Modern Flirtations: A Novel Read online

  CHAPTER III.

  The life of Louis De Crespigny, from the hour he entered the army, wasone continued steeple-chase after pleasure and amusement, in whateverform they could be courted, or at whatever expense they could beenjoyed. At a very early age, he was already a veteran in the worldand its ways; for he stood "alone in his glory," the most admired,courted, and idolized of mankind, a perfect adept in all the arts ofrendering himself agreeable in society, and possessing many pleasantqualities, but none that were valuable. During a gay career ofdissipation and frivolity, he had entered with successive eagerness ona thousand flirtations, though he always forgot to marry in the end,while his heart, like a phoenix, was frequently consumed, yet neverdestroyed, and always ready at the service of any young lady, withyouth, beauty, and accomplishments enough to excite his temporaryinterest. Being of opinion, that, though not yet a peer, he oughtspeedily to be one, young De Crespigny openly avowed the impossibilityof marrying while Lord Doncaster survived, and jocularly remarked,that it would be a pity prematurely to cut off the hopes of hishundred and one Scotch cousins, who lived, like Ernest Anstruther, onthe hope, that if his neck were broken at Melton, his succession mightyet be "cut up" amongst them; and to the friendly inquiries of hismany relatives, he frequently replied with a condoling look, that heand his uncle were both "hopelessly well."

  Lord Doncaster was not even yet, by any means, so great aMethusalemite in age, nor so weighed down by infirmities, as hislively nephew chose among the mothers and daughters of his intimateacquaintance to represent; and some ladies whom young De Crespigny hadpiqued or affronted, were actually ill-natured enough to hint, thatLord Doncaster was still almost young and almost handsome! They hadeven been so malicious as to insinuate, that his Lordship mightpossibly have a genius for marrying his house-keeper, almost the onlyrespectable female who ever crossed his threshold; but Mrs. Fireland'svery mature age, and very antiquated dress, shewed how completely shemust have given up that point; and even her desire to please him inher own department, became every hour so increasingly difficult, andwas attended with failures and disappointments so unforeseen andunaccountable, that the good woman often shook her head ominously, inalluding to his Lordship's numerous whims, saying, in a confidentialunder tone, which seemed to mean more than met the ear, to thesteward, "he's petiklar! he's very petiklar! It would require a personbespoke to order to please his Lordship." And certainly he had becomeof late years more particular than ever.

  One personage only seemed to have the art of doing no wrong in theestimation of Lord Doncaster; and the respect which he withheld fromall mankind, was concentrated to an immeasurable degree on the AbbeMordaunt, who was the Cardinal Wolsey of Kilmarnock Abbey andBeaujolie Castle. Proud, overbearing, harsh, and arbitrary, he ruledover the house, the purse, and even the will of his patron, withdespotic and unlimited sway. Men are generally advanced in yearsbefore the passions and feelings have stamped their indelible traces,like the impression of a seal, which becomes permanent only after thewax has began to cool; but in every feature of the Abbe's countenance,might now be seen the evidences of a gloomy, severe, and almostferocious temper, yet never was there a greater triumph of art overnature, than in the skill with which he adapted his looks andconversation to the taste or caprice of those whom it was his interestto govern, and the astonishing facility with which he could call up abland smile and insinuating voice, to supersede the habitualhaughtiness of his tone and manner.

  Educated at St. Omers, in all the dark superstitions of that bigotedcollege, the Abbe was nevertheless far from desirous to seek withinthe walls of a cloister any protection from those temptations toworldly indulgence, which he had not even the wish to resist. Heneither preached nor practised the virtues of his vocation, butparaded a whole troop of vices openly in the public eye; and far fromattempting to reform mankind, he never attempted even to reformhimself. Though in personal appearance of distinguished ugliness, yetsuch was the magic of his manner, that even by ladies he wasconsidered perfectly irresistible; and to all, whether old or young,he generally succeeded in imparting a conviction, that he saw in her,for the first time, a realization of female perfection and femalefascination. The Abbe was never known to stop half-way in arduouslypursuing any object of pleasure, profit, or ambition, nor, whatevermight be the impediments, was he ever seen to fail of success; for,like Bonaparte, he did not know the meaning of the word "impossible."

