Lawrence Clavering Part 1

Lawrence Clavering.

by A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason.

CHAPTER I.

TELLS OF A PICTURE.

The picture hangs at my lodgings here at Avignon, a stone's throw from the Porte de la Ligne, and within the shadow of Notre Dame des Doms, though its intended housing-place was the great gallery of Blackladies. But it never did hang there, nor ever will; nor do I care that it should--no, not the sc.r.a.pe of a fiddle. I have heard men circ.u.mstanced like myself tell how, as they fell into years, more and more their thoughts flew homewards like so many carrier-pigeons, each with its message of longing. But Blackladies, though it was the only home I ever knew in England, did not of right belong to me, and the period during which I was master there was so populous with troubles, so chequered with the impertinent follies of an inexperienced youth raised of a sudden above his station, that even now, after all these years, I look back on it with a burning shame. And if one day, perchance, as I walk in the alleys here beyond the city walls, the wind in the branches will whisper to me of the house and the brown hills about it--it is only because I was in England while I lived there. And if, again, as I happen to stand upon the banks of the Rhone, I see unexpectedly reflected in the broken mirror of its waters, the terraces, the gardens, the long row of windows, and am touched for the moment to a foolish melancholy by the native aspect of its gables--why, it is only because I look out here across a country of _tourelles_.

However, I come back to my lodging, and there is my picture on the wall--an accountant, as it were, ever casting up the good fortune and the mishaps of my life, and ever striking a sure balance in my favour.

I take the description of it from a letter which Mr. George Vertue wrote to a friend of mine in London, and that friend despatched to me.

For, since the picture is a portrait of myself, it may be that an account of it from another's hand will be the more readily credited.

Mr. Vertue saw it some years since at a dealer's in Paris, whither, being at that time hard pressed for money, I had sent it, but was lucky enough not to discover a purchaser.

"I have come across a very curious picture," he wrote, "of which I would gladly know more, and I trust that you may help me to the knowledge. For more than once you have spoken to me of Mr. Lawrence Clavering, who fought for the Chevalier de St. George at Preston, and was out too in the Forty-five. The picture is the bust of a young gentleman painted by Anthony Herbert, and with all the laborious minuteness which was distinctive of his earlier methods. Indeed, in the delicacy with which the lace of the cravat is figured, the painter has, I think, exceeded himself, and even exceeded Vandermijn, whom at this period he seems to have taken for his model. The coat, too, which is of a rose-pink in colour, is painted with the same elaboration, the very threads of the velvet being visible. The richness of the work gives a very artful effect when you come to look at the face, which chiefly provokes my curiosity. In colour it is a dead white, except for the lips, which are purple, as though the blood stagnated there; the eyes are gla.s.sy and bright, with something of horror or fear staring out of them; the features knotted out of all comeliness; the mouth half opened and curled in the very sickness of pain; the whole expression, in a word, that of a man in the extremity of suffering--a soul's torture superimposed upon an agony of the body; and all this painted with such circ.u.mstantial exactness as implies not merely great leisure in the artist, but also a singular pleasure and gusto in his subject...."

After a few more remarks of a like sort, he continues: "I made it my business to inquire of Mr. Herbert the history of the picture. But he would tell me no more than this: that it was the portrait of Mr.

Lawrence Clavering, painted in that gentleman's youth, and that if I would have fuller knowledge on the matter, I must get it from Mr.

Clavering himself; and Mrs. Herbert, a very gentle woman, now growing old, but I should say of considerable beauty in her prime, warmly seconded him in his reticence. Therefore I address myself to you to act as an intermediary between Mr. Clavering and myself."

The information I did not think it fitting at that time to deliver.

But both Mr. Herbert and his wife are dead these three years past; and so I write out the history of my picture, setting down, as my memory serves, the incidents which attach to it in the due order of their sequence. For if the picture is a strange one, it has, I think, a history to match.

CHAPTER II.

I TAKE A WALK AND HEAR A SERMON IN THE COMPANY OF LORD BOLINGBROKE.

That history I take to have begun on the 28th day of March at Paris in the year 1715. I was sitting in my room at the Jesuit College in the Rue St Antoine, with the "De Imitatione" at one elbow, and Marco Polo's travels at the other; and, alas! I fear that I gave more attention to the adventurer than I did to the theologian. But, in truth, neither author occupied the chief place in my thoughts. For the spring sparkled in the air, its music was noisy among the budding trees, and something of its music, too, seemed to be singing in my blood. From my window I looked down across the roof-tops to the ile St. Louis, and I could see a strip of the Seine flashing in the sunlight like a riband of steel. It was on the current of the river that my thoughts floated, yet they travelled faster than the current, seeing that while I still looked they had reached the bar where the river clashes with the sea. I had the tumble of its waters in my ears when the door was opened, and one of the lay coadjutors entered with a message that the rector wished to speak with me.

I followed him down the stairs, not without a guilty apprehension as to the nature of the interview in store for me, and found the rector pacing backwards and forwards across one end of the hall, with his hands folded behind his back. As I made my reverence, he stopped and eyed me for a moment thoughtfully.

"Twelve months since," said he, "you received from the Duke of Ormond in England the offer of a cornetcy in the Horse Guards."

"Yes, Father," I replied, taken aback by his unexpected commencement; and I replied hastily, "I refused it."

"You refused it!" he repeated very deliberately; and then, suddenly bending his eyebrows, "And without reluctance?"

I felt my face flush as he asked the question. "Father," I stammered, "I refused it;" and so came to a stop.

He nodded his head once or twice, but pressed me no further upon the point. Instead--

"You know at whose instance the commission was offered to you?" he asked.

