Paul Clifford

by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  And now, Heaven guard and bless you! Nothing on earth could injure you. And even the wicked who have looked upon you learn to pray – I have prayed for you!

  Thus (abrupt and signatureless) ended the expected letter. Lucy came down the next morning at her usual hour, and, except that she was very pale, nothing in her appearance seemed to announce past grief or emotion. The squire asked her if she had received the promised letter? She answered in a clear, though faint voice, that she had – that Mr Clifford had confessed himself of too low an origin to hope for marriage with Mr Brandon’s family; that she trusted the squire would keep his secret; and that the subject might never again be alluded to by either. If, in this speech, there was something alien to Lucy’s ingenuous character, and painful to her mind, she felt it, as it were, a duty to her former lover not to betray the whole of that confession so bitterly wrung from him. Perhaps, too, there was in that letter a charm which seemed to her too sacred to be revealed to anyone. And mysteries were not excluded even from a love so ill-placed, and seemingly so transitory as hers.

  Lucy’s answer touched the squire in his weak point. ‘A man of decidedly low origin,’ he confessed, ‘was utterly out of the question; nevertheless, the young man showed a great deal of candour in his disclosure.’ He readily promised never to broach a subject necessarily so unpleasant; and though he sighed as he finished his speech, yet the extreme quiet of Lucy’s manner reassured him; and when he perceived that she resumed, though languidly, her wonted avocations, he felt but little doubt of her soon overcoming the remembrance of what, he hoped, was but a girlish and fleeting fancy. He yielded, with avidity, to her proposal to return to Warlock; and in the same week as that in which Lucy had received her lover’s mysterious letter, the father and daughter commenced their journey home.

  Chapter XXIV

  Butler: What are these, sir?

  Yeoman: And of what nature – to what use?

  Latroc: Imagine.

  The Tragedy of Rollo

  Quickly: He’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to

  Arthur’s bosom.

  Henry V

  The stream of our narrative now conducts us back to William Brandon. The law-promotions previously intended were completed; and, to the surprise of the public, the envied barrister, undergoing the degradation of knighthood, had, at the time we return to him, just changed his toilsome occupations for the serene dignity of the bench. Whatever regret this wily and aspiring schemer might otherwise have felt at an elevation considerably less distinguished than he might reasonably have expected, was entirely removed by the hopes afforded to him of a speedy translation to a more brilliant office: it was whispered among those not unlikely to foresee such events, that the interest of the government required his talents in the house of peers. Just at this moment, too, the fell disease, whose ravages Brandon endeavoured, as jealously as possible, to hide from the public, had appeared suddenly to yield to the skill of a new physician; and by the administration of medicines, which a man less stern or resolute might have trembled to adopt (so powerful and, for the most part, deadly was their nature), he passed from a state of almost insufferable torture to an elysium of tranquillity and ease: perhaps, however, the medicines which altered also decayed his constitution: and it was observable, that in two cases, where the physician had attained a like success by the same means, the patients had died suddenly, exactly at the time when their cure seemed to be finally completed. However, Sir William Brandon appeared very little anticipative of danger. His manner became more cheerful and even than it had ever been before; there was a certain lightness in his gait, a certain exhilaration in his voice and eye, which seemed the tokens of one from whom a heavy burden had been suddenly raised, and who was no longer prevented from the eagerness of hope by the engrossing claims of a bodily pain. He had always been bland in society, but now his courtesy breathed less of artifice, – it took a more hearty tone. Another alteration was discernible in him, and that was precisely the reverse of what might have been expected. He became more thrifty – more attentive to the expenses of life than he had been. Though a despiser of show and ostentation, and far too hard to be luxurious, he was too scientific an architect of the weaknesses of others not to have maintained during his public career an opulent appearance and a hospitable table. The profession he had adopted requires, perhaps, less of externals to aid it than any other; still Brandon had affected to preserve parliamentary as well as legal importance; and, though his house was situated in a quarter entirely professional, he had been accustomed to assemble around his hospitable board all who were eminent, in his political party, for rank or for talent. Now, however, when hospitality, and a certain largeness of expenses, better became his station, he grew closer and more exact in his economy. Brandon never could have degenerated into a miser; money, to one so habitually wise as he was, could never have passed from means into an object; but he had, evidently, for some cause or another, formed the resolution to save. Some said it was the result of returning health, and the hope of a prolonged life, to which many objects for which wealth is desirable might occur. But when it was accidentally ascertained that Brandon had been making several inquiries respecting a large estate in the neighbourhood of Warlock, formerly in the possession of his family, the gossips (for Brandon was a man to be gossiped about) were no longer in want of a motive, false or real, for the judge’s thrift.

  It was shortly after his elevation to the bench, and ere these signs of change had become noticeable, that the same strange ragamuffin whom we have mentioned before, as introduced by Mr Swoppem to a private conference with Brandon, was admitted to the judge’s presence.