  After having recklessly squandered, in a career of almost startlingdissipation, the whole of his own patrimony, it was believed that hehad obtained fraudulent possession of L10,000 belonging to his verybeautiful niece, to whom he must have refunded it had she lived tocome of age, or had she married it must have been restored to herchildren, but about the time our story commences, she was supposedeither to have died, or to have retired to a convent abroad, thoughwhether upon conviction or not, might be considered very doubtful, asshe had been educated by her mother in the Protestant faith, and itwas generally conjectured that to so sudden and entire a removal fromall former connections, her poverty more than her will must haveconsented. Laura Mordaunt had resided much at Kilmarnock Abbe with heruncle, to whom she seemed warmly and blindly attached, but thegossiping world sometimes conjectured that perhaps the evidentpartiality and admiration of Lord Doncaster might have roused in hersome ambitious thoughts, backed by the influence of the Abbe. Amongthe peculiarities of the Marquis he had always professed a decidedcontempt for all respectable ladies, and therefore his attentions toLaura Mordaunt were at best a very questionable compliment, and becamenaturally of a nature which few relatives would have wished toencourage, yet Miss Mordaunt still remained a guest at KilmarnockAbbey, till the period of her sudden disappearance, which caused somuch astonishment among her intimate friends and near connections,that the father of Richard Granville, her cousin, shortly before hisown death, wrote an affectionate letter, entreating her to return,were it but for a few months, and to make a home of his house for thefuture, should it suit her to do so; but to this kind and generousoffer no reply ever came, and as all communications were to passthrough the Abbe's hands, who alone knew his niece's direction, itmight be doubted whether the invitation ever reached that hand forwhich it was intended.

  That Lord Doncaster had cruelly disappointed Laura Mordaunt, as he hadalready disappointed many others, her friend and cousin had goodreason to believe; and though unable to imagine any really romantic orlasting attachment to a man, however elevated in rank or agreeable inmanners, of at least fifty years old, yet he knew that Laura, wholived so retired that she could boast of few friends and no admirers,might really have been dazzled with the splendour of his rank or thefascination of his conversation; while it seemed the mostunaccountable part of the whole affair, that if such were the case,the attachment had not been reciprocal, between a young and beautifulgirl, thrown so continually in his way, and an aged roue, who had soevidently admired her.

  If the probable duration of Lord Doncaster's life had been measuredaccording to the estimate formed of it in many an Edinburghdrawing-room, it would have brought a very small premium indeed at theinsurance offices. By referring to that valuable record, Debrett'speerage, it was satisfactorily proved that the De Crespignys were avery short-lived family! One Lord Doncaster had died of a fall fromhis horse at thirty-five; another had been killed in battle, atforty-two; and not one of them had contrived very much to exceedeighty, therefore hopes might be entertained of the popular andfascinating Louis De Crespigny at last gaining the long-expected"step." It might have been supposed by strangers in Edinburgh, thatthere was but one marquisate in Britain, so frequently were thestrawberry-leaves of Lord Doncaster under animated discussion; and anyvisitor who accidentally took Burke or Debrett in his hand, mightsmile to observe that the pages naturally fell open where thatinteresting paragraph presented itself to notice,

  "Doncaster, Marquis of. Heir presumptive, Louis Henry De Crespigny."

  A tradition prevailed among the elder ladies of fashion now insociety, that
a splendid set of diamonds, which had been long theornament and admiration of Queen Charlotte's drawing-rooms, were sinceentailed, by an old Lady Doncaster, in the family; and many a youngbeauty, in arranging a bright futurity on her own plan, had frequentlyworn these far-famed jewels in her imagination, when presented atCourt as a Marchioness, the envy and admiration of all hercontemporaries. Meantime nothing could be more astonishing than tofind how much was known in Edinburgh concerning the modes of life,temper, and character of the present Lord Doncaster, though he livednot only secluded from society, but made it his peculiar study toevade the scrutiny of impertinent curiosity, and was so anxious tocheck the loquaciousness of servants, that his butler and housekeeperhad strict orders to keep up a sort of prison discipline in theestablishment, and not to allow a word to be spoken when at meals. Itwas, however, authentically ascertained by some unknown means, thatLord Doncaster, who had formerly been a man of dissipated habits andirregular hours, now devoted himself to the care of his health asdiligently and intensely as a miser does to the care of his money, andthat to him it had become a subject of almost avaricious interest. Ifthe Marquis had a finger-ache, it was magnified in Edinburgh into acase of certain death; but after a really severe illness, he was heardjocularly to remark, in sporting phrase, "I have had another roundwith death!" while he seemed confident, on these occasions, of alwayscoming off victorious, though few among the young ladies of hisnephew's acquaintance would have been found ready to back hisexpectations, while Agnes Dunbar impatiently remarked, that LordDoncaster had been so long in the world, he seemed not to know how toleave it.

