The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer — CompleteLever, Charles
General
The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer — Complete
Lever, Charles
Fiction
One of my fellow-passengers was a gentleman holding a high official
appointment in the viceregal court, either comptroller of the
household, master of the horse, or something else equally magnificent;
however, whatever the nature of the situation, one thing is certain—one
possessed of more courtly manners, and more polished address, cannot be
conceived, to which he added all the attractions of a very handsome
person and a most prepossessing countenance. The only thing the most
scrupulous critic could possibly detect as faulty in his whole air and
bearing, was a certain ultra refinement and fastidiousness, which in a
man of acknowledged family and connections was somewhat unaccountable,
and certainly unnecessary. The fastidiousness I speak of, extended to
everything round and about him; he never eat of the wrong dish, nor
spoke to the wrong man in his life, and that very consciousness gave
him a kind of horror of chance acquaintances, which made him shrink
within himself from persons in every respect his equals. Those who knew
Sir Stewart Moore, will know I do not exaggerate in either my praise or
censure, and to those who have not had that pleasure, I have only to
say, theirs was the loss, and they must take my word for the facts.
The very antithesis to the person just mentioned, was another passenger
then on board. She, for even in sex they were different—she was a
short, squat, red-faced, vulgar-looking woman, of about fifty,
possessed of a most garrulous tendency, and talking indiscriminately
with every one about her, careless what reception her addresses met
with, and quite indifferent to the many rebuffs she momentarily
encountered. To me by what impulse driven Heaven knows this amorphous
piece of womanhood seemed determined to attach herself. Whether in the
smoky and almost impenetrable recesses of the cabin, or braving the
cold and penetrating rain upon deck, it mattered not, she was ever at
my side, and not only martyring me by the insufferable annoyance of her
vulgar loquacity, but actually, from the appearance of acquaintanceship
such constant association gave rise to, frightening any one else from
conversing with me, and rendering me, ere many hours, a perfect pariah
among the passengers. By not one were we—for, alas, we had become
Siamese—so thoroughly dreaded as by the refined baronet I have
mentioned; he appeared to shrink from our very approach, and avoided us
as though we had the plagues of Egypt about us. I saw this—I felt it
deeply, and as deeply and resolutely I vowed to be revenged, and the
time was not long distant in affording me the opportunity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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