicarage 
 
 N 3 
 
274 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 was a bustling", fussy body, much more intent 
 upon her household affairs and village duties than 
 upon fostering the affections and faculties of her 
 son's orphan ; and felt that in keeping her from 
 chilblains in winter and overheating herself in 
 summer, she was showing more kindness than 
 by listening to nonsensical histories of hawthorn 
 hedges or squirrels' nests. 
 
 It was consequently from the fair-faced vale- 
 tudinarian, wrapt in her white India shawl, in the 
 corner of her quiet chintz sofa, that Justina 
 received the daily kiss, — the pat upon the shoul- 
 der, — the reproving or approving smile, — and all 
 the matronly caresses wdiich keep up the holier 
 tendernesses of filial life between mother and 
 child. At The Wilderness, she was sure of a kind 
 word, let whatever would betide. If sometimes 
 out of spirits, Mrs Blair was never out of humour. 
 Chastened in the school of adversity by the events 
 of her early widowhood, she had never laid aside 
 the humility of nature engendered by her hours 
 of sorrow ; and was, in fact, as grateful for the 
 little girl's affection, as if she had never earned it 
 by acts of favour and forbearance. 
 
 Sweet is love-service to such a friend ! — Justina 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 275 
 
 would have blushed for herself had she allowed 
 even her favourite rambles .over the soft moss in 
 summer, or crisp snow in winter, to interfere with 
 her attendance on her partial protectress ; and when 
 her grandmother, who, too old for much sympathy 
 in her pursuits, hinted that, since it disturbed the 
 good Doctor's nap after dinner to hear her turning 
 over the pages of the book with which she solaced 
 their dull evenings, she might go and dine or 
 drink tea with Mrs Blair whenever she pleased, 
 the offer was readily accepted. 
 
 Sad, therefore, was the event to Reginald's 
 mother, even beyond the common sympatliies of 
 neighbourship and good will, when a second para- 
 lytic seizure, by suddenly carrying off the Vicar, 
 threatened to deprive her of her young companion. 
 She knew that, thenceforth, Justina's time must be 
 devoted to the old lady, and that the old lady must 
 speedily make way at the vicarage for the succes- 
 sor long since provided by the foresight of Messrs 
 Snapper and Co. ; and as it was already rumoured 
 that the good Doctor, who, whatever treasures he 
 might have been laying up in Heaven, had laid 
 up in the land where moth and rust do corrupt 
 no less a sum than 38,000/. for the benefit of 
 
276 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 liis widow and their future representative, Mrs 
 Blair entertained little doubt that Mrs Chaffles, 
 with so good an income, would hasten to Bath or 
 London, for the sake of more cheerful associations 
 for Justina. 
 
 But the widow of the vicarage belonged to a 
 century which was wise enough to hold that the 
 pleasures of youth ought to be subservient to the 
 comforts of age ; and had no mind to uproot her- 
 self from a soil in which she had so long; flourished. 
 She had become part and parcel of the neigh- 
 bourhood of Stoke. Stoke was her home. She 
 knew the village by heart. Having seen the 
 young people born, and the old people young, 
 she cared more about them than about any other 
 people, young or old ; and though she was no 
 longer privileged to provide them broths when 
 sick, or flannel when rheumatic, she would not 
 deny herself the satisfaction of at least walking 
 through the village, and being curtseyed to, 
 whenever the weather and her pattens permitted. 
 
 The modest mansion inhabited by the honour- 
 able member for Llanstephen while the plumage 
 of his new dignities was still unfledged, was for- 
 tunately still vacant, at the distance of little more 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 277 
 
 than a mile from the Village. Thither, the widow 
 determined to bend her steps ; and from the grati- 
 tude evinced by Justina when the decision was 
 announced to her, it might have been surmised 
 that her wishes alone had been consulted in the 
 selection. 
 
 Now^ however, were her trials to commence ! 
 even those trials of temper indispensable to per- 
 fect every woman's vocation upon earth. The 
 old lady, whose time had been so fully occupied by 
 her duties as a wife and a Lady Bountiful that it 
 was a relief to her to find the leisure of Justina 
 bestowed elsewhere, now discovered (the new 
 Vicaress having evinced considerable jealousy of her 
 interference in the village) that there was scarcely 
 a moment in the day in which she could dispense 
 with her granddaughter's society. Even after the 
 poor girl had devoted whole mornings to sorting 
 her flower-seeds, cataloguing her books, or copy- 
 ing out recipes, the fussy old lady would not 
 hear of an evening visit to The Wilderness, now 
 that Mrs Blair's pony chaise or her own must be 
 in requisition for the purpose. No sooner, in 
 short, did she perceive the girl's earnest desire to 
 persist in her attentions to her kind friend, than 
 
278 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 she grew so jealous as to maS^e every visit a matter 
 of pain and grief to all parties. 
 
 Still, with grateful forbearance and grateful 
 consistency, Justina steered her way between both, 
 with as little offence as possible ; made no reply 
 when reproached with the noble fortune laid up for 
 her by those towards whom she evinced no natural 
 affection ; and answered only by a gentle kiss on 
 the hand of the invalid, when assured that by 
 proper management, she might certainly come 
 oftener. She never rebelled — never murmured ; 
 — too grateful to Providence for having fixed her 
 so near her old home to resent the caprices to 
 which she was subjected. The terrors which had 
 seized her mind on Mrs Blair's suggestion that 
 her grandmother would probably settle in town, 
 or at some watering place, had made her clearly 
 understand all the value she affixed to the beloved 
 haunts of her childhood, and all the torture of 
 bidding them adieu. 
 
 INIoreover she fancied that, when she was gone, 
 there would be no one left to love them ! — Not a 
 single being connected with the old Hall seemed 
 to take note of the burstino^ of its vernal ver- 
 dure, or the reddening of its autumnal tints. — 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 279 
 
 No soul but herself ever now pushed out the little 
 pleasure boat on the lake, to delight in the sur- 
 rounding scenery ; — no one sauntered through the 
 entangled shrubberies; — no one heeded how the 
 flowers grew wild, or the song-birds increased. 
 