  It was generally understood by the juries who sat upon LordDoncaster's case in society, that his breakfast consisted of stronggravy-soup and poached eggs, which were pronounced to be veryplethoric,--he ate no luncheon, which must be very exhausting at histime of life,--he had an enormous appetite for dinner, which wouldcertainly drive blood to his head,--and above all, he took a hotsupper, which must be fatal at last;--every newspaper tends to prove,that after eating a hearty supper the night before, people areinvariably found dead in their beds the next morning;--and it wasalready unaccountable how many mornings Lord Doncaster had survived!Any day in the world might bring accounts of his death,--some day mustdo so, sooner or later,--hundreds of old people were dyingcontinually, and so might the superannuated peer; yet though his dayswere numbered in so many houses, they nevertheless seemed to benumberless, while gentlemen, older than himself, were often heardimpatiently speculating and wondering what will he would make, anddeclaring they only wished to live, in order to know the result of somany anxious conjectures, while his dutiful nephew gayly remarked,that his uncle need never wait for parchment to write his will upon,while the skin on his face looked so like it.

  Still Lord Doncaster obstinately persevered in living on, while,strange to say, many of the manoeuvring mamas who had been heard todeclare, that if an old person must die at any rate, they could sparehis Lordship better than any other mortal, became mortal themselves,and were first consigned to the tomb. Even some of the young andlovely girls, who had thought, in the morning of life, before thefreshness of their bloom had been dimmed, or the lustre of theirbeauty had decayed, that this one obstacle to their happiness must beremoved,--many of these gay, joyous, and unthinking beings had sunkunexpectedly into an early grave, while still Lord Doncaster, in amost provoking and unprincipled manner, disappointed everybody, andcontinued to exist in a world where he was anything but welcome,resolved apparently, never, in an every-day vulgar way, to die at all.

  In the mean time, Louis De Crespigny, devoted to the amusements oflife, but independent of all its finer sympathies, seemed to breathenothing but the exhilarating ether of life, joyous, giddy, andintoxicating. He revelled in a laughing, lively, satiricalconsciousness of his own exact position in society, and privatelyresolved to make the most of it,--not that he deliberately made up hismind to deceive,--his code of honor was rigid enough in respect to histransactions with gentlemen, but in the case of young ladies it wasotherwise,--

  "Man, to man so oft unjust, Is always so to woman."

  With ladies Mr. De Crespigny considered his own brilliant prospectsand personal fascinations to be fair, marketable produce, which therecould be no objection that he should use to the utmost advantage, forbringing in the largest possible return of pleasure, profit, andamusement. Accordingly, the gay young Cornet, living upon what hecould borrow, on the disinterested attentions of manoeuvringmothers, and on the expectation of his uncle's speedy demise, madehimself the chosen attendant of half a hundred accomplished andperfectly amiable young ladies, who laughed, talked, sang, and dancedwith him, while he soon became but too intimately known as a ruthlessflirt, to many a young heart, and to many a happy home, where he tookcare that it should be distinctly implied and understood, that nothingbut the jealous penuriousness of "that old quiz, Lord Doncaster,"impeded his ardent wish to settle for life; while in the mean time,wherever a good table and cellar were kept, he testified exactly sucha degree of partiality for the sister or daughter of his host, as madeher be considered his wife-presumptive, and secured him a regularknife and fork in the house on all family festivals and stateoccasions, without any trouble in either ordering or paying for theentertainment. It has been said, that as a rolling stone gathers nomoss, neither does a roving heart gain any affection; but whatevermight be the case with others, Louis De Crespigny felt himself withouta doubt the idol of every drawing-room, where he sentimentalized,rattled, and flirted in every style, with every girl under twenty, asdiligently as if he were canvassing for an election, while theytalked, looked, smiled, and dressed their very best; and theexcellence of any gentleman's wine might be accurately estimated bythe thermometer of Mr. De Crespigny's attention to the daughters; buthe had a declared abhorrence of family dinners, which looked toobusiness-like and domestic, as if he had really committed himself;though, as Lady Towercliffe remarked to her four daughters one day,"he never said anything to the purpose, when the purpose wasmarriage."

