Paul Clifford — Complete
lest his cherished matrimonial project should altogether fail. The
account of Lucy and of Captain Clifford contained in the epistle
instilled, indeed, a double portion of sourness into the professionally
acrid mind of the lawyer; and as it so happened that he read the letter
just before attending the court upon a case in which he was counsel to
the crown, the witnesses on the opposite side of the question felt the
full effects of the barrister's ill humour. The case was one in which
the defendant had been engaged in swindling transactions to a very large
amount; and among his agents and assistants was a person of the very
lowest orders, but who, seemingly enjoying large connections, and
possessing natural acuteness and address, appeared to have been of
great use in receiving and disposing of such goods as were fraudulently
obtained. As a witness against the latter person appeared a pawnbroker,
who produced certain articles that had been pledged to him at different
times by this humble agent. Now, Brandon, in examining the guilty
go-between, became the more terribly severe in proportion as the man
evinced that semblance of unconscious stolidity which the lower orders
can so ingeniously assume, and which is so peculiarly adapted to enrage
and to baffle the gentlemen of the bar. At length, Brandon entirely
subduing and quelling the stubborn hypocrisy of the culprit, the man
turned towards him a look between wrath and beseechingness, muttering,--
“Aha! if so be, Counsellor Prandon, you knew vat I knows. You vould not
go for to bully I so!”
“And pray, my good fellow, what is it that you know that should make me
treat you as if I thought you an honest man?”
The witness had now relapsed into sullenness, and only answered by
a sort of grunt. Brandon, who knew well how to sting a witness
into communicativeness, continued his questioning till the witness,
re-aroused into anger, and it may be into indiscretion, said in a low
voice,--
“Hax Mr. Swoppem the pawnbroker what I sold 'im on the 15th hof
February, exactly twenty-three yearn ago.” Brandon started back, his
lips grew white, he clenched his hands with a convulsive spasm; and
while all his features seemed distorted with an earnest yet fearful
intensity of expectation, he poured forth a volley of questions, so
incoherent and so irrelevant that he was immediately called to order
by his learned brother on the opposite side. Nothing further could be
extracted from the witness. The pawnbroker was resummoned: he appeared
somewhat disconcerted by an appeal to his memory so far back as
twenty-three years; but after taking some time to consider, during which
the agitation of the usually cold and possessed Brandon was remarkable
to all the court, he declared that he recollected no transaction
whatsoever with the witness at that time. In vain were all Brandon's
efforts to procure a more elucidatory answer. The pawnbroker was
impenetrable, and the lawyer was compelled reluctantly to dismiss
him. The moment the witness left the box, Brandon sank into a gloomy
abstraction,--he seemed quite to forget the business and the duties of
the court; and so negligently did he continue to conclude the case, so
purposeless was the rest of his examination and cross-examination, that
the cause was entirely marred, and a verdict “Not guilty” returned by
the jury.
The moment he left the court, Brandon repaired to the pawnbroker's; and
after a conversation with Mr. Swoppem, in which he satisfied that honest
tradesman that his object was rather to reward than intimidate, Swoppem
confessed that twenty-three years ago the witness had met him at a
public-house in Devereux Court, in company with two other men, and sold
him several articles in plate, ornaments, etc. The great bulk of these
articles had, of course, long left the pawnbroker's abode; but he still
thought a stray trinket or two, not of sufficient worth to be reset or
remodelled, nor of sufficient fashion to find a ready sale, lingered in
his drawers. Eagerly, and with trembling hands, did Brandon toss over
the motley contents of the mahogany reservoirs which the pawnbroker now
submitted to his scrutiny. Nothing on earth is so melancholy a
prospect as a pawnbroker's drawer! Those little, quaint, valueless
ornaments,--those true-lovers' knots, those oval lockets, those battered
rings, girdled by initials, or some brief inscription of regard or of
grief,--what tales of past affections, hopes, and sorrows do they not
tell! But no sentiment of so general a sort ever saddened the hard mind
of William Brandon, and now less than at any time could such reflections
have occurred to him. Impatiently he threw on the table, one after
another, the baubles once hoarded perchance with the tenderest respect,
till at length his eyes sparkled, and with a nervous gripe he seized
upon an old ring which was inscribed with letters, and circled a heart
containing hair. The inscription was simply, “W. B. to Julia.” Strange
and dark was the expression that settled on Brandon's face as he
regarded this seemingly worthless trinket. After a moment's gaze, he
uttered an inarticulate exclamation, and thrusting it into his pocket,
renewed his search. He found one or two other trifles of a similar
nature; one was an ill-done miniature set in silver, and bearing at
the back sundry half-effaced letters, which Brandon construed at once
(though no other eye could) into “Sir John Brandon, 1635, AEtat. 28;”
the other was a seal stamped with the noble crest of the house of
Brandon, 'A bull's head, ducally crowned and armed, Or.' As soon as
Brandon had possessed himself of these treasures, and arrived at the
conviction that the place held no more, he assured the conscientious
Swoppem of his regard for that person's safety, rewarded him
munificently, and went his way to Bow Street for a warrant against the
witness who had commended him to the pawnbroker. On his road thither,
a new resolution occurred to him. “Why make all public,” he muttered
to himself, “if it can be avoided? and it may be avoided!” He paused a
moment, then retraced his way to the pawnbroker's, and, after a brief
mandate to Mr. Swoppem, returned home. In the course of the same
evening the witness we refer to was brought to the lawyer's house by Mr.
