Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846
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The Christino commander had taken up his quarters in the house of one of the principal inhabitants of Artajona. At the time of Herrera's arrival, although it was past ten o'clock, all was bustle and movement in and about the extensive range of building; the stables crammed with horses, the general's escort loitering in the vestibule, orderly officers and aides-de-camp hurrying in all directions, bringing reports and conveying orders to the different regiments and brigades; peasants, probably spies, conversing in low earnest tones with officers of rank: here a party of soldiers drinking, there another group gambling, in a third place a row of sleepers stretched upon the hard ground, but soundly slumbering in spite of its hardness and of the surrounding din. Pushing his way through the crowd, Herrera ascended the stairs, and meeting an orderly at the top, enquired for the general's apartments. Before the soldier could reply, a door opened, a young officer came out, and, perceiving Herrera, hurried towards him. The two officers shook hands. The aide-de-camp was Mariano Torres, who had recently been appointed to the general's staff, upon which Herrera would also have been placed had he not preferred remaining in command of his squadron.
"What brings you here, Luis?" said Torres.
"To see the general. I have a favour to ask of him – one which he must grant. Take me to him, Torres, immediately."
Struck by the wild and hurried manner of his friend, and by the discomposure manifest in his features, Mariano took his arm, and walking with him down the long corridor, which was dimly lighted by lanterns suspended against the wall, led him into his own room. "The general is particularly engaged," said he, "and I cannot venture to disturb him; but in five minutes I will inform him of your arrival. Meanwhile, what is the matter, Luis? What has happened thus to agitate you?"
Although chafing at the delay, Herrera could not refuse to reply to this enquiry; and, in hurried and confused terms, he informed Torres of the news brought by Paco, and of the plan he had devised for the rescue of Rita. Thunderstruck at the temerity of the project, Torres undertook, but at first with small success, to convince Herrera of its impracticability, and induce him to abandon it, at least for the time.
"How can you possibly expect," he said, "ever to reach the convent you have described to me? In front is the Carlist army; on all sides you will meet bands of armed peasants, and you will throw away your own life without a chance of accomplishing your object."
"Don't speak to me of life!" exclaimed Herrera, impetuously interrupting him; "it is valueless. Spare yourself the trouble of argument; all that you can urge will be in vain. Come what may, and at any risk, I will make the attempt. Every hour is a year of torture to me whilst I know Rita in the power of that villain."
"And much good it will do her," replied Torres, "to have you killed in her service. As to accomplishing her rescue, it is out of the question in the way you propose. You will inevitably be shot or taken prisoner. If, on the contrary, you have a little patience, and wait a few days, something may be done. This Don Baltasar, there can scarcely be a doubt, is with the army in our front, and his prisoner must therefore be free from his persecutions. Besides, admitting that your project had a shadow of common sense, how can you suppose, that on the eve of a battle against superior numbers, the general will spare even a score of men from the ranks of his army?"
"He will spare them, for me," cried Herrera. "He has known me since the beginning of the war: I have fought by his side; and more than once he has thanked me for my services, and expressed his willingness to reward them. Let him grant me this request, and I will die for him to-morrow."
"You would be likely enough to die if he did grant it," replied Torres; "but luckily there is no chance of his doing so."
"We will see that," said Herrera, impatiently. "This is idle talk and waste of time. You are not my friend, Mariano, thus to detain me. The five minutes have twice elapsed. Take me at once to the general."
"I will take you to him, if you insist upon it," answered Torres. "Hear me but one minute longer. What will be said to-morrow, when we move forward to meet the enemy, and it is found that Luis Herrera is wanting at his post; when it is known that he has left the camp in the night-*time, on his own private business, only a few hours before a battle, which all agree will be a bloody and perhaps a decisive one? His advancement, although nobly deserved, has been rapid. There are many who envy him, and such will not fail to attribute his absence to causes by which his friends well know he is incapable of being influenced. It will be pleasant for those friends to hear slanderous tongues busy with his good name."