  Though Mr. De Crespigny seemed, at the "dignity dinners" in Edinburgh,to live for no other object on earth, but the one fascinating younglady, with whom it was his game at the time to appear _epris_, andthough she might probably be astonished and piqued during the followingweek, to observe this indefatigable amateur in flirtations equallyassiduous in his attentions to another, and shooting like a brilliantmeteor in the ball-room, unheedingly past herself, yet she mightconsole herself by reflecting, that Mr. De Crespigny was in the habitof confidentially hinting how much he felt embarrassed and annoyed bythe necessity of generalizing his intimacies, that no gossiping reportsmight reach his whimsical relative. "Because actually!" he one daywhispered in confidence to Lady Towercliffe, "when my uncle becomesirritable, he threatens to make all sorts of ridiculous marriageshimself; and it would be my last hour in his will, if he thought meheretic enough merely to dance with a Protestant partner. He would notengage so much as a housemaid of your persuasion; but for my own part,I leave all these concerns to the Abbe Mordaunt, who, to do himjustice, lets me off very easily."

  The difference of faith made wonderfully little difference in theintentions of those young ladies who believed themselves the objectsof Mr. De Crespigny's unacknowledged preference, for every bit ofmillinery in a ball-room was in a flutter of agitation whenever heapproached; and certainly no one ever excelled more in making those heconversed with rise in their own opinion, from his tact in showing howvery high they stood in his, and the consequence was, that he alreadypossessed a rare and romantic collection of sentimental valentines,sketches with his figure in the foreground, songs with the magicalname of Louis conspicuously introduced, withered bouquets, anagrams,anonymous letters, and anonymous verses, all with a too-well-rememberedhistory belonging to them, which called up a smile of derision, or asigh of self-reproach, according as the case required, but alltreasured as relics of former happy hours, which had perhaps been thehistory of a lifetime to the fair donors, and the diversio
n of a fewdays only to himself, while he secretly applauded his own dexterity inescaping the matrimonial noose, and to them there remained only thesilent remembrance of that intercourse, now for ever at an end, whichthey had believed was to last for life.

  Mr. De Crespigny's engagement book was nearly as complicated an affairas any ledger or day-book, and much more so than his own banker'saccount, for he arranged it on the most systematic principles ofprofit and loss. In whatever house he had been invited to dine, heconsidered himself as "owing a quadrille" to one of the young ladiesat the next assembly. If he had actually "sat under her father'smahogany," as he termed it, she might be perhaps entitled to twodances; and when he had spent the greater part of a summer in hermother's country house, that established a sort of sinking fund in herbehalf, which entitled him to have the use of him as a partner,whenever he happened accidentally to be disengaged, though indeednothing ever occurred accidentally in Captain De Crespigny'sarrangements, for he never acted on impulse, but always on systematiccalculation. He seemed, with his gay pell-mell manner, the mostoff-hand, careless, and undesigning of men; but even in the triflingaffair of going to a ball, where he might literally have exclaimed, "Iam monarch of all I survey," he invariably carried in his mind's eye alist of all those partners with whom policy or self-interest directedhim to dance, and very seldom indeed did he swerve from hispre-conceived muster-roll.

  It was a singular evidence of young De Crespigny's discretion andskill, that, while paying attentions which should either have neverbeen paid at all, or never afterwards discontinued, and while, with allits fascinations, Lady Towercliffe declared it was dangerous to a younglady's happiness to be even introduced to him, still, in not oneinstance had "his intentions" ever yet been asked, and neither fathers,uncles, nor brothers had betrayed the slightest symptoms ofinsurrection against his universal dominion, believing, as his excusefor delaying to propose was so perfectly unanswerable and respectable,that his intentions might safely be allowed to "lie on the table,"while they awaited in breathless suspense the _denouement_, certainlyto take place on Lord Doncaster's death.

  Some of Mr. De Crespigny's brother officers, envious perhaps of hisextraordinary success in society, threw out sceptical hints respectingthe certainty of his succession, and laughed sarcastically at theindefatigable vanity with which he evidently liked being thus torn topieces among the chaperons and dowagers of society; but he laughed asheartily as themselves. No one could ever get the start of him in ajoke; and his associates, when he came in competition with any one ofthem, found it no laughing matter. He knew his own power--who does notknow that?--and difficulties only enhanced his triumph.

