Paul Clifford — Complete
of men,--a cuckold, a cuckold!” and as he said the last word Brandon
laughed outright. “And he thinks, too,” added he, “that he is sure of my
fortune; otherwise, perhaps, he, the goldsmith's descendant, would not
dignify our house with his proposals; but he may err there,--he may err
there,” and, finishing his soliloquy, Brandon finished also his letter
by--“Adieu, my dear lord, your most affectionate friend”!
It is not difficult to conjecture the effect produced upon Lucy by
Brandon's letter. It made her wretched; she refused for days to go out;
she shut herself up in her apartment, and consumed the time in tears
and struggles with her own heart. Sometimes what she conceived to be her
duty conquered, and she resolved to forswear her lover; but the night
undid the labour of the day,--for at night, every night, the sound of
her lover's voice, accompanied by music, melted away her resolution, and
made her once more all tenderness and trust. The words, too, sung
under her window were especially suited to affect her; they breathed
a melancholy which touched her the more from its harmony with her own
thoughts. One while they complained of absence, at another they hinted
at neglect; but there was always in them a tone of humiliation, not
reproach; they bespoke a sense of unworthiness in the lover, and
confessed that even the love was a crime: and in proportion as they
owned the want of desert did Lucy more firmly cling to the belief that
her lover was deserving.
The old squire was greatly disconcerted by his brother's letter. Though
impressed with the idea of self-consequence, and the love of tolerably
pure blood, common to most country squires, he was by no means ambitious
for his daughter. On the contrary, the same feeling which at Warlock had
made him choose his companions among the inferior gentry made him
averse to the thought of a son-in-law from the peerage. In spite of
Mauleverer's good-nature, the very ease of the earl annoyed him, and he
never felt at home in his society. To Clifford he had a great liking;
and having convinced himself that there was nothing to suspect in the
young gentleman, he saw no earthly reason why so agreeable a companion
should not be an agreeable son-in-law. “If he be poor,” thought the
squire, “though he does not seem so, Lucy is rich!” And this truism
appeared to him to answer every objection. Nevertheless, William Brandon
possessed a remarkable influence over the weaker mind of his brother;
and the squire, though with great reluctance, resolved to adopt his
advice. He shut his doors against Clifford, and when he met him in the
streets, instead of greeting him with his wonted cordiality, he passed
him with a hasty “Good day, Captain!” which, after the first day or two,
merged into a distant bow. Whenever very good-hearted people are rude,
and unjustly so, the rudeness is in the extreme. The squire felt it so
irksome to be less familiar than heretofore with Clifford, that his
only remaining desire was now to drop him altogether; and to this
consummation of acquaintance the gradually cooling salute appeared
rapidly approaching. Meanwhile Clifford, unable to see Lucy, shunned by
her father, and obtaining in answer to all inquiry rude looks from the
footman, whom nothing but the most resolute command over his muscles
prevented him from knocking down, began to feel perhaps, for the first
time in his life, that an equivocal character is at least no equivocal
misfortune. To add to his distress, “the earnings of his previous
industry”--we use the expression cherished by the wise Tomlinson--waxed
gradually less and less beneath the expenses of Bath; and the murmuring
voices of his two comrades began already to reproach their chief for his
inglorious idleness, and to hint at the necessity of a speedy exertion.
CHAPTER XX.
Whackum. Look you there, now! Well, all Europe cannot show a knot
of finer wits and braver gentlemen.
Dingboy. Faith, they are pretty smart men.
SHADWELL: Scourers.
The world of Bath was of a sudden delighted by the intelligence that
Lord Mauleverer had gone to Beauvale (the beautiful seat possessed by
that nobleman in the neighbourhood of Bath), with the intention of there
holding a series of sumptuous entertainments.
The first persons to whom the gay earl announced his “hospitable
purpose” were Mr. and Miss Brandon; he called at their house, and
declared his resolution of not leaving it till Lucy (who was in her own
room) consented to gratify him with an interview, and a promise to
be the queen of his purposed festival. Lucy, teased by her father,
descended to the drawing-room, spiritless and pale; and the earl,
struck by the alteration of her appearance, took her hand, and made his
inquiries with so interesting and feeling a semblance of kindness as
prepossessed the father for the first time in his favour, and touched
even the daughter. So earnest, too, was his request that she would
honour his festivities with her presence, and with so skilful a flattery
was it conveyed, that the squire undertook to promise the favour in
her name; and when the earl, declaring he was not contented with that
promise from another, appealed to Lucy herself, her denial was soon
melted into a positive though a reluctant assent.
Delighted with his success, and more struck with Lucy's loveliness,
refined as it was by her paleness, than he had ever been before,
Mauleverer left the house, and calculated, with greater accuracy than
he had hitherto done, the probable fortune Lucy would derive from her
uncle.
No sooner were the cards issued for Lord Mauleverer's fete than nothing
else was talked of among the circles which at Bath people were pleased
to term “the World.”
