We are willing, by what we have said, not to defend Clifford, but to redeem Lucy in the opinion of our readers for loving so unwisely; and when they remember her youth, her education, her privation of a mother, of all female friendship, even of the vigilant and unrelaxing care of some protector of the opposite sex, we do not think that what was so natural will be considered by any inexcusable.
Mauleverer woke the morning after the ball in better health than usual, and, consequently, more in love than ever. According to his resolution the night before, he sat down to write a long letter to William Brandon: it was amusing and witty as usual; but the wily nobleman succeeded, under the cover of wit, in conveying to Brandon’s mind a serious apprehension lest his cherished matrimonial project should altogether fail. The account of Lucy and of Captain Clifford, contained in the epistle, instilled, indeed, a double portion of sourness into the professionally acrid mind of the lawyer; and as it so happened that he read the letter just before attending the court upon a case in which he was counsel to the crown, the witnesses on the opposite side of the question felt the full effects of the barrister’s ill-humour.
The case was one in which the defendant had been engaged in swindling transactions to a very large amount; and, among his agents and assistants, was a person of the very lowest orders – but who, seemingly enjoying large connexions, and possessing natural acuteness and address, appeared to have been of great use in receiving and disposing of such goods as were fraudulently obtained. As a witness against the latter person appeared a pawnbroker, who produced certain articles that had been pledged to him at different times by this humble agent. Now, Brandon, in examining the guilty go-between, became the more terribly severe, in proportion as the man evinced that semblance of unconscious stolidity which the lower orders can so ingeniously assume, and which is so peculiarly adapted to enrage and to baffle the gentlemen of the bar. At length, Brandon entirely subduing and quelling the stubborn hypocrisy of the culprit, the man turned towards him a look between wrath and beseechingness, muttering: –
‘Aha! – If so be, Counsellor Brandon, you knew vat I knows, you vould not go for to bully I so!’
‘And pray, my good fellow, what is it that you know that should make me treat you as if I thought you an honest man?’
The witness had now relapsed into sullenness, and only answered by a sort of grunt. Brandon, who knew well how to sting a witness into communicativeness, continued his questioning, till the witness, re-aroused into anger, and, it may be, into indiscretion, said, in a low voice, –
‘Hax Mr Swoppem’ (the pawnbroker) ‘what I sold ’im on the 15th hof February, exactly twenty-three yearn ago?’
Brandon started back, his lips grew white, he clenched his hands with a convulsive spasm; and while all his features seemed distorted with an earnest, yet fearful intensity of expectation, he poured forth a volley of questions, so incoherent and so irrelevant, that he was immediately called to order by his learned brother on the opposite side. Nothing farther could be extracted from the witness. The pawnbroker was re-summoned: he appeared somewhat disconcerted by an appeal to his memory so far back as twenty-three years; but after taking some time to consider, during which the agitation of the usually cold and possessed Brandon was remarkable to all the court, he declared that he recollected no transaction whatsoever with the witness at that time. In vain were all Brandon’s efforts to procure a more elucidatory answer. The pawnbroker was impenetrable, and the lawyer was compelled reluctantly to dismiss him. The moment the witness left the box, Brandon sunk into a gloomy abstraction – he seemed quite to forget the business and the duties of the court; and so negligently did he continue to conclude the case, so purposeless was the rest of his examination and cross-examination, that the cause was entirely marred, and a verdict ‘Not guilty’ returned by the jury.
The moment he left the court, Brandon repaired to the pawnbroker’s; and after a conversation with Mr Swoppem, in which he satisfied that honest tradesman that his object was rather to reward than intimidate, Swoppem confessed that, twenty-three years ago, the witness had met him at a public-house in Devereux Court, in company with two other men, and sold him several articles in plate, ornaments, &c. The great bulk of these articles had, of course, long left the pawnbroker’s abode; but he still thought a stray trinket or two – not of sufficient worth to be re-set or remodelled, nor of sufficient fashion to find a ready sale – lingered in his drawers. Eagerly, and with trembling hands, did Brandon toss over the motley contents of the mahogany reservoirs which the pawnbroker now submitted to his scrutiny. Nothing on earth is so melancholy a prospect as a pawnbroker’s drawer! Those little, quaint, valueless ornaments, – those true-lovers’-knots, those oval lockets, those battered rings, girdled by initials, or some brief inscription of regard or of grief, – what tales of past affections, hopes, and sorrows, do they not tell! But no sentiment of so general a sort ever saddened the hard mind of William Brandon, and now less than at any time could such reflections have occurred to him. Impatiently he threw on the table, one after another, the baubles once hoarded, perchance, with the tenderest respect, till, at length, his eyes sparkled, and with a nervous grip he seized upon an old ring, which was inscribed with letters, and circled a heart containing hair. The inscription was simply, ‘W. B. to Julia.’ Strange and dark was the expression that settled on Brandon’s face as he regarded this seemingly worthless trinket. After a moment’s gaze, he uttered an inarticulate exclamation, and thrusting it into his pocket, renewed his search. He found one or two other trifles of a similar nature; one was an ill-done miniature set in silver, and bearing at the back sundry half-effaced letters, which Brandon construed at once (though no other eye could) into ‘Sir John Brandon, 1635, Ætat. 28;’ the other was a seal stamped with the noble crest of the house of Brandon, ‘A bull’s head, ducally crowned and armed, Or.’ As soon as Brandon had possessed himself of these treasures, and arrived at the conviction that the place held no more, he assured the conscientious Swoppem of his regard for that person’s safety, and rewarded him munificently, and went his way to Bow Street for a warrant against the witness who had commended him to the pawnbroker. On his road thither, a new resolution occurred to him: ‘Why make all public,’ he muttered to himself, ‘if it can be avoided? And it may be avoided!’ He paused a moment,–then retraced his way to the pawnbroker’s, and, after a brief mandate to Mr Swoppem, returned home. In the course of the same evening, the witness we refer to was brought to the lawyer’s house by Mr Swoppem, and there held a long and private conversation with Brandon; the result of this seemed a compact to their mutual satisfaction, for the man went away safe, with a heavy purse and a light heart, although sundry shades and misgivings did certainly ever and anon cross the latter; while Brandon flung himself back in his seat, with the triumphant air of one who has accomplished some great measure, and his dark face betrayed in every feature a joyousness and hope, which were unfrequent guests, it must be owned, either to his countenance or his heart.
