Paul Clifford — Complete
better to see it die in your custody than to let it live and to see it
no more?”
“Oh, no, no!” said Lucy, eagerly; “when I love any one, anything, I wish
that to be happy, not me!”
As she said this, she took the bird from the cage; and bearing it to
the open window, kissed it, and held it on her hand in the air. The poor
bird turned a languid and sickly eye around it, as if the sight of the
crowded houses and busy streets presented nothing familiar or inviting;
and it was not till Lucy with a tender courage shook it gently from her,
that it availed itself of the proffered liberty. It flew first to
an opposite balcony; and then recovering from a short and as it were
surprised pause, took a brief circuit above the houses; and after
disappearing for a few minutes, flew back, circled the window, and
re-entering, settled once more on the fair form of its mistress and
nestled into her bosom.
Lucy covered it with kisses. “You see it will not leave me!” said she.
“Who can?” said the uncle, warmly, charmed for the moment from every
thought but that of kindness for the young and soft creature before
him,--“who can,” he repeated with a sigh, “but an old and withered
ascetic like myself? I must leave you indeed; see, my carriage is at
the door! Will my beautiful niece, among the gayeties that surround her,
condescend now and then to remember the crabbed lawyer, and assure him
by a line of her happiness and health? Though I rarely write any notes
but those upon cases, you, at least, may be sure of an answer. And tell
me, Lucy, if there be in all this city one so foolish as to think that
these idle gems, useful only as a vent for my pride in you, can add a
single charm to a beauty above all ornament?”
So saying, Brandon produced a leathern case; and touching a spring, the
imperial flash of diamonds, which would have made glad many a patrician
heart, broke dazzlingly on Lucy's eyes.
“No thanks, Lucy,” said Brandon, in answer to his niece's disclaiming
and shrinking gratitude; “I do honour to myself, not you; and now bless
you, my dear girl. Farewell! Should any occasion present itself in which
you require an immediate adviser, at once kind and wise, I beseech you,
my dearest Lucy, as a parting request, to have no scruples in consulting
Lord Mauleverer. Besides his friendship for me, he is much interested
in you, and you may consult him with the more safety and assurance;
because” (and the lawyer smiled) “he is perhaps the only man in the
world whom my Lucy could not make in love with her. His gallantry may
appear adulation, but it is never akin to love. Promise me that you will
not hesitate in this.”
Lucy gave the promise readily; and Brandon continued in a careless tone:
“I hear that you danced last night with a young gentleman whom no one
knew, and whose companions bore a very strange appearance. In a place
like Bath, society is too mixed not to render the greatest caution
in forming acquaintances absolutely necessary. You must pardon me, my
dearest niece, if I remark that a young lady owes it not only to
herself but to her relations to observe the most rigid circumspection of
conduct. This is a wicked world, and the peach-like bloom of character
is easily rubbed away. In these points Mauleverer can be of great use to
you. His knowledge of character, his penetration into men, and his tact
in manners are unerring. Pray, be guided by him; whomsoever he warns
you against, you may be sure is unworthy of your acquaintance. God bless
you! You will write to me often and frankly, dear Lucy; tell me all that
happens to you,--all that interests, nay, all that displeases.”
Brandon then, who had seemingly disregarded the blushes with which
during his speech Lucy's cheeks had been spread, folded his niece in his
arms, and hurried, as if to hide his feelings, into his carriage. When
the horses had turned the street, he directed the postilions to stop at
Lord Mauleverer's. “Now,” said he to himself, “if I can get this clever
coxcomb to second my schemes, and play according to my game and not
according to his own vanity, I shall have a knight of the garter for my
nephew-in-law!”
Meanwhile Lucy, all in tears, for she loved her uncle greatly, ran down
to the squire to show him Brandon's magnificent present.
“Ah,” said the squire, with a sigh, “few men were born with more good,
generous, and great qualities (pity only that his chief desire was to
get on in the world; for my part, I think no motive makes greater and
more cold-hearted rogues) than my brother William!”
CHAPTER XVIII.
Why did she love him? Curious fool, be still!
Is human love the growth of human will?
To her he might be gentleness!
LORD BYRON.
