Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience

“I half suspect, Count,” said I, laughing, “that if my claim to this estate were a real one, I should not be so sure of your aid and assistance.”

“And you are right there, Gervois. It is in the very daring and danger of this pursuit I feel the pleasure. The game on which I risk nothing has no excitement for me; but here the stake is a heavy one.”

“And how would you proceed?” asked I, not heeding this remark.

“By opening a correspondence with Bickering and Ragge, the lawyers. They have long been in search of the heir, and would be delighted to hear there were any tidings of his existence. My name is already known to them, and I could address them with confidence. They would, of course, require to see you, and either come over here or send for you. In either case you would be preceded by your story; the family parts should be supplied by me; the other details you should fill in at will. All this, however, should be concerted together. The first point is your consent, – your hearty consent; and even that I would not accept, unless ratified by a solemn oath, to persist to the last, and never falter nor give in to the end, whatever it be!”

I at first hesitated, but at last consented to give the required pledge; and though for a while it occurred to me that a frank avowal of my real claim to be the person designated might best suit the object I had in view, I suddenly bethought me that if Ysaffich once believed that he himself was not the prime mover in the scheme, and that I was other than a mere puppet in his hand, he was far more likely to mar than to make our fortune. Intrigue and trick were the very essence of the man’s nature; and it was enough that the truthful entered into anything to destroy its whole value or interest in his eyes. That this plot had long been lying in his mind, I had but to remember the night in the garden at Hamburg to be convinced of, and since that time he had never ceased to ruminate upon it. Indeed, he now told me that it constantly occurred to him to fancy that this piece of success was to be a crowning recompense for a long life of reverses and failures.

How gladly did my thoughts turn from him and all his crafty counsels to think of that true friend, poor Raper, and my dear, dear mother, as I used to call her, who had, in the midst of their own hard trials, devoted their best energies to my cause. It is not necessary to say that Raper was the faithful clerk, and Polly the unknown lady who had given the impulse to this search. The papers, of which Ysaffich showed me several, were all in the handwriting of one or other of them; a few of my father’s own letters were also in one packet, and though referring to matters far remote from this object, had an indescribable interest for me.

“Seven years ago,” said the Count, “this estate was in the possession of a certain Mr. Curtis, who claimed to be the next of kin of the late owner, and who, I believe, was so, in the failure of this youth’s legitimacy. This is now our great fact, since we have already found the individual. Eh, Gervois?” said he, laughing. “Our man is here, and from this hour forth your name is – let me see what it is – ay, here we have it: Jasper Carew, son of Walter Carew and Josephine de Courtois, his wife.”

“Jasper Carew am I from this day, then, and never to be called by any other name,” said I.

“Ay, but you must have your lesson perfect,” said he; “you must not forget the name of your parents.”

“Never fear,” said I; “Walter Carew and Josephine de Courtois are easily remembered.”

“All correct,” said he, well pleased at my accuracy. “Now, as to family history, this paper will tell you enough. It is drawn out by Mr. Raper, and is minutely exact. There is not a strong point of the case omitted, nor a weak one forgotten. Read it over carefully; mark the points in which you trace resemblance to your own life; study well where any divergence or difficulty may occur; and, lastly, draw up a brief memoir in the character of Jasper Carew, with all your recollections of childhood: for remember that up to the age of twelve or thirteen, if not later, you were domesticated with this Countess de Gabriac, and educated by Raper. After that you are free to follow out what fancy, or reality, if you like it better, may suggest. When you have drawn up everything, with all the consistency and plausibility you can, avoid none of the real difficulties, but rather show yourself fully aware of them, and also of all their importance. Let the task of having persuaded you to address Messrs. Bickering and Ragge be left to me; I have already held correspondence with them, and on this very subject. I give you three days to do this; meanwhile I start at once for Brussels, where I can consult a lawyer, an old friend of mine, as to our first steps in the campaign.”

