The Young Duke, Benjamin Disraeli [early reader books TXT] 📗

a manner which he had not anticipated; and he became also the hero of the ten, or twelve, or fifteen millions of pariahs for whose existence philosophers have hitherto failed to adduce a satisfactory cause.

The Duke of St. James was now, in the comprehensive sense of the phrase, a public character. Some choice spirits took the hint from the public feeling, and determined to dine on the public curiosity. A Sunday journal was immediately established. Of this epic our Duke was the hero. His manners, his sayings, his adventures, regularly regaled, on each holy day, the Protestant population of this Protestant empire, who in France or Italy, or even Germany, faint at the sight of a peasantry testifying their gratitude for a day of rest by a dance or a tune. 'Sketches of the Alhambra,' '_Soupers_ in the Regent's Park,' 'The Court of the Caliph,' 'The Bird Cage,' &c, &c, &c, were duly announced and duly devoured. This journal, being solely devoted to the illustration of the life of a single and a private individual, was appropriately entitled 'The Universe.' Its contributors were eminently successful. Their pure inventions and impure details were accepted as delicate truth; and their ferocious familiarity with persons with whom they were totally unacquainted demonstrated at the same time their knowledge both of the forms and the personages of polite society.

At the first announcement of this hebdomadal his Grace was a little annoyed, and 'Noctes Hautevillienses' made him fear treason; but when he had read a number, he entirely acquitted any person of a breach of confidence. On the whole he was amused. A variety of ladies in time were introduced, with many of whom the Duke had scarcely interchanged a bow; but the respectable editor was not up to Lady Afy.

If his Grace, however, were soon reconciled to this not very agreeable notoriety, and consoled himself under the activity of his libellers by the conviction that their prolusions did not even amount to a caricature, he was less easily satisfied with another performance which speedily advanced its claims to public notice.

There is an unavoidable reaction in all human affairs. The Duke of St. James had been so successfully attacked that it became worth while successfully to defend him, and another Sunday paper appeared, the object of which was to maintain the silver side of the shield. Here everything was _couleur de rose_. One week the Duke saved a poor man from the Serpentine; another a poor woman from starvation; now an orphan was grateful; and now Miss Zouch, impelled by her necessity and his reputation, addressed him a column and a half, quite heart-rending. Parents with nine children; nine children without parents; clergymen most improperly unbeneficed; officers most wickedly reduced; widows of younger sons of quality sacrificed to the Colonies; sisters of literary men sacrificed to national works, which required his patronage to appear; daughters who had known better days, but somehow or other had not been so well acquainted with their parents; all advanced with multiplied petitions, and that hackneyed, heartless air of misery which denotes the mumper. His Grace was infinitely annoyed, and scarcely compensated for the inconvenience by the prettiest little creature in the world, who one day forced herself into his presence to solicit the honour of dedicating to him her poems.

He had enough on his hands, so he wrote her a cheque and, with a courtesy which must have made Sappho quite desperate, put her out of the room.

We forgot to say that the name of the new journal was 'The New World.' The new world is not quite so big as the universe, but then it is as large as all the other quarters of the globe together. The worst of this business was, 'The Universe' protested that the Duke of St. James, like a second Canning, had called this 'New World' into existence, which was too bad, because, in truth, he deprecated its discovery scarcely less than the Venetians.

Having thus managed, in the course of a few weeks, to achieve the reputation of an unrivalled roue, our hero one night betook himself to Almack's, a place where his visits, this season, were both shorter and less frequent.

Many an anxious mother gazed upon him, as he passed, with an eye which longed to pierce futurity; many an agitated maiden looked exquisitely unembarrassed, while her fluttering memory feasted on the sweet thought that, at any rate, another had not captured this unrivalled prize. Perhaps she might be the Anson to fall upon this galleon. It was worth a long cruise, and even a chance of shipwreck.

He danced with Lady Aphrodite, because, since the affair of the Signora, he was most punctilious in his attentions to her, particularly in public. That affair, of course, she passed over in silence, though it was bitter. She, however, had had sufficient experience of man to feel that remonstrance is a last resource, and usually an ineffectual one. It was something that her rival--not that her ladyship dignified the Bird by that title--it was something that she was not her equal, that she was not one with whom she could be put in painful and constant collision. She tried to consider it a freak, to believe only half she heard, and to indulge the fancy that it was a toy which would soon tire. As for Sir Lucius, he saw nothing in this adventure, or indeed in the Alhambra system at all, which militated against his ulterior views. No one more constantly officiated at the ducal orgies than himself, both because he was devoted to self-gratification, and because he liked ever to have his protege in sight. He studiously prevented any other individual from becoming the Petronius of the circle. His deep experience also taught him that, with a person of the young Duke's temper, the mode of life which he was now leading was exactly the one which not only would insure, but even hurry, the catastrophe his faithful friend so eagerly desired. His pleasures, as Sir Lucius knew, would soon pall; for he easily perceived that the Duke was not heartless enough for a roue. When thorough satiety is felt, young men are in the cue for desperate deeds. Looking upon happiness as a dream, or a prize which, in life's lottery, they have missed; worn, hipped, dissatisfied, and desperate, they often hurry on a result which they disapprove, merely to close a miserable career, or to brave the society with which they cannot sympathise.

