 sufficient care, it seems,
was taken to keep alive his resentment. Falkland forsooth attended him on his
death-bed, as if nobody else were worthy of his confidential communications. But
what was worst of all was this executorship. In every thing this pragmatical
rascal throws me behind. Contemptible wretch, that has nothing of the man about
him! Must he perpetually trample upon his betters! Is every body incapable of
saying what kind of stuff a man is made of? caught with mere outside? choosing
the flimsy before the substantial? And upon his death-bed too! [Mr. Tyrrel with
his uncultivated brutality mixed, as usually happens, certain rude notions of
religion.] Sure the sense of his situation might have shamed him. Poor wretch!
his soul has a great deal to answer for. He has made my pillow uneasy; and,
whatever may be the consequences, it is he we have to thank for them.
    The death of Mr. Clare removed the person who could most effectually have
moderated the animosities of the contending parties, and took away the great
operative check upon the excesses of Mr. Tyrrel. This rustic tyrant had been
held in involuntary restraint by the intellectual ascendancy of his celebrated
neighbour; and, notwithstanding the general ferocity of his temper, he did not
appear till lately to have entertained a hatred against him. In the short time
that had elapsed from the period in which Mr. Clare had fixed his residence in
the neighbourhood to that of the arrival of Mr. Falkland from the continent, the
conduct of Mr. Tyrrel had even shown tokens of improvement. He would indeed have
been better satisfied not to have had even this intruder, into a circle where he
had been accustomed to reign. But with Mr. Clare he could have no rivalship; the
venerable character of Mr. Clare disposed him to submission; this great man
seemed to have survived all the acrimony of contention, and all the jealous
subtleties of a mistaken honour.
    The effects of Mr. Clare's suavity however, so far as related to Mr. Tyrrel,
had been in a certain degree suspended by considerations of rivalship between
this gentleman and Mr. Falkland. And, now that the influence of Mr. Clare's
presence and virtues was entirely removed, Mr. Tyrrel's temper broke out into
more criminal excesses than ever. The added gloom which Mr. Falkland's
neighbourhood inspired, overflowed upon all his connections; and the new
examples of his sullenness and tyranny which every day afforded, reflected back
upon this accumulated and portentous feud.
 

                                   Chapter VI

The consequences of all this
