The Last Man | Page 9

to their pristine

splendour, and the park, all disrepairs restored, was guarded with unusual care.
I was beyond measure disturbed by this intelligence. It roused all my dormant
recollections, my suspended sentiments of injury, and gave rise to the new one of revenge.
I could no longer attend to my occupations; all my plans and devices were forgotten; I
seemed about to begin life anew, and that under no good auspices. The tug of war, I
thought, was now to begin. He would come triumphantly to the district to which my
parent had fled broken-hearted; he would find the ill-fated offspring, bequeathed with
such vain confidence to his royal father, miserable paupers. That he should know of our
existence, and treat us, near at hand, with the same contumely which his father had
practised in distance and absence, appeared to me the certain consequence of all that had
gone before. Thus then I should meet this titled stripling--the son of my father's friend.
He would be hedged in by servants; nobles, and the sons of nobles, were his companions;
all England rang with his name; and his coming, like a thunderstorm, was heard from far:
while I, unlettered and unfashioned, should, if I came in contact with him, in the
judgment of his courtly followers, bear evidence in my very person to the propriety of
that ingratitude which had made me the degraded being I appeared.
With my mind fully occupied by these ideas, I might be said as if fascinated, to haunt the
destined abode of the young Earl. I watched the progress of the improvements, and stood
by the unlading waggons, as various articles of luxury, brought from London, were taken
forth and conveyed into the mansion. It was part of the Ex-Queen's plan, to surround her
son with princely magnificence. I beheld rich carpets and silken hangings, ornaments of
gold, richly embossed metals, emblazoned furniture, and all the appendages of high rank
arranged, so that nothing but what was regal in splendour should reach the eye of one of
royal descent. I looked on these; I turned my gaze to my own mean dress.--Whence
sprung this difference? Whence but from ingratitude, from falsehood, from a dereliction
on the part of the prince's father, of all noble sympathy and generous feeling. Doubtless,
he also, whose blood received a mingling tide from his proud mother--he, the
acknowledged focus of the kingdom's wealth and nobility, had been taught to repeat my
father's name with disdain, and to scoff at my just claims to protection. I strove to think
that all this grandeur was but more glaring infamy, and that, by planting his
gold-enwoven flag beside my tarnished and tattered banner, he proclaimed not his
superiority, but his debasement. Yet I envied him. His stud of beautiful horses, his arms
of costly workmanship, the praise that attended him, the adoration, ready servitor, high
place and high esteem,--I considered them as forcibly wrenched from me, and envied
them all with novel and tormenting bitterness.
To crown my vexation of spirit, Perdita, the visionary Perdita, seemed to awake to real
life with transport, when she told me that the Earl of Windsor was about to arrive.
"And this pleases you?" I observed, moodily.
"Indeed it does, Lionel," she replied; "I quite long to see him; he is the descendant of our
kings, the first noble of the land: every one admires and loves him, and they say that his
rank is his least merit; he is generous, brave, and affable."

"You have learnt a pretty lesson, Perdita," said I, "and repeat it so literally, that you forget
the while the proofs we have of the Earl's virtues; his generosity to us is manifest in our
plenty, his bravery in the protection he affords us, his affability in the notice he takes of
us. His rank his least merit, do you say? Why, all his virtues are derived from his station
only; because he is rich, he is called generous; because he is powerful, brave; because he
is well served, he is affable. Let them call him so, let all England believe him to be
thus--we know him--he is our enemy--our penurious, dastardly, arrogant enemy; if he
were gifted with one particle of the virtues you call his, he would do justly by us, if it
were only to shew, that if he must strike, it should not be a fallen foe. His father injured
my father--his father, unassailable on his throne, dared despise him who only stooped
beneath himself, when he deigned to associate with the royal ingrate. We, descendants
from the one and the other, must be enemies also. He shall find that I can feel my injuries;
he shall learn to dread my revenge!"
A few days after he arrived. Every inhabitant of