‘It is my mother’s picture,’ said Lucy, simply, and putting it aside.
The old squire had loved his wife tenderly, and when Lucy made this reply, all the fond and warm recollections of his youth rushed upon him: he thought, too, how earnestly on her death-bed that wife had recommended to his vigilant care their only child now weeping on his bosom; he remembered how, dwelling on that which to all women seems the grand epoch of life, she had said, ‘Never let her affections be trifled with, – never be persuaded by your ambitious brother to make her marry where she loves not, or to oppose her, without strong reason, where she does: though she be but a child now, I know enough of her to feel convinced that if ever she love, she will love too well for her own happiness, even with all things in her favour.’ These words, these recollections, joined to the remembrance of the cold-hearted scheme of William Brandon, which he had allowed himself to favour, and of his own supineness towards Lucy’s growing love for Clifford, till resistance became at once necessary and too late, all smote him with a remorseful sorrow, and fairly sobbing himself, he said, ‘Thy mother, child! Ah, would that she were living, she would never have neglected thee as I have done!’
The squire’s self-reproach made Lucy’s tears cease on the instant, and, as she covered her father’s hand with kisses, she replied only by vehement accusations against herself, and praises of his too great fatherly fondness and affection. This little burst, on both sides, of honest and simple-hearted love, ended in a silence full of tender and mingled thoughts: and as Lucy still clung to the breast of the old man, uncouth as he was in temper, below even mediocrity in intellect, and altogether the last person in age, or mind, or habit, that seemed fit for a confidant in the love of a young and enthusiastic girl, she felt the old homely truth, that under all disadvantages there are, in this hollow world, few in whom trust can be so safely reposed, few who so delicately and subtly respect the confidence, as those from whom we spring.
The father and daughter had been silent for some minutes, and the former was about to speak, when the carriage suddenly stopped. The squire heard a rough voice at the horses’ heads; he looked forth from the window to see, through the mist of the night, what could possibly be the matter, and he encountered in this action, just one inch from his forehead, the protruded and shining barrel of a horse-pistol. We may believe, without a reflection on his courage, that Mr Brandon threw himself back into his carriage with all possible despatch; and at the same moment the door was opened, and a voice said, not in a threatening, but a smooth accent, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry to disturb you, but want is imperious: oblige me with your money, your watches, your rings, and any other little commodities of a similar nature!’
So delicate a request the squire had not the heart to resist, the more especially as he knew himself without any weapons of defence; accordingly he drew out a purse, not very full it must be owned, together with an immense silver hunting-watch, with a piece of black riband attached to it: ‘There, sir,’ said he, with a groan, ‘don’t frighten the young lady.’
The gentle applicant, who indeed was no other than the specious Augustus Tomlinson, slid the purse into his waistcoat-pocket, after feeling its contents with a rapid and scientific finger. ‘Your watch, sir,’ quoth he, and as he spoke he thrust it carelessly into his coat-pocket, as a schoolboy would thrust a peg-top, ‘is heavy; but trusting to experience, since an accurate survey is denied me, I fear it is more valuable from its weight than its workmanship: however, I will not wound your vanity by affecting to be fastidious. But surely the young lady, as you call her (for I pay you the compliment of believing your word as to her age, inasmuch as the night is too dark to allow me the happiness of a personal inspection), the young lady has surely some little trinket she can dispense with; “Beauty when unadorned,” you know, &c.’
Lucy, who, though greatly frightened, lost neither her senses nor her presence of mind, only answered by drawing forth a little silk purse, that contained still less than the leathern convenience of the squire; to this she added a gold chain; and Tomlinson, taking them with an affectionate squeeze of the hand, and a polite apology, was about to withdraw, when his sagacious eyes were suddenly stricken by the gleam of jewels. The fact was, that in altering the position of her mother’s picture, which had been set in the few hereditary diamonds possessed by the Lord of Warlock, Lucy had allowed it to hang on the outside of her dress, and bending forward to give the robber her other possessions, the diamonds at once came in full sight, and gleamed the more invitingly from the darkness of the night.
