Jasper Losely

“ Losely! you!—Jasper Losely! how you be changed! what ha' ye done to yourself? where's your comeliness? where's the look that stole ladies' hearts? you, Jasper Losely! you are his goblin!"
"Hold your peace, old hussey!" said the visitor, evidently annoyed at remarks so disparaging. "I am Jasper Losely, more bronzed of cheek, more iron of hand." He raised his switch with a threatening gesture, that might be in play, for the lips wore smiles, or might be in earnest, for the brows were bent; and pushing into the passage, and shutting the door, said, "Is your mistress up stairs? ”

“ Even by burglars and cut-throats, whose dangers he shunned, while fearlessly he joined their circle, Jasper Losely was regarded with terror. To be the awe of reckless men, as he had been the admiration of foolish women, this was delight to his vanity—the last delight that was left to it. ”

“ Strange though it seem to the novice in human nature, to Jasper Losely the woman who had so long lived but for one object—namely, to save him from the gibbet—was as his evil genius, his haunting fiend. ”

“ Darrell was still too much under the influence of recent excitement and immense sorrow for that supremacy of prudence over passion which could alone have made him a willing listener to overtures from Jasper Losely. And about the man whose connection with himself was a thought of such bitter shame, there was now so unmistakably the air of settled degradation, that all Darrell’s instincts of gentleman were revolted—just at the very time, too, when his pride had been most chafed and assailed by the obtrusion of all that rendered most galling to him the very name of Jasper Losely. ”

“ Jasper Losely sleeps under the portico from which Falsehood was borne by Black Horses. He forgets a promise, reweaves a scheme, visits a river side; and a door closes on the Strong Man and the Grim Woman. Jasper had satisfied the wild yearnings of his wounded vanity. He had vindicated his claim to hardihood and address, which it seemed to him he had forfeited in his interview with Darrell. ”

“ Trying to recover his constitutional audacity, Jasper said, with a tone of the old rollicking voice: “Well, Mr. Darrell, it is all one to me how I wring from you, in your own house, what you refused me when I was a suppliant on the road. Fair means are pleasanter than foul. I am a gentleman—the grandson of Sir Julian Losely, of Losely Hall; I am your son-in-law; and I am starving. This must not be; write me a cheque.” ”

“ Meanwhile the unhappy Adolphus Poole had been the reluctant but unfailing source from which Jasper Losely had weekly drawn the supplies to his worthless and workless existence. Never was a man more constrainedly benevolent, and less recompensed for pecuniary sacrifice by applauding conscience, than the doomed inhabitant of Alhambra Villa. In the utter failure of his attempts to discover Sophy, or to induce Jasper to accept Colonel Morley’s proposals, he saw this parasitical monster fixed upon his entrails, like the vulture on those of the classic sufferer in mythological tales. ”

“ Listen to me, Jasper Losely, I have no reason to love that child, as j'ou may suppose. But now that you so desert her, I think I feel compassion for her; and when, this morning, I raised my hand to strike her for her stubborn spirit, and saw her eyes unflinching, and her pale, pale, but fearless face, my arm fell to my side powerless. She will not take to this life without the old man. She will waste away and die. ”

“ True, Lionel had induced him to say—
“Could it be indisputably proved that no drop of Jasper Losely’s blood were in this girl’s veins—that she were the lawful child of honest parents, however humble—my right to stand between her and yourself would cease.” But a lawyer’s experience is less credulous than a lover’s hope. And to Darrell’s judgment it was wholly improbable that any honest parents, however humble, should have yielded their child to a knave like Jasper, while it was so probable that his own persuasion was well founded, and that she was Jasper’s daughter, though not Matilda’s. ”

“ Whatever Losely's intention in hastening after Darrell, he had no option now but to relinquish it, and drop back. The village itself was not many hundred yards distant; and, after all, what good in violence, except the gratified rage of the moment? Violence would not give to Jasper Losely the income that had just been within his grasp, and had so unexpectedly eluded it. He remained, therefore, in the lane, standing still, and seeing Darrell turn quietly into his park through another gate close to the Manor-house. ”