 There were certain old trees to which she 
 attached a sense of companionship, under which 
 Reginald had made a sylvan home for her and 
 her toys in childhood ; or where, in riper years, 
 she had first turned a page of Shakspeare, or 
 dwelt enraptured over the more earnest inspira- 
 tions of Wordsworth — inspirations such as her 
 own heart had found in the running brooks and 
 green forests, her sole companions. — And these, 
 she fancied, would be sacrificed, like the rest, 
 after her departure ! — The red cross would be 
 marked upon her own old oak, — the oak under 
 which she had watched every morning as a child 
 for the first opening of the garden gate of The 
 Wilderness, for Reginald to come out and play. It 
 was something to keep her eye upon her own oak, 
 even though the influence which assigned its first 
 charm had departed ! — 
 
 For some time past, however, her associations 
 with the oak had been growing more satisfactory. 
 
280 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 The letters now addressed to Mrs Blair by her 
 son, savoured far more of Reginald, and far less 
 of Pine-apple Fritters Cressingham. There was 
 more truthfulness in his expressions, more reality 
 in his kindness. He seemed really eager for her 
 health and welfare, — really glad to find that Mrs 
 Chaffles had fixed herself in the neighbourhood ; 
 and that little Tina, as he still called her, 
 was so great a comfort to the invalid. Unaware 
 that even his own correspondence passed through 
 " little Tina's " hands, he expressed his heart- 
 felt delight on hearing that she was so well pro- 
 vided for by her grandfather. 
 
 " The precarious nature of Tina*s prospects had 
 often made me anxious," wrote he. " For though, 
 with such fine preferment, it seemed easy for old 
 Chafiles to insure his life, or something of that kind, 
 for his grandchild's benefit, my own extravagance 
 and carelessness in money-matters have led me to 
 expect no better from other people ; and the first 
 thing that occurred to me, on learning from my 
 man of business that the living of Stoke had fallen 
 in, was how I could decently offer some sort of pro- 
 vision to the widow and grandchild ; though, if I am 
 to believe Messrs Snapper and Co., the involved 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 281 
 
 state of my affairs might have rendered it diffi- 
 cult!"— 
 
 The kind intention of her old playmate was not 
 thrown away on the grateful girl ; and she could 
 have v/rung her hands for very bitterness when, 
 that very evening, on taking refuge under her own 
 oak, and diverting her eyes from the green laurel 
 hedge overtopping the garden paling of The Wil- 
 derness towards the grim-looking desolate old Hall, 
 — she felt how little interest was maintained by 
 either his old home or his new in the eyes of their 
 owner; — how little they had profited by him, 
 or he by them ! 
 
 Little as she knew of worldly business, it was 
 clear to Justina, from Mr Cressingham's letters, 
 that though in some degree aware of the unsatis- 
 factory nature of the parties to whom his affairs 
 were intrusted, he was too deeply involved to 
 extricate himself without more exertion and 
 greater self-denial than could be expected from 
 either his nature or education. She saw that the 
 evils which had arisen from his recklessness were, 
 through his inertness, increasing in magnitude ; — 
 nor was it possible to warn him of all that was 
 going on upon the estate during his absence. 
 
282 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Justina could address him only through his 
 mother, who, suffering from a disease of the heart, 
 was not to be agitated by anxiety or evil tidings 
 without danger. — Nay, even had she taken courage 
 to insinuate something nearer the truth to Mrs 
 Blair than had yet come to her knowledge, there 
 was every probability that Reginald would turn a 
 deaf ear to her suggestions ; for upon the old 
 Vicar's once presuming to hint at the irregularities 
 of the new steward, he had received a harsh 
 rebuff from his patron, who accused him of being 
 the partizan of Docket, and blinded in his favour 
 to disparage the new man of business. 
 
 Thus was poor Justina condemned to the vexa- 
 tion of witnessing in silence the devastation of the 
 property ; and hearing, without possibility of afford- 
 ing aid, the murmurs of the tenants. She beheld 
 all, as in a dream, without the power of interfer- 
 ence. — Frank as her childhood had been towards 
 her playmate, nay, frank as her girlhood had been 
 towards the rich Cressingham, at all risks of 
 offending and estranging him, something of a 
 woman's mistrust now came over her, forewarning 
 her that it was not for her to address the wayward 
 exile touching the disposal of his affairs. — 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 283 
 
 Still, it lessened her joy in the growing ration- 
 ality of the pursuits his letters described, lo 
 feel that others were executing in his name all the 
 follies he had formerly executed for himself; that 
 while he spoke of his rides on the shores of the 
 Bosphorus and modest establishment at Pera, the 
 house in Hamilton Place remained undisposed of; 
 nor, till a report reached the country through the 
 Duke of Granton's family, that a fashionable 
 auctioneer had announced the probability of his 
 having in the course of the following spring 
 the Stoke Paddocks gallery, more especially a 
 celebrated pair of family portraits by Holbein, to 
 dispose of, did Justina become desperate. 
 
 Notwithstanding Reginald's lukewarm pride in 
 the Cressinghams, as of female descent, she could 
 not suppose him capable of disposing for money 
 of such sacred family relics as portraits by Holbein, 
 unless on the brink of ruin ; and on this occasion 
 actually ventured to address to him a letter of 
 remonstrance. 
 
 The result was as she had anticipated. He had 
 no part in a project so barbarous; and on receiv- 
 ing her letter, sent a bitter reproof to Snapper 
 and Co. for having permitted such rumours to get 
 
284 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 wind. He had once said to them in jest, " Money 
 I must have — and if I cannot mortgage my estate, 
 I can at least sell my plate and pictures ;" — but it 
 was in the same reckless spirit of menace in 
 which he would have talked of selling the ashes of 
 his ancestors out of the family vault. — 
 
 The letter containing this intelligence conveyed 
 unspeakable comfort to the heart of Justina. 
 Forced to address in the tone of a reasonable 
 being the young companion with whom he had 
 hitherto dealt as with a wayward and insignificant 
 child, Reginald could not refrain from adding a 
 few grateful words touching her devotedness to 
 his mother. He even solemnly recommended 
 Mrs Blair to her continued attention ; — adding, in 
 a few illegible words, that, since his own disgrace- 
 fully useless course was fated to afford so little 
 addition to her happiness, it was a comfort to feel 
 that she had found a daughter where she was less 
 entitled to expect solace and affection. 
 
