Peveril of the Peak by Walter Scott (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📕

good-humour, he will be incensed at your repeated rivalry.”

“His Majesty defied me to it.”

“You have lost all hopes of the Isle, by quarrelling with Christian.”

“I have ceased to care a farthing about it,” replied the Duke.

“In Christian himself, whom you have insulted, and to whose family you intend dishonour, you have lost a sagacious, artful, and cool-headed instrument and adherent,” said the monitor.

“Poor Jerningham!” answered the Duke; “Christian would say as much for thee, I doubt not, wert thou discarded tomorrow. It is the common error of such tools as you and he to think themselves indispensable. As to his family, what was never honourable cannot be dishonoured by any connection with my house.”

“I say nothing of Chiffinch,” said Jerningham, “offended as he will be when he learns why, and by whom, his scheme has been ruined, and the lady spirited away—He and his wife, I say nothing of them.”

“You need not,” said the Duke; “for were they even fit persons to speak to me about, the Duchess of Portsmouth has bargained for their disgrace.”

“Then this bloodhound of a Colonel, as he calls himself, your Grace cannot even lay him on a quest which is to do you service, but you must do him such indignity at the same time, as he will not fail to remember, and be sure to fly at your throat should he ever have an opportunity of turning on you.”

“I will take care he has none,” said the Duke; “and yours, Jerningham, is a low-lived apprehension. Beat your spaniel heartily if you would have him under command. Ever let your agents see you know what they are, and prize them accordingly. A rogue, who must needs be treated as a man of honour, is apt to get above his work. Enough, therefore, of your advice and censure, Jerningham; we differ in every particular. Were we both engineers, you would spend your life in watching some old woman’s wheel, which spins flax by the ounce; I must be in the midst of the most varied and counteracting machinery, regulating checks and counter-checks, balancing weights, proving springs and wheels, directing and controlling a hundred combined powers.”

“And your fortune, in the meanwhile?” said Jerningham; “pardon this last hint, my lord.”

“My fortune,” said the Duke, “is too vast to be hurt by a petty wound; and I have, as thou knowest, a thousand salves in store for the scratches and scars which it sometimes receives in greasing my machinery.”

“Your Grace does not mean Dr. Wilderhead’s powder of projection?”

“Pshaw! he is a quacksalver, and mountebank, and beggar.”

“Or Solicitor Drowndland’s plan for draining the fens?”

“He is a cheat,—videlicet, an attorney.”

“Or the Laird of Lackpelf’s sale of Highland woods?”

“He is a Scotsman,” said the Duke,—“videlicet, both cheat and beggar.”

“These streets here, upon the site of your noble mansion-house?” said Jerningham.

“The architect’s a bite, and the plan’s a bubble. I am sick of the sight of this rubbish, and I will soon replace our old alcoves, alleys, and flower-pots by an Italian garden and a new palace.”

“That, my lord, would be to waste, not to improve your fortune,” said his domestic.

“Clodpate, and muddy spirit that thou art, thou hast forgot the most hopeful scheme of all—the South Sea Fisheries—their stock is up 50 per cent. already. Post down to the Alley, and tell old Mansses to buy £20,000 for me.—Forgive me, Plutus, I forgot to lay my sacrifice on thy shrine, and yet expected thy favours!—Fly post-haste, Jerningham—for thy life, for thy life, for thy life!”[*]

[*] Stock-jobbing, as it is called, that is, dealing in shares of monopolies, patent, and joint-stock companies of every description, was at least as common in Charles II.‘s time as our own; and as the exercise of ingenuity in this way promised a road to wealth without the necessity of industry, it was then much pursued by dissolute courtiers.

With hands and eyes uplifted, Jerningham left the apartment; and the Duke, without thinking a moment farther on old or new intrigues—on the friendship he had formed, or the enmity he had provoked—on the beauty whom he had carried off from her natural protectors, as well as from her lover—or on the monarch against whom he had placed himself in rivalship,—sat down to calculate chances with all the zeal of Demoivre, tired of the drudgery in half-an-hour, and refused to see the zealous agent whom he had employed in the city, because he was busily engaged in writing a new lampoon.