Mariano had at last touched the right chord, and this, his final argument, strongly impressed Herrera. What no consideration of personal danger could accomplish, the dread of an imputation upon his honour, although it might be uttered but by one or two enemies, and disbelieved by a thousand friends, went far to effect. Moreover, during the quarter of an hour passed with Torres, his thoughts had become in some degree collected, and the truth of the aide-de-camp's observations as to the Quixotism and utter madness of his scheme began to dawn upon him. He hesitated, and remained silent. Torres saw his advantage, and hastened to follow it up.
"Hear me, Luis," said he. "You have ever found me willing to be guided by your opinion, but at this moment you are not in a state of mind to judge for yourself. For once then, be guided by me, and return to your squadron. To-morrow's fight will make a mighty difference. If we gain the day, and we are sure of it, we shall advance to Pampeluna, and you will be at a comparatively short distance from the convent where your mistress is detained. Then, indeed, when the Carlists are scattered and dispirited after their defeat, the scheme you have in view may be executed, and then, but only then, are you likely to get permission to attempt it. I will accompany you if you wish it, and we will get some guerilla leader, skilled in such hazardous expeditions, to join us with his band."
By these and similar arguments, did Torres finally prevail with Herrera to abandon his project until after the approaching action. Even then, and even should the victory be complete and in favour of the Christinos, Mariano was doubtful whether it would be possible to attempt the dangerous excursion proposed by Herrera; but in the interim his friend would have time to reflect, and Torres hoped that he might be induced entirely to give up the plan. He, himself a light-hearted devil-may-care fellow, taking life as it came, and with a gentle spice of egotism in his character, was unsusceptible of such an attachment as that of Herrera for Rita, and, being unsusceptible, he could not understand it. The soldier's maxim of letting a new love drive out the old one, whenever a change of garrison or other cause renders it advisable, was what he practised, and would have wished his friend also to adopt. He was unable to comprehend Herrera's deeply-rooted and unselfish love, which had grown up with him from boyhood, had borne up against so many crosses and discouragements, and which time, although it might prove its hopelessness, could never entirely obliterate.
"Time," thought Torres, as he returned to his room, after seeing Herrera mount his horse and ride away, "is a great healer of Cupid's wounds, particularly a busy time, like this. A fight one day and a carouse the next, have cured many an honest fellow of the heartache. Herrera is pretty sure of one half of the remedy, although it might be difficult to induce him to try the other. Well, qui vivra verra– I have brought him to his senses for the present, and there'd be small use in bothering about the future, when, by this time to-morrow, half of us may be food for ravens."
And with this philosophical reflection, the insouciant aide-de-camp threw himself upon his bed, to sleep as soundly as if the next day's sun had to shine upon a feast instead of a fray.
Midnight was approaching when Herrera reached the bivouac, which had now assumed a character of repose very different from the bustle reigning there when he had left it. The fires were blazing far less brightly, and some, neglected by the soldiers who lay sleeping around them, had dwindled into heaps of ashes, over which a puff of the night breeze would every now and then bring a red glow, driving at the same time a long train of sparks into the faces of the neighbouring sleepers. There was no more chattering or singing; the distant shots had ceased, the musicians had laid aside their instruments, and were sharing the general repose; the only sounds that broke the stillness were the distant challenging from the outpost, the tramp of the sentry faintly audible upon the turf, the rattling of the collar chain of some restless horse, or the snore of the sleeping soldiery. Restoring his horse to Paco, whom he found waiting beside the watch-fire, Herrera desired him to remain there till morning, and then wrapping himself in his cloak, he lay down upon the grass, to court a slumber, of which anxious and uneasy thoughts long debarred his eyelids.