"I have no certain knowledge," I replied, with considerable relief; "but I can think of but one person in the world with the power and inclination to do me that service."

"Ah," broke in the rector, sharply, "you count it a service, then?"

"He would count it a service," I answered, with a clumsy effort to retrieve the mistake. "For my part, Father, I refused it."

"Precisely," said he. "He would count it a service he was doing you.

There are no fine feathers in our army, and there is no leisure to parade them were there any. Yes, Lord Bolingbroke would count it a service he was doing you."

Now, although the relationship between Lord Bolingbroke and myself was the merest thread--my father having married a niece of Lady Joanna St.

John--I was well enough acquainted with his diligence to know that the sneer was unjust; and I was preparing to make some rejoinder in a proper spirit of humility when the rector continued--

"It is of Lord Bolingbroke that I wish to speak to you. He is in Paris."

"In Paris, Father!" I exclaimed incredulously.

"In Paris. He came last night, and asks permission of me this morning that you should wait on him."

"Father," I cried, "you will give that permission?"

He shook his head over my eagerness and resumed his walk.

"Very well," he said at length, and he gave me Lord Bolingbroke's address. "You can go now," he added.

I waited no longer than sufficed to utter a brief word of thanks, and hurried towards the door.

"My son."

I turned back towards the rector, with a doleful thought that he would revoke his permission. But as I approached him reluctantly enough, I saw something of a smile brighten upon his rigorous face.

"My son," he said, without a trace of his former severity, "you have taken no vows as yet, and will not for eight months to come. Think, and think humbly, during those months! Our Order, thank G.o.d, is not so poor in service that we need to reckon obstinacy as devotion."

I stood abashed and shamefaced at his words. "Father," I said, "I have chosen."

"But it is for us to ratify the choice," he answered, with a cast back to his former sternness, "or to annul it as unworthy." With that he dismissed me; but this time, being somewhat stung by his warning, I retired with a more decorous step. Once in the street, however, I made up for the delay. For, in truth, I was at some trouble to account for my kinsman's sudden arrival in France; for, although Walpole had publicly declared his intention of bringing both Bolingbroke and the Earl of Oxford to trial for their work in compa.s.sing the Peace of Utrecht, it was common rumour that Bolingbroke and his colleague awaited the impeachment in all confidence as to its issue. This hasty departure, however, bore to my thinking all the appearance of a desperate flight, and I hurried to his lodging in no small anxiety of spirit. My Lord Bolingbroke makes but a slight figure in this story of my picture, compared with that he made upon the wider field of a nation's chronicle; and it is very well for me that this is so. For, indeed, I never understood him; although I held him in a great liking and esteem, and considered him to have confronted more adversity and mischance than commonly falls to any one, I never understood him. He was compacted of so many contradictions, and in all of them was so seemingly sincere that a plain man like Lawrence Clavering was completely at a loss to discover the inward truth of him. But as he was a riddle to my speculations, so was he a cherished object to my affections. For even during those last years of Queen Anne's rule, when his life was at its busiest and his fortunes at their climax, he still found time to show kindness to one whose insignificance was only rivalled by his poverty. He was "Harry St. John" to me as to his equals and my betters, and in spite of the difference of our years; and when I found myself in company with Dr. Swift and Mr. Congreve and Mr. Prior and the little crook-back poet whose "Windsor Castle" had brought him into a sudden reputation, he was ever at pains to distinguish me in his conversation, so that I might suffer no shame from my inferiority. Doubtless it was to the natural courtesy of the man rather than to any special inclination that his behaviour was due, but I was none the less grateful to him on that account.

He had just finished dinner, and was still at the table over his wine, when his footman introduced me into his apartment.

"Ah," said he, "I expected you would come;" and he drew a chair to the table, and filled a second gla.s.s, "It is not the welcome you have had from me at Bucklersbury, but philosophers"--and he made a polite flourish of the hand to include me in the phrase--"will ever be content with a makeshift. For my part," he continued, "I do not know but what the makeshift is the better. A few trustworthy friends, a few honest books and leisure wherein to savour their merits--it is what I have chiefly longed for these last five years;" and he threw up his arms with a long breath of relief, as though he had been unexpectedly lightened of some burdensome load. I had heard him talk often enough in this way before, and was disinclined to set great value upon his contentment.

"What brought you in this scurry to Paris?" I asked.

"They meant to pursue me to the scaffold," he returned. "I had sure information of that. No testimony would have helped me or thwarted them. It was my blood they needed--Marlborough told me so--my blood and Oxford's." And he flashed out into a sudden pa.s.sion. "There's the point. Alone I would have faced them. These whimsical Tories are the frailest of reeds, the Whigs the most factious and vindictive opponents. Still, I would have faced them had I stood alone. But to make common cause with Oxford! No, I abhor him to that degree, I cannot. It were worse than death. However, let's talk no more of it!"

and he recovered himself with an effort, and sat for a little, silent, fingering his gla.s.s. "Oxford!" he exclaimed again with a bitter laugh of contempt. "Soft words, and never a thing done! To live till to-morrow was the ultimate of policy to him. And jealous, too! The bubble of his own jealousy! Had he cared to act, or had he been dismissed but a few weeks earlier, I tell you, Lawrence, the Tories would now be cemented to such a solidity of power that----" He stopped abruptly, and leaned over to me: "For whom are you?" he asked, "the Hanoverian, or the"--and he paused for the briefest s.p.a.ce--"the Chevalier de St. George?"

"I am for King James the Third," I replied promptly.

"Oh," says he; and, rising from his chair, he took a turn across the room. "I rather fancied," he resumed, with a queer smile, "that discretion was amongst the lessons taught at the Jesuit Colleges."