



Produced by Les Bowler





THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY

By William Makepeace Thackeray


Contents.

  I.   Of the loves of Mr. Perkins and Miss Gorgon, and of the two
  great factions in the town of Oldborough.

  II.  Shows how the plot began to thicken in or about Bedford Row.

  III. Behind the scenes.


  Note:

  A story of Charles de Bernard furnished the plot of
  "The Bedford-Row Conspiracy."




THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY




CHAPTER I.


OF THE LOVES OF MR. PERKINS AND MISS GORGON, AND OF THE TWO GREAT
FACTIONS IN THE TOWN OF OLDBOROUGH.

"My dear John," cried Lucy, with a very wise look indeed, "it must and
shall be so. As for Doughty Street, with our means, a house is out of
the question. We must keep three servants, and Aunt Biggs says the taxes
are one-and-twenty pounds a year."

"I have seen a sweet place at Chelsea," remarked John: "Paradise Row,
No. 17,--garden--greenhouse--fifty pounds a year--omnibus to town within
a mile."

"What! that I may be left alone all day, and you spend a fortune in
driving backward and forward in those horrid breakneck cabs? My darling,
I should die there--die of fright, I know I should. Did you not say
yourself that the road was not as yet lighted, and that the place
swarmed with public-houses and dreadful tipsy Irish bricklayers? Would
you kill me, John?"

"My da-arling," said John, with tremendous fondness, clutching Miss
Lucy suddenly round the waist, and rapping the hand of that young person
violently against his waistcoat,--"My da-arling, don't say such things,
even in a joke. If I objected to the chambers, it is only because you,
my love, with your birth and connections, ought to have a house of your
own. The chambers are quite large enough and certainly quite good enough
for me." And so, after some more sweet parley on the part of these
young people, it was agreed that they should take up their abode,
when married, in a part of the House number One hundred and something,
Bedford Row.

It will be necessary to explain to the reader that John was no other
than John Perkins, Esquire, of the Middle Temple, barrister-at-law, and
that Miss Lucy was the daughter of the late Captain Gorgon, and Marianne
Biggs, his wife. The Captain being of noble connections, younger son of
a baronet, cousin to Lord X----, and related to the Y---- family, had
angered all his relatives by marrying a very silly pretty young woman,
who kept a ladies'-school at Canterbury. She had six hundred pounds
to her fortune, which the Captain laid out in the purchase of a sweet
travelling-carriage and dressing-case for himself; and going abroad with
his lady, spent several years in the principal prisons of Europe, in one
of which he died. His wife and daughter were meantime supported by the
contributions of Mrs. Jemima Biggs, who still kept the ladies'-school.

At last a dear old relative--such a one as one reads of in
romances--died and left seven thousand pounds apiece to the two sisters,
whereupon the elder gave up schooling and retired to London; and the
younger managed to live with some comfort and decency at Brussels,
upon two hundred and ten pounds per annum. Mrs. Gorgon never touched
a shilling of her capital, for the very good reason that it was placed
entirely out of her reach; so that when she died, her daughter found
herself in possession of a sum of money that is not always to be met
with in this world.

Her aunt the baronet's lady, and her aunt the ex-schoolmistress, both
wrote very pressing invitations to her, and she resided with each for
six months after her arrival in England. Now, for a second time, she had
come to Mrs. Biggs, Caroline Place, Mecklenburgh Square. It was under
the roof of that respectable old lady that John Perkins, Esquire, being
invited to take tea, wooed and won Miss Gorgon.

Having thus described the circumstances of Miss Gorgon's life, let us
pass for a moment from that young lady, and lift up the veil of mystery
which envelopes the deeds and character of Perkins.

Perkins, too, was an orphan; and he and his Lucy, of summer evenings,
when Sol descending lingered fondly yet about the minarets of the
Foundling, and gilded the grassplots of Mecklenburgh Square--Perkins,
I say, and Lucy would often sit together in the summer-house of that
pleasure-ground, and muse upon the strange coincidences of their life.
Lucy was motherless and fatherless; so too was Perkins. If Perkins was