But in the interim caps are making, and talk flowing, at Bath; and when
it was found that Lord Mauleverer--the good-natured Lord Mauleverer, the
obliging Lord Mauleverer--was really going to be exclusive, and out of
a thousand acquaintances to select only eight hundred, it is amazing
how his popularity deepened into respect. Now, then, came anxiety and
triumph; she who was asked turned her back upon her who was not,--old
friendships dissolved,--Independence wrote letters for a ticket,--and,
as England is the freest country in the world, all the Mistresses
Hodges and Snodges begged to take the liberty of bringing their youngest
daughters.
Leaving the enviable Mauleverer,--the god-like occasion of so much
happiness and woe, triumph and dejection,--ascend with us, O reader,
into those elegant apartments over the hairdresser's shop, tenanted
by Mr. Edward Pepper and Mr. Augustus Tomlinson. The time was that of
evening; Captain Clifford had been dining with his two friends; the
cloth was removed, and conversation was flowing over a table graced
by two bottles of port, a bowl of punch for Mr. Pepper's especial
discussion, two dishes of filberts, another of devilled biscuits, and a
fourth of three Pomarian crudities, which nobody touched.
The hearth was swept clean, the fire burned high and clear, the curtains
were let down, and the light excluded. Our three adventurers and
their rooms seemed the picture of comfort. So thought Mr. Pepper; for,
glancing round the chamber and putting his feet upon the fender, he
said,--
“Were my portrait to be taken, gentlemen, it is just as I am now that I
would be drawn!”
“And,” said Tomlinson, cracking his filberts,--Tomlinson was fond of
filberts,--“were I to choose a home, it is in such a home as this that I
would be always quartered.”
“Ah, gentlemen,” said Clifford, who had been for some time silent, “it
is more than probable that both your wishes may be heard, and that ye
may be drawn, quartered, and something else, too, in the very place of
your desert!”
“Well,” said Tomlinson, smiling gently, “I am happy to hear you jest
again, Captain, though it be at our expense.”
“Expense!” echoed Ned; “ay, there's the rub! Who the deuce is to pay the
expense of our dinner?”
“And our dinners for the last week?” added Tomlinson. “This empty nut
looks ominous; it certainly has one grand feature strikingly resembling
my pockets.”
“Heigho!” sighed Long Ned, turning his waistcoat commodities inside-out
with a significant gesture, while the accomplished Tomlinson, who
was fond of plaintive poetry, pointed to the disconsolate vacua, and
exclaimed,
“E'en while Fashion's brightest arts decoy,
The heart desponding asks if this be joy!”
“In truth, gentlemen,” added he, solemnly depositing his nut-crackers
on the table, and laying, as was his wont when about to be luminous, his
right finger on his sinister palm,--“in truth, gentlemen, affairs are
growing serious with us, and it becomes necessary forthwith to devise
some safe means of procuring a decent competence.”
“I am dunned confoundedly,” cried Ned.
“And,” continued Tomlinson, “no person of delicacy likes to be subjected
to the importunity of vulgar creditors; we must therefore raise money
for the liquidation of our debts. Captain Lovett, or Clifford, whichever
you be styled, we call upon you to assist us in so praiseworthy a
purpose.”
Clifford turned his eyes first on one and then on the other; but made no
answer.
“Imprimis,” said Tomlinson, “let us each produce our stock in hand; for
my part, I am free to confess--for what shame is there in that poverty
which our exertions are about to relieve?--that I have only two guineas
four shillings and threepence halfpenny!”
“And I,” said Long Ned, taking a China ornament from the chimney-piece,
and emptying its contents in his hand, “am in a still more pitiful
condition. See, I have only three shillings and a bad guinea. I gave
the guinea to the waiter at the White Hart yesterday; the dog brought
it back to me to-day, and I was forced to change it with my last shiner.
Plague take the thing! I bought it of a Jew for four shillings, and have
lost one pound five by the bargain.”
“Fortune frustrates our wisest schemes,” rejoined the moralizing
Augustus. “Captain, will you produce the scanty wrecks of your wealth?”
Clifford, still silent, threw a purse on the table. Augustus carefully
emptied it, and counted out five guineas; an expression of grave
surprise settled on Tomlinson's contemplative brow, and extending the
coins towards Clifford, he said in a melancholy tone,--
“All your pretty ones?
Did you say all?”
A look from Clifford answered the interesting interrogatory.
“These, then,” said Tomlinson, collecting in his hand the common
wealth,--“these, then, are all our remaining treasures!” As he spoke,
he jingled the coins mournfully in his palm, and gazing upon them with a
parental air, exclaimed,--
“Alas! regardless of their doom, the little victims play!”
“Oh, d---it!” said Ned, “no sentiment! Let us come to business at once.
To tell you the truth, I, for one, am tired of this heiress-hunting, and
a man may spend a fortune in the chase before he can win one.”
“You despair then, positively, of the widow you have courted so long?”
asked Tomlinson.
“Utterly,” rejoined Ned, whose addresses had been limited solely to the
dames of the middling class, and who had imagined himself at one
time, as he punningly expressed it, sure of a dear rib from
Cheapside,--“utterly; she was very civil to me at first, but when I
proposed, asked me, with a blush, for my 'references.' 'References?'
said I; 'why, I want the place of your husband, my charmer, not your
footman!' The dame was inexorable, said she could not take me without
a character, but hinted that I might be the lover instead of the
bridegroom; and when I scorned the suggestion, and pressed for the