  ‘Well,’ said Brandon, impatiently, the moment the door was closed, ‘your news?’

  ‘Vy, your onor,’ said the man, bashfully, twirling a thing that stood proxy for a hat, ‘I thinks as ow I shall be hable to satisfy your vorship’s onor.’ Then approaching the judge, and assuming an important air, he whispered, –

  ‘’Tis as ow I thought!’

  ‘My God!’ cried Brandon, with vehemence. ‘And he is alive? – And where?’

  ‘I believes,’ answered the seemly confidant of Sir William Brandon, ‘that he be’s alive! And if he be’s alive, may I flash my ivories in a glass case, if I does not ferret him out; but as to saying vhere he be at this nick o’ the moment, smash me if I can!’

  ‘Is he in this country?’ said Brandon. ‘Or do you believe that he has gone abroad?’

  ‘Vy, much of one and not a little of the other!’ said the euphonious confidant.

  ‘How! Speak plain, man – what do you mean?’

  ‘Vy, I means, your onor, that I can’t say vhere he is.’

  ‘And this,’ said Brandon, with a muttered oath, – ‘this is your boasted news, is it? Dog! Damned, damned dog! If you trifle with me, or play me false, I will hang you, – by the living G–d, I will!’

  The man shrunk back involuntarily from Brandon’s vindictive forehead and kindled eyes; but with the cunning peculiar to low vice answered, though in an humbler tone, –

  ‘And vot good vill that do your onor? If so be as ow you scrags I, vill that put your vorship in the vay of finding he?’

  Never was there an obstacle in grammar through which a sturdy truth could not break; and Brandon, after a moody pause, said in a milder voice, – ‘I did not mean to frighten you! Never mind what I said; but you can surely guess whereabouts he is, or what means of life he pursues? Perhaps’ – and a momentary paleness crossed Brandon’s swarthy visage – ‘perhaps he may have been driven into dishonesty in order to maintain himself!’

  The informant replied with great naïveté, that ‘such a thing was not umpossible!’ And Brandon then entered into a series of seemingly careless but artful cross-questionings, which either the ignorance or the craft of the man enabled him to baffle. After some time, Brandon, disappointed and dissatisfied, gave up his professional task; and bestowing on the man many sagacious and minute instructions, as well as a ver
y liberal donation, he was forced to dismiss his mysterious visitor and to content himself with an assured assertion, that if the object of his inquiries should not already be gone to the devil, the strange gentleman employed to discover him would certainly, sooner or later, bring him to the judge.

  This assertion, and the interview preceding it, certainly inspired Sir William Brandon with a feeling like complacency, although it was mingled with a considerable alloy.

  ‘I do not,’ thought he, concluding his meditations when he was left alone, – ‘I do not see what else I can do! Since it appears that the boy had not even a name when he set out alone from his wretched abode, I fear that an advertisement would have but little chance of even designating, much less of finding him, after so long an absence. Besides, it might make me the prey to impostors; and, in all probability, he has either left the country, or adopted some mode of living which would prevent his daring to disclose himself!’ This thought plunged the soliloquist into a gloomy abstraction, which lasted several minutes, and from which he started, muttering aloud, –

  ‘Yes, yes! I dare to believe, to hope it. – Now for the minister, and the peerage!’ And from that time the root of Sir William Brandon’s ambition spread with a firmer and more extended grasp over his mind.

  We grieve very much that the course of our story should now oblige us to record an event which we would willingly have spared ourselves the pain of narrating. The good old Squire of Warlock Manor-house had scarcely reached his home on his return from Bath, before William Brandon received the following letter from his brother’s grey-headed butler: –

  Honnured Sur,

  I send this with all speede, thof with a hevy hart, to axquainte you with the sudden (and it is feered by his loving friends and well-wishers, which latter, to be sur, is all as knows him) dangeros ilness of the Squire. He was seezed, poor deer gentleman (for God never made a better, no offence to your Honnur), the moment he set footing in his Own Hall, and what has hung rond me like a mill-ston ever sin, is that instead of his saying – ‘How do you do, Sampson?’ as was his wont, whenever he returned from forren parts, sich as Bath, Lunnun, and the like; he said, ‘God bless you, Sampson!’ which makes me think sumhow that it will be his last wurds; for he has never spoke sin, for all Miss Lucy be by his bedside continual. She, poor deer, don’t take on at all, in regard of crying and such woman’s wurk, but looks nevertheless, for all the wurld, just like a copse. I sends Tom the postilion with this hexpress, nowing he is a good hand at a gallop, having, not sixteen years ago, beat some o’ the best on un at a raceng. Hoping as yer honnur will lose no time in coming to this ‘hous of mourning,’