 Again and again, was this letter perused by the 
 young admonitress of Mr Cressingham ; and long 
 was it worn near her heart, as if affording sufficient 
 compensation for all the vexatious hours she had 
 endured in consequence of her consistent attend- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 285 
 
 ance on her friend at The Wilderness. But it did 
 not decrease her anxieties on Reginald's account to 
 perceive that he gave himself up as a lost case ; — 
 that he still wanted the energy and self-reliance 
 which might have enabled him, even now, to start 
 forth in his own defence, assume a more appropri- 
 ate position in the world, and command, by higher 
 purposes and steady conduct, the respect he had 
 been unable to purchase by prodigality of gold. 
 
 She could not, however, again address the 
 absentee. It was not for a girl of her age to 
 establish a correspondence with a young man of 
 his ; and all the result of her altered state of feel- 
 ing towards him w^as a tone of deeper interest in 
 reading aloud his letters to his mother, and 
 milder interpretation of all she saw and heard 
 concerning his faults and follies. 
 
 " You are not quite so harsh in your way of 
 talking about my poor Reginald as you used to 
 be," observed Mrs Blair, as she was wishing her 
 good night, after an evening which, by special 
 favour of her grandmother, she had been permitted 
 to spend at The Wilderness, a few weeks after the 
 arrival of the letter from the Levant — " You speak 
 now as if you almost thought he might some day 
 
286 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 come back an altered man, to settle down happily 
 at home !" — 
 
 " God grant it ! " replied Justina, bending down 
 to receive on her forehead the kiss imprinted there 
 at every parting by her adopted mother. 
 
 " What a doubly happy day would it be to me," 
 added Mrs Blair with a smile, " could I only hope 
 that the two old playmates would take a fancy to 
 each other, — and my dearest Tina become my 
 daughter indeed ! " 
 
 Tears swam in the eyes of the girl who was 
 receiving these affectionate adieus ; but she in- 
 stantly checked them. 
 
 " If Mr Cressingham could but hear you utter 
 such humiliating insinuations !" — cried she, " Mr 
 Cressingham so haughty, — so supercilious, — I will 
 not say proud, — for in such a station as his proper 
 pride appears to me becoming, — do you imagine 
 that the three years he has been away have so 
 changed him as to make him think the girl he 
 despised as a child compared with himself, — as 
 ill-born and obscurely educated, — grown worthy 
 to be the wife of Cressingham of Stoke Pad- 
 docks?"— 
 
 " It is from the change of my own opinions that 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 287 
 
 I have learned to hope for an alteration in his. 
 Time was, my dearest child, that even / was 
 anxious my son should make a brilliant connexion ; 
 I was pleased when the newspapers announced 
 that he was to marry Lady Adelaide North ; and 
 conceived that, with Reginald's fortune, he was 
 entitled to match with the aristocracy. But now, 
 I would rather have my little Tina for a daughter- 
 in-law, than any duke's daughter in the land. 
 There is no reason he should not have become as 
 much wiser as myself." 
 
 " Beware, at all events, of allowing Mr 
 Cressingham to surmise such a project," cried 
 Justina, laughingly, as she quitted the room, " or 
 you will be having him turn Turk and settle in a 
 kiosk for the remainder of his days, in dread of 
 returning to the Hall !" 
 
 The bloom painted upon her cheek by these 
 startling allusions, had scarcely subsided when 
 Justina arrived at home. But it was not to be of 
 long continuance. She saw in a moment that her 
 grandmother had disagreeable news to communi- 
 cate, connected, in some way or other, with the 
 family at once the object of her deference and 
 
288 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 animosity. The fussy old lady was big with 
 momentous tidings. 
 
 " And pray, my dear, how did your poor friend 
 bear this dreadful affair?" said she, as soon as her 
 granddaughter entered the room. " I'm sure I 
 quite trembled when I heard it, to think what the 
 consequence might be to that poor shattered frame 
 of hers! — though I can't bring myself to believe 
 her in the sort of precarious condition which poor 
 Mr Drench chooses to fancy. It seems to me 
 that people who have been ten years and more 
 a- dying, may go on dying for ten years to 
 come." 
 
 " But what has occurred, dear grandmamma, to 
 make you more anxious than usual on poor Mrs 
 Blair's account ?" demanded Justina. 
 
 '* Nothing very particular, my dear, — only this 
 execution ! To be sure, there never was any- 
 thing so dreadful ! " faltered the old lady, raising 
 her eyes and hands to Heaven, — almost sin- 
 cerely. 
 
 " What execution?" persisted Justina, begin- 
 ning to be agitated in her turn. 
 
 " Why, is it possible, my love, that you have 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 289 
 
 not heard ? — There is an execution put in at the 
 Hall, and the sheriff's officers have been in pos- 
 session since the afternoon !" 
 
 Justina rushed to the bell. — She hoped to be in 
 time to stop Mrs Blair's pony chair. 
 
 " What on earth are you going to do, Justina ?'* 
 cried the old lady, perceiving that she was tying 
 on her bonnet. 
 
 " Return to The Wilderness if the carriage be 
 not gone," said she. ** Mrs Blair will die, should 
 this sad news be hastily communicated to her. — 
 At present she knows nothing. — Oh ! if I could 
 only reach her in time ! " 
 
 " My dear, no one would be so cruel as to tell 
 her such a thing," said the old lady, not a little 
 relieved to find from the servant that the carriage 
 had been gone ten minutes. " Besides, I really 
 cannot have you running about the country at 
 this time of night." 
 
 " Dear grandmamma, you yourself seemed to 
 think it impossible, just now, but that the news 
 should have already reached her. Her servants 
 will have learned it here. Reflect upon the con- 
 sequences !" 
 
