Paul Clifford — Complete
that bashful, blushing silence,--it is insupportable. Thank Heaven, the
dance is over! Thank Heaven, again! I have not felt such pains since the
last nightmare I had after dining with her father!”
With a face all smiles, but with a mien in which more dignity than he
ordinarily assumed was worn, Mauleverer now moved towards Lucy, who was
leaning on her partner's arm. The earl, who had ample tact where his
consummate selfishness did not warp it, knew well how to act the lover,
without running ridiculously into the folly of seeming to play the hoary
dangler. He sought rather to be lively than sentimental; and beneath the
wit to conceal the suitor.
Having paid, then, with a careless gallantry his first compliments, he
entered into so animated a conversation, interspersed with so many naive
yet palpably just observations on the characters present, that perhaps
he had never appeared to more brilliant advantage. At length, as the
music was about to recommence, Mauleverer, with a careless glance at
Lucy's partner, said, “Will Miss Brandon now allow me the agreeable duty
of conducting her to her father?”
“I believe,” answered Lucy, and her voice suddenly became timid, “that,
according to the laws of the rooms, I am engaged to this gentleman for
another dance.”
Clifford, in an assured and easy tone, replied in assent.
As he spoke. Mauleverer honoured him with a more accurate survey than
he had hitherto bestowed on him; and whether or not there was any
expression of contempt or superciliousness in the survey, it was
sufficient to call up the indignant blood to Clifford's cheek. Returning
the look with interest, he said to Lucy, “I believe, Miss Brandon,
that the dance is about to begin;” and Lucy, obeying the hint, left the
aristocratic Mauleverer to his own meditations.
At that moment the master of the ceremonies came bowing by, half afraid
to address so great a person as Mauleverer, but willing to show his
respect by the profoundness of his salutation.
“Aha! my dear Mr. -------!” said the earl, holding out both his hands to
the Lycurgus of the rooms; “how are you? Pray can you inform me who that
young man is, now dancing with Miss Brandon?”
“It is--let me see-oh! it is a Captain Clifford, my lord! a very fine
young man, my lord! Has your lordship never met him?”
“Never! Who is he? One under your more especial patronage?” said the
earl, smiling.
“Nay, indeed!” answered the master of the ceremonies, with a simper of
gratification; “I scarcely know who he is yet; the captain only made
his appearance here to-night for the first time. He came with two other
gentlemen,--ah! there they are!” and he pointed the earl's scrutinizing
attention to the elegant forms of Mr. Augustus Tomlinson and Mr. Ned
Pepper, just emerging from the card-rooms. The swagger of the latter
gentleman was so peculiarly important that Mauleverer, angry as he was,
could scarcely help laughing. The master of the ceremonies noted the
earl's countenance, and remarked that “that fine-looking man seemed
disposed to give himself airs.”
“Judging from the gentleman's appearance,” said the earl, dryly (Ned's
face, to say truth, did betoken his affection for the bottle), “I
should imagine that he was much more accustomed to give himself thorough
draughts!”
“Ah!” renewed the arbiter elegantiarum, who had not heard Mauleverer's
observation, which was uttered in a very low voice,--“ah! they seem real
dashers!”
“Dashers!” repeated Mauleverer; “true, haberdashers!” Long Ned now,
having in the way of his profession acquitted himself tolerably well
at the card-table, thought he had purchased the right to parade himself
through the rooms, and show the ladies what stuff a Pepper could be made
of.
Leaning with his left hand on Tomlinson's arm, and employing the right
in fanning himself furiously with his huge chapeau bras, the lengthy
adventurer stalked slowly along, now setting out one leg jauntily, now
the other, and ogling “the ladies” with a kind of Irish look,--namely, a
look between a wink and a stare.
Released from the presence of Clifford, who kept a certain check on
his companions, the apparition of Ned became glaringly conspicuous; and
wherever he passed, a universal whisper succeeded.
“Who can he be?” said the widow Matemore. “'T is a droll creature; but
what a head of hair!”
“For my part,” answered the spinster Sneerall, “I think he is a
linen-draper in disguise; for I heard him talk to his companion of
'tape.'”
“Well, well,” thought Mauleverer, “it would be but kind to seek out
Brandon, and hint to him in what company his niece seems to have
fallen!” And so thinking, he glided to the corner where, with a
gray-headed old politician, the astute lawyer was conning the affairs of
Europe.
In the interim the second dance had ended, and Clifford was conducting
Lucy to her seat, each charmed with the other, when he found himself
abruptly tapped on the back, and turning round in alarm,--for such taps
were not unfamiliar to him,--he saw the cool countenance of Long Ned,
with one finger sagaciously laid beside the nose.
“How now?” said Clifford, between his ground teeth; “did I not tell thee
to put that huge bulk of thine as far from me as possible?”
“Humph!” granted Ned; “if these are my thanks, I may as well keep my
kindness to myself; but know you, my kid, that Lawyer Brandon is here,
peering through the crowd at this very moment, in order to catch a
glimpse of that woman's face of thine.”
“Ha!” answered Clifford, in a very quick tone; “begone, then! I will
meet you without the rooms immediately.” Clifford now turned to his
partner, and bowing very low, in reality to hide his face from those
sharp eyes which had once seen it in the court of Justice Burnflat,
said: “I trust, madam, I shall have the honour to meet you again. Is
it, if I may be allowed to ask, with your celebrated uncle that you are
staying, or--”
“With my father,” answered Lucy, concluding the sentence Clifford had
left unfinished; “but my uncle has been with us, though I fear he leaves
us to-morrow.”
