Paul Clifford

by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  ‘Very sensibly said, indeed, sir,’ said the lady addressed, who was rather of a serious turn.

  ‘I never,’ resumed Augustus in a louder key, and looking round for auditors, ‘I never see a great town from the top of a hill, without thinking of an apothecary’s shop!’

  ‘Lord, sir!’ said the lady. Tomlinson’s end was gained: – struck with the quaintness of the notion, a little crowd gathered instantly around him, to hear it farther developed.

  ‘Of an apothecary’s shop, ma’am!’ repeated Tomlinson. ‘There lie your simples, and your purges, and your cordials, and your poisons; all things to heal, and to strengthen, and to destroy. There are drugs enough in that collection to save you, to cure you all; but none of you know how to use them, nor what medicines to ask for, nor what portions to take; so that the greater part of you swallow a wrong dose, and die of the remedy!’

  ‘But if the town be the apothecary’s shop, what, in the plan of your idea, stands for the apothecary?’ asked an old gentleman, who perceived at what Tomlinson was driving.

  ‘The apothecary, sir,’ answered Augustus, stealing his notion from Clifford, and sinking his voice, lest the true proprietor should overhear him – Clifford was otherwise employed – ‘the apothecary, sir, is the LAW! It is the law that stands behind the counter, and dispenses to each man the dose he should take. To the poor, it gives bad drugs gratuitously; to the rich, pills to stimulate the appetite; to the latter, premiums for luxury; to the former, only speedy refuges from life! Alas! Either your apothecary is but an ignorant quack, or his science itself is but in its cradle. He blunders as much as you would do if left to your own selection. Those who have recourse to him seldom speak gratefully of his skill. He relieves you, it is true – but of your money, not your malady; and the only branch of his profession in which he is an adept, is that which enables him to bleed you! – O Mankind!’ continued Augustus, ‘what noble creatures you ought to be! You have keys to all sciences, all arts, all mysteries, but one! You have not a notion how you ought to be governed! – You cannot frame a tolerable law for the life and soul of you! You make yourselves as uncomfortable as you can by all sorts of galling and vexatious institutions, and you throw the blame upon “Fate.” You lay down rules it is impossible to comprehend, much less to obey; and you call each other monsters, because you cannot conquer the impossibility! You invent all sorts of vices, under pretence of making laws for preserving virtue; and the anomalous artificialities of conduct yourselves produce, you say you are born with; – you make a machine by the perversest art you can think of, and you call it, with a sigh, “Human Nature.” With a host of good dispositions struggling at your breasts, you insist upon libelling the Almighty, and declaring that He meant you to be wicked. Nay, you even call the man mischievous and seditious who begs and implores you to be one jot better than you are. – O Mankind! You are like a nosegay bought at Covent Garden. The flowers are lovely, the scent delicious; – mark that glorious hue; contemplate that bursting petal! – how beautiful, how redolent of health, of nature, of the dew and breath and blessing of Heaven, are you all! But as for the dirty piece of string that ties you together, one would think you had picked it out of the kennel.’

  So saying, Tomlinson turned on his heel, broke away from the crowd, and solemnly descended the hill. The party of pleasure slowly followed; and Clifford, receiving an invitation from the squire to partake of his family dinner, walked by the side of Lucy, and felt as if his spirit were drunk with the airs of Eden.

  A brother squire, who, among the gaieties of Bath, was almost as forlorn as Joseph Brandon himself, partook of the Lord of Warlock’s hospitality. When the three gentlemen adjourned to the drawing-room, the two elder sat down to a game at backgammon, and Clifford was left to the undisturbed enjoyment of Lucy’s conversation. She was sitting by the window when Clifford joined her. On the table by her side were scattered books, the charm of which (they were chiefly poetry) she had only of late learned to discover; there also were strewn various little masterpieces of female ingenuity, in which the fairy fingers of Lucy Brandon were especially formed to excel. The shades of evening were rapidly darkening over the empty streets; and in the sky, which was cloudless and transparently clear, the stars came gradually out one by one, until, ‘As water does a sponge, so their soft light / Fill’d the void, hollow, universal air.’