 " No,— I warned John and Mary to be on their 
 
 VOL. I. o 
 
290 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 guard, in case the thing should not have trans- 
 pired. No one can possibly see poor Mrs Blair 
 to-night; and in the morning, you may visit her 
 as early as you please." — 
 
 With this permission, the anxious girl was forced 
 to content herself, as she retired to her sleepless 
 pillow; — and in the silence of the night, pain- 
 ful indeed was it to contemplate the disgrace 
 brought by Reginald upon the threshold of the 
 ancient family of which he was the unworthy 
 representative. — In a thousand forms, with a 
 thousand forebodings, did she consider the 
 matter. — There was but one chamber in Mrs 
 Blair's abode that commanded a view of the 
 Hall ; at the windows of which, during Reginald's 
 absence aforetime, the fond mother had loved to 
 sit and contemplate the brightness of the setting 
 sun reflected upon the multiplicity of windows of 
 the old pile. Even for some time after his depar- 
 ture for the continent, she found enjoyment in the 
 contemplation. It was Reginald's roof, — it was 
 Reginald's home on which she was gazing, and 
 there was a soothing influence in the sight. 
 
 But when, amid the altered fortunes of the 
 place, it became only too evident that Stoke Pad- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 291 
 
 docks was deserted by its master, she ordered the 
 windows to be closed, and the room was abandoned. 
 
 That very morning, however, by one of those 
 instincts that seem to connect our destinies with 
 some vague and mysterious influence whose 
 import is equally inscrutable with the Higher 
 will that "shapes our ends," Mrs Blair had 
 taken it into her head to repair to the room, and 
 station herself at the forbidden window, leaning 
 upon the arm of Justina. She ascribed the caprice 
 to the yearning of a house-ridden heart after a 
 more extensive landscape than was afforded by 
 her view of the garden of The Wilderness, bright- 
 ened by the revivifying influence of spring. But 
 Justina was now persuaded that some deeper 
 hidden impulse had produced her sudden interest 
 in the spot she had so long dreaded to contem- 
 plate. — 
 
 " Thank Heaven,*' murmured the kind-hearted 
 girl, as she vainly attempted to dismiss the recol- 
 lection from her mind, — "Thank Heaven, that, 
 while she stood there, leaning on my shoulder, 
 indulging in such happy visions for the future, 
 she was spared all conjecture of the afflicting 
 
292 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 event fated to form the climax of her mortifica- 
 tions/' 
 
 At an earlier hour than any other in the vil- 
 lage of Stoke was astir, Justina ascertained that 
 the claim asserted by the sherifi''s officers was a 
 bond amounting to eleven hundred pounds, for 
 which Reginald had made himself responsible for 
 Lord Robert Leigh, at the period when the Tyrant 
 of Stoke Paddocks still rejoiced in the name of 
 the Heir and many friends. 
 
 It was some comfort to find that no new impru- 
 dence was the cause of the evil ; and she conse- 
 quently took courage to hasten to the house of Mr 
 Drench, who was co-executor with her grand- 
 mother of the will of the late Vicar, with an 
 earnest entreaty that, from a sum of two thousand 
 pounds to which, by virtue of her father's settle- 
 ments, she was entitled at the age of fourteen, 
 he would satisfy the demand, and prevent the 
 transaction from coming to the knowledge of his 
 patient at The Wilderness. 
 
 " Believe me, I run no risk of losing my 
 money," pleaded she, on his flat refusal to sanc- 
 tion an act so preposterous. — " You cannot doubt 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 293 
 
 Mr Cressingliam's eagerness to repay me, tlie 
 moment this disgraceful business comes to his 
 knowledge." 
 
 " I am very tar from certain of his ability," 
 replied the prudent apothecary, " and take my 
 word for it, the service you propose would defeat 
 its own purpose. Other executions would follow, 
 in the hope of similar interposition. Rest yourself 
 easy, my dear young lady. Nothing can be done, 
 but to keep the circumstance from the knowledge 
 of Mrs Blair. You might as well stand on West- 
 minster Bridge, and try to arrest the course of 
 the Thames, as pretend to stop the ruin and dis- 
 credit of Reginald Cressingham." 
 
 Vainly did Justina reiterate her importunities. 
 Drench stood firm, and their argument was at 
 length interrupted by a summons to him to hasten 
 instantly to The Wilderness. 
 
 "I am afraid this abominable business has 
 transpired," cried he, acceding to Justina's re- 
 quest to bear him company, " in which case Mrs 
 Blair will never hold up her head again." 
 
 She never did ! — The event, which the im- 
 prudence of servants had betrayed to her know- 
 ledge, had already struck her death-blow; and 
 
 o 2 
 
294 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 the service required of tlie apothecary was to 
 restore her to consciousness after a long swoon, 
 from which she was with difficulty recovered, and 
 only to relapse into insensibility. 
 
 *' Tell him I forgave him !" — were the first ra- 
 tional words she uttered, when at length aware 
 that it was in the arms of her adopted daughter she 
 was so tenderly supported. 
 
 " You will see him again and again, to express 
 your own feelings," answered Justina, compre- 
 hending all that was comprised in her words. " At 
 present, you are overcome by this sad shock.-— 
 You will soon, very soon, be better " 
 
 ^' Never!" replied Mrs Blair, in a hoarse 
 whisper. " I have borne much suffering. — All 
 these silent years of mine, have been years of 
 suffering, — years of self-reproach. This last blow 
 has only proved the over-brimming drop in my 
 cup of sorrow." 
 
 " At some future time you will experience relief 
 from having been forced to lay aside the mask 
 you must have often found so oppressive,'* replied 
 her young friend. " When all this is over, dearest 
 Mrs Blair, you will be more at peace than before." 
 
