Retreating to an obscure part of the room, where he could see all without being conspicuous, Mauleverer now employed himself in watching the motions and looks of the young pair. He was naturally a penetrating and quick observer, and in this instance jealousy sharpened his talents; he saw enough to convince him that Lucy was already attached to Clifford; and being, by that conviction, fully persuaded that Lucy was necessary to his own happiness, he resolved to lose not a moment in banishing Captain Clifford from her presence, or at least, in instituting such inquiries into that gentleman’s relatives, rank, and respectability, as would, he hoped, render such banishment a necessary consequence of the research.
Fraught with this determination, Mauleverer repaired at once to the retreat of the squire, and engaging him in conversation, bluntly asked him, ‘Who the deuce Miss Brandon was dancing with?’
The squire, a little piqued at this brusquerie, replied by a long eulogium on Paul; and Mauleverer, after hearing it throughout with the blandest smile imaginable, told the squire, very politely, that he was sure Mr Brandon’s good nature had misled him. ‘Clifford!’ said he, repeating the name, – ‘Clifford! It is one of those names which are particularly selected by persons nobody knows; first, because the name is good, and secondly, because it is common. My long and dear friendship with your brother makes me feel peculiarly anxious on any point relative to his niece; and, indeed, my dear William, overrating, perhaps, my knowledge of the world, and my influence in society, – but not my affection for him, – besought me to assume the liberty of esteeming myself a friend, nay, even a relation of yours and Miss Brandon’s; so that I trust you do not consider my caution impertinent.’
The flattered squire assured him that he was particularly honoured, so far from deeming his lordship – (which never could be the case with people so distinguished as his lordship was, especially!) – impertinent.
Lord Mauleverer, encouraged by this speech, artfully renewed, and succeeded, if not in convincing the squire that the handsome captain was a suspicious character, at least in persuading him that common prudence required that he should find out exactly who the handsome captain was, especially as he was in the habit of dining with the squire thrice a week, and dancing with Lucy every night.
‘See,’ said Mauleverer, ‘he approaches you now: I will retreat to the chair by the fireplace, and you shall cross-examine him – I have no doubt you will do it with the utmost delicacy.’
So saying, Mauleverer took possession of a seat where he was not absolutely beyond hearing (slightly deaf as he was) of the ensuing colloquy, though the position of his seat screened him from sight. Mauleverer was esteemed a man of the most punctilious honour in private life, and he would not have been seen in the act of listening to other people’s conversation for the world.
Hemming with an air and resettling himself as Clifford approached, the squire thus skilfully commenced the attack: ‘Ah, ha! My good Captain Clifford, and how do you do? I saw you – (and I am very glad, my friend, as every one else is, to see you) – at a distance. And where have you left my daughter?’
‘Miss Brandon is dancing with Mr Muskwell, sir,’ answered Clifford.
‘Oh! She is! – Mr Muskwell – humph! – Good family the Muskwells – came from Primrose Hall. Pray, Captain, – not that I want to know for my own sake, for I am a strange, odd person, I believe, and I am thoroughly convinced – (some people are censorious, and others, thank God, are not!) – of your respectability, – what family do you come from? You won’t think my – my caution impertinent?’ added the shrewd old gentleman, borrowing that phrase which he thought so friendly in the mouth of Lord Mauleverer.
Clifford coloured for a moment, but replied with a quiet archness of look, ‘Family! Oh, my dear sir, I come from an old family, – a very old family indeed.’
‘So I always thought; and in what part of the world?’
‘Scotland, sir – all our family come from Scotland; viz. all who live long do – the rest die young.’
‘Ay, particular air does agree with particular constitutions. I, for instance, could not live in all countries; not – you take me – in the North!’
‘Few honest men can live there,’ said Clifford, drily.
‘And,’ resumed the squire, a little embarrassed by the nature of his task, and the cool assurance of his young friend, – ‘and pray, Captain Clifford, what regiment do you belong to?’
‘Regiment? – Oh, the Rifles!’ answered Clifford. (‘Deuce is in me,’ muttered he, ‘if I can resist a jest, though I break my neck over it.’)
‘A very gallant body of men?’ said the squire.
‘No doubt of that, sir!’ rejoined Clifford.
‘And do you think, Captain Clifford,’ renewed the squire, ‘that it is a good corps for getting on?’
