Paul Clifford — Complete
parson, she told me point-blank, with her unlucky city pronunciation,
'that she would never accompany me to the halter!'”
“Ha, ha, ha!” cried Tomlinson, laughing. “One can scarcely blame the
good lady for that. Love rarely brooks such permanent ties. But have you
no other lady in your eye?”
“Not for matrimony,--all roads but those to the church!” While this
dissolute pair were thus conversing, Clifford, leaning against
the wainscot, listened to them with a sick and bitter feeling of
degradation, which till of late days had been a stranger to his breast.
He was at length aroused from his silence by Ned, who, bending forward
and placing his hand upon Clifford's knee, said abruptly,--
“In short, Captain, you must lead us once more to glory. We have still
our horses, and I keep my mask in my pocketbook, together with my comb.
Let us take the road to-morrow night, dash across the country towards
Salisbury, and after a short visit in that neighbourhood to a band of
old friends of mine,--bold fellows, who would have stopped the devil
himself when he was at work upon Stonehenge,--make a tour by Reading and
Henley and end by a plunge into London.”
“You have spoken well, Ned!” said Tomlinson, approvingly. “Now, noble
captain, your opinion?”
“Messieurs,” answered Clifford, “I highly approve of your intended
excursion, and I only regret that I cannot be your companion.”
“Not! and why?” cried Mr. Pepper, amazed.
“Because I have business here that renders it impossible; perhaps,
before long, I may join you in London.”
“Nay,” said Tomlinson, “there is no necessity for our going to London,
if you wish to remain here; nor need we at present recur to so desperate
an expedient as the road,--a little quiet business at Bath will answer
our purpose; and for my part, as you well know, I love exerting my
wits in some scheme more worthy of them than the highway,--a profession
meeter for a bully than a man of genius. Let us then, Captain, plan a
project of enrichment on the property of some credulous tradesman! Why
have recourse to rough measures so long as we can find easy fools?”
Clifford shook his head. “I will own to you fairly,” said he, “that I
cannot at present take a share in your exploits; nay, as your chief I
must lay my positive commands on you to refrain from all exercise of
your talents at Bath. Rob, if you please: the world is before you; but
this city is sacred.”
“Body o' me!” cried Ned, colouring, “but this is too good. I will not be
dictated to in this manner.”
“But, sir,” answered Clifford, who had learned in his oligarchical
profession the way to command,--“but, sir, you shall, or if you mutiny
you leave our body, and then will the hangman have no petty chance of
your own. Come, come! ingrate as you are, what would you be without me?
How many times have I already saved that long carcass of thine from the
rope, and now would you have the baseness to rebel? Out on you!”
Though Mr. Pepper was still wroth, he bit his lip in moody silence, and
suffered not his passion to have its way; while Clifford, rising, after
a short pause continued: “Look you, Mr. Pepper, you know my commands;
consider them peremptory. I wish you success and plenty! Farewell,
gentlemen!”
“Do you leave us already?” cried Tomlinson. “You are offended.”
“Surely not!” answered Clifford, retreating to the door. “But an
engagement elsewhere, you know!”