The man who stoops once to a minute dissection of his life must perforce steel his heart against many a sense of shame, since even in the story of the good and the upright are passages of dark omen, moments when the bad has triumphed, and seasons when the true has been postponed by the false. It is not now that, having revealed so much as I have done of my secret history, I dare make any pretensions to superior honesty, or affect to be one of the “unblemished few.” Still, I have a craving desire not to be judged over harshly, – a painful feeling of anxiety that no evil construction should be put upon those actions of my life other than what they absolutely merit. My “over-reachings” have been many, – my “shortcomings” still more; but, with all their weight and gravity before me, I still entreat a merciful judgment, and hope that if the sentence be “guilty,” there will be at least the alleviation of “attenuating circumstances.”

I am now an old man; the world has no more any bribe to my ambition than have I within me the energy to attempt it. The friendships that warmed up the late autumn of my life are departed; they lie in the churchyard, and none have ever replaced them. In these confessions, therefore, humiliating as they often would seem, there are none to suffer pain. I make them at the cost of my own feelings alone, and in some sense I do so as an act of atonement and reparation to a world that, with some hard lessons, has still treated me with kindness, and to whom, with the tremulous fingers of old age, I write myself most grateful.

If they who read this story suppose that I should not have hesitated to propose myself a claimant for an estate to which I had no right, I have no better answer to give them than a mere denial, and even that uttered in all humility, since it comes from one whose good name has been impeached, and whose good faith may be questioned. Still do I repeat it, this was an act I could not have done. There is a kind of half-way rectitude in the world which never scruples at the means of any success so long as it injures no other, but which recoils from the thought of any advantage obtained at another’s cost and detriment. Such I suspect to have been mine. At least, I can declare with truth that I am not conscious of an incident in my life which will bear the opposite construction.

But to what end should I endeavor to defend my motives, since my actions are already before the world, and each will read them by the light his own conscience lends? Let me rather hasten to complete a task which, since it has involved an apology, has become almost painful to pursue.

So successfully had Ysaffich employed his time at Brussels that a well-known notary there had already consented to aid our plans and furnish means for our journey to England. I cannot go over with minuteness details in which the deceptions I had to concur in still revive my shame. I could, it is true, recite the story of my birth and parentage, my early years abroad, and so on, with the conscious force of truth; but there were supplementary evidences required of me with which I could not bring myself to comply. Ysaffich, naturally enough, could not understand the delicacy of scruples which only took alarm by mere caprice, nor could he comprehend why he who was willing to feign a name and falsify a position should hesitate about assuming any circumstances that might be useful to sustain it.

Of course I could not explain this mystery, and was obliged to endure all the sarcastic allusions he vented on the acuteness of my sense of honor and the extreme susceptibility of my notions of right. It chanced, however, that this very repugnance on my part should prove more favorable for us than all his most artful devices, and indeed it shows with clearness how often the superadded efforts fraud contributes to insure success are as frequently the very sources of its failure, – just as we see in darker crimes how the over care and caution of the murderer have been the clew that has elicited the murder.

Ysaffich wished me to detail, amongst the memories of my childhood, the having heard often of the great estate and vast fortune to which I was entitled. He wanted me to supply, as it were from memory, many links of the chain of evidence that seemed deficient, – vague recollections of having heard this, that, and the other; but, with an obstinacy that to him appeared incomprehensible, I held to my own unadorned tale, and would not add a word beyond my own conviction.