  Lord Doncaster often dryly remarked, that the best economist inBritain must certainly be Louis De Crespigny, as, to his certainknowledge, he possessed only L300 a year, and yet he seemed to revelin all the luxuries of life, besides having a great deal over forextravagance. There was no occasion for the young Cornet ever to thinkof dining at his club, as he might be entertained at the houses ofthree or four friends in a day, if he could have mustered as manyappetites. In summer he incurred no expense, except to pay for hisplace occasionally on the top of a coach, or in a steam-boat, from onehospitable country house to another, where gigs were sent a stage tomeet him on the way, if he were expected by the mail, or if by sea, achariot might be seen waiting on the pier. He got "a mount" from onefriend, the best seat in a barouche from another, and often the vacantplace in a britschska from a third party, even to the expulsion of itsmore legitimate occupiers.

  "De Crespigny has nothing on earth, and you see how he looks!" remarkedhis handsome friend Sir Patrick one day to Sir Arthur Dunbar; "yet howmagnificently he contrives to live at the expense of all those deludedmortals who have disposable or indisposable daughters. His futureprospects act like a cork jacket in society, keeping him always at thetop. Last summer worthy Lord Towercliffe, with his rapidly increasingfamily and rapidly decreasing income, took De Crespigny in his gig tothat old tumble-down castle of his in Argyleshire, where he spent sixweeks, ruining the family in champagne and wax candles. The housebecame rather cold in September, so at last he accepted a cast in LadyWinandermere's carriage to that nest of nieces and daughters at CastleHighcombe, where he found excellent yachting and sea-bathing. There helingered a month, till the brother of those four pretty Miss Vavasoursbid still higher for his company, by offering him a mount at Kelso, andmentioning that he had a first-rate French cook a '_cordon bleu_,' whohires his own stall at the opera during the London season, and enjoys asalary and perquisites amounting to more than the best curacy in theEnglish Church; and all this De Crespigny repays with a few frothynothings, which he is for ever repeating to any young lady who willlend an ear. Those who beat the bush do not always snare the bird; andI wonder the manoeuvring world does not yet see that he is evidently nomarrying man."

  "What sort of looking individual, is a marrying man?" asked SirArthur, slyly. "I am often told that you, for instance, do not looklike a marrying man; but pray point me out any one who does, that Imay become more a connoisseur on the subject than I am. As for whatyou say of Louis De Crespigny, it sounds to my unpractised ear verylike swindling; and he is not the youth I took him for if he live insuch an element of deceit, sacrificing all sense of honor, allconfidence, and all good feeling, for a worthless and transientpopularity, or worse than all, for motives of mean, heartlessself-interest. Such a man is not worth the space he occupies in theworld!"

  The Admiral's honest indignation would have been vented in stillstronger terms, could his upright and honorable mind have been made tounderstand how entirely every thought, word, and action of Mr. DeCrespigny's life was based on the most unswerving principles of cold,hard, unrelenting selfishness, and with what utter carelessness heseemed ready to trample on the wounded feelings of others; for itmattered not to him what degree of confidence he betrayed, or whatdegree of sorrow he inflicted. If in one house where he had beenreceived as a son or a brother, he no longer found the cordial welcomeof other days, a hundred other doors were still opened wide to receivehim, where he could boast of having been "very nearly caught," andcarry on the same game as before, which was a pastime to him, thoughfatal to the peace of many, who would willingly have died rather thanbetray the injury their feelings had suffered, when, after passingthrough the ordeal of his assiduities, they found themselves beguiledand cheated of all that was deepest and most sacred in their earthlyaffections--robbed without compunction by one who gave no return--whowatched with elated triumph the growing delusion of those whom he hadmarked as victims to his own self-love, and whom he appeared toconsider all in all to his happiness, till they found out at last thatthey were in reality less than nothing to him; yet the deceptionadmitted of no redress. He lived on in a sort of cowardly impunity;for no young girl endowed with sensibility, and conscious of her owninjuries, could desire, after entrusting him with the whole story ofher hopes and affections, that the truth should be known; and his wasa crime against which no evidence can be brought; for who coulddescribe the tender nothings--the refined insinuations--the lookswhich say everything and mean nothing--the wordless language of theeyes, with which an undeclared love may be safely and yet obviouslyprofessed? What but a smile of ridicule or of censure could attend onsuch a detail of "unutterable things?" But with Louis De Crespignynothing was unutterable; for he could say and unsay the same thingstwo hundred times, and they always seemed to carry as much or aslittle weight as he pleased at the moment, while he entered society asa school-boy rushes into a garden, eagerly to pursue the brilliantinsects fluttering in the sunbeams, ready to crush and injure them allfor his momentary diversion, and yet on his guard to retreat in goodorder, should there appear to be the slightest danger of annoyance ordiscomfort to himself.