MOSES AND SON
Chapter I
"It's no good your talking, Aby," said a diminutive gentleman, with a Roman nose and generally antique visage; "you must do the best you can for yourself, and get your living in a respectable sort of vay. I can't do no more for you, so help my – "
"You're a nice father, aint you?" interrogatively replied the gentleman addressed – a youth of eighteen, very tall, very thin, very dressy, and very dirty. "I should like to know why you brought me into the world at all."
"To make a man of you, you ungrateful beast," answered the small father; "and that's vot you'll never be, as true as my name's Moses. You aint got it in you. You're as big a fool as any Christian in the parish."
"Thankee, old un," replied he of six feet. "'Twas nature's fault that made me like my father," he added immediately, throwing himself into a theatrical posture, and pointing irreverently to the individual referred to.
"There he goes again!" exclaimed Moses senior, with a heavy sigh. "That's another of his tricks that'll bring him to the gallows. Mark my words, Aby – that acting of yours will do your business. I vish the amytoors had been at the devil before you made their acquaintance!"
"In course you do, you illiterate old man. What do you know of literature? Aint all them gentlemen as I plays with chice sperits and writers? Isn't it a honour to jine 'em in the old English drammy, and to eat of the wittles and drink of the old ancient poets?"
"Aby, my dear," proceeded the other sarcastically, "I've only two vurds to say. You have skulked about this 'ere house for eighteen years of your precious life, vithout doing a ha'porth of work. It's all very fine while it lasts; but I am sorry to say it can't last much longer. To-morrow is Sabbath, make much of it, for it's the last blessed day of rest you'll see here. Sunday morning I'll trouble you to pack."
"Do you mean it?"
"Upon my soul – as true as I'm here."
"Hear that, ye gods, and wonder how you made him!" exclaimed Abraham, turning up his nose at his parent, and then looking to the ceiling with emotion – "You unnatural old Lear! you bloodless piece of earth!"
"Go 'long, go 'long!" said the prosaic Moses, senior; "don't talk rubbish!"
"Father!" cried the youth, with an attitude, "when I'm gone, you'll think of me, and want me back."
"Vait, my dear, till I send for you."
"When the woice is silent, you'll be glad to give a ten pun' note for an echo."
"No, my boy; I don't like the security."
"When you have lost sight of these precious featers, you'll be glad to give all you have got for a picter."
"Vot a lucky painter he'll be as draws you off!" said the stoic father.
Abraham Moses gazed upon the author of his being for one minute with intensest disgust. Then taking a chair in his hand, he first raised it in the air, and afterwards struck it with vehement indignation to the ground. That done, he seated himself with a mingled expression of injured innocence and lofty triumph.
"You old sinner," said he, "you've done for yourself."
"Sorry for it," replied the cool old gentleman.
"I've sounded you, have I? Oh! did I try to strike a chord in that hollow buzzum, and did I think to make it answer? Now listen, you disreputable father. I leave your house, not the day after to-morrow, but this very hour. I shall go to that high sphere which you knows nothing about, and is only fit for a gent of the present generation. I don't ask you for nothing. I'm settled and provided for. If you were to take out your cheque-book and say, 'Aby, fill it up,' I can't answer for a impulse of nater; but I do think I should scorn the act, and feel as though I had riz above it. You have told me, all my wretched life, that I should take my last snooze outside o' Newgate. I always felt very much obliged to you for the compliment; but you'll recollect that I've told you as often that I'd live to make you take your hat off to me. The time is come, sir! I've got an appointment! Such a one! I came to tell you of it; but I considered it my religious duty to inwestigate your paternal feelings concerning me aforehand. I have inwestigated 'em. I am sorry to say it; I have put you into the weighing machine, and found you short."
"The fool's mad!"
"Is he? Wait a minute. If your shocking eddication permits, I'll trouble you to read that there."
Mr Abraham Moses drew from his pocket a despatch, ornamented with a huge seal, and some official red tape. The elder gentleman took it into his hand, and gazed at his worthy son with unutterable surprise, as he read on the outside – "Private and confidential, House of Lords, to Abraham Moses, Esq., &c. &c. &c."