Mr. Ragge, the solicitor by whom the case was undertaken, seemed most favorably impressed by this reserve on my part; and, far from being discouraged by my ignorance of certain points, appeared, on the contrary, only the more satisfied as to the genuineness of my story. Over and over have I felt in my conversations with him how impossible it would have been for me to practise any deception successfully with him. Without any semblance of cross-examination, he still contrived to bring me again and again over the same ground, viewing the same statement from different sides, and trying to discover a discrepancy in my narrative. When at length assured, to all appearance, at least, of my being the person I claimed to be, he drew up a statement of my case for counsel, and a day was named when I should be personally examined by a distinguished member of the bar. I cannot even now recall that interview without a thrill of emotion. My sense of hope, dashed as it was by a conscious feeling that I was, in some sort, practising a deception, – for in all my compact with Ysaffich our attempt was purely a fraud, – I entered the chamber with a faltering step and a failing heart Far, however, from questioning and cross-questioning, like the solicitor, the lawyer suffered me to tell my story without even so much as a word of interruption. I had, I ought to remark, divested my tale of many of the incidents which really befell me. I made my life one of commonplace events and unexciting adventures, in which poverty occupied the prominent place. I as cautiously abstained from all mention of the distinguished persons with whom accident had brought me into contact, since any allusion to them would have compromised the part I Was obliged to play with Ysaffich. When asked what documents or written evidence I had to adduce in support of my pretensions, and I had confessed to possessing none, the old lawyer leaned back in his chair, and, closing his eyes, seemed lost in thought.

“At the best,” said he, at length, “it is a case for a compromise. There is really so little to go upon, I can advise nothing better.”

I need not go into the discussion that ensued further than to say the weight of argument was on the side of those who counselled the compromise, and, however little disposed to yield, I felt myself overborne by numbers, and compelled to give in.

Weeks, even months, were now passed without any apparent progress in our suit. The party in possession of the estate treated our first advances with the most undisguised contempt, and even met our proposals with menaces of legal vengeance. Undeterred by these signs of strength, Mr. Ragge persevered in his search for evidence, sent his emissaries hither and thither, and entered upon the case with all the warm zeal of a devoted friend. It was at length thought that a visit to Ireland might possibly elicit some information on certain points, and thither we went together.

It was little more than a quarter of a century since the date of my father’s death, and yet such had been the changes in the condition of Ireland, and so great the social revolution accomplished there, that men talked of the bygone period like some long-past history. The days of the parliaments, and the men who figured in them, were alike for* gotten; and although there were many who had known my father well, all memory, not to speak of affection for him, had lapsed from their natures.

Crowther and Fagan were dead, but Joe Curtis was alive, and continued to live in Castle Carew in a style of riotous debauchery that scandalized the whole country. In fact, the mere mention of his name was sufficient to elicit the most disgraceful anecdotes of his habits. Unknown to and unrecognized by his equals, this old man had condescended to form intimacy with all that Dublin contained of the profligate and abandoned; and, surrounded by men and women of this class, his days and nights were one continued orgie. Although the estate was a large one, it was rumored that he was deeply in debt, and only obtained means for this wasteful existence by loans on ruinous conditions. In vain Mr. Ragge made inquiries for some one who might possess his confidence and have the legal direction of his affairs. He had changed from this man to that so often that it was scarcely possible to discover in what quarter the property was managed. Without any settled plan of procedure, but half to watch the eventualities that might arise, it was determined that I should proceed to Castle Carew and present myself as the son and the heir of the last owner.

If there were circumstances attendant on this step which I by no means fancied, there was one gratification that more than atoned for them all: I should see the ancient home of my family; the halls wherein my father’s noble hospitalities had been practised; the chamber which had been my dear mother’s! I own that the sight of the princely domain and all its attendant wealth, contrasting with my own poverty, served to extinguish within me the last spark of hope. How could I possibly dream of success against the power of such adjuncts as these? Were my cause fortified by every document and evidence, how little would it avail against the might of vast wealth and resources! Curtis would laugh my pretensions to scorn, if not treat them with greater violence; and with such thoughts I found myself one bright morning of June slowly traversing the approach to the Castle. The sight of the dense dark woods, the swelling lawns dotted over with grazing cattle, the distant corn-fields waving beneath a summer wind, and the tall towers of the Castle itself far off above the trees, all filled my heart with a strange chaos, in which hope, and fear, and proud ambition, and the very humblest terrors were all commingled. Although my plan of procedure had been carefully sketched out for me by Ragge, so confused were all my thoughts that I forgot everything. I could not even bethink me in what character and with what pretension I was to present myself, and I was actually at the very entrance of the Castle, still trying to remember the part I was to play.