‘It is rather a bad one for getting off,’ muttered the captain, and then aloud, ‘Why, we have not much interest at court, sir.’
‘Oh! But then there is a wider scope, as my brother the lawyer says – and no man knows better – for merit. I dare say you have seen many a man elevated from the ranks?’
‘Nothing more common, sir, than such elevation; and so great is the virtue of our corps, that I have also known not a few willing to transfer the honour to their comrades.’
‘You don’t say so!’ exclaimed the squire, opening his eyes at such disinterested magnanimity.
‘But,’ said Clifford, who began to believe he might carry the equivoque too far, and who thought, despite of his jesting, that it was possible to strike out a more agreeable vein of conversation – ‘but, sir, if you remember, you have not yet finished that youthful hunting adventure of yours, when the hounds were lost at Burnham Copse.’
‘Oh, very true,’ cried the squire, quite forgetting his late suspicions; and forthwith he began a story that promised to be as long as the chase it recorded. So charmed was he when he had finished it, with the character of the gentleman who had listened to it so delightedly, that on rejoining Mauleverer, he told the earl, with an important air, that he had strictly examined the young captain, and that he had fully convinced himself of the excellence of his family, as well as the rectitude of his morals. Mauleverer listened with a countenance of polite incredulity; he had heard but little of the conversation that had taken place between the pair; but on questioning the squire upon sundry particulars of Clifford’s birth, parentage, and property, he found him exactly as ignorant as before. The courtier, however, seeing further expostulation was in vain, contented himself with patting the squire’s shoulder, and saying, with a mysterious urbanity, ‘Ah, sir, you are too good!’
With these words he turned on his heel, and, not yet despairing, sought the daughter. He found Miss Brandon just released from dancing, and, with a kind of paternal gallantry, he offered his arm to parade the apartments. After some preliminary flourish, and reference, for the thousandth time, to his friendship for William Brandon, the earl spoke to her about that ‘fine-looking young man, who called himself Captain Clifford.’
Unfortunately for Mauleverer, he grew a little too unguarded, as his resentment against the interference of Clifford warmed with his language, and he dropped in his anger one or two words of caution, which especially offended the delicacy of Miss Brandon.
‘Take care how I encourage, my lord!’ said Lucy, with glowing cheeks, repeating the words which had so affronted her. ‘I really must beg you –’
‘You mean, dear Miss Brandon,’ interrupted Mauleverer, squeezing her hand with respectful tenderness, ‘that you must beg me to apologize for my inadvertent expression. I do most sincerely. If I had felt less interest in your happiness, believe me, I should have been more guarded in my language.’
Miss Brandon bowed stiffly, and the courtier saw, with secret rage, that the country beauty was not easily appeased, even by an apology from Lord Mauleverer. ‘I have seen the time,’ thought he, ‘when young unmarried ladies would have deemed an affront from me an honour! They would have gone into hyster
ics at an apology!’ Before he had time to make his peace, the squire joined them; and Lucy taking her father’s arm, expressed her wish to return home. The squire was delighted at the proposition. It would have been but civil in Mauleverer to offer his assistance in those little attentions preparatory to female departure from balls. He hesitated for a moment – ‘It keeps one so long in those cursed through draughts,’ thought he, shivering. ‘Besides, it is just possible that I may not marry her, and it is no good risking a cold (above all, at the beginning of winter) for nothing!’ Fraught with this prudential policy, Mauleverer then resigned Lucy to her father, and murmuring in her ear that ‘her displeasure made him the most wretched of men,’ concluded his adieu by a bow penitentially graceful.
About five minutes afterwards, he himself withdrew. As he was wrapping his corporeal treasure in his roquelaire of sables, previous to immersing himself in his chair, he had the mortification of seeing Lucy, who with her father, from some cause or other, had been delayed in the hall, handed to the carriage by Captain Clifford. Had the earl watched more narrowly than in the anxious cares due to himself he was enabled to do, he would, to his consolation, have noted that Lucy gave her hand with an averted and cool air, and that Clifford’s expressive features bore rather the aspect of mortification than triumph.
He did not, however, see more than the action; and as he was borne homeward with his flambeaux and footmen preceding him, and the watchful Smoothson by the side of the little vehicle, he muttered his determination of writing by the very next post to Brandon, all his anger for Lucy, and all his jealousy of her evident lover.