  I remane, with all respect,

  Your Honnur’s humble sarvant to command,

  John Sampson

  Sir William Brandon did not give himself time to re-read this letter, in order to make it more intelligible, before he wrote to one of his professional compeers, requesting him to fill his place during his unavoidable absence, on the melancholy occasion of his brother’s expected death; and having so done, he immediately set off for Warlock. Inexplicable even to himself was that feeling, so nearly approaching to real sorrow, which the worldly lawyer felt at the prospect of losing his guileless and unspeculating brother. Whether it be that turbulent and ambitious minds, in choosing for their wavering affections the very opposites of themselves, feel (on losing the fellowship of those calm, fair characters that have never crossed their rugged path) as if they lost, in losing them, a kind of haven for their own restless thoughts and tempest-worn designs! – be this as it may, certain it is, that when William Brandon arrived at his brother’s door, and was informed by the old butler, who, for the first time, was slow to greet him, that the squire had just breathed his last, his austere nature forsook him at once, and he felt the shock with a severity perhaps still keener than that which a more genial and affectionate heart would have experienced.

  As soon as he had recovered his self-possession, Sir William made question of his niece; and finding that after an unrelaxing watch during the whole of the squire’s brief illness, nature had failed her at his death, and she had been borne senseless from his chamber to her own, Brandon walked with a step far different from his usual stately gait to the room where his brother lay. It was one of the oldest apartments in the house, and much of the ancient splendour that belonged to the mansion ere its size had been reduced, with the fortunes of its successive owners, still distinguished the chamber. The huge mantel-piece ascending to the carved ceiling in grotesque pilasters, and scroll-work of the blackest oak, with the quartered arms of Brandon and Saville escutcheoned in the centre, – the panelled walls of the same dark wainscot, – the armorie of ebony, – the high-backed chairs, with their tapestried seats, – the lofty bed, with its hearselike plumes and draperies of a crimson damask that seemed, so massy was the substance, and so prominent the flowers, as if it were rather a carving than a silk, – all conspired with the size of the room to give it a feudal solemnity, not perhaps suited to the rest of the house, but well calculated to strike a gloomy awe into the breast of the worldly and proud man who now entered the death-chamber of his brother.

  Silently William Brandon motioned away the attendants, and silently he seated himself by the bed, and looked long and wistfully upon the calm and placid face of the deceased. It is difficult to guess at what passed within him during the space of time in which he remained alone in that room. The apartment itself he could not, at another period, have tenanted without secret emotion. It was that in which, as a boy, he had himself been accustomed to sleep; and, even then a schemer and an aspirant, the very sight of the room sufficed to call back all the hopes and visions, the restless projects and the feverish desires, which had now brought him to the envied state of an acknowledged celebrity and a shattered frame. There must have been something awful in the combination of those active remembrances with the cause which had led him to that apartment; and there was a homily in the serene countenance of the dead, which preached more effectually to the heart of the living than William Brandon would ever have cared to own. He had been more than an hour in the room, and the evening had already begun to cast deep shadows through the small panes of the half-closed window, when Brandon was startled by a slight noise. He looked up, and beheld Lucy opposite to him. She did not see him; but throwing herself upon the bed, she took the cold hand of the deceased, and, after a long silence, burst into a passion of tears.

  ‘My father!’ she sobbed, ‘my kind, good father! Who will love me now?’

  ‘I!’ said Brandon, deeply affected; and, passing round the bed, he took his niece in his arms. ‘I will be your father, Lucy, and you – the last of our race – shall be to me as a daughter!’

  Chapter XXV

  Falsehood in him was not the useless lie

  Of boasting pride or laughing vanity:

  It was the gainful – the persuading art…

  Crabbe

  On with the horses – off to Canterbury,

  Tramp – tramp o’er pebble, and splash – splash thro’ puddle;

  Hurrah! How swiftly speeds the post so merry!

  ‘Here laws are all inviolate; none lay

  Traps for the traveller; every highway’s clear;

  Here – ’ he was interrupted by a knife,

  With ‘D— your eyes! – Your money or your life!’

  Don Juan

  Misfortunes are like the creations of Cadmus – they destroy one another! Roused from the torpor of mind occasioned by the loss of her lover at the sudden illness of the squire, Lucy had no thought for herself – no thought for anyone – for anything but her father, till long after the earth had closed over his remains. The very activity of the latter grief was less dangerous than the quiet of the former; and when the first keenness of sorrow passed away, and her mind gradually and mechanically returned to the remembrance of Clifford, it was with an intensity less strong, and less fatal to her health and happiness than before. She thought it unnatural and crim
inal to allow anything else to grieve her, while she had so sacred a grief as that of her loss; and her mind, once aroused into resistance to passion, betrayed a native strength little to have been expected from her apparent character. Sir William Brandon lost no time in returning to town after the burial of his brother. He insisted upon taking his niece with him; and, though with real reluctance, she yielded to his wishes, and accompanied him. By the squire’s will, indeed, Sir William was appointed guardian to Lucy, and she yet wanted more than a year of her majority.