“ He encounters an old acquaintance in a traveler, who, like Shakspeare's Jaques, is "a melancholy fellow;" who, also like Jaques, hath "great reason to be sad;" and who, still like Jaques, is "full of matter." Jasper Losely rode slowly on through the clear frosty night; not back to the country town which he had left on his hateful errand, nor into the broad road to London. With a strange desire to avoid the haunts of men, he selected—at each choice of way in the many paths branching right and left, between waste and woodland—the lane that seemed the narrowest and dimmest. ”

“ The old crone gave him one angry glance, which sank frightened beneath the cruel gleam of his eyes, and hastening up the stairs with a quicker stride than her age seemed to warrant, cried out, "Mistress, mistress! here is Mr. Losely! Jasper Losely himself!" By the time the visitor had reached the landing-place of the first floor, a female form had emerged from a room above, a female face peered over the banisters. Losely looked up and started as he saw it. A haggard face,—the face of one over whose
life there has passed a blight. ”

“ Where a Lovelace so superb condescended to make overtures, a Clarissa so tasteless as to decline them deserved and experienced his contempt. Besides, steadfast and prolonged pursuit of any object, however important and attractive, was alien to the levity and fickleness of his temper. But in this instance he had other motives than those on the surface for unusual perseverance.
A man like Jasper Losely never reposes implicit confidence in any one. ”

“ It was but the visit which he, Jasper Losely, Esquire, thought fit to pay, however unceremoniously and unseasonably, to the house of a father-in-law! At the worst, should he fail in finding Darrell, or securing an unwitnessed interview—should he instead alarm the household, it would be a proof of the integrity of his intentions that he had no weapons save those which Nature bestows on the wild man as the mightiest of her wild beasts. ”

“ Poole, I have but a few words to say. The letters which gave Jasper Losely the power to extort money from you are no longer in his possession; they are in mine. You need fear him no more—you will fee him no more."
"Oh!" cried Poole, falling on his knees, "the blessing of a father of a family—a babe not six weeks born—be on your blessed, blessed head!"
"Get up, and don't talk nonsense. I do not give you these papers at present, nor burn them. Instead of being in the power of a muddled, irresolute drunkard, you are in the power of a vigilant, clear-brained woman. ”

“ Again I say, strange creature is Woman!—and, in this instance, creature more strange, because so grim! But as her eyes soften, and her fingers work, and her mind revolves schemes for making that lawless wild beast an innocuous, tame animal, who can help feeling for and with grim Arabella Crane?
Poor woman! And will not the experiment succeed? Three evenings does Jasper Losely devote to this sinless life and its peaceful occupation. He completes his task—he receives the ten guineas. ”

“ To penetrate into the home of this haughty scorner—to confront him in his own chamber at the dead of night, man to man, force to force; to say to him, "None now can deliver you from me—I come no more as a suppliant—I command you to accept my terms;" to gloat over the fears which, the strong man felt assured, would bow the rich man to beg for mercy at his feet;—this was the picture which Jasper Losely conjured up; and even the spoil to be won by violence smiled on him less than the grand position which the violence itself would bestow. ”

“ And where can coarseness so vanish into polished expression as in that diamond-like language—all terseness and sparkle— which, as friendly to Wit in its airiest prose, as hostile to Passion in its torrent of cloud-wrack of poetry, seems invented by the Grace out of spite to the Muse?
Into circles such as those of which the dim outline is here so imperfectly sketched, Jasper Losely niched himself, as /le bel Anglais/. (Pleasant representative of the English nation!) Not that those circles are to have the sole credit of his corruption. No! Justice is justice! Stand we up for our native land! ”

“ True, I recognize you now. There's a crown for you. I wish I had more to spare!"
Bridget pushed back the silver.
"No; I dare not! Take money from you, Jasper Losely! Mistress would not forgive me!"
Losely, not unreluctantly, restored the crown to his pocket; and, with a snort rather than sigh of relief, stepped into open daylight. As he crossed the street to join Rugge, who was waiting for him on the shady side, he mechanically turned to look back at the house, and, at the open window of an upper story, he beheld again those shining eyes which had glared down on him from the stairs. ”