 " It cannot be over. — Such stains are indelible," 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 295 
 
 replied the sufferer, waving her head. " And it Is 
 all my doing, Justina. It is / who am the cause 
 of poor Reginald's ruin. I courted riches for him. 
 As a child, I accepted dependence for him in the 
 house of a cruel, heartless man. — When he attained 
 the object of my desires, I seemed to worship him 
 the more, — worship my only son the more — that 
 he was rich and great; and, instead of checking 
 his faults, or attempting to mature his judgment, 
 gave way to all his caprices, and allowed him to 
 grow up in utter hardness of heart ! — The hard- 
 ening influence of money destroyed him. As you 
 once said to me, Justina, Reginald was encased 
 from his boyhood in a coat of golden armour, that 
 seemed to prevent all expansion of his natural 
 qualities. — On ! my poor son ! " — 
 
 " Compose yourself, dearest friend,** remon- 
 strated Justina, terrified by the wildness of her 
 eye and huskiness of her voice. 
 
 "Have I not said that I have forgiven him?" 
 rejoined Mrs Blair. " If you love me, Justina, 
 pray in your turn, that God may forgive me I" 
 
 It was useless, to attempt to lead her to any 
 other train of thought. She was dying, — she knew 
 it, — dying with the home of her only son, within 
 
296 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 view of her dwelling, in possession of the assertors 
 of the law ! 
 
 " There is one among the family possessions," 
 faltered the conscience-struck mother, as she be- 
 came aware of the yet nearer approach of death, 
 — " which even he has not been able to expose to 
 shame. — See me laid in the family vault, Justina. 
 Should he ever return, tell him it was there I took 
 refuge from the publicity of his disgrace." 
 
 She never spoke again. — Vainly was she ques- 
 tioned by the apothecary and exhorted by the 
 new Vicar ; nay, vainly was she caressed with 
 tears of tenderest sympathy by her adopted child. 
 -^Her irradiated features betokened joy as she 
 listened to the assuaging words of the priest of 
 her faith, — her yearning eyes expressed grateful 
 affection towards one who had been unto her as a 
 daughter. But ever and anon, her eyes wandered 
 with a terrified glance towards the door of her 
 chamber, as though in expectation of some outrage 
 from the intrusion of the minions of the law. Her 
 mind, perhaps, was already wandering. — Better 
 so ! — There can be no comfort for the death-bed 
 of a mother tormented by the misdoings of a 
 graceless child. 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 297 
 
 Justina did not quit her a moment. — In vain 
 was she recalled home by mandates of authority ; 
 and in vain did the medical man, after a whole 
 day's watching beside the dying woman, insist 
 that his young friend should desist from a duty 
 beyond her years and strength. — Justina stood 
 beside her pillow to the last, — wiped away the 
 dews from her forehead, — fanned her fainting 
 form, — and at length closed the eyes, whose fixed, 
 unconscious gaze proclaimed that the world con- 
 tained a sufferer the less. — 
 
 " She has been a mother to me, and I will do by 
 her the duty of a daughter ! " — said she, in reply 
 to every remonstrance ; nor, till the limbs of her 
 friend had been arrayed for the grave, and the 
 coffin lid was closed over her remains, did she 
 prepare to quit the house. — 
 
 Just as she was departing from the chamber of 
 death, her tearful face muffled in her cloak, and 
 her soul stifled with grief, a stranger appeared at 
 the door from which she was departing. — Justina 
 recoiled with horror. — Recalling to mind the 
 terrors of Mrs Blair lest some insult should be 
 offered to her in her last moments, as it now 
 appeared she had more than once undergone 
 
 o 3 
 
298 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 during her life-time, she fancied that the intruder 
 must be connected with the disgraceful business at 
 the Hall. 
 
 His mode of address, however, instantly dis- 
 pelled her fears. — She had ceased to doubt that 
 he was a gentleman, even before, with earnest 
 apologies for his intrusion, he announced himself 
 to be Richard Cressingham. 
 
 " A rumour of what was going on at Stoke 
 Paddocks having reached me at my place in Berk- 
 shire, where I was spending the Easter holidays," 
 said he, in explanation of his visit, " I hastened 
 hither to do a kinsman's part by relieving the 
 family and the family place from a stigma, abso- 
 lutely the result of ill-will and mischief on the 
 part of those employed to act for the absent 
 owner. — All I meditated was to pay off the claim : 
 — I was not advised that a more painful duty 
 awaited me here towards my unfortunate aunt." 
 
 " Would that you had arrived in time to soothe 
 her last anxieties by proving that her son still 
 possessed a friend," replied Justina, with a heavy 
 sigh; — "for her death was as devoid of conso- 
 lation as her life of offence." — 
 
 With the kindest deference towards the feelings 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 299 
 
 of one who, thougli so young, so almost a child, 
 evinced the wisest s^lf-possession in the midst of 
 her afflictions, Mr Cressingham proceeded to state 
 his intention of remaining at Stoke till after the 
 funeral, which the instructions of Reginald's man 
 of business had appointed indecently soon, in 
 order to obtain earlier possession of The Wilder- 
 ness ; and it was a comfort to Justina to feel that, 
 in Reginald's absence, she was to be countenanced 
 in her last melancholy tribute of respect to the 
 dead, by one whose name commanded such 
 general respect as that of the member for 
 Wilsbury. — 
 
 The funeral took place; — and as the proces- 
 sion passed through the park, the first gloomy 
 array of death which had figured there since 
 the gorgeous funeral of Sir Giles Cressingham, — 
 Justina felt a daughter's pride in observing that her 
 benefactress was speeded to her resting-place by 
 the lamentations of the poor ; while of the hard- 
 hearted man of fortune, not a single human tear 
 had moistened the pall. — She was grateful too that, 
 as the coffin containing the wasted form of that 
 suffering mother was borne past the old Hall, 
 no dishonouring presence brought the scoffer and 
 
300 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 the hireling to gaze upon her obsequies. — A 
 tearful glance towards the grave kinsman of Mrs 
 Blair, as the funeral glided before the portico 
 towards the little church containing the family 
 monuments of his race, conveyed her thankfulness 
 for his interposition ! — 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 301 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Show me the grave 
 That I have brought her to. Let me weep there 
 Till Death himself have pity. 
 
