CHAPTER I.
OF THE HERO'S BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.--NOTHING CAN DIFFER MORE FROM THE ENDOF THINGS THAN THEIR BEGINNING.
MY grandfather, Sir Arthur Devereux (peace be with his ashes!) was anoble old knight and cavalier, possessed of a property sufficientlylarge to have maintained in full dignity half a dozen peers,--such aspeers have been since the days of the first James. Nevertheless, mygrandfather loved the equestrian order better than the patrician,rejected all offers of advancement, and left his posterity no titles butthose to his estate.
Sir Arthur had two children by wedlock,--both sons; at his death, myfather, the younger, bade adieu to the old hall and his only brother,prayed to the grim portraits of his ancestors to inspire him, andset out--to join as a volunteer the armies of that Louis, afterwardssurnamed _le grand_. Of him I shall say but little; the life of asoldier has only two events worth recording,--his first campaign and hislast. My uncle did as his ancestors had done before him, and, cheap asthe dignity had grown, went up to court to be knighted by Charles II. Hewas so delighted with what he saw of the metropolis that he forswore allintention of leaving it, took to Sedley and champagne, flirted with NellGwynne, lost double the value of his brother's portion at one sitting tothe chivalrous Grammont, wrote a comedy corrected by Etherege, and tooka wife recommended by Rochester. The wife brought him a child six monthsafter marriage, and the infant was born on the same day the comedy wasacted. Luckily for the honour of the house, my uncle shared the fate ofPlemneus, king of Sicyon, and all the offspring he ever had (that is tosay, the child and the play) "died as soon as they were born." Myuncle was now only at a loss what to do with his wife,--that remainingtreasure, whose readiness to oblige him had been so miraculouslyevinced. She saved him the trouble of long cogitation, an exerciseof intellect to which he was never too ardently inclined. There was agentleman of the court, celebrated for his sedateness and solemnity;my aunt was piqued into emulating Orpheus, and, six weeks afterher confinement, she put this rock into motion,--they eloped. Poorgentleman! it must have been a severe trial of patience to a man neverknown before to transgress the very slowest of all possible walks, tohave had two events of the most rapid nature happen to him in the sameweek: scarcely had he recovered the shock of being run away with by myaunt, before, terminating forever his vagrancies, he was run through bymy uncle. The wits made an epigram upon the event, and my uncle, whowas as bold as a lion at the point of a sword, was, to speak frankly,terribly disconcerted by the point of a jest. He retired to the countryin a fit of disgust and gout. Here his natural goodness soon recoveredthe effects of the artificial atmosphere to which it had been exposed,and he solaced himself by righteously governing domains worthy of aprince, for the mortifications he had experienced in the dishonourablecareer of a courtier.
Hitherto I have spoken somewhat slightingly of my uncle, and in hisdissipation he deserved it, for he was both too honest and too simple toshine in that galaxy of prostituted genius of which Charles II. was thecentre. But in retirement he was no longer the same person; and I donot think that the elements of human nature could have furnished forth amore amiable character than Sir William Devereux presiding at Christmasover the merriment of his great hall.
Good old man! his very defects were what we loved best in him: vanitywas so mingled with good-nature, that it became graceful, and wereverenced one the most, while we most smiled at the other.
One peculiarity had he which the age he had lived in and his domestichistory rendered natural enough; namely, an exceeding distaste to thematrimonial state: early marriages were misery, imprudent marriagesidiotism, and marriage, at the best, he was wont to say, with a kindlingeye and a heightened colour, marriage at the best was the devil! Yet itmust not be supposed that Sir William Devereux was an ungallant man. Onthe contrary, never did the _beau sexe_ have a humbler or more devotedservant. As nothing in his estimation was less becoming to a wise manthan matrimony, so nothing was more ornamental than flirtation.