While this doughty resolve was animating the great soul of Mauleverer, Lucy reached her own room, bolted the door, and throwing herself on her bed, burst into a long and bitter paroxysm of tears. So unusual were such visitors to her happy and buoyant temper, that there was something almost alarming in the earnestness and obstinacy with which she now wept.
‘What!’ said she, bitterly, ‘have I placed my affections upon a man of uncertain character! And is my infatuation so clear, that an acquaintance dare hint at its imprudence? And yet his manner – his tone! No, no, there can be no reason for shame in loving him!’ And as she said this, her heart smote her for the coldness of her manner towards Clifford, on his taking leave of her for the evening. ‘Am I,’ she thought, weeping yet more vehemently than before – ‘am I so worldly, so base, as to feel altered towards him the moment I hear a syllable breathed against his name? Should I not, on the contrary, have clung to his image with a greater love, if he were attacked by others? But my father, my dear father, and my kind, prudent uncle, something is due to them; and they would break their hearts if I loved one whom they deemed unworthy. Why should I not summon courage, and tell him of the suspicions respecting him? One candid word would dispel them. Surely it would be but kind in me towards him, to give him an opportunity of disproving all false and dishonouring conjectures. And why this reserve, when so often, by look and hint, if not by open avowal, he has declared that he loves me, and knows –he must know – that he is not indifferent to me? Why does he never speak of his parents, his relations, his home?’
And Lucy, as she asked this question, drew from a bosom whose hue and shape might have rivalled hers who won Cymon to be wise,* a drawing which she herself had secretly made of her lover, and which, though inartificially and even rudely done, yet had caught the inspiration of memory, and breathed the very features and air that were stamped already ineffaceably upon a heart too holy for so sullied an idol. She gazed upon the portrait as if it could answer her question of the original; and as she looked, and looked, her tears slowly ceased, and her innocent countenance relapsed gradually into its usual and eloquent serenity. Never, perhaps, could Lucy’s own portrait have been taken at a more favourable moment. The unconscious grace of her attitude; her dress loosened; the modest and youthful voluptuousness of her beauty; the tender cheek to which the virgin bloom, banished for a while, was now all glowingly returning; the little white soft hand on which that cheek leaned, while the other contained the picture upon which her eyes fed; the half smile just conjured to her full, red, dewy lips, and gone the moment after, yet again restored; all made a picture of such enchanting loveliness, that we question whether Shakspeare himself could have fancied an earthly shape more meet to embody the vision of a Miranda or a Viola. The quiet and maiden neatness of the apartment gave effect to the charm; and there was a poetry even in the snowy furniture of the bed, the shutters partly unclosed and admitting a glimpse of the silver moon, and the solitary lamp just contending with the purer ray of the skies, and so throwing a mixed and softened light around the chamber.
She was yet gazing on the drawing, when a faint stream of music stole through the air beneath her window, and it gradually rose till the sound of a guitar became distinct and clear, suiting with, not disturbing, the moonlit stillness of the night. The gallantry and romance of a former day, though at the time of our story subsiding, were not quite dispelled; and nightly serenades under the casements of a distinguished beauty were by no means of unfrequent occurrence. But Lucy, as the music floated upon her ear, blushed deeper and deeper, as if it had a dearer source to her heart than ordinary gallantry; and raising herself on one arm from her incumbent position, she leaned forward to catch the sound with a greater and more unerring certainty.
After a prelude of some moments, a clear and sweet voice accompanied the instrument, and the words of the song were as follows: –
CLIFFORD’S SERENADE
There is a world where every night
My spirit meets and walks with thine;
And hopes – I dare not tell thee – light
Like stars of Love – that world of mine!
Sleep! – To the waking world my heart
Hath now, methinks, a stranger grown:
Ah, sleep! That I may feel thou art
Within one world that is my own.
As the music died away, Lucy sank back once more, and the drawing which she held was pressed (with cheeks glowing, though unseen, at the act) to her lips. And though the character of her lover was uncleared, though she herself had come to no distinct resolution even to inform him of the rumours against his name, yet so easily restored was her trust in him, and so soothing the very thought of his vigilance and his love, that before an hour had passed, her eyes were closed in sleep; the drawing was laid, as a spell against grief, under her pillow; and in her dreams she murmured his name, and unconscious of reality and the future, smiled tenderly as she did so!