 Fletcher. 
 
 A FEW weeks after these distressing events, Jus- 
 tina was loitering, after evening service, in the 
 old church, leaning against the marble balustrade 
 of the monument of a Sir Reginald de Cressing- 
 ham, beside _ which was the entrance to the family 
 vault, and musing with many a grievous retro- 
 spection upon the sorrows of her whom she had 
 recently seen consigned to that cheerless dwelling, 
 — sorrows all the more bitter for the fond ma- 
 ternal pride which had kept them so long unac- 
 knowledged; when a travel-worn, haggard man 
 hurried along the aisle, and threw himself upon 
 the stones of the sepulchre. 
 
302 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 That it was Reginald, she could not entertain 
 a doubt ; though his dishevelled appearance bore 
 little trace of the fine gentleman of other days ; 
 and respecting his anguish, she quietly withdrew 
 from the spot, without venturing to address him. 
 
 On arriving, however, at the stile leading from 
 the churchyard towards the Vicarage, it occurred 
 to her that such remorse as must, or ought to be 
 that of Reginald Cressingham, could not be devoid 
 of danger. He was now the murderer of his 
 mother, as before of his own good name ; and 
 she fancied that he might rush upon self-destruc- 
 tion as a refuge from the consciousness of his 
 double crime. Retracing her steps, therefore, 
 Justina sat anxiously down in the porch of the 
 old church, and listened, moan by moan, sob by 
 sob, to the tortures of the penitent ; until a sudden 
 cessation of his cries suggesting a renewal of her 
 alarm, she hurried back into the chancel, and found 
 him extended, faint and exhausted, on the ground, 
 while the marble effigies standing around, seemed 
 to survey with scorn these bootless tortures of the 
 weakling, the last of their race. Sympathizing 
 in his desolate condition, Justina now drew 
 towards him, took his hand in hers, to whisper 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 303 
 
 the words of comfort and forgiveness she had 
 gathered from the lips of his dying mother. 
 
 " She forgave you and blessed you before she 
 died/' — repeated Justina again and again ; and 
 in time, the soothing words were of due effect. 
 By degress Reginald was able to explain and 
 question in his turn. He had started from the 
 East on the first intimation of an execution 
 having been put into his house, — a sufficient 
 intimation of the unworthiness of the hands to 
 which his affairs were committed, since four years 
 of retrenchment had done so little to extricate 
 them from involvement. But for the cruel intel- 
 ligence which greeted him the moment he set 
 foot in London he had been utterly unprepared ; 
 nor was it till, a few hours afterwards, he made 
 his way to Stoke, he could believe in the reality 
 of that terrible bereavement. So long as his 
 mother survived, there had seemed comfort for 
 him, — hope for him. There was nothing now, and 
 he rushed from The Wilderness to her grave, as 
 if eager to crush both soul and body against the 
 stone that parted him from the dead. 
 
 The presence of a mild and patient friend in an 
 hour of affliction so especial, might be accepted 
 
304 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 as a token that the mercies of Heaven were not 
 yet wholly withdrawn from one who had taken 
 such small account of its benefits. Justina's gentle 
 voice, her silent forbearance, gradually subdued 
 the frenzy of his affliction. He listened almost 
 with satisfaction to her assurances that for many 
 months preceding his mother's sudden dissolution 
 she had enjoyed better health than usual, and 
 more cheering expectations ; that she continually 
 talked of him with undiminished affection; and 
 that the unhappy day preceding her release, could 
 alone be said to have proved a season of distress. 
 
 All this was but confirmation of the contents of 
 her letters to her son, — letters so fondly describing 
 the consolation derived from the very friend who 
 now sat beside him as a sister, relating with her 
 usual firm but quiet utterance, the evils whereof he 
 had been the cause, and the untiring motherly love 
 with which they had been endured for his sake. 
 
 " And you were her only friend !" — he ex- 
 claimed at length, clasping his hands with an 
 expression of utter despair. " But for you, her 
 eyes would have been closed by the hands of 
 menials, and her head laid in a neglected grave ! " 
 
 " She was not so much on that account an 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 805 
 
 object of compassion," remonstrated Justina. 
 " The menials, as you call them, who had so 
 long and faithfully attended her, were to her as 
 friends. The kind heart of Mrs Blair found com- 
 fort in their sympathy. Her death was mourned 
 with respect by all who witnessed her blameless 
 life, and with aflfection by those humbler friends 
 who had seen her, ill and feeble, attend the death- 
 bed of the faithful old nurse of her son. But 
 other tokens of deference awaited her. The chief 
 mourner at your mother's funeral was a man of 
 the highest importance in the eyes of his country- 
 men, — your cousin, Mr Cressingham, of Manny 
 Park!" 
 
 Reginald started up, — nay, almost recoiled, 
 from the side of his companion. — All that was 
 left in his soul of the leaven of his old pride, rose 
 up against this bitter rebuke. 
 
 '' Richard Cressingham !" was all he faltered, on 
 hearing the name of one whom he had supplanted 
 in fortune, and who had supplanted him in the 
 estimation of the world, by the nobler influence of 
 worth and wisdom. " There needed only this to 
 make me know myself a wretch indeed ! " 
 
 "A wretch, indeed, if thus heartless in your 
 
306 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 appreciation of the service he has rendered you !" 
 cried Justina. " Reginald, Reginald ! it was your 
 cousin who defrayed that dishonouring debt, — it 
 was your cousin who redeemed your house from 
 shame, — it was your cousin who caused the head 
 of your mother to be laid with honour in the 
 grave !" 
 
 "And you expect me to forgive him such 
 advantages over me !" retorted the humiliated 
 man, smiting his brows, as they sat together under 
 the old porch overlooking the secluded church- 
 yard which formed almost a portion of iiis 
 park. 
 