‘Ah, madam!’ said Tomlinson, stretching forth his hand, ‘you would play me false, would you? Treachery should never go unpunished. Favour me instantly with the little ornament round your neck!’
‘I cannot – I cannot!’ said Lucy grasping her treasure with both her hands, – ‘it is my mother’s picture and my mother is dead!’
‘The wants of others, madam,’ returned Tomlinson, who could not for the life of him rob immorally, ‘are ever more worthy your attention than family prejudices. Seriously, give it, and that instantly; we are in a hurry, and your horses are plunging like devils: they will break your carriage in an instant – dispatch!’
The squire was a brave man on the whole, though no hero, and the nerves of an old fox-hunter soon recover from a little alarm. The picture of his buried wife was yet more inestimable to him than it was to Lucy, and at this new demand his spirit was roused within him.
He clenched his fists, and advancing himself, as it were, on his seat, he cried in a loud voice: –
‘Begone, fellow! – I have given you – for my own part I think so – too much already; and by G–d you shall not have the picture!’
‘Don’t force me to use violence!’ said Augustus, and putting one foot on the carriage-step, he brought his pistol within a few inches of Lucy’s breast, rightly judging, perhaps, that the show of danger to her would be the best method to intimidate the squire. At that instant the valorous moralist found himself suddenly seized with a powerful grip on the shoulder, and a low voice, trembling with passion, hissed in his ear. Whatever might be the words that startled his organs, they operated as an instantaneous charm; and to their astonishment, the squire and Lucy beheld their assailant abruptly withdraw. The door of the carriage was clapped to, and scarcely two minutes had elapsed before the robber having remounted, his comrade – hitherto stationed at the horses’ heads – set spurs to his own steed, and the welcome sound of receding hoofs smote upon the bewildered ears of the father and daughter.
The door of the carriage was again opened, and a voice, which made Lucy paler than the preceding terror, said, –
‘I fear, Mr Brandon, the robbers have frightened your daughter. There is now, however, nothing to fear – the ruffians are gone.’
‘God bless me!’ said the squire. ‘Why, is that Captain Clifford?’
‘It is! And he conceives himself too fortunate to have been of the smallest service to Mr and Miss Brandon.’
On having convinced himself that it was indeed to Mr Clifford that he owed his safety, as well as that of his daughter, whom he believed to have been in a far more imminent peril than she really was (for to tell thee the truth, reader, the pistol of Tomlinson was rather calculated for show than use, having a peculiarly long bright barrel with nothing in it), the squire was utterly at a loss how to express his gratitude; and when he turned to Lucy to beg she would herself thank their gallant deliverer, he found that, overpowered with various emotions, she had, for the first time in her life, fainted away.
‘Good Heavens!’ cried the alarmed father. ‘She is dead, – my Lucy – my Lucy – they have killed her!’
To open the door nearest to Lucy, to bear her from the carriage in his arms, was to Clifford the work of an instant; utterly unconscious of the presence of anyone else – unconscious even of what he said, he poured forth a thousand wild, passionate, yet half-audible expressions; and as he bore her to a bank by the roadside, and seating him
self, supported her against his bosom, it would be difficult, perhaps, to say, whether something of delight – of burning and thrilling delight – was not mingled with his anxiety and terror. He chafed her small hands in his own – his breath, all trembling and warm, glowed upon her cheek, and once, and but once, his lips drew nearer, and breathing aside the dishevelled richness of her tresses, clung in a long and silent kiss to her own.
Meanwhile, by the help of his footman, who had now somewhat recovered his astonished senses, the squire descended from his carriage, and approached with faltering steps the place where his daughter reclined. At the instant that he took her hand, Lucy began to revive, and the first action, in the bewildered unconsciousness of awaking, was to throw her arm around the neck of her supporter.
