Chapter 3

Whilst the domestic _tête-à-tête_, feebly described in the foregoing chapter, was in progress, the nobleman, more than once referred to, was passing miserable moments in his temporary lodgings at the Salisbury Hotel, in Oxford Street. A more unhappy gentleman than Baron Downy it would be impossible to find in or out of England. The inheritor of a cruelly-burdened title, he had spent a life in adding to its incumbrances, rather than in seeking to disentangle it from the meshes in which it had been transmitted to him. In the freest country on the globe, he had never known the bliss of liberty. He had moved about with a drag-chain upon his spiritual and physical energies, as long as he could remember his being. At school and at college, necessarily limited in his allowance, he contracted engagements which followed him for at least ten years after his entrance into life, and then only quitted him to leave him bound to others far more tremendous and inextricable. His most frequent visitors, his most constant friends, his most familiar acquaintance, were money-lenders. He had borrowed money upon all possible and unimaginable securities, from the life of his grandmother down to that last resource of the needy gentleman, the family repeater, chain, and appendages. His lordship, desperate as his position was, was a man of breeding, a nobleman in thought and feeling. But the more incapable of doing wrong, so much the more liable to deceit and fraud. He had been passed, so to speak, from hand to hand by all the representatives of the various money-lending classes that thrive in London on the folly and necessity of the reckless and the needy. All had now given him up. His name had an odour in the market, where his paper was a drug. His bills of a hundred found few purchasers at a paltry five pounds, and were positively rejected by all but wine-merchant-sheriff's officers, who took them at nothing, and contrived to make a handsome profit out of them into the bargain. Few had so little reason to be proud as the man whose name had become a by-word and a joke amongst the most detestable and degraded of their race; and yet, strange as it may seem, few had a keener sense of their position, or could be so readily stung by insult, let it but proceed from a quarter towards which punishment might be directed with credit or honour. A hundred times Lord Downy had cursed his fate, which had not made him an able-bodied porter, or an independent labourer in the fields, rather than that saddest of all sad contradictions, a nobleman without the means of sustaining nobility--a man of rank with no dignity--a superior without the shadow of pre-eminence; but for all the wealth of the kingdom, he would not have sullied the order to which he belonged, by what he conceived to be one act of meanness or sordid selfishness; as if there could be any thing foul or base in any act that seeks, by honourable industry, to repair the errors of a wayward fortune.

Upon the day of which we speak, there sat with Lord Downy a rude, ill-favoured man, brought into juxtaposition with the peer by the unfortunate relation that connected the latter with so many men of similar stamp and station. He seemed more at home in the apartment than the owner, and took some pains to over-act his part of vulgar independence. He had never been so intimate with a nobleman before--certainly no nobleman had ever been in his power until now. The low and abject mind holds its jubilee when it fancies that it reduces superiority to its own level, and can trample upon it for an hour without fear of rebuke or opposition.

"For the love of heaven! Mr Ireton, if for no kindness towards me," said Lord Downy, "give me one day longer to redeem those sacred pledges. They are heirlooms--gifts of my poor dear mother. I had no right to place them in your hands--they belong to my child."

"Then why did you? I never asked you; I could have turned my money twenty times over since you have had it. I dare say you think I have made a fortune out of you."

"I have always paid you liberally--and given you your terms."

"I thought so--it's always the way. The more you do for great people the more you may. I might have taken the bed from under your lordship many a time, if so I had been so disposed; but of course you have forgotten all about _that_."

"About these jewels, Mr Ireton. They are not of great value, and cannot be worth your selling. I shall receive two hundred and fifty pounds to-morrow--it shall be made three hundred, and you shall have the whole sum on account. Surely four-and-twenty hours are not to make you break your faith with me?"

"As for breaking faith, Lord Downy, I should like to know what you'd do if I were in your place and you in mine."

"I hope"--

"Oh, yes! it's easy enough to talk now, when you aint in my position; but I know very well how you all grind down the poor fellows that are in your power--how you make them slave on five shillings a-week, to keep you in luxury, and all the rest of it. Not that I blame you. I know it's human nature to get what one can out of every body, and I don't complain to see men try it on."

"I have nothing more to say, Mr Ireton. You must do with me as you think proper."

"I am to wait till to-morrow, you say?"

"Yes; only until to-morrow. I shall surely be in receipt of money then."

"Oh, sure of course!" said Mr Ireton. "You gentlemen are always sure till the time comes, and then you can't make it out how it is you are disappointed. No sort of experience conquers your spirits; but the more your hopes are defeated, the more sanguine you get. I'll wait till to-morrow then"--

"A thousand thanks."

"Wait a bit--on certain terms. You know as well as I do, that I could put you to no end of expense. I don't wish to do it; but I don't prefer to be out of pocket by the matter. I must have ten pounds for the accommodation."

"Ten!" exclaimed poor Lord Downy.

"Yes, only ten; and I'll give you twenty if you'll pay me at once;" added Mr Ireton--knowing very well that his victim could as easily have paid off the national debt.

Lord Downy sighed.

"There's a slip of paper before you. Give me your I O U for the trifle, and pay principal and interest to-morrow."

His lordship turned obediently to the table, wrote in silence the acknowledgment required, and with a hand that trembled from vexation and anxiety, presented the document to his tormentor. The latter vanished. He had scarcely departed before Lord Downy rang his bell with violence, and a servant entered.

"Are there any letters for me, Mason?" inquired his lordship eagerly.

"None, my lord," answered Mason with some condescension, and a great deal of sternness.

Lord Downy bit his lip, and paced the room uneasily.

"My lord," said Mason, "I beg your"----

"Nothing more, nothing more;" replied the master, interrupting him. "Should any letters arrive, let them be brought to me immediately."

"Beg your pardon, my lord," said Mason, taking no notice of the order, "the place doesn't suit me."

"How?"

"Nothing to complain of, my lord--only wish to get into a good family."

"Sirrah!"

"It isn't the kind of thing, my lord," continued Mason, growing bolder, "that I have been used to. I brought a character with me, and I want to take it away again. I'm talked about already."

"What does the fellow mean?"

"I don't wish to hurt your lordship's feelings, and I'd rather not be more particular. If it gets blown in the higher circles that I have been here, my character, my lord, is smashed."

"You may go, sir, when your month has expired."

"I'd rather go at once, my lord, if it's all the same to you. As for the salary, my lord, it's quite at your service--quite. I never was a grasping man; and in your lordship's unfortunate situation,"----Lord Downy walked to the window, flung it open, and commenced whistling a tune----"I should know better than to take advantage," proceeded Mr Mason. "There is a young man, my lord, a friend of mine, just entering life, without any character at all, who would be happy, I have no doubt, to undertake"----

Lord Downy banged the window, and turned upon the flunky with an expression of rage that might have put a violent and ever-to-be-lamented stop to this true history, had not the door of his lordship's apartment opened, and _boots_ presented himself with the announcement of "MR WARREN DE FITZALBERT."