“ And the reader will also comprehend why, partly from fear that his father might betray him, partly from a compassionate unwillingness to deprive the old man of a belief in which William Losely said he had found such solace, Jasper, in his last interview with his father, shrank from saying, "but she is not your grandchild!" The idea of recurring to the true relations of the child naturally never entered into Jasper's brain. He considered them to be as poor as himself. ”

“ Farther and farther from the nest in which all his love was centred fled the old man. What if Jasper did discover him now; that very discovery would mislead the pursuit from Sophy. Most improbable that Losely would ever guess that they could become separated; still more improbable, unless Waife, imprudently lurking near her home, guided conjecture, that Losely should dream of seeking under the roof of the lofty peeress the child that had fled from Mr. Rugge. ”

“ Jasper Losely! Can it be? Once before, in the fields of Fawley, we beheld him out at elbows, seedy, shabby, ragged. But then it was the decay of a foppish spendthrift, —clothes distained, ill-assorted, yet, still of fine cloth; shoes in holes, yet still pearl-coloured brodequins. But now it is the decay of no foppish spendthrift: the rags are not of fine cloth; the tattered shoes are not the brodequins. The man has fallen far below the politer grades of knavery, in which the sharper affects the beau. ”

“ But at this time Jasper Losely, under his name of Hammond, brought his wife from the French town at which they had been residing, since their marriage, to see Mrs. Lyndsay and Caroline at Paris, and implore their influence to obtain a reconciliation with her father. Matilda soon learned from Mrs. Lyndsay, who affected the most enchanting candour, the nature of the engagement between Caroline and Darrell. She communicated the information to Jasper, who viewed it with very natural alarm. ”

“ Crane put on the look of a mother incensed,—mild but awful,—and scolded as mothers sometimes can scold. Jasper Losely began to be frightened at Mrs. Crane's scoldings. And he had not that power over her which, though arrogated by a lover, is denied to an adopted son. His mind, relieved from the habitual distraction of the gaming-table for which the resource was wanting, settled with redoubled ardour on the image of Mrs. Haughton. He had called at her house several times since the fatal day on which he had met there Colonel Morley, but Mrs. Haughton was never at home. ”

“ He is garrulous, indiscreet—lets out much that Machiavel would have advised him not to disclose; but he invariably has nooks and corners in his mind which he keeps to himself. Jasper did not confide to his adopted mother his designs upon his intended bride. But she knew them through Poole, to whom he was more frank; and when she saw him looking over her select and severe library—taking therefrom the Polite Letter-Writer and the Elegant Extracts, Mrs. Crane divined at once that Jasper Losely was meditating the effect of epistolary seduction upon the Widow of Gloucester Place. ”

“ Little heeding these symptoms, which he ascribed to cold and want of food, and rather agreeably surprised not to feel the gnaw of his accustomed pains, Jasper now betook himself to Podden Place. The house was still unclosed; and it was not till Jasper's knock had been pretty often repeated, that the bolts were withdrawn from the door, and Bridgett Greggs appeared. "Oh, it is you, Mr. Losely," she said, with much sullenness, but with no apparent surprise. ”

“ Muscular strength often remains to a powerful frame long after the constitution is undermined, and Jasper Losely's frame was still that of a formidable athlete; nay, its strength was yet more apparent now that the shoulders and limbs had increased in bulk than when it was half- disguised in the lissome symmetry of exquisite proportion,—less active, less supple, less capable of endurance, but with more crushing weight in its rush or its blow. ”

“ We will all go together and enjoy ourselves. The Russians doat upon whist. We shall get into their swell sets, and live like princes." There with Jasper launched forth on the text of Russian existence, in such glowing terms, that Dolly Poole shut his aching eyes, and fancied himself sledging down the Neva, covered with furs—a countess waiting for him at dinner, and counts in dozens ready to offer bets, to a fabulous amount, that Jasper Losely lost the rubber. ”