Could all the hours and realities of hope, joy, pleasure, in Clifford’s previous life have been melted down and concentrated into a single emotion, that emotion would have been but tame to the rapture of Lucy’s momentary and innocent caress! And at a later, yet no distant, period, when in the felon’s cell the grim visage of Death scowled upon him, it may be questioned whether his thoughts dwelt not far more often on the remembrance of that delightful moment, than on the bitterness and ignominy of an approaching doom!
‘She breathes – she moves – she wakes!’ cried the father. And Lucy, attempting to rise, and recognizing the squire’s voice, said faintly, ‘Thank God, my dear father, you are not hurt! And are they really gone? – And where – where are we?’
The squire, relieving Clifford of his charge, folded his child in his arms, while in his own elucidatory manner he informed her where she was, and with whom. The lovers stood face to face to each other, but what delicious blushes did the night, which concealed all but the outline of their forms, hide from the eyes of Clifford!
The honest and kind heart of Mr Brandon was glad of a release to the indulgent sentiments it had always cherished towards the suspected and maligned Clifford, and turning now from Lucy, it fairly poured itself forth upon her deliverer. He grasped him warmly by the hand, and insisted upon his accompanying them to Bath in the carriage, and allowing the footman to ride his horse. This offer was still pending, when the footman, who had been to see after the health and comfort of his fellow-servant, came to inform the party in a dolorous accent, of something which, in the confusion and darkness of the night, they had not yet learned, – namely, that the horses and coachman were – gone!
‘Gone!’ said the squire, ‘gone! – Why the villains can’t (for my part, I never believe, though I have heard such wonders of, those sleights of hand) have bagged them!’
Here a low groan was audible, and the footman, sympathetically guided to the spot whence it emanated, found the huge body of the coachman safely deposited, with its face downward, in the middle of the kennel. After this worthy had been lifted to his legs, and had shaken himself into intelligence, it was found that when the robber had detained the horses, the coachman, who required very little to conquer his more bellicose faculties, had – he himself said, by a violent blow from the ruffian, though, perhaps, the cause lay nearer home – quitted the coach-box for the kennel, the horses grew frightened, and after plunging and rearing till he cared no longer to occupy himself with their arrest, the highwayman had very quietly cut the traces, and by the time present, it was not impossible that the horses were almost at the door of their stables at Bath.
The footman who had apprised the squire of this misfortune was, unlike most news-tellers, the first to offer consolation.
‘There be an excellent public,’ quoth he, ‘about a half a mile on, where your honour could get horses; or, mayhap, if Miss Lucy, poor heart, be faint, you may like to stop for the night.’
Though a walk of half a mile in a dark night, and under other circumstances, would not have seemed a grateful proposition, yet, at present, when the squire’s imagination had only pictured to him the alternatives of passing the night in the carriage, or of crawling on foot to Bath, it seemed but a very insignificant hardship. And tucking his daughter’s arm under his own, while in a kind voice he told Clifford ‘to support her on the other side,’ the squire ordered the footman to lead the way with Clifford’s horse, and the coachman to follow or be d—d, whichever he pleased.
In silence Clifford offered his arm to Lucy, and silently she accepted the courtesy. The squire was the only talker, and the theme he chose was not ungrateful to Lucy, for it was the praise of her lover. But Clifford scarcely listened, for a thousand thoughts and feelings contested within him; and the light touch of Lucy’s hand upon his arm would alone have been sufficient to distract and confuse his attention. The darkness of the night, the late excitement, the stolen kiss that still glowed upon his lips, the remembrance of Lucy’s flattering agitation in the scene with her at Lord Mauleverer’s, the yet warmer one of that unconscious embrace, which still tingled through every nerve of his frame, all conspired with the delicious emotion which he now experienced at her presence and her contact to intoxicate and inflame him. Oh, those burning moments in love, when romance has just mellowed into passion, and without losing anything of its luxurious vagueness, mingles the enthusiasm of its dreams with the ardent desires of reality and earth! That is the exact time, when love has reached its highest point, – when all feelings, all thoughts, the whole soul, and the whole mind, are seized and engrossed, – when every difficulty weighed in the opposite scale seems lighter than dust, – when to renounce the object beloved is the most deadly and lasting sacrifice, – and when in so many breasts, where honour, conscience, virtue, are far stronger than we can believe them ever to have been in a criminal like Clifford, honour, conscience, virtue, have perished at once and suddenly into ashes before that mighty and irresistible fire.