 " I scarcely expect you to forgive yourself for 
 being the cause of his obtaining them !" was her 
 steady reply. " Nevertheless, if you would still 
 testify your love and veneration for your poor 
 mother's memory, — if you would redeem the name 
 of her forefathers from obloquy, — if you would 
 cease to be a fable and disgrace to all belonging 
 to you, I beseech you, lay aside these jealous re- 
 pinings ! You asked me just now how you should 
 ever repay my devotion to your mother. Thus ! 
 — Go straight to your cousin. — Seek his advice 
 in all that regards your worldly interests. His 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 307 
 
 character for wisdom and uprightness ought to 
 satisfy you that you cannot have a safer coun- 
 sellor ; and richly has he earned your confidence 
 by the promptitude of his service." 
 
 Reginald Cressingham replied by a heavy 
 groan. 
 
 " I know that I am an inert, selfish fool," he 
 replied. " I know that the mismanagement by 
 which my ruin has been completed would dis- 
 grace a child. — Can I go and throw myself on the 
 contempt of a man like Richard Cressingham by 
 such confessions ?" — 
 
 " It is the only chance that may enable you to 
 surmount it," persisted Justina. " You are for- 
 tunate in having a near kinsman to whose judg- 
 ment the nation has recourse in its emergencies. 
 Will you be the only one who disdains to seek 
 it? — He extends the olive branch towards you, 
 under circumstances that ought to soften the most 
 obdurate heart. — Can you refuse to accept the 
 pledge ?" 
 
 Long did Reginald remain absorbed in reflec- 
 tion, and almost sullenly silent. 
 
 " Go now, — go at once !" persisted Justina. 
 
308 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 " Do not enter your own home till you have come 
 to such a decision as will enable you to restore it and 
 yourself to the position you ought to hold. Pro- 
 ceed straight from the grave of your mother to 
 the presence of him by whose manly sensibility it 
 was hallowed. Forgive me if I speak so reso- 
 lutely, and in a manner perhaps unbecoming my 
 age and our relative position. But I speak in her 
 name, — I speak with her feelings ! — Could she 
 arise from yonder vault, it would be to implore 
 you to be true to yourself, and honour her memory 
 by your own restoration to happiness and respecta- 
 biUty." 
 
 Such, often reiterated, but reiterated with all 
 the earnestness of faithful regard, were the expos- 
 tulations which at length determined the prodigal 
 son to arise and seek the interposition of his 
 cousin. He could not have decided more wisely. 
 Richard Cressingham, from his kinsmanship with 
 the ward of Docket, — the Tyrant of Stoke Pad- 
 docks, — the butt of Lord Robert Leigh, — the 
 victim of Snapper and Co., — had more than once 
 been apprized of villanies connected with the 
 aflfairs of an estate, of which by many he was sup- 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 309 
 
 posed to be the heir in tail, and was fully pre- 
 pared with faith for the grievances of Reginald, 
 and even with data to secure partial redress. 
 
 Under his wise and practical counsels, accord- 
 ingly such measures were adopted for the dis- 
 missal of his present men of business and the 
 adjustment of his estate, as inspired even the de- 
 sponding man with hopes of a gradual extrication. 
 
 " Nothing but a degree of wilful blindness, little 
 short of insanity," pleaded the member for Wils- 
 bury, " can account for the manner in which you 
 have suffered yourself to be driven, entanglement 
 by entanglement, into this maze of ruin." 
 
 By skilful and persevering investigations, more- 
 over, the clever Cressingham was enabled to trace 
 the early involvements of Reginald to the malver- 
 sations of his guardian even beyond his surmises. 
 The honourable member for Llanstephen proved 
 to be the real holder of many of those claims upon 
 the property, which had arisen out of advances at 
 an exorbitant rate of interest ; — and the dread of 
 exposure such as must have levelled to the dust 
 even his well-constructed temple of plausibility, 
 proved the means of enabling the new solicitors to 
 strike out such plans of sure but gradual payment, 
 
310 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 as assigned to the proprietor of Stoke Paddocks an 
 income fully enabling him to maintain his family 
 respectability at the Hall. 
 
 But from this, the good feeling of Reginald 
 recoiled. He determined to settle at The Wilder- 
 ness, and cause the old mansion to stand unin- 
 habited, a memento ever before his eyes of his 
 folly and prodigality, till his whole estate should 
 be retrieved. — The Wilderness was enough for 
 happiness ; — The Wilderness, hallowed by re- 
 membrances of his mother, and sentiments of 
 early friendship, was a home that sufficed his 
 modified ambition. 
 
 " And now," said Richard Cressingham, one 
 day, when, many months after their reconciliation, 
 he was putting the finishing stroke to the organi- 
 zation of these projects, — " may I in return for 
 my good offices, my dear Reginald, request 
 your interposition where you seem to hold the 
 influence of a brother? — I am a plain spoken 
 fellow, as becomes one who is too much a man of 
 figures to pretend to be a man of figure. I have 
 long been wanting a wife ; without much leisure on 
 my hands for the arduous task of hunting out, in 
 worldly circles, such a companion as would sweeten 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 311 
 
 my toils as a public man, without finding her own 
 embittered by my gravity. Such a person, — 
 (but in a form, heaven knows, and gifted with 
 superiority of sense and feeling, I had despaired of 
 finding united !) have I found in your village of 
 Stoke. Try therefore, I entreat you, whether you 
 cannot assist me in persuading her to demonstrate 
 her affection for your poor mother, by restoring to 
 the home where Sophia Cressingham first saw the 
 light, all that it has so long wanted of female illus- 
 tration!"— 
 
 Poor Reginald, who was beginning to feel that 
 the one thing wanting to the perfecting of his 
 new projects of happiness, was the hope of recom- 
 mending himself as a husband to one who had so 
 lightly regarded him as the man of fortune, could 
 scarcely repress a cry of despair as he listened to 
 a demand so well founded ; and admitted the im- 
 possibility that the hand of the member for Wils- 
 bury should be rejected by so wise a girl as 
 Justina, or a man so well established as Cressing- 
 ham of Manny Park, by Justina's grandmother. 
 
 " You will need no recommendation of mine," 
 said he, in a faltering voice. '^ A marriage so 
 
312 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 perfectly assorted cannot fail to meet the wishes of 
 all parties." 
 
