The Tenants of Malory Volume III Part 29

"I said I should name it first; but as your lordship coughs, we had, perhaps, best discuss it last. Or, indeed, if it makes your lordship cough very much, perhaps we had better postpone it, or leave it entirely to your lordship's discretion--as I wouldn't for the world send this little attack into your chest."

Lord Verney thought Mr. Dingwell less unreasonable, but also more flighty, than he had supposed.

"You are quite at liberty, sir, to treat your subjects in what order you please. I wish you to understand that I have no objection to hear you; and--and you may proceed."

"The next is a question on which I presume we shall find ourselves in perfect accord. I had the honour, as you are very well aware, of an intimate acquaintance with your late brother, the Honourable Arthur Verney, and beyond measure I admired his talents, which were second in brilliancy only to your own. I admired even his _principles_--but I see they make you cough also. They were, it is true, mephitic, sulphurous, such as might well take your breath, or that of any other moral man, quite away; but they had what I call the Verney stamp upon them; they were perfectly consistent, and quite harmonious. His, my lord, was the intense and unflinching rascality, if you permit me the phrase, of a man of genius, and I honoured it. Now, my lord, his adventures were curious, as you are aware, and I have them at my fingers' ends--his crimes, his escape, and, above all, his life in Constantinople--ha, ha, ha! It would make your hair stand on end. And to think he should have been _your brother_! Upon my _soul_! Though, as I said, the genius--the _genius_, Lord Verney--the inspiration was there. In _that_ he _was_ your brother."

"I'm aware, sir, that he had talent, Mr. Dingwell, and could speak--about it. At Oxford he was considered the most promising young man of his time--almost."

"Yes, except _you_; but you were two years later."

"Yes, exactly. I was precisely two years later about it."

"Yes, my lord, you were always about it; so he told me. No matter what it was--a book, or a boot-jack, or a bottle of port, you were always about it. It was a way you had, he said--about it."

"I wasn't aware that anyone remarked any such thing--about it," said Lord Verney, very loftily.

It dawned dimly upon him that Mr. Dingwell, who was a very irregular person, was possibly intoxicated. But Mr. Dingwell was speaking, though in a very nasal, odd voice, yet with a clear and sharp articulation, and in a cool way, not the least like a man in that sort of incapacity. Lord Verney concluded, therefore, that Mr. Dingwell was either a remarkably impertinent person, or most insupportably deficient in the commonest tact. I think he would have risen, even at the inconvenience of suddenly disturbing his flannelled foot, and intimated that he did not feel quite well enough to continue the conversation, had he not known something of Mr. Dingwell's dangerous temper, and equally dangerous knowledge and opportunities; for had they not subsidized Mr. Dingwell, in the most unguarded manner, and on the most monstrous scale, pending the investigation and proof before the Lords? "It was inevitable," Mr. Larkin said, "but also a little awkward; although _they_ knew that the man had sworn nothing but truth." _Very_ awkward, _Lord Verney_ thought, and therefore he endured Mr. Dingwell.

But the "great Greek merchant," as, I suppose half jocularly, he termed himself, not only seemed odious at this moment, by reason of his impertinence, but also formidable to Lord Verney, who, having waked from his dream that Dingwell would fly beyond the Golden Horn when once his evidence was given, and the coronet well fixed on the brows of the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney, found himself still haunted by this vampire bat, which hung by its hooked wing, sometimes in the shadows of Rosemary Court--sometimes in those of the old Steward's House--sometimes hovering noiselessly nearer--always with its eyes upon him, threatening to fasten on his breast, and drain him.

The question of money he would leave "to his discretion." But what did his impertinence mean? Was it not minatory? And to what exorbitant sums in a choice of evils might not "discretion" point?

"This d--d Mr. Dingwell," thought Lord Verney "will play the devil with my gout. I wish he was at the bottom of the Bosphorus."

"Yes. And your brother, Arthur--there were points in which he differed from you. Unless I'm misinformed, he was a first-rate cricketer, the crack bat of their team, and you were _nothing_; he was one of the best Grecians in the university, and you were plucked."

"I--I don't exactly see the drift of your rather inaccurate and extremely offensive observations, Mr. Dingwell," said Lord Verney, wincing and flushing in the dark.

"Offensive? Good heaven! But I'm talking to a Verney, to a man of genius; and I say, how the devil could I tell that _truth_ could offend, either? With this reflection I forgive _myself_, and I go on to say what will interest you."

Lord Verney, who had recovered his presence of mind, here nodded, to intimate that he was ready to hear him.

"Well, there were a few other points, but I need not mention them, in which you differed. You were both alike in this--each was a genius--you were an opaque and obscure genius, he a brilliant one; but each being a genius, there must have been a sympathy, notwithstanding his being a publican and you a--not exactly a Pharisee, but a paragon of prudence."

"I really, Mr. Dingwell, must request--you see I'm far from well, about it--that you'll be so good as a little to abridge your remarks; and I don't want to hear--you can easily, I hope, understand--my poor brother talked of in any but such terms as a brother should listen to."