Chapter XIX
Come, the plot thickens! And another fold
Of the warm cloak of mystery wraps us around…
And for their loves?
Behold the seal is on them!
Tanner of Tyburn
We must not suppose that Clifford’s manner and tone were towards Lucy Brandon such as they seemed to others. Love refines every roughness; and that truth which nurtures tenderness is never barren of grace. Whatever the habits and comrades of Clifford’s life, he had at heart many good and generous qualities. They were not often perceptible it is true – first, because he was of a gay and reckless turn; secondly, because he was not easily affected by any external circumstances; and thirdly, because he had the policy to affect among his comrades only such qualities as were likely to give him influence with them. Still, however, his better genius broke out whenever an opportunity presented itself. Though no ‘Corsair,’ romantic and unreal, an Ossianic shadow becoming more vast in proportion as it recedes from substance; though no grandly imagined lie to the fair proportions of human nature, but an erring man in a very prosaic and homely world; Clifford still mingled a certain generosity and chivalric spirit of enterprise even with the practices of his profession. Although the name of Lovett, by which he was chiefly known, was one peculiarly distinguished in the annals of the adventurous, it had never been coupled with rumours of cruelty or outrage; and it was often associated with anecdotes of courage, courtesy, goo
d humour, or forbearance. He was one whom a real love was peculiarly calculated to soften and to redeem. The boldness, the candour, the unselfishness of his temper, were components of nature upon which affection invariably takes a strong and deep hold. Besides, Clifford was of an eager and aspiring turn; and the same temper and abilities which had in a very few years raised him in influence and popularity far above all the chivalric band with whom he was connected, when once inflamed and elevated by a higher passion, were likely to arouse his ambition from the level of his present pursuits, and reform him, ere too late, into a useful, nay, even an honourable member of society. We trust that the reader has already perceived that, despite his early circumstances, his manner and address were not such as to unfit him for a lady’s love. The comparative refinement of his exterior is easy of explanation, for he possessed a natural and inborn gentility, a quick turn for observation, a ready sense both of the ridiculous and the graceful; and these are materials which are soon and lightly wrought from coarseness into polish. He had been thrown, too, among the leaders and heroes of his band; many not absolutely low in birth, nor debased in habit. He had associated with the Barringtons of the day: gentlemen who were admired at Ranelagh, and made speeches worthy of Cicero when they were summoned to trial. He had played his part in public places; and, as Tomlinson was wont to say after his classic fashion, ‘the triumphs accomplished in the field had been planned in the ball-room.’ In short, he was one of those accomplished and elegant highwaymen of whom we yet read wonders, and by whom it would have been delightful to have been robbed: and the aptness of intellect which grew into wit with his friends, softened into sentiment with his mistress. There is something, too, in beauty (and Clifford’s person, as we have before said, was possessed of even uncommon attractions) which lifts a beggar into nobility; and there was a distinction in his gait and look which supplied the air of rank, and the tone of courts. Men, indeed, skilled like Mauleverer in the subtleties of manner, might perhaps have easily detected in him the want of that indescribable essence possessed only by persons reared in good society; but that want being shared by so many persons of indisputable birth and fortune, conveyed no particular reproach. To Lucy, indeed, brought up in seclusion, and seeing at Warlock none calculated to refine her taste in the fashion of an air or phrase to a very fastidious standard of perfection, this want was perfectly imperceptible: she remarked in her lover only a figure everywhere unequalled – an eye always eloquent with admiration – a step from which grace could never be divorced – a voice that spoke in a silver key, and uttered flatteries delicate in thought and poetical in word: – even a certain originality of mind, remark, and character, occasionally approaching to the bizarre, yet sometimes also to the elevated, possessed a charm for the imagination of a young and not unenthusiastic female, and contrasted favourably, rather than the reverse, with the dull insipidity of those she ordinarily saw. Nor are we sure that the mystery thrown about him, irksome as it was to her, and discreditable as it appeared to others, was altogether ineffectual in increasing her love for the adventurer; and thus Fate, which transmutes in her magic crucible all opposing metals into that one which she is desirous to produce, swelled the wealth of an ill-placed and ominous passion by the very circumstances which should have counteracted and destroyed it.
Paul Clifford Page 26