There before me rose the grand and massive edifice, to erect which had been one of the chief elements of my poor father’s ruin. Though far from architecturally correct in its details, the effect of the whole was singularly fine. Between two square towers of great size extended a long facade, in which, from the ornamented style of architraves and brackets, it was easy to see the chief suite of apartments lay; and in front of this the ground had been artificially terraced, and gardens formed in the Italian taste, the entire being defended by a deep fosse in front, and crossed by a drawbridge. Neglect and dilapidation had, however, disfigured all these; the terraces were broken down by the cattle, the cordage of the bridge hung in fragments in the wind, and even the stained-glass windows were smashed, and their places filled by paper or wooden substitutes. As I came nearer, these signs of ruin and devastation were still more apparent. The marble statues were fractured, and fissured by bullet-marks; the pastures were cut up by horses’ feet; and even fragments of furniture were strewn about, as though thrown from the windows in some paroxysm of passionate debauchery. The door of the mansion was open, and evidences of even greater decay presented themselves within. Massive cornices of carved oak hung broken and shattered from the walls; richly cut wainscotings were split and fissured; a huge marble table of immense thickness was smashed through the centre, and the fragments still lay scattered on the floor where they had fallen. As I stood, in mournful mood, gazing on this desecration of what once had been a noble and costly estate, an ill-dressed, slatternly woman-servant chanced to cross the hall, and stopped with some astonishment to stare at me. To my inquiry if I could see Mr. Curtis, she replied by a burst of laughter too natural to be deemed offensive.

“By coorse you couldn’t,” said she, at length; “sure there’s nobody stirrin’, nor won’t be these two hours.”

“At what time, then, might I hope to be more fortunate?”

If I came about three or four in the afternoon, when the gentlemen were at breakfast, I might see Mr. Archy, – Archy M’Clean.

This gentleman was, as she told me, the nephew of Mr. Curtis, and his reputed heir.

Having informed her that I was a stranger in Ireland, and come from a long distance off to pay this visit, she good-naturedly suffered me to enter the house and rest myself in a small and meanly furnished chamber adjoining the hall. If I could but recall the sensations which passed through my mind as I sat in that solitary room, I could give a more correct picture of my nature than by all I have narrated of my actual life. Hour after hour glided by at first, in all the stillness of midnight; but gradually a faint noise would be heard afar off, and now and again a voice would echo through the long corridors, the very accents of which seemed to bring up thoughts of savage revelry and debauch. It had been decided by my lawyers that I should present myself to Curtis, without any previous notification of my identity or my claim; that, in fact, not to prejudice my chances of success by any written application for an audience, I should contrive to see him without his having expected me; and thus derive whatever advantage might accrue from any admissions his surprise should betray him into. I had been drilled into my part by repeated lessons. I was instructed as to every word I was to utter, and every phrase I was to use; but now that the moment to employ these arts drew nigh, I had utterly forgotten them all. The one absorbing thought: that beneath the very roof under which I now stood, my father and mother had lived; that these walls were their own home; that within them had been passed the short life they had shared together, – overcame me so completely that I lost all consciousness about myself and my object there.

At length the loud tones of many voices aroused me from my half stupor, and on drawing nigh the door I perceived a number of servants, ill-dressed and disorderly looking, carrying hurriedly across the hall the materials for a breakfast. I addressed myself to one of these, with a request to know when and how I could see Mr. Curtis. A bold stare and a rude burst of laughter was, however, the only reply he made me. I tried another, who did not even vouchsafe to hear more than half my question, when he passed on.

“Is it possible,” said I, indignantly, “that none of you will take a message for your master?”

“Begad, we have so many masters,” said one, jocosely, “it’s hard to say where we ought to deliver it;” and the speech was received with a roar of approving laughter.

“It is Mr. Curtis I desire to see,” said I.

