Paul Clifford — Complete
seem to me an atonement for crime merely to regret it. My mind would
lead me, not to regret, but to repair! Repent! no, not yet. The older I
grow, the more I see of men and of the callings of social life, the more
I, an open knave, sicken at the glossed and covert dishonesties around.
I acknowledge no allegiance to society. From my birth to this hour, I
have received no single favour from its customs or its laws; openly
I war against it, and patiently will I meet its revenge. This may be
crime; but it looks light in my eyes when I gaze around, and survey on
all sides the masked traitors who acknowledge large debts to society,
who profess to obey its laws, adore its institutions, and, above
all--oh, how righteously!--attack all those who attack it, and who
yet lie and cheat and defraud and peculate,--publicly reaping all the
comforts, privately filching all the profits. Repent!--of what? I come
into the world friendless and poor; I find a body of laws hostile to
the friendless and the poor! To those laws hostile to me, then, I
acknowledge hostility in my turn. Between us are the conditions of
war. Let them expose a weakness,--I insist on my right to seize
the advantage; let them defeat me, and I allow their right to
destroy.”--[The author need not, he hopes, observe that these sentiments
are Mr. Paul Clifford's, not his.]
“Passion,” said Augustus, coolly, “is the usual enemy of reason; in your
case it is the friend.”
The pair had now gained the summit of a hill which commanded a view of
the city below. Here Augustus, who was a little short-winded, paused
to recover breath. As soon as he had done so, he pointed with his
forefinger to the scene beneath, and said enthusiastically, “What a
subject for contemplation!”
Clifford was about to reply, when suddenly the sound of laughter and
voices was heard behind. “Let us fly!” cried Augustus; “on this day of
spleen man delights me not--or woman either.”
“Stay!” said Clifford, in a trembling accent; for among those voices he
recognized one which had already acquired over him an irresistible and
bewitching power. Augustus sighed, and reluctantly remained motionless.
Presently a winding in the road brought into view a party of pleasure,
some on foot, some on horseback, others in the little vehicles which
even at that day haunted watering-places, and called themselves “Flies”
or “Swallows.”
But among the gay procession Clifford had only eyes for one! Walking
with that elastic step which so rarely survives the first epoch of
youth, by the side of the heavy chair in which her father was drawn, the
fair beauty of Lucy Brandon threw--at least in the eyes of her lover--a
magic and a lustre over the whole group. He stood for a moment, stilling
the heart that leaped at her bright looks and the gladness of her
innocent laugh; and then recovering himself, he walked slowly, and with
a certain consciousness of the effect of his own singularly handsome
person, towards the party. The good squire received him with his usual
kindness, and informed him, according to that lucidus ordo which he so
especially favoured, of the whole particulars of their excursion. There
was something worthy of an artist's sketch in the scene at that moment:
the old squire in his chair, with his benevolent face turned towards
Clifford, and his hands resting on his cane, Clifford himself bowing
down his stately head to hear the details of the father; the beautiful
daughter on the other side of the chair, her laugh suddenly stilled, her
gait insensibly more composed, and blush chasing blush over the smooth
and peach-like loveliness of her cheek; the party, of all sizes, ages,
and attire, affording ample scope for the caricaturist; and the pensive
figure of Augustus Tomlinson (who, by the by, was exceedingly like
Liston) standing apart from the rest, on the brow of the hill where
Clifford had left him, and moralizing on the motley procession, with
one hand hid in his waistcoat, and the other caressing his chin, which
slowly and pendulously with the rest of his head moved up and down.
As the party approached the brow of the hill, the view of the city
below was so striking that there was a general pause for the purpose of
survey. One young lady in particular drew forth her pencil, and began
sketching, while her mamma looked complacently on, and abstractedly
devoured a sandwich. It was at this time, in the general pause, that
Clifford and Lucy found themselves--Heaven knows how!--next to each
other, and at a sufficient distance from the squire and the rest of the
party to feel in some measure alone. There was a silence in both which
neither dared to break; when Lucy, after looking at and toying with a
flower that she had brought from the place which the party had been to
see, accidentally dropped it; and Clifford and herself stooping at the
same moment to recover it, their hands met. Involuntarily, Clifford
detained the soft fingers in his own; his eyes, that encountered hers,
so spell-bound and arrested them that for once they did not sink beneath
his gaze; his lips moved, but many and vehement emotions so suffocated
his voice that no sound escaped them. But all the heart was in the eyes
of each; that moment fixed their destinies. Henceforth there was an
era from which they dated a new existence; a nucleus around which their
thoughts, their remembrances, and their passions clung. The great gulf
was passed; they stood on the same shore, and felt that though
still apart and disunited, on that shore was no living creature but
themselves! Meanwhile Augustus Tomlinson, on finding himself surrounded
by persons eager to gaze and to listen, broke from his moodiness and
reserve. Looking full at his next neighbour, and flourishing his right
hand in the air, till he suffered it to rest in the direction of the
houses and chimneys below, he repeated that moral exclamation which
had been wasted on Clifford, with a more solemn and a less passionate
gravity than before,--“What a subject, ma'am, for contemplation!”