  Beautiful Evening! (If we, as well as Augustus Tomlinson, may indulge in an apostrophe) – Beautiful Evening! For thee all poets have had a song, and surrounded thee with rills, and waterfalls, and dews, and flowers, and sheep, and bats, and melancholy, and owls; yet we must confess that to us, who in this very sentimental age are a bustling, worldly, hardminded person, jostling our neighbours, and thinking of the main chance; – to us, thou art never so charming, as when we meet thee walking in thy grey hood, through the emptying streets, and among the dying sounds of a city. We love to feel the stillness, where all, two hours back, was clamour. We love to see the dingy abodes, of Trade and Luxury, those restless patients of earth’s constant fever, contrasted and canopied by a heaven full of purity, and quietness, and peace. We love to fill our thought with speculations on man, – even though the man be the muffin-man, – rather than with inanimate objects – hills and streams – things to dream about, not to meditate on. Man is the subject of far nobler contemplation, of far more glowing hope, of a far purer and loftier vein of sentiment, than all the ‘floods and fells’ in the universe; – and that, sweet Evening, is one reason why we like that the earnest and tender thoughts thou excitest within us, should be rather surrounded by the labours and tokens, of our species, than by sheep, and bats, and melancholy, and owls. But whether – most blessed Evening! – thou delightest us in the country or in the town, thou equally disposest us to make and to feel love! – Thou art the cause of more marriages, and more divorces, than any other time in the twenty-four hours. Eyes, that were common eyes to us before, touched by thy enchanting and magic shadows, become inspired, and preach to us of heaven. A softness settles on features that were harsh to us while the sun shone; a mellow ‘light of love’ reposes on the complexion, which by day we would have steeped ‘full fathom five’ in a sea of Mrs Gowland’s lotion. – What, then, thou modest hypocrite! to those who already and deeply love – what, then, of danger and of paradise dost thou bring?

  Silent, and stilling the breath which heaved in both quick and fitfully, Lucy and Clifford sat together. The streets were utterly deserted, and the loneliness, as they looked below, made them feel the more intensely not only the emotions which swelled within them, but the undefined and electric sympathy which, in uniting them, divided them from the world. The quiet around was broken by a distant strain of rude music; and as it came nearer, two forms of no poetical order grew visible: the one was a poor blind man, who was drawing from his flute tones in which the melancholy beauty of the air compensated for any deficiency (the deficiency was but slight) in the execution. A woman much younger than the musician, and with something of beauty in her countenance, accompanied him, holding a tattered hat, and looking wistfully up at the windows of the silent street. We said two forms – we did the injustice of forgetfulness to another – a rugged and simple friend, it is true, but one that both minstrel and wife had many and moving reasons to love. This was a little wiry terrier, with dark piercing eyes, that glanced quickly and sagaciously in all quarters from beneath the shaggy covert that surrounded them; slowly the animal moved onward, pulling gently against the string by which he was held, and by which he guided his master. Once his fidelity was tempted: another dog invited him to play; the poor terrier looked anxiously and doubtingly round, and then uttering a low growl of denial, pursued ‘the noiseless tenor of his way.’

  The little procession stopped beneath the window where Lucy and Clifford sat; for the quick eye of the woman had perceived them, and she laid her hand on the blind man’s arm, and whispered to him. He took the hint, and changed his air into one of love. Clifford glanced at Lucy – her che
ek was dyed in blushes. The air was over, – another succeeded – it was of the same kind; a third – the burden was still unaltered; and then Clifford threw into the street a piece of money, and the dog wagged his abridged and dwarfed tail, and darting forward, picked it up in his mouth; and the woman (she had a kind face!) patted the officious friend, even before she thanked the donor, and then she dropped the money with a cheering word or two into the blind man’s pocket, and the three wanderers moved slowly on. Presently they came to a place where the street had been mended, and the stones lay scattered about. Here the woman no longer trusted to the dog’s guidance, but anxiously hastened to the musician, and led him with evident tenderness and minute watchfulness over the rugged way. When they had passed the danger, the man stopped; and before he released the hand which had guided him, he pressed it gratefully, and then both the husband and the wife stooped down and caressed the dog. This little scene – one of those rough copies of the loveliness of human affections, of which so many are scattered about the highways of the world – both the lovers had involuntarily watched; and now as they withdrew their eyes – those eyes settled on each other – Lucy’s swam in tears.