“It’s four hours too early, then,” said the same speaker. “Old Joe won’t be stirring till nigh eight o’clock. If Mr. Archy would do, he’s in the stables, and it’s the best time to talk to him.”

“And if it’s the master you want,” chimed in another, “he ‘s your man.”

“Lead me to him, then,” said I, resolving at least to see the person who claimed to be supreme in this strange household. Traversing a number of passages and dirty, ill-kept rooms, we descended by a small stone stair into an ample courtyard, two sides of which were occupied by ranges of stables. The spacious character of the building and the costly style of the arrangements were evident at a glance; and even a glance was all that I had time for, when my guide, whispering, “There is Mr. Archy,” hurriedly withdrew and left me. The person indicated was standing as if to examine a young horse which had met with some accident, for the animal could scarcely move, and with the greatest difficulty could bring up his hind legs.

I had time to observe him; and certainly, though by no means deficient as regarded good features, I had rarely seen anything so repulsive as the expression of his face. Coarsely sensual and brutal, they were rendered worse by habits of dissipation and debauch; and in the filmy eye and the tremulous lip might be read the signs of habitual drunkenness. In figure he was large and most powerfully built, and if not over-fleshy, must have been of great muscular strength.

“Shoot him, Ned,” he cried, after a few minutes of close scrutiny; “he’s as great a cripple as old Joe himself.”

“I suppose, your honor,” said the groom, “there’s nothing else to be done, it ‘s in the back it is.”

“I don’t care a curse where it is,” said the other, savagely; “I only know when a horse can’t go. You can put a bullet in him, and more’s the pity all other useless animals are not as easily disposed of. – And who is our friend here?” added he, turning and approaching where I stood.

I briefly said that I was a stranger desirous of seeing and speaking with Mr. Curtis; that my business was one of importance not less to myself than to him; and that I would feel obliged if he could procure me the opportunity I sought for.

“If you talk of business, and important business,” said he, sternly, “you ought to know, if you haven’t heard it already, that the man you want to discuss it with is upwards of a hundred years of age; that he is a doting idiot; and that, for many a day, the only one who has given any orders here now stands before you.”

“In that case,” said I, courteously, “I am equally prepared to address myself to him. Will you kindly accord me an interview?”

“Are you a dun?” said he, rudely.

“No,” said I, smiling at the abruptness of the demand.

“Are you a tenant in arrear of his rent? or wanting an abatement?”

“Neither one nor the other.”

“Are you sent by a friend with a hostile message?”

“Not even that,” said I, with impassive gravity.

“Then, what the devil are you?” said he, rudely; “for I don’t recognize you as one of my friends or acquaintances.”

I hesitated for a moment what reply I should make to this coarsely uttered speech. Had I reflected a little longer, it is possible that good sense might have prevailed, and taught me how inopportune was the time for such reprisals; but I was stung by an insult offered in presence of many others; and in a tone of angry defiance answered, —

“You may discover to your cost, sir, that my right to be here is somewhat better than your own, and that the day is not very distant when your presence in this domain will be more surely questioned than is mine now. Is that name new to you?” And as I spoke I handed him my card, whereupon, with my name, the ancient arms of my family were also engraved. A livid paleness suddenly spread over his features as he read the words, and then as quickly his face became purple red.

“Do you mean,” said he, in a voice guttural with passion, “do you mean to impose upon a man of my stamp with such stupid balderdash as that? And do you fancy that such a paltry attempt at a cheat will avail you here? Now, I’ll show you how we treat such pretensions without any help from lawyers. Garvey,” cried he, addressing one of the grooms who stood by, laughing heartily at his master’s wit, “Garvey, go in and rouse the gentlemen; tell them to dress quickly and come downstairs; for I ‘ve got sport for them. And you, Mick, saddle Ranty for me, and get out the dogs. Now, Mr. Carew, I like fair play, and so I’ll give you fifteen minutes law. Take the shortest cut you can out of these grounds; for, by the rock of Cashel, if you ‘re caught, I would n’t be in your skin for a trifle.”