"That arises, Lord Verney, from your not having had the advantage of his society for so very many years. Now, I knew him intimately, and I can undertake to say he did not care twopence what any one on earth thought of him, and it rather amused him painting infernal caricatures of himself, as a fiend or a monkey, and he often made me laugh by the hour--ha, ha, ha! he amused himself with revealed religion, and with everything sacred, sometimes even with _you_--ha, ha, ha--he _had_ certainly a wonderful sense of the ridiculous."

"May I repeat my request, if it does not appear to you _very_ unreasonable?" again interrupted Lord Verney, "and may I entreat to know what it is you wish me to understand about it, in as few words as you can, sir?"

"Certainly, Lord Verney; it is just this. As I have got materials, perfectly authentic, from my deceased friend, both about himself--horribly racy, you may suppose--ha, ha, ha--about your grand-uncle Pendel--you've heard of him, of course--about your aunt Deborah, poor thing, who sold mutton pies in Chester,--I was thinking--suppose I write a memoir--Arthur alone deserves it; you pay the expenses; I take the profits, and I throw you in the copyright for a few thousand more, and call it, 'Snuffed-out lights of the Peerage,'

or something of the kind? I think something is due to Arthur--don't you?"

"I think you can hardly be serious, Mr.--Mr.----"

"Perfectly serious, upon my soul, my lord. Could anything be more curious? Eccentricity's the soul of genius, and you're proud of your genius, I _hope_."

"What strikes me, Mr. Dingwell, amounts, in short, to something like this. My poor brother, he has been unfortunate, about it, and--and _worse_, and he has done things, and I ask myself _why_ there should be an effort to obtrude him, and I answer myself, there's no reason, about it, and therefore I vote to have everything as it is, and I shall neither contribute my countenance, about it, nor money to any such undertaking, or--or--undertaking."

"Then my book comes to the ground, egad."

Lord Verney simply raised his head with a little sniff, as if he were smelling at a snuff-box.

"Well, Arthur must have something, you know."

"My brother, the Honourable Arthur Kiffyn Verney, is past receiving anything at my hands, and I don't think he probably looked for anything, about it, at any time from _yours_."

"Well, but it's just the time for what I'm thinking of. You wouldn't give him a tombstone in his lifetime, I suppose, though you _are_ a genius. Now, I happen to know he wished a tombstone. _You_'d like a tombstone, though not now--time enough in a year or two, when you're fermenting in your lead case."

"I'm not thinking of tombstones at present, sir, and it appears to me that you are giving yourself a very unusual lat.i.tude--about it."

"I don't mean in the mausoleum at Ware. Of course that's a place where people who have led a decorous life putrify together. I meant at the small church of Penruthyn, where the scamps await judgment."

"I--a--don't see that such a step is properly for the consideration of any persons--about it--outside the members of the Verney family, or more properly, of any but the representatives of that family," said Lord Verney, loftily, "and you'll excuse my not admitting, or--or, in fact, admitting any right in anyone else."

"He wished it immensely."

"I can't understand why, sir."

"Nor I; but I suppose you all get them--all ticketed--eh? and I'd write the epitaph, only putting in essentials, though, egad! in such a life it would be as long as a newspaper."

"I've already expressed my opinion, and--and things, and I have nothing to add."

"Then the tombstone comes to the ground also?"

"Anything _more_, sir?"

"But, my lord, he showed an immense consideration for you."

"I don't exactly recollect _how_."

"By _dying_--you've got hold of everything, don't you see, and you grudge him a tablet in the little church of Penruthyn, by gad! I told your nephew he wished it, and I tell you he wished it; it's not stinginess, it's your mean pride."

"You seem, Mr. Dingwell, to fancy that there's no limit to the impertinence I'll submit to."

"I'm sure there's none almost--you better not ring the bell--you better think twice--he gave me that message, and he also left me a mallet--quite a toy--but a single knock of it would bring Verney House, or Ware, or this place, about your ears."

The man was speaking in quite another voice now, and in the most awful tones Lord Verney had ever heard in his life, and to his alarmed and sickly eyes it seemed as if the dusky figure of his visitor were dilating in the dark like an evoked Genii.

"I--I think about it--it's quite unaccountable--all this." Lord Verney was looking at the stranger as he spoke, and groping with his left hand for the old-fashioned bell-rope which used to hang near him in the library in Verney House, forgetting that there was no bell of any sort within his reach at that moment.

"I'm not going to take poor dear Arthur's mallet out of my pocket, for the least tap of it would make all England ring and _roar_, sir. No, I'll make no noise; you and I, sir, _tte--tte_. I'll have no go-between; no Larkin, no Levi, no Cleve; you and I'll settle it alone.

Your brother was a great Grecian, they used to call him [Greek: Odusseus]--Ulysses. Do you remember? I said I was the great Greek merchant? We have made an exchange together. You must pay. What shall I call myself, for Dingwell isn't my name. I'll take a new one--To [Greek: men prton Outin heauton epikalei--epeidande diepheuge kai ex n belous Odussyn onomazesthai eph] In English--at first he called himself Outis--_n.o.body_; but so soon as he had escaped, and was out of the javelin's reach, he said that he was named Odusseus--_Ulysses_, and here he is. This is the return of Ulysses!"

There had been a sudden change in Mr. Dingwell's Yankee intonation.

The nasal tones were heard no more. He approached the window, and said, with a laugh, pulling the shutter more open--