 " Nay," replied Lis cousin, — on whom the 
 tremulous voice and whitening cheek of poor Re- 
 ginald were not thrown away, — " do not say all 
 parties. I see how it is, my dear fellow ! — I was 
 not aware of this attachment. I fancied your 
 tastes and predilections of a- more worldly nature. 
 I will think no more of the business. Not a word 
 has ever yet escaped my lips to any other than 
 yourself ; nor am I young enough, idle enough, 
 or enough in love, to suppose that the world may 
 not contain elsewhere a partner equally suitable 
 for me, whom I may marry without the self-re- 
 proach of having broken a tenderer heart than 
 my own." 
 
 Reginald, however, was not to be outdone in 
 generosity. He insisted upon laying the wishes 
 of his , cousin distinctly and earnestly before 
 one whom they honoured, and whose happiness 
 he knew must be secured by an alliance so un- 
 exceptionable. Of his own aspirings, — his own 
 ardent affections, — he uttered not a syllable ; nor 
 was it till some time had elapsed after the decided 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 313 
 
 though grateful refusal of one whose prospects in 
 life rendered her no ineligible match even for the 
 squire of Manny Park, relieved him from his 
 scruples, that Reginald by degrees began to in- 
 sinuate his ardent desire of converting her long 
 and consistent friendship into a warmer sentiment. 
 " You used to tell me, dearest Justina, that I 
 should never have a friend ; — I have found one in 
 the man I most detested ! You used to tell me I 
 should never have an opinion of my own ; will you 
 not accept my fervent attachment as a proof to the 
 contrary ?" whispered Reginald, as he pressed his 
 suit upon the playmate of his childhood, who 
 listened without any apparent reluctance. But 
 whatever her secret joy at finding herself beloved 
 by one for whom her own affection had grown 
 with her growth, she was not so much the slave of 
 her feelings as to accept the good intentions of 
 Reginald Cressingham as a sufficient assurance 
 of his reformation. His natural instability of cha- 
 racter suggested caution. Justina knew that he 
 had been on the point of sacrificing his pride for 
 an interested marriage ; — he might, perhaps, feel 
 it a greater sacrifice now, though renounced at a 
 higher instigation. She chose, therefore, to assure 
 
 VOL. I. p 
 
314 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 herself by experience whether the alteration of his 
 views and habits were likely to prove permanent, 
 and demanded time for the trial. 
 
 The probation, however, was not to be of a 
 very barbarous nature. Residing in the same 
 village, meeting every day of their lives, the two 
 years' engagement on which she insisted as a 
 token of his sincerity, served only to endear to 
 each other two persons worthy of a mutual attach- 
 ment ; and though the death of the Vicar's widow 
 within a year of the period originally appointed 
 for their union, afforded a fair excuse to Justina 
 for accelerating the event, she was firm in requir- 
 ing that her eighteenth year should be accom- 
 plished ere she gave her hand to the object of her 
 first affections. May the docility with which the 
 Tyrant of Stoke Paddocks submitted to the decree 
 of his fair despot, be accepted as sufficient evidence 
 of his amended temper ! 
 
 The two years wore to an end. — It was a 
 very happy wedding — it promises to be a very 
 happy marriage. Mrs Cressingham, by the de- 
 votion of her handsome fortune to the further 
 extrication of the estate of Stoke Paddocks, has 
 earned the gratitude of her husband by placing 
 
THE MAN OP FORTUNE. 315 
 
 him in the all but unencumbered enjoyment 
 of his fine income ; and the son and heir born 
 to them last year, saw the light under the 
 roof of the old Hall, in all its former dignity 
 and pride; — when, for the first time, Reginald 
 took part in the rejoicings of the village of 
 Stoke, and heard the bob-majors pealed in his 
 honour. But for the recollection that she who 
 would so fondly have rejoiced in the sound had 
 been deprived by his follies of the enjoyment of 
 a tranquil old age, he would not at that moment 
 have had a sorrow in the world ! — 
 
 Such people as Lord Holmeswell, Sir Henry 
 Morton, and Bob Leigh, laughed heartily at the 
 announcement of his marriage with the grand- 
 daughter of the old Vicar, regarding it as con- 
 firmation of their former verdict, that " it was all 
 up with poor Cress !" — But the honourable posi- 
 tion now maintained in his county by Cressingham 
 of Stoke Paddocks, and the friendship of a happy 
 circle of good and honourable families, who 
 readily overlooked the early follies of a man, for 
 whose reform no less a person than the member 
 for Wilsbury deigned to stand sponsor, afford all 
 
316 THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 the society and distinction wanting in former days 
 to the respectability of the family place. Even 
 the houses of Granton and Beaconsfield have dis- 
 covered, with profit to themselves, that Stoke is 
 within visiting distance. 
 
 Athanasius Docket, meanwhile, having fallen 
 into disgrace with his party upon the discovery of 
 his- negotiations with government for the gover- 
 norship of one of the new South Sea Colonies, 
 was thrown out of Parliament at the late election ; 
 and is said to be on the point of sailing for 
 Australia, where he has invested a considerable 
 portion of his ill-gotten gains. In England, his 
 career was crushed. He was observed never to 
 hold up his head in the House from the moment 
 he was unable to confront the contemptuous smile 
 of the honourable member for Wilsbury. 
 
 The ill-omened old beech-tree of Sir Giles 
 Cressingham has been levelled with the lawn ; and 
 all the cogitations of Reginald now occur under 
 the spreading branches of the oak sacred to Jus- 
 tina. — It may consequently be inferred that they 
 are not of a very gloomy nature ; and that, under 
 the prudent guidance of such parents, the present 
 
THE MAN OF FORTUNE. 317 
 
 " Heir " will become worthy of " many friends ;" 
 — and trained in sentiments of honour sobered by 
 honesty, and generosity tempered by prudence, he 
 will, at some future period, accredit the responsi- 
 ble position of a "Man of Fortune." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 PRINTED BY C. REYKELL, LITTLE PULTEKEY STREET.