The servant, who had had previous opportunities of ascertaining the topography of the ‘public’ of which he spake, and who was perhaps tolerably reconciled to his late terror in the anticipation of renewing his intimacy with ‘the spirits of the past,’ now directed the attention of our travellers to a small inn just before them. Mine host had not yet retired to repose, and it was not necessary to knock twice before the door was opened.
A bright fire, an officious landlady, a commiserate landlord, a warm potation, and the promise of excellent beds, all appeared to our squire to make ample amends for the intelligence that the inn was not licensed to let post-horses; and mine host having promised forthwith to send two stout fellows, a rope, and a cart-horse, to bring the carriage under shelter (for the squire valued the vehicle because it was twenty years old), and, moreover, to have the harness repaired, and the horses ready by an early hour the next day, the good humour of Mr Brandon rose into positive hilarity. Lucy retired under the auspices of the landlady to bed, and the squire having drunk a bowl of bishop, and discovered a thousand new virtues in Clifford, especially that of never interrupting a good story, clapped the captain on the shoulder, and making him promise not to leave the inn till he had seen him again, withdrew also to the repose of his pillow. Clifford remained below, gazing abstractedly on the fire for some time afterwards; nor was it till the drowsy chambermaid had thrice informed him of the prepared comforts of his bed, that he adjourned to his chamber. Even then it seems that sleep did not visit his eyelids, for a wealthy grazier, who lay in the room below, complained bitterly the next morning of some person walking overhead ‘in all manner of strides, just for all the world like a happarition in boots.’
Chapter XXIII
Viola: – And dost thou love me?
Lysander: Love thee, Viola?
Do I not fly thee when my being drinks
Light from thine eyes? – that flight is all my answer!
The Bride
The curtain meditations of the squire had not been without the produce of a resolve. His warm heart at once reopened to the liking he had formerly conceived for Clifford; he longed for an opportunity to atone for his past unkindness, and to testify his present gratitude; moreover, he felt at once indignant at, and a
shamed of, his late conduct in joining the popular, and, as he now fully believed, the causeless prepossession against his young friend, and before a more present and a stronger sentiment his habitual deference for his brother’s counsels faded easily away. Coupled with these favourable feelings towards Clifford were his sagacious suspicions, or rather certainty, of Lucy’s attachment to her handsome deliverer; and he had at least sufficient penetration to perceive that she was not likely to love him the less for the night’s adventure. To all this was added the tender recollection of his wife’s parting words; and the tears and tell-tale agitation of Lucy in the carriage were sufficient to his simple mind, which knew not how lightly maiden’s tears are shed and dried, to confirm the prediction of the dear deceased. Nor were the squire’s more generous and kindly feelings utterly unmixed with selfish considerations. Proud, but not the least ambitious, he was always more ready to confer an honour than receive one, and at heart he was secretly glad at the notion of exchanging, as a son-in-law, the polished and unfamiliar Mauleverer for the agreeable and social Clifford. Such, in ‘admired disorder,’ were the thoughts which rolled through the teeming brain of Joseph Brandon, and before he had turned on his left side, which he always did preparatory to surrendering himself to slumber, the squire had fully come to a determination most fatal to the schemes of the lawyer and the hopes of the earl.
The next morning, as Lucy was knitting ‘the loose train of her amber-dropping hair’ before the little mirror of her chamber, which even through its dimmed and darkened glass gave back a face which might have shamed a Grecian vision of Aurora, a gentle tap at her door announced her father. There was in his rosy and comely countenance that expression generally characteristic of a man pleased with himself, and persuaded that he is about to give pleasure.
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