Swoppem, and there held a long and private conversation with Brandon;
the result of this seemed a compact to their mutual satisfaction, for
the man went away safe, with a heavy purse and a light heart, although
sundry shades and misgivings did certainly ever and anon cross the
latter; while Brandon flung himself back in his seat with the triumphant
air of one who has accomplished some great measure, and his dark face
betrayed in every feature a joyousness and hope which were unfrequent
guests, it must be owned, either to his countenance or his heart.
So good a man of business, however, was William Brandon that he allowed
not the event of that day to defer beyond the night his attention to his
designs for the aggrandizement of his niece and house. By daybreak the
next morning he had written to Lord Mauleverer, to his brother, and to
Lucy. To the last his letter, couched in all the anxiety of fondness and
the caution of affectionate experience, was well calculated to occasion
that mingled shame and soreness which the wary lawyer rightly judged
would be the most effectual enemy to an incipient passion. “I have
accidentally heard,” he wrote, “from a friend of mine, just arrived from
Bath, of the glaring attentions paid to you by a Captain Clifford; I
will not, my dearest niece, wound you by repeating what also I heard of
your manner in receiving them. I know the ill-nature and the envy of the
world; and I do not for a moment imagine that my Lucy, of whom I am so
justly proud, would countenance, from a petty coquetry, the advances
of one whom she could never marry, or evince to any suitor partiality
unknown to her relations, and certainly placed in a quarter which could
never receive their approbation. I do not credit the reports of the
idle, my dear niece; but if I discredit, you must not slight them. I
call upon your prudence, your delicacy, your discretion, your sense of
right, at once and effectually to put a stop to all impertinent rumours:
dance with this young man no more; do not let him be of your party in
any place of amusement, public or private; avoid even seeing him if you
are able, and throw in your manner towards him that decided coldness
which the world cannot mistake.” Much more did the skilful uncle write,
but all to the same purpose, and for the furtherance of the same design.
His letter to his brother was not less artful. He told him at once
that Lucy's preference of the suit of a handsome fortune-hunter was
the public talk, and besought him to lose not a moment in quelling the
rumour. “You may do so easily,” he wrote, “by avoiding the young man;
and should he be very importunate, return at once to Warlock. Your
daughter's welfare must be dearer to you than anything.”
To Mauleverer, Brandon replied by a letter which turned first on
public matters, and then slid carelessly into the subject of the earl's
information.
Among the admonitions which he ventured to give Mauleverer, he dwelt,
not without reason, on the want of tact displayed by the earl in not
manifesting that pomp and show which his station in life enabled him
to do. “Remember,” he urged, “you are not among your equals, by whom
unnecessary parade begins to be considered an ostentatious vulgarity.
The surest method of dazzling our inferiors is by splendour, not taste.
All young persons--all women in particular--are caught by show, and
enamoured of magnificence. Assume a greater state, and you will be more
talked of; and notoriety wins a woman's heart more than beauty or youth.
You have, forgive me, played the boy too long; a certain dignity becomes
your manhood; women will not respect you if you suffer yourself to
become 'stale and cheap to vulgar company.' You are like a man who has
fifty advantages, and uses only one of them to gain his point, when you
rely on your conversation and your manner, and throw away the resources
of your wealth and your station. Any private gentleman may be amiable
and witty; but any private gentleman cannot call to his aid the
Aladdin's lamp possessed in England by a wealthy peer. Look to this,
my dear lord! Lucy at heart is vain, or she is not a woman. Dazzle her,
then,--dazzle! Love may be blind, but it must be made so by excess of
light. You have a country-house within a few miles of Bath. Why not take
up your abode there instead of in a paltry lodging in the town? Give
sumptuous entertainments,--make it necessary for all the world to attend
them,--exclude, of course, this Captain Clifford; you will then meet
Lucy without a rival. At present, excepting only your title, you fight
on a level ground with this adventurer, instead of an eminence from
which you could in an instant sweep him away. Nay, he is stronger than
you; he has the opportunities afforded by a partnership in balls where
you cannot appear to advantage; he is, you say, in the first bloom
of youth, he is handsome. Reflect!--your destiny, so far as Lucy is
concerned, is in your hands. I turn to other subjects,” etc. As Brandon
re-read, ere he signed, this last letter, a bitter smile sat on his
harsh yet handsome features. “If,” said he, mentally, “I can effect this
object,--if Mauleverer does marry this girl,--why so much the better
that she has another, a fairer, and a more welcome lover. By the great
principle of scorn within me, which has enabled me to sneer at what
weaker minds adore, and make a footstool of that worldly honour which
fools set up as a throne, it would be to me more sweet than fame--ay,
or even than power--to see this fine-spun lord a gibe in the mouths