  ‘To be loved and tended by the one I love,’ said Clifford, in a low voice, ‘I would walk blind and bare foot over the whole earth!’

  Lucy sighed very gently; and placing her pretty hands (the one clasped over the other) upon her knee, looked down wistfully on them, but made no answer. Clifford drew his chair nearer, and gazed on her as she sat; the long dark eyelash drooping over her eyes, and contrasting the ivory lids; her delicate profile half turned from him, and borrowing a more touching beauty from the soft light that dwelt upon it; and her full yet still scarcely developed bosom heaving at thoughts which she did not analyse, but was content to feel at once vague and delicious: he gazed and his lips trembled – he longed to speak – he longed to say but those words which convey what volumes have endeavoured to express, and have only weakened by detail – ‘I love.’ How he resisted the yearnings of his heart, we know not – but he did resist; and Lucy, after a confused and embarrassed pause, took up one of the poems on the table, and asked him some questions about a particular passage in an old ballad which he had once pointed to her notice. The passage related to a border chief, one of the Armstrongs of old, who, having been seized by the English and condemned to death, vented his last feelings in a passionate address to his own home – his rude tower – and his newly wedded bride. ‘Do you believe,’ said Lucy, as their conversation began to flow, ‘that one so lawless and eager for bloodshed and strife, as this robber is described to be, could be so capable of soft affections?’

  ‘I do,’ said Clifford, ‘because he was not sensible that he was as criminal as you esteem him. If a man cherish the idea that his actions are not evil, he will retain at his heart all its better and gentler sensations as much as if he had never sinned. The savage murders his enemy, and when he returns home is not the less devoted to his friend, or the less anxious for his children. To harden and embrute the kindly dispositions, we must not only indulge in guilt, but feel that we are guilty. Oh! Many that the world load with their opprobrium are capable of acts – nay, have committed acts, which in others the world would reverence and adore. Would you know whether a man’s heart be shut to the power of love; ask what he is – not to his foes, but to his friends! Crime, too,’ continued Clifford, speaking fast and vehemently, while his eyes flashed and the dark blood rushed to his cheek – ‘crime – what is crime? Men embody their worst prejudices, their most evil passions, in a heterogeneous and contradictory code, and whatever breaks this code they term a crime. When they make no distinction in the penalty – that is to say, in the estimation – awarded both to murder and to a petty theft imposed on the weak will by famine, we ask nothing else to convince us that they are ignorant of the very nature of guilt, and that they make up in ferocity for the want of wisdom.’

  Lucy looked in alarm at the animated and fiery countenance of the speaker. Clifford recovered himself after a moment’s pause, and rose from his seat, with the gay and frank laugh which made one of his peculiar characteristics. ‘There is a singularity in politics, Miss Brandon,’ said he, ‘which I dare say you have often observed, viz. that those who are least important, are always most noisy; and that the chief people who lose their temper, are those who have nothing to gain in return.’

  As Clifford spoke, the doors were thrown open, and some visitors to Miss Brandon were announced. The good squire was still immersed in the vicissitudes of his game, and the sole task of receiving and entertaining ‘the company,’ as the chambermaids have it, fell, as usual, upon Lucy. Fortunately for her, Clifford was one of those rare persons who possess eminently the talents of society. There was much in his gay and gallant temperament, accompanied as it was with sentiment and ardour, that resembled our beau idéal of those chevaliers, ordinarily peculiar to the Continent – heroes equally in the drawing-room and the field. Observant, courteous, witty, and versed in the various accomplishments that combine (that most unfrequent of all unions!) vivacity with grace, he was especially formed for that brilliant world from which his circumstances tended to exclude him. Under different auspices, he might have been – Pooh! We are running into a most pointless commonplace; – what might any man be under auspices different from those by which his life has been guided? Music soon succeeded to conversation, and Clifford’s voice was of necessity put into requisition. Miss Brandon had just risen from the harpsichord, as he sat down to perform his part; and she stood by him with the rest of the group while he sung. Only twice his eye stole to that spot which her breath and form made sacred to him; once when he began, and once when he concluded his song. Perhaps the recollection of their conversation inspired him; certainly it dwelt upon his mind at the moment – threw a richer flush over his brow, and infused a more meaningful and heartfelt softness into his tone.