He had the old man's weakness, garrulity; and he told the wittieststories in the world, without omitting anything in them but the point.This omission did not arise from the want either of memory or of humour;but solely from a deficiency in the malice natural to all jesters. Hecould not persuade his lips to repeat a sarcasm hurting even the dead orthe ungrateful; and when he came to the drop of gall which should havegiven zest to the story, the milk of human kindness broke its barrier,despite of himself,--and washed it away. He was a fine wreck, a littleprematurely broken by dissipation, but not perhaps the less interestingon that account; tall, and somewhat of the jovial old English girth,with a face where good-nature and good living mingled their smilesand glow. He wore the garb of twenty years back, and was curiouslyparticular in the choice of his silk stockings. Between you and me, hewas not a little vain of his leg, and a compliment on that score wasalways sure of a gracious reception.
The solitude of my uncle's household was broken by an invasion of threeboys,--none of the quietest,--and their mother, who, the gentlest andsaddest of womankind, seemed to follow them, the emblem of that primevalsilence from which all noise was born. These three boys were my twobrothers and myself. My father, who had conceived a strong personalattachment for Louis XIV., never quitted his service, and the greatKing repaid him by orders and favours without number; he died of woundsreceived in battle,--a Count and a Marshal, full of renown and destituteof money. He had married twice: his first wife, who died without issue,was a daughter of the noble house of La Tremouille; his second, ourmother, was of a younger branch of the English race of Howard. Broughtup in her native country, and influenced by a primitive and retirededucation, she never loved that gay land which her husband had adoptedas his own. Upon his death she hastened her return to England, andrefusing, with somewhat of honourable pride, the magnificent pensionwhich Louis wished to settle upon the widow of his favourite, came tothrow herself and her children upon those affections which she knew theywere entitled to claim.
My uncle was unaffectedly rejoiced to receive us; to say nothing of hislove for my father, and his pride at the honours the latter had won totheir ancient house, the good gentleman was very well pleased with theidea of obtaining four new listeners, out of whom he might select anheir, and he soon grew as fond of us as we were of him. At the time ofour new settlement, I had attained the age of twelve; my second brother(we were twins) was born an hour after me; my third was about fifteenmonths younger. I had never been the favourite of the three. In thefirst place, my brothers (my youngest especially) were uncommonlyhandsome, and, at most, I was but tolerably good-looking: in the secondplace, my mind was considered as much inferior to theirs as my body; Iwas idle and dull, sullen and haughty,--the only wit I ever displayedwas in sneering at my friends, and the only spirit, in quarrelling withmy twin brother; so said or so thought all who saw us in our childhood;and it follows, therefore, that I was either very unamiable or very muchmisunderstood.
But, to the astonishment of myself and my relations, my fate was now tobe reversed; and I was no sooner settled at Devereux Court than I becameevidently the object of Sir William's pre-eminent attachment. The factwas, that I really liked both the knight and his stories better thanmy brothers did; and the very first time I had seen my uncle, I hadcommented on the beauty of his stocking, and envied the constitution ofhis leg; from such trifles spring affection! In truth, our attachmentto each other so increased that we grew to be constantly together; andwhile my childish anticipations of the world made me love to listen tostories of courts and courtiers, my uncle returned the compliment bydeclaring of my wit, as the angler declared of the River Lea, that onewould find enough in it, if one would but angle sufficiently long.
Nor was this all; my uncle and myself were exceedingly like the watersof Alpheus and Arethusa,--nothing was thrown into the one without beingseen very shortly afterwards floating upon the other. Every witticism orlegend Sir William imparted to me (and some, to say truth, were a littletinged with the licentiousness of the times he had lived in),
I took thefirst opportunity of retailing, whatever might be the audience; and fewboys, at the age of thirteen, can boast of having so often as myselfexcited the laughter of the men and the blushes of the women. Thiscircumstance, while it aggravated my own vanity, delighted my uncle's;and as I was always getting into scrapes on his account, so he wasperpetually bound, by duty, to defend me from the charges of which hewas the cause. No man defends another long without loving him the betterfor it; and perhaps Sir William Devereux and his eldest nephew were theonly allies in the world who had no jealousy of each other.