“Very sensibly said, indeed, sir,” said the lady addressed, who was
rather of a serious turn.
“I never,” resumed Augustus in a louder key, and looking round for
auditors,--“I never see a great town from the top of a hill without
thinking of an apothecary's shop!”
“Lord, sir!” said the lady. Tomlinson's end was gained. Struck with the
quaintness of the notion, a little crowd gathered instantly around him,
to hear it further developed.
“Of an apothecary's shop, ma'am!” repeated Tomlinson. “There lie your
simples and your purges and your cordials and your poisons,--all things
to heal and to strengthen and to destroy. There are drugs enough in that
collection to save you, to cure you all; but none of you know how to use
them, nor what medicines to ask for, nor what portions to take; so that
the greater part of you swallow a wrong dose, and die of the remedy!”
“But if the town be the apothecary's shop, what, in the plan of your
idea, stands for the apothecary?” asked an old gentleman, who perceived
at what Tomlinson was driving.
“The apothecary, sir,” answered Augustus, stealing his notion from
Clifford, and sinking his voice lest the true proprietor should overhear
him (Clifford was otherwise employed),--“the apothecary, sir, is the
LAW! It is the law that stands behind the counter, and dispenses to
each man the dose he should take. To the poor it gives bad drugs
gratuitously; to the rich, pills to stimulate the appetite; to the
latter, premiums for luxury; to the former, only speedy refuges from
life! Alas! either your apothecary is but an ignorant quack, or his
science itself is but in its cradle. He blunders as much as you would
do if left to your own selection. Those who have recourse to him seldom
speak gratefully of his skill. He relieves you, it is true,--but of your
money, not your malady; and the only branch of his profession in which
he is an adept is that which enables him to bleed you! O mankind!”
continued Augustus, “what noble creatures you ought to be! You have keys
to all sciences, all arts, all mysteries, but one! You have not a notion
how you ought to be governed; you cannot frame a tolerable law, for the
life and soul of you! You make yourselves as uncomfortable as you can by
all sorts of galling and vexatious institutions, and you throw the blame
upon 'Fate.' You lay down rules it is impossible to comprehend, much
less to obey; and you call each other monsters, because you cannot
conquer the impossibility! You invent all sorts of vices, under pretence
of making laws for preserving virtue; and the anomalous artificialities
of conduct yourselves produce, you say you are born with; you make a
machine by the perversest art you can think of, and you call it, with
a sigh, 'Human Nature.' With a host of good dispositions struggling at
your breasts, you insist upon libelling the Almighty, and declaring that
he meant you to be wicked. Nay, you even call the man mischievous and
seditious who begs and implores you to be one jot better than you are. O
mankind! you are like a nosegay bought at Covent Garden. The flowers are
lovely, the scent delicious. Mark that glorious hue; contemplate that
bursting petal! How beautiful, how redolent of health, of nature, of the
dew and breath and blessing of Heaven, are you all! But as for the dirty
piece of string that ties you together, one would think you had picked
it out of the kennel.”
So saying, Tomlinson turned on his heel, broke away from the crowd, and
solemnly descended the hill. The party of pleasure slowly followed;
and Clifford, receiving an invitation from the squire to partake of his
family dinner, walked by the side of Lucy, and felt as if his spirit
were drunk with the airs of Eden.
A brother squire, who among the gayeties of Bath was almost as forlorn
as Joseph Brandon himself, partook of the Lord of Warlock's hospitality.
When the three gentlemen adjourned to the drawing-room, the two
elder sat down to a game at backgammon, and Clifford was left to the
undisturbed enjoyment of Lucy's conversation. She was sitting by the
window when Clifford joined her. On the table by her side were scattered
books, the charm of which (they were chiefly poetry) she had only
of late learned to discover; there also were strewn various little
masterpieces of female ingenuity, in which the fairy fingers of Lucy
Brandon were especially formed to excel. The shades of evening were
rapidly darkening over the empty streets; and in the sky, which was
cloudless and transparently clear, the stars came gradually out one by
one, until,--
“As water does a sponge, so their soft light
Filled the void, hollow, universal air.”
Beautiful evening! (if we, as well as Augustus Tomlinson, may indulge in
an apostrophe)--beautiful evening! For thee all poets have had a song,
and surrounded thee with rills and waterfalls and dews and flowers and
sheep and bats and melancholy and owls; yet we must confess that to us,
who in this very sentimental age are a bustling, worldly, hard-minded
person, jostling our neighbours, and thinking of the main chance,--to us
thou art never so charming as when we meet thee walking in thy gray hood
through the emptying streets and among the dying sounds of a city. We
love to feel the stillness where all, two hours back, was clamour.
We love to see the dingy abodes of Trade and Luxury--those restless
patients of earth's constant fever--contrasted and canopied by a heaven
full of purity and quietness and peace. We love to fill our thought with
speculations on man, even though the man be the muffin-man, rather than
with inanimate objects,--hills and streams,--things to dream about, not
to meditate on. Man is the subject of far nobler contemplation, of far