  When I leave thee, oh! Ask not the world what that heart

  Which adores thee to others may be!

  I know that I sin when from thee I depart,

  But my guilt shall not light upon thee!

  My life is a river which glasses a ray

  That hath deign’d to descend from above;

  Whatever the banks that o’ershadow its way,

  It mirrors the light of thy love.

  Though the waves may run high when the night wind awakes,

  And hurries the stream to its fall:

  Though broken and wild be the billows it makes,

  Thine image still trembles on all!

  While this ominous love between Clifford and Lucy was thus finding fresh food in every interview and every opportunity, the unfortunate Mauleverer, firmly persuaded that his complaint was a relapse of what he termed the ‘Warlock dyspepsia,’ was waging dire war with the remains of the beef and pudding, which he tearfully assured his physicians ‘were lurking in his constitution.’ As Mauleverer, though complaisant – like most men of unmistakeable rank – to all his acquaintances, whatever might be their grade, – possessed but very few friends intimate enough to enter his sick chamber, and none of that few were at Bath, it will readily be perceived that he was in blissful ignorance of the growing fortunes of his rival; and to say the exact truth, illness, which makes a man’s thoughts turn very much upon himself, banished many of the most tender ideas usually floating in his mind around the image of Lucy Brandon. His pill superseded his passion; and he felt that there are draughts in the world more powerful in their effects than those in the phials of Alcidonis.* He very often thought, it is true, how pleasant it would be for Lucy to smooth his pillow, and Lucy to prepare that mixture; but then Mauleverer had an excellent valet, who hoped to play the part enacted by Gil Blas towards the honest Licentiate; and to nurse a legacy while he was nursing his master. And the earl, who was tolerably good-tempered, was forced to confess that it would be scarcely possible for any one ‘to know his ways better than Smoothson.’ Thus, during his illness, the fair form of his in
tended bride little troubled the peace of the noble adorer. And it was not till he found himself able to eat three good dinners consecutively, with a tolerable appetite, that Mauleverer recollected that he was violently in love. As soon as this idea was fully reinstated in his memory, and he had been permitted by his doctor to allow himself ‘a little cheerful society,’ Mauleverer resolved to go to the rooms for an hour or two.

  It may be observed that most great personages have some favourite place, some cherished Baiæ, at which they love to throw off their state, and to play the amiable instead of the splendid; and Bath at that time, from its gaiety, its case, the variety of character to be found in its haunts, and the obliging manner in which such characters exposed themselves to ridicule, was exactly the place calculated to please a man like Mauleverer, who loved at once to be admired and to satirize. He was therefore an idolized person at the city of Bladud; and as he entered the rooms he was surrounded by a whole band of imitators and sycophants, delighted to find his lordship looking so much better and declaring himself so convalescent. As soon as the earl had bowed and smiled, and shaken hands sufficiently to sustain his reputation, he sauntered towards the dancers in search of Lucy. He found her not only exactly in the same spot in which he had last beheld her, but dancing with exactly the same partner who had before provoked all the gallant nobleman’s jealousy and wrath. Mauleverer, though not by any means addicted to preparing his compliments beforehand, had just been conning a delicate speech for Lucy; but no sooner did the person of her partner flash on him than the whole flattery vanished at once from his recollection. He felt himself grow pale; and when Lucy turned, and seeing him near, addressed him in the anxious and soft tone which she thought due to her uncle’s friend on his recovery, Mauleverer bowed, confused and silent; and that green-eyed passion, which would have convulsed the mind of a true lover, altering a little the course of its fury, effectually disturbed the manner of the courtier.