Lawrence Clavering Read online

  Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive

  Transcriber's Notes:

  1. Page scan source: https://www.archive.org/details/lawrenceclaveri00masouoft

  2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].

  LAWRENCE

  CLAVERING

  BY

  A. E. W. MASON

  AUTHOR OF "THE WATCHERS," "CLEMENTINA," "THE FOUR FEATHERS," "THE TRUANTS," ETC.

  WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED LONDON AND MELBOURNE

  _Made and Printed in Great Britain by_ WARD, LOCK & Co., LIMITED, LONDON.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I. TELLS OF A PICTURE.

  II. I TAKE A WALK AND HEAR A SERMON IN THE COMPANY OF LORD BOLINGBROKE.

  III. MY KINSMAN AND I RIDE DIFFERENT WAYS.

  IV. AND MEET. I CROSS TO ENGLAND AND HAVE A STRANGE ADVENTURE ON THE WAY.

  V. BLACKLADIES.

  VI. MR. HERBERT.

  VII. A DISPUTE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

  VIII. THE AFTERNOON OF THE 23RD OF AUGUST.

  IX. THE NIGHT OF THE 23RD: IN THE GARDEN.

  X. A TALK WITH LORD DERWENTWATER. I ESCAPE.

  XI. APPLEGARTH.

  XII. I RETURN TO KESWICK.

  XIII. DOROTHY CURWEN.

  XIV. I DROP THE CLOAK.

  XV. I REVISIT BLACKLADIES.

  XVI. ASHLOCK GIVES THE NEWS.

  XVII. THE MARCH TO PRESTON.

  XVIII. AT PRESTON AND AFTERWARDS.

  XIX. APPLEGARTH AGAIN.

  XX. A CONVERSATION IN WASTDALE CHURCH.

  XXI. I TRAVEL TO CARLISLE AND MEET AN ATTORNEY.

  XXII. REPARATION.

  XXIII. THE LAST.

  LAWRENCE CLAVERING.

  CHAPTER I.

  TELLS OF A PICTURE.

  The picture hangs at my lodgings here at Avignon, a stone's throw fromthe Porte de la Ligne, and within the shadow of Notre Dame des Doms,though its intended housing-place was the great gallery ofBlackladies. But it never did hang there, nor ever will; nor do I carethat it should--no, not the scrape of a fiddle. I have heard mencircumstanced like myself tell how, as they fell into years, more andmore their thoughts flew homewards like so many carrier-pigeons, eachwith its message of longing. But Blackladies, though it was the onlyhome I ever knew in England, did not of right belong to me, and theperiod during which I was master there was so populous with troubles,so chequered with the impertinent follies of an inexperienced youthraised of a sudden above his station, that even now, after all theseyears, I look back on it with a burning shame. And if one day,perchance, as I walk in the alleys here beyond the city walls, thewind in the branches will whisper to me of the house and the brownhills about it--it is only because I was in England while I livedthere. And if, again, as I happen to stand upon the banks of theRhone, I see unexpectedly reflected in the broken mirror of itswaters, the terraces, the gardens, the long row of windows, and amtouched for the moment to a foolish melancholy by the native aspect ofits gables--why, it is only because I look out here across a countryof _tourelles_.

  However, I come back to my lodging, and there is my picture on thewall--an accountant, as it were, ever casting up the good fortune andthe mishaps of my life, and ever striking a sure balance in my favour.

  I take the description of it from a letter which Mr. George Vertuewrote to a friend of mine in London, and that friend despatched to me.For, since the picture is a portrait of myself, it may be that anaccount of it from another's hand will be the more readily credited.Mr. Vertue saw it some years since at a dealer's in Paris, whither,being at that time hard pressed for money, I had sent it, but waslucky enough not to discover a purchaser.

  "I have come across a very curious picture," he wrote, "of which Iwould gladly know more, and I trust that you may help me to theknowledge. For more than once you have spoken to me of Mr. LawrenceClavering, who fought for the Chevalier de St. George at Preston, andwas out too in the Forty-five. The picture is the bust of a younggentleman painted by Anthony Herbert, and with all the laboriousminuteness which was distinctive of his earlier methods. Indeed, inthe delicacy with which the lace of the cravat is figured, the painterhas, I think, exceeded himself, and even exceeded Vandermijn, whom atthis period he seems to have taken for his model. The coat, too, whichis of a rose-pink in colour, is painted with the same elaboration, thevery threads of the velvet being visible. The richness of the workgives a very artful effect when you come to look at the face, whichchiefly provokes my curiosity. In colour it is a dead white, exceptfor the lips, which are purple, as though the blood stagnated there;the eyes are glassy and bright, with something of horror or fearstaring out of them; the features knotted out of all comeliness; themouth half opened and curled in the very sickness of pain; the wholeexpression, in a word, that of a man in the extremity of suffering--asoul's torture superimposed upon an agony of the body; and all thispainted with such circumstantial exactness as implies not merely greatleisure in the artist, but also a singular pleasure and gusto in hissubject...."

  After a few more remarks of a like sort, he continues: "I made it mybusiness to inquire of Mr. Herbert the history of the picture. But hewould tell me no more than this: that it was the portrait of Mr.Lawrence Clavering, painted in that gentleman's youth, and that if Iwould have fuller knowledge on the matter, I must get it from Mr.Clavering himself; and Mrs. Herbert, a very gentle woman, now growingold, but I should say of considerable beauty in her prime, warmlyseconded him in his reticence. Therefore I address myself to you toact as an intermediary between Mr. Clavering and myself."

  The information I did not think it fitting at that time to deliver.But both Mr. Herbert and his wife are dead these three years past; andso I write out the history of my picture, setting down, as my memoryserves, the incidents which attach to it in the due order of theirsequence. For if the picture is a strange one, it has, I think, ahistory to match.