"Vy, vot does it all mean, my dear?" enquired the agitated parent.
"Spare your 'my dears,' venerable apostate, and open it," said Aby. "The seal's broke. It's private and confidential, but that means when you are not one of the family."
Mr Methusaleh Moses did as he was bid, and read as follows: —
"Sir, – The Usher of the Blue Rod vacates his office on Wednesday next, when you will be required to appear before the woolsack to take the usual oaths. As soon as you have entered upon your duties, the customary presentation to her Majesty will take place. Lord Downy will be prepared to conclude the preliminaries at his hotel at twelve o'clock to-morrow. – I am, sir, with respect, your obedient humble servant,
"Warren de Fitzalbert."Abraham Moses, Esq.,&c. &c. &c."As little Mr Moses read the last words with a tremulous utterance, tall Mr Moses rose to take his departure. "Vot's your hurry, Aby?" said the former, coaxingly.
"Come, I like that. What's my hurry? Didn't you want to kick me out just now?"
"My dear, give every dog his due. Stick to the truth, my boy, votever you does. I axed you to stay over the Sabbath – I vish I may die if I didn't."
Mr Abraham Moses directed towards his sire one of those decided and deadly glances which are in so much request at the theatres, and which undertake to express all the moral sentiments at one and the same moment. Having paid this tribute to his wounded nature, he advanced to the door, and said, determinedly —
"I shall go!"
"I'm blessed if you do, Aby!" exclaimed the father, with greater resolution, and seizing his offspring by the skirts of his coat. "I'm your father, and I knows my sitivation. You're sich a fellow! You can't take a vurd in fun. Do you think I meant to turn you out ven I said it? Can you stop nater, Aby? Isn't nater at vork vithin, and doesn't it tell me if I knocks you on the nose, I hits myself in the eye? Come, sit down my boy; tell me all about it, and let's have someting to eat."
Aby was proof against logical argument, but he could not stand up against the "someting to eat." He sank into the chair again like an infant. Mr Methusaleh took quick advantage of his success. Rushing wildly to a corner cupboard, he produced from it a plate of cold crisp fried fish, which he placed with all imaginable speed exactly under the nose of the still vacillating Aby. He vacillated no longer. The spell was complete. The old gentleman, with a perfect reliance upon the charm, proceeded to prepare a cup of coffee at his leisure.
"And now, Aby," said the father, stirring the grounds of his muddy beverage – "I'm dying to hear vot it all means. How did you manage to get amongst dese people? You're more clever as your father." A hearty meal of fish and coffee had considerably greased the external and internal man of Aby Moses. His views concerning filial obligations became more satisfactory and humane; his spirit was evidently chastened by repletion.
"Father," said he, meaning to be very tender – "You have always been such a fool about the company as I keep."
"Well, so I have, my dear; but don't rake up the past."
"It's owing to that very company, father, that you sees me in my proud position."
"No!"
"It is, though. Lend me your ears."
"Don't be shtoopid, Aby – go on vith your story."
A slight curl might be seen playing around the dirty lip of Moses junior at this parental ignorance of the immortal Will: a stern sacrifice of filial reverence to poetry.
It passed away, and the youth proceeded.
"That Warren de Fitzalbert, father, as signed that dockyment, is a buzzum friend. He see'd me one night when I played Catesby, and, after the performance, requested the honour of an introduction, which I, in course, could not refuse. You know how it is – men gets intimate – tells one another their secrets – opens their hearts – and lives in one another's societies. I never knew who he was, but I was satisfied he was a superior gent, from the nateral course of his conversation. Everybody said it as beautiful to see us, we was so united and unseparated. Well, you may judge my surprise, when one day another gent, also a friend of mine, says to me, 'Moses, old boy, do you know who Fitzalbert is?' 'No,' says I, 'I don't.' 'Well, then,' says he, 'I'll tell you. He's a under secretary of state.' There was a go! Only think of me being hand and glove with a secretary of state! What does I do? Why, sir, the very next time he and I meet, I says to him, 'Fitzalbert, it's very hard a man of your rank can't do something for his friends.' I knew the right way was to put the thing to him point-blank. 'So it would be,' says he, 'if it was, but it isn't.' 'Oh, isn't it?' says I; 'then, if you are the man I take you to be, you'll do the thing as is handsome by me.' He said nothing then, but took hold of my hand, and shook it like a brother."