In three weeks from the time of his arrival, Captain Clifford was the
most admired man in Bath. It is true the gentlemen, who have a quicker
tact as to the respectability of their own sex than women, might have
looked a little shy upon him, had he not himself especially shunned
appearing intrusive, and indeed rather avoided the society of men than
courted it; so that after he had fought a duel with a baronet (the
son of a shoemaker), who called him one Clifford, and had exhibited a
flea-bitten horse, allowed to be the finest in Bath, he rose insensibly
into a certain degree of respect with the one sex as well as popularity
with the other. But what always attracted and kept alive suspicion,
was his intimacy with so peculiar and dashing a gentleman as Mr. Edward
Pepper. People could get over a certain frankness in Clifford's
address, but the most lenient were astounded by the swagger of Long
Ned. Clifford, however, not insensible to the ridicule attached to his
acquaintances, soon managed to pursue his occupations alone; nay, he
took a lodging to himself, and left Long Ned and Augustus Tomlinson (the
latter to operate as a check on the former) to the quiet enjoyment of
the hairdresser's apartments. He himself attended all public gayeties;
and his mien, and the appearance of wealth which he maintained,
procured him access into several private circles which pretended to be
exclusive,--as if people who had daughters ever could be exclusive! Many
were the kind looks, nor few the inviting letters, which he received;
and if his sole object had been to marry an heiress, he would have found
no difficulty in attaining it. But he devoted himself entirely to Lucy
Brandon; and to win one glance from her, he would have renounced all the
heiresses in the kingdom. Most fortunately for him, Mauleverer, whose
health was easily deranged, had fallen ill the very day William Brandon
left Bath; and his lordship was thus rendered unable to watch the
movements of Lucy, and undermine or totally prevent the success of her
lover. Miss Brandon, indeed, had at first, melted by the kindness of
her uncle, and struck with the sense of his admonition (for she was
no self-willed young lady, who was determined to be in love), received
Captain Clifford's advances with a coldness which, from her manner the
first evening they had met at Bath, occasioned him no less surprise than
mortification. He retreated, and recoiled on the squire, who, patient
and bold, as usual, was sequestered in his favourite corner. By
accident, Clifford trod on the squire's gouty digital; and in
apologizing for the offence, was so struck by the old gentleman's
good-nature and peculiarity of expressing himself, that without knowing
who he was, he entered into conversation with him. There was an off-hand
sort of liveliness and candour, not to say wit, about Clifford, which
always had a charm for the elderly, who generally like frankness above
all the cardinal virtues; the squire was exceedingly pleased with him.
The acquaintance, once begun, was naturally continued without difficulty
when Clifford ascertained who was his new friend; and next morning,
meeting in the pump-room, the squire asked Clifford to dinner. The
entree to the house thus gained, the rest was easy. Long before
Mauleverer recovered his health, the mischief effected by his rival
was almost beyond redress; and the heart of the pure, the simple, the
affectionate Lucy Brandon was more than half lost to the lawless and
vagrant cavalier who officiates as the hero of this tale.
One morning, Clifford and Augustus strolled out together. “Let us,” said
the latter, who was in a melancholy mood, “leave the busy streets, and
indulge in a philosophical conversation on the nature of man, while we
are enjoying a little fresh air in the country.” Clifford assented to
the proposal, and the pair slowly sauntered up one of the hills that
surround the city of Bladud.
“There are certain moments,” said Tomlinson, looking pensively down at
his kerseymere gaiters, “when we are like the fox in the nursery rhyme,
'The fox had a wound, he could not tell where,'--we feel extremely
unhappy, and we cannot tell why. A dark and sad melancholy grows over
us; we shun the face of man; we wrap ourselves in our thoughts like
silkworms; we mutter fag-ends of dismal songs; tears come into our eyes;
we recall all the misfortunes that have ever happened to us; we stoop in
our gait, and bury our hands in our breeches-pockets; we say, 'What is
life?--a stone to be shied into a horsepond!' We pine for some congenial
heart, and have an itching desire to talk prodigiously about ourselves;
all other subjects seem weary, stale, and unprofitable. We feel as if a
fly could knock us down, and are in a humour to fall in love, and make a
very sad piece of business of it. Yet with all this weakness we have at
these moments a finer opinion of ourselves than we ever had before. We
call our megrims the melancholy of a sublime soul, the yearnings of an
indigestion we denominate yearnings after immortality, nay, sometimes
'a proof of the nature of the soul!' May I find some biographer who
understands such sensations well, and may he style those melting
emotions the offspring of the poetical character, which, in reality,
are the offspring of--a mutton-chop!”
[Vide Moore's “Life of Byron,” in which it is satisfactorily shown
that if a man fast forty-eight hours, then eat three lobsters, and
drink Heaven knows how many bottles of claret; if, when he wake the
next morning, he sees himself abused as a demon by half the
periodicals of the country,--if, in a word, he be broken in his
health, irregular in his habits, unfortunate in his affairs, unhappy
in his home, and if then he should be so extremely eccentric as to
be low-spirited and misanthropical, the low spirits and the
misanthropy are by no means to be attributed to the above agreeable
circumstances, but, God wot, to the “poetical character”!]
“You jest pleasantly enough on your low spirits,” said Clifford; “but I
have a cause for mine.”
“What then?” cried Tomlinson. “So much the easier is it to cure them.
The mind can cure the evils that spring from the mind. It is only a fool
and a quack and a driveller when it professes to heal the evils that
spring from the body. My blue devils spring from the body; consequently
my mind, which, as you know, is a particularly wise mind, wrestles not
against them. Tell me frankly,” renewed Augustus, after a pause, “do you
ever repent? Do you ever think, if you had been a shop-boy with a white
apron about your middle, that you would have been a happier and a better
member of society than you now are?”
“Repent!” said Clifford, fiercely; and his answer opened more of his
secret heart, its motives, its reasonings, and its peculiarities
than were often discernible,--“repent! that is the idlest word in our
language. No; the moment I repent, that moment I reform! Never can it