University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.

It is to be hoped that the reader has had few opportunities
to observe the heart of a libertine, when
brought up in an opulence which offers the gratification
of every wish, and without the restraining influence
of principle or religious belief. His life
spent in one unceasing round of vices, following
every pleasure to its end, and with most zeal when
most forbidden; indulging all his passions, never
replenishing his mind with reading or instructive
conversation, or purifying it by calm self-examination
and wholesome reflection, he becomes at last
totally selfish and depraved. Perhaps no characters
could be more strikingly contrasted than those of
the two young men now about to come into contact.
The one was as completely base as the other was
noble and disinterested. The one was destitute of
all moral sense; the other would have died rather
than commit a wrong action.

Elkington was in every way Claude's antithesis,
and, in painting a character so abandoned, we should
fear the charge of exaggeration, did not history and
the less extended annals of private life furnish too
many examples. It is becoming a fashion in modern
novels to mingle the good and bad so ingeniously
in the characters of scoundrels, that one scarcely
knows whether they are objects of censure or admiration;
and Lady Macbeth has become the original
of a race of villains, who commit crimes by

fortuitous coincidences and with amiable reluctance.
Experience has not led us to think that such examples
in the portraiture of character are to be too implicitly
followed. Unfortunately for human nature,
there are, and always will be, men who, if tried,
will be found utterly wanting; whose profligacy
never stops while it has power to proceed; and
whose very virtues only serve to render them more
inexcusable and disgusting. Elkington was one of
these—a libertine, a gambler, a duellist. He plunged
into every temptation, without a thought of
right or wrong. Ida had fewer attractions for him
than the less intellectual beauty of Mary Digby;
and, as far as such a person could be inspired with
love, he entertained it for that beautiful but simple
girl. The facility with which he impressed her
heart encouraged him to proceed, while the difficulties
in his path gave zest to the game, and furnished
a sort of pleasing excitement.

The answer of Digby to his challenge opened a
new field to his passions. Claude Wyndham was
the bearer of it, and he hated him with all his heart;
and, from some yet unexplained cause, his mother,
since their first meeting, had never ceased to speak
of him with contempt and hatred, and to call her
son's attention to everything which could cause him
to participate in her sentiments; of this the chief
cause was his standing with the Carolans, and his
visible progress in the good opinion of Ida. Several
circumstances, which had made Elkington suspect
Claude had placed Digby on his guard touching
his visits to Mary, would, without other grounds,
have awakened the resentment of a heart familiar
with plans of death. He had also reason to know
that the note from Digby, declining his challenge,
was written by Claude. From that moment he resolved
to fix the quarrel upon Claude, and to pursue
it to an extremity. No principle or religion checked
his bad passions. He wanted a rival out of the

way. He desired the destruction of a man, whose
unbending rectitude rebuked his profligacy by its
contrast, and whose fearless chivalry of character
did not hesitate to thwart his unholy plans. The
custom of duelling, sanctioned by the opinion of
many, although denounced by the law, literature,
taste, and religion of the age, offered a safe and sure
means of executing his scheme. It is such men as
he alone who are interested in preserving this bloody
custom from the odium it merits. The honest man
requires no such remedy. His life is the witness
of his courage and honour; and the insults of the
rash, or the wrongs and slanders of the wicked, pass
from before his name, like clouds from the ever-unstained
and stainless moon.

Claude knew Elkington was base and malignant.
He saw he hated him, and in his own breast a secret
and strange dislike had risen with a strength
which he could not wholly repress. It had been
his wish to avoid any association with him. He
regarded him as a dark and dangerous man, ready
for any deed of open violence or secret fraud. Several
things of which Lavalle had informed him, added
to his own observations, enabled him to read his
character correctly. It was, therefore, not without
reluctance that he agreed to become the bearer of a
message which might place him in collision with a
person whom, from various considerations, he so
much wished to avoid. But the idea that he might
prevent a bloody catastrophe, that he might save
Digby and Mary from the snares of a murderer and
a libertine, induced him to forego his own desires.
He had, as Elkington suspected, long since put
Digby on his guard concerning his visits to his
house; and it was from a generous impulse to defend
the weak and to take part with the innocent,
that he had given his counsel, written the letter, and
borne it to Beaufort.

Claude saw Digby the next morning. The honest

fellow had received another visit from Beaufort
of a conciliatory nature. Elkington begged to assure
him that, if his principles did not permit him
to adopt that mode of arranging a dispute, he would
not press it upon him, and that, on condition of a
mutual forgiveness, he would let the affair drop.
But, should he ever relate their disagreement or
the cause of it, he would consider it as a provocation
to resume the correspondence. The delighted
Digby—a mountain off his mind—promised everything,
and secretly resolved to withdraw his family
from Berlin as speedily as possible, and think of the
matter no more. He regarded Claude as his saviour,
and swore that, as long as he lived, he should
command him to any extent, and that his purse and
his life were, and ever should be, at his disposal.
The friend whose good sense had rescued him from
this disagreeable dilemma wanted neither, and took
his leave with the pleasing consciousness of having
prevented bloodshed.