"Vell, go on, my boy; I tink they are making a fool of you."
"Are they? That's all you know. Well, a few days after this, Fitzalbert writes me a letter to call on him directly. I goes, of course. 'Moses,' says he, as soon as he sees me, 'you are provided for.' 'No!' says I. 'Yes,' says he. 'Lord Downy has overrun the constable; he can't stop in England no longer; he's going to resign the blue rod; he's willing to sell it for a song; you shall buy it, and make your fortune.'"
"But vere's your money, my dear?"
"Wait a minute. 'What's the salary?' said I. 'A thousand a-year,' says he. 'You don't mean it?' says I again. 'Upon my soul,' says he. 'And what will it cost?' says I. 'The first year's salary,' says he; 'and I'll advance it, because I know you are a gentleman, and will not forget to pay me back.' 'If I do,' says I, 'I wish I may die.' Now, father, that there letter, as you sees, is official, and that's why he doesn't say 'dear Moses;' but if you was to see us together, it would do your heart good. Not that you ever will, because your unfortinate lowness of character will compel me, as a gent, to cut your desirable acquaintance the moment I steps into Lord Downy's Wellingtons. Now, if you have got no more fish in that 'ere cupboard, I wish you good morning."
"Shtay, shtay, Aby, you're in such a devil of a hurry!" exclaimed Methusaleh, holding him by the wrist. "Now, my dear boy, if you're dead to natur, there's an end of the matter, and I've nothing more to say; but if you've any real blood left in you, you von't break my heart. Vy shouldn't your father have the pleasure of advancing the money? If it is a true bill, Aby, you sha'n't be under no obligation to nobody!"
"True bill! I like that! Why, I have seen Lord Downy's own hand-*writing; and, what's more, seen him in the House of Lords, talking quite as familiarly, as I conwerse with you, with the Lord Chancellor, and all the rest on 'em. I heard him make a speech – next morning I looks into the paper – no deceit, sir – there was Lord Downy's name. Now, to-morrow, when I'm introduced to him, don't you think I shall be able to diskiver whether he's the same man or not?"
"Vere's the tousand pound?" inquired Mr Methusaleh.
"My friend goes with me to-morrow to hand it over. Three hundred is to be given up at Lord Downy's hotel in Oxford Street, and the balance at Mr Fitzalbert's chambers in Westminster, an hour afterwards, when I receive the appointment."
"My dear Aby, I von't beat about the bush with you. I'm quite sure, my child, ve should make it answer much better, if you'd let your father advance the money. Doesn't it go agin the grain to vurk into the hands of Christians against your own flesh and blood? If this Mr Fitzalbert advances the money, depend upon it it's to make someting handsome by the pargain. Let me go vith you to his lordship, and perhaps, if he's very hard-up, he'll take seven hundred instead of the thousand. Ve'll divide the three hundred between us. Don't you believe that your friend is doing all this for love. Vot can he see, my darling, in your pretty face, to take all this trouble for nothing? I shouldn't be at all surprised if he's a blackguard, and means to take a cruel advantage of his lordship's sitivation – give him perhaps only five hundred for his tousand. Aby, let your ould father do an act of charity, and put two hundred pounds into this poor gentleman's pockets."
Before Aby could reply to this benevolent appeal, a stop was put to the interesting conversation, by a violent knocking at the door, on the part of no less a gentleman than Warren de Fitzalbert himself.
Chapter II
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.