The Duke, however, was not yet sated. As after a feast, when we have despatched a quantity of wine, there sometimes, as it were, arises a second appetite, unnatural to be sure, but very keen; so, in a career of dissipation, when our passion for pleasure appears to be exhausted, the fatal fancy of man, like a wearied hare, will take a new turn, throw off the hell-hounds of ennui, and course again with renewed vigour.

And to-night the Duke of St. James was, as he had been for some weeks, all life, and fire, and excitement; and his eye was even now wandering round the room in quest of some consummate spirit whom he might summon to his Saracenic Paradise.

A consummate spirit his eye lighted on. There stood May Dacre. He gasped for breath. He turned pale. It was only for a moment, and his emotion was unperceived. There she stood, beautiful as when she first glanced before him; there she stood, with all her imperial graces; and all surrounding splendour seemed to fade away before her dazzling presence, like mournful spirits of a lower world before a radiant creature of the sky.

She was speaking with her sunlight smile to a young man whose appearance attracted his notice. He was dressed entirely in black, rather short, but slenderly made; sallow, but clear, with long black curls and a Murillo face, and looked altogether like a young Jesuit or a Venetian official by Giorgone or Titian. His countenance was reserved and his manner not easy: yet, on the whole, his face indicated intellect and his figure blood. The features haunted the Duke's memory. He had met this person before. There are some countenances which when once seen can never be forgotten, and the young man owned one of these. The Duke recalled him to his memory with a pang.

Our hero--let him still be ours, for he is rather desolate, and he requires the backing of his friends--our hero behaved pretty well. He seized the first favourable opportunity to catch Miss Dacre's eye, and was grateful for her bow. Emboldened, he accosted her, and asked after Mr. Dacre. She was courteous, but unembarrassed. Her calmness, however, piqued him sufficiently to allow him to rally. He was tolerably easy, and talked of calling. Their conversation lasted only for a few minutes, and was fortunately terminated without his withdrawal, which would have been awkward. The young man whom we have noticed came up to claim her hand.

'Arundel Dacre, or my eyes deceive me?' said the young Duke. 'I always consider an old Etonian a friend, and therefore I address you without ceremony.'

The young man accepted, but not with readiness, the offered hand. He blushed and spoke, but in a hesitating and husky voice. Then he cleared his throat, and spoke again, but not much more to the purpose. Then he looked to his partner, whose eyes were on the ground, and rose as he endeavoured to catch them. For a moment he was silent again; then he bowed slightly to Miss Dacre and solemnly to the Duke, and then he carried off his cousin.

'Poor Dacre!' said the Duke; 'he always had the worst manner in the world. Not in the least changed.'

His Grace wandered into the tea-room. A knot of dandies were in deep converse. He heard his own name and that of the Duke of Burlington; then came 'Doncaster beauty.' 'Don't you know?' 'Oh! yes.' 'All quite mad,' &c, &c, &c. As he passed he was invited in different ways to join the coterie of his admirers, but he declined the honour, and passed them with that icy hauteur which he could assume, and which, judiciously used, contributed not a little to his popularity.

He could not conquer his depression; and, although it was scarcely past midnight, he determined to disappear. Fortunately his carriage was waiting. He was at a loss what to do with himself. He dreaded even to be alone. The Signora was at a private concert, and she was the last person whom, at this moment, he cared to see. His low spirits rapidly increased. He got terribly nervous, and felt miserable. At last he drove to White's.

The House had just broken up, and the political members had just entered, and in clusters, some standing and some yawning, some stretching their arms and some stretching their legs, presented symptoms of an escape from boredom. Among others, round the fire, was a young man dressed in a rough great coat all cords and sables, with his hat bent aside, a shawl tied round his neck with boldness, and a huge oaken staff clenched in his left hand. With the other he held the 'Courier,' and reviewed with a critical eye the report of the speech which he had made that afternoon. This was Lord Darrell.

We have always considered the talents of younger brothers as an unanswerable argument in favour of a Providence. Lord Darrell was the younger son of the Earl of Darleyford, and had been educated for a diplomatist. A report some two years ago had been very current that his elder brother, then Lord Darrell, was, against the consent of his family, about to be favoured with the hand of Mrs. Dallington Vere. Certain it is he