So good a man of business, however, was William Brandon, that he allowed not the event of that day to defer beyond the night his attentions to his designs for the aggrandizement of his niece and house. By daybreak the next morning he had written to Lord Mauleverer, to his brother, and to Lucy. To the last, his letter, couched in all the anxiety of fondness, and the caution of affectionate experience, was well calculated to occasion that mingled shame and soreness which the wary lawyer rightly judged would be the most effectual enemy to an incipient passion. ‘I have accidentally heard,’ he wrote, ‘from a friend of mine, just arrived from Bath, of the glaring attentions paid to you by a Captain Clifford; I will not, my dearest niece, wound you by repeating what also I heard of your manner in receiving them. I know the ill-nature and the envy of the world; and I do not for a moment imagine that my Lucy, of whom I am so justly proud, would countenance, from a petty coquetry, the advances of one whom she could never marry, or evince to any suitor partiality unknown to her relations, and cert
ainly placed in a quarter which could never receive their approbation. I do not credit the reports of the idle, my dear niece; but if I discredit you must not slight them. I call upon your prudence, your delicacy, your discretion, your sense of right, at once, and effectually, to put a stop to all impertinent rumours: dance with this young man no more; do not let him be of your party in any place of amusement, public or private; avoid even seeing him if you are able, and throw in your manner towards him that decided coldness which the world cannot mistake.’ Much more did the skilful uncle write, but all to the same purpose, and for the furtherance of the same design. His letter to his brother was no less artful. He told him at once that Lucy’s preference of the suit of a handsome fortune-hunter was the public talk, and besought him to lose not a moment in quelling the rumour. ‘You may do so easily,’ he wrote, ‘by avoiding the young man; and should he be very importunate, return at once to Warlock; your daughter’s welfare must be dearer to you than anything.’
To Mauleverer, Brandon replied by a letter which turned first on public matters, and then slid carelessly into the subject of the earl’s information.
Among the admonitions which he ventured to give Mauleverer, he dwelt, not without reason, on the want of tact displayed by the earl, in not manifesting that pomp and show which his station in life enabled him to do. ‘Remember,’ he urged, ‘you are not among your equals, by whom unnecessary parade begins to be considered an ostentatious vulgarity. The surest method of dazzling our inferiors is by splendour – not taste. All young persons – all women in particular, – are caught by show, and enamoured of magnificence. Assume a greater state, and you will be more talked of; and notoriety wins a woman’s heart more than beauty or youth. You have, forgive me, played the boy too long; a certain dignity becomes your manhood: women will not respect you if you suffer yourself to become “stale and cheap to vulgar company.” You are like a man who has fifty advantages, and uses only one of them to gain his point, when you rely on your conversation and your manner, and throw away the resources of your wealth and your station. Any private gentleman may be amiable and witty; but any private gentleman cannot call to his aid the Aladdin’s lamp possessed in England by a wealthy peer. Look to this, my dear lord; Lucy at heart is vain, or she is not a woman. Dazzle her, then, – dazzle! Love may be blind, but it must be made so by excess of light. You have a country-house within a few miles of Bath. Why not take up your abode there instead of in a paltry lodging in the town? Give sumptuous entertainments, – make it necessary for all the world to attend them, – exclude, of course, this Captain Clifford; you will then meet Lucy without a rival. At present, excepting only your title, you fight on a level ground with this adventurer, instead of an eminence from which you could in an instant sweep him away. Nay, he is stronger than you; he has the opportunities afforded by a partnership in balls where you cannot appear to advantage; he is, you say, in the first bloom of youth, – he is handsome. Reflect! – Your destiny, so far as Lucy is concerned, is in your hands. I turn to other subjects,’ &c.
As Brandon re-read, ere he signed, this last letter, a bitter smile sat on his harsh, yet handsome features. ‘If,’ said he, mentally, ‘I can effect this object; if Mauleverer does marry this girl, why so much the better that she has another, a fairer, and a more welcome lover. By the great principle of scorn within me, which has enabled me to sneer at what weaker minds adore, and make a footstool of that worldly honour which fools set up as a throne, it would be to me more sweet than fame, – ay, or even than power – to see this fine-spun lord a gibe in the mouths of men, – a cuckold – a cuckold!’ And as he said the last word Brandon laughed outright. ‘And he thinks, too,’ added he, ‘that he is sure of my fortune; otherwise, perhaps, he, the goldsmith’s descendant, would not dignify our house with his proposals; but he may err there – he may err there.’ And finishing his soliloquy, Brandon finished also his letter by: – ‘Adieu, my dear lord, your most affectionate friend!’
It is not difficult to conjecture the effect produced upon Lucy by Brandon’s letter: it made her wretched; she refused for days to go out; she shut herself up in her apartment, and consumed the time in tears and struggles with her own heart. Sometimes, what she conceived to be her duty conquered, and she resolved to forswear her lover; but the night undid the labour of the day: for at night, every night, the sound of her lover’s voice, accompanied by music, melted away her resolution, and made her once more all tenderness and trust. The words, too, sung under her window, were especially suited to affect her; they breathed a melancholy which touched her the more from its harmony with her own thoughts. One while they complained of absence, at another they hinted at neglect; but there was always in them a tone of humiliation, not reproach: they bespoke a sense of unworthiness in the lover, and confessed that even the love was a crime: and in proportion as they owned the want of desert, did Lucy more firmly cling to the belief that her lover was deserving.
The old squire was greatly disconcerted by his brother’s letter. Though impressed with the idea of self-consequence, and the love of tolerably pure blood, common to most country squires, he was by no means ambitious for his daughter. On the contrary, the same feeling which at Warlock had made him choose his companions among the inferior gentry, made him averse to the thought of a son-in-law from the peerage. In spite of Mauleverer’s good nature, the very ease of the earl annoyed him, and he never felt at home in his society. To Clifford he had a great liking; and having convinced himself that there was nothing to suspect in the young gentleman, he saw no earthly reason why so agreeable a companion should not be an agreeable son-in-law. ‘If he be poor,’ thought the squire, ‘though he does not seem so, Lucy is rich!’ And this truism appeared to him to answer every objection. Nevertheless, William Brandon possessed a remarkable influence over the weaker mind of his brother; and the squire, though with great reluctance, resolved to adopt his advice. He shut his doors against Clifford, and when he met him in the streets, instead of greeting him with his wonted cordiality, he passed him with a hasty ‘Good day, captain!’ which, after the first day or two, merged into a distant bow. Whenever very good-hearted people are rude, and unjustly so, the rudeness is in the extreme. The squire felt it so irksome to be less familiar than heretofore with Clifford, that his only remaining desire was now to drop him altogether; and to this consummation of acquaintance the gradually cooling salute appeared rapidly approaching. Meanwhile, Clifford, unable to see Lucy, shunned by her father, and obtaining in answer to all inquiry rude looks from the footman, whom nothing but the most resolute command over his muscles prevented him from knocking down, began to feel, perhaps, for the first time in his life, that an equivocal character is at least no equivocal misfortune. To add to his distress, ‘the earnings of his previous industry’ – we use the expression cherished by the wise Tomlinson – waxed gradually less and less, beneath the expenses of Bath; and the murmuring voices of his two comrades began already to reproach their chief for his inglorious idleness, and to hint at the necessity of a speedy exertion.
Chapter XX
Whackum: Look you there, now! Well, all Europe cannot show a knot of finer wits and braver gentlemen.
Dingboy: Faith, they are pretty smart men.
Shadwell’s Scourers
The world of Bath was of a sudden delighted by the intelligence that Lord Mauleverer had gone to Beauvale (the beautiful seat possessed by that nobleman in the neighbourhood of Bath), with the intention of there holding a series of sumptuous entertainments.
The first persons to whom the gay earl announced his ‘hospitable purpose’ were Mr and Miss Brandon; he called at their house, and declared his resolution of not leaving it till Lucy (who was in her own room) consented to gratify him with an interview, and a promise to be the queen of his purposed festival. Lucy, teased by her father, descended to the drawing-room spiritless and pale; and the earl, struck by the alteration of her appearance, took her hand, and made his inquiries with so interesting and feeling a semblance of k
indness, as prepossessed the father, for the first time, in his favour, and touched even the daughter. So earnest, too, was his request that she would honour his festivities with her presence, and with so skilful a flattery was it conveyed, that the squire undertook to promise the favour in her name; and when the earl, declaring he was not contented with that promise from another, appealed to Lucy herself, her denial was soon melted into a positive, though a reluctant assent.
Paul Clifford Page 27