Clifford's eyes sparkled; he made no answer, but bowing again, receded
into the crowd and disappeared. Several times that night did the
brightest eyes in Somersetshire rove anxiously round the rooms in search
of our hero; but he was seen no more.
It was on the stairs that Clifford encountered his comrades; taking an
arm of each, he gained the door without any adventure worth noting, save
that, being kept back by the crowd for a few moments, the moralizing
Augustus Tomlinson, who honoured the moderate Whigs by enrolling himself
among their number, took up, pour passer le temps, a tall gold-headed
cane, and weighing it across his finger with a musing air, said,
“Alas! among our supporters we often meet heads as heavy, but of what
a different metal!” The crowd now permitting, Augustus was walking away
with his companions, and, in that absence of mind characteristic of
philosophers, unconsciously bearing with him the gold-headed object of
his reflection, when a stately footman, stepping up to him, said, “Sir,
my cane!”
“Cane, fellow!” said Tomlinson. “Ah, I am so absent! Here is thy cane.
Only think of my carrying off the man's cane, Ned! Ha, ha!”
“Absent indeed!” grunted a knowing chairman, watching the receding
figures of the three gentlemen; “body o' me! but it was the cane that
was about to be absent!”
CHAPTER XVI.
Whackum. My dear rogues, dear boys, Bluster and Dingboy! you
are the bravest fellows that ever scoured yet!--SHADWELL:
Scourers.
Cato, the Thessalian, was wont to say that some things may be
done unjustly, that many things may be done justly.--LORD BACON
(being a justification of every rascality).
Although our three worthies had taken unto themselves a splendid lodging
in Milsom Street, which, to please Ned, was over a hairdresser's shop,
yet, instead of returning thither, or repairing to such taverns as might
seem best befitting their fashion and garb, they struck at once from the
gay parts of the town, and tarried not till they reached a mean-looking
alehouse in a remote suburb.
The door was opened to them by an elderly lady; and Clifford, stalking
before his companions into an apartment at the back of the house, asked
if the other gentlemen were come yet.
“No,” returned the dame. “Old Mr. Bags came in about ten minutes ago;
but hearing more work might be done, he went out again.”
“Bring the lush and the pipes, old blone!” cried Ned, throwing himself
on a bench; “we are never at a loss for company!”
“You, indeed, never can be, who are always inseparably connected with
the object of your admiration,” said Tomlinson, dryly, and taking up
an old newspaper. Ned, who, though choleric, was a capital fellow, and
could bear a joke on himself, smiled, and drawing forth a little pair of
scissors, began trimming his nails.
“Curse me,” said he, after a momentary silence, “if this is not a
devilish deal pleasanter than playing the fine gentleman in that great
room, with a rose in one's button-hole! What say you, Master Lovett?”
Clifford (as henceforth, despite his other aliases, we shall denominate
our hero), who had thrown himself at full length on a bench at the far
end of the room, and who seemed plunged into a sullen revery, now looked
up for a moment, and then, turning round and presenting the dorsal part
of his body to Long Ned, muttered, “Fish!”
“Harkye, Master Lovett!” said Long Ned, colouring. “I don't know what
has come over you of late; but I would have you to learn that gentlemen
are entitled to courtesy and polite behaviour; and so, d' ye see, if
you ride your high horse upon me, splice my extremities if I won't have
satisfaction!”
“Hist, man! be quiet,” said Tomlinson, philosophically, snuffing the
candles,--
“'For companions to quarrel,
Is extremely immoral.'
“Don't you see that the captain is in a revery? What good man ever loves
to be interrupted in his meditations? Even Alfred the Great could not
bear it! Perhaps at this moment, with the true anxiety of a worthy
chief, the captain is designing something for our welfare!”
“Captain indeed!” muttered Long Ned, darting a wrathful look at
Clifford, who had not deigned to pay any attention to Mr. Pepper's
threat; “for my part I cannot conceive what was the matter with us when
we chose this green slip of the gallows-tree for our captain of the
district. To be sure, he did very well at first, and that robbery of the
old lord was not ill-planned; but lately--”
“Nay, nay,” quoth Augustus, interrupting the gigantic grumbler; “the
nature of man is prone to discontent. Allow that our present design
of setting up the gay Lothario, and trying our chances at Bath for an
heiress, is owing as much to Lovett's promptitude as to our invention.”
“And what good will come of it?” returned Ned, as he lighted his pipe;
“answer me that. Was I not dressed as fine as a lord, and did not I walk
three times up and down that great room without being a jot the better
for it?”
“Ah! but you know not how many secret conquests you may have made. You
cannot win a prize by looking upon it.”
“Humph!” grunted Ned, applying himself discontentedly to the young
existence of his pipe.
“As for the captain's partner,” renewed Tomlinson, who maliciously
delighted in exciting the jealousy of the handsome “tax-collector,”--for
that was the designation by which Augustus thought proper to style
himself and companions,--“I will turn Tory if she be not already half
in love with him; and did you hear the old gentleman who cut into our
rubber say what a fine fortune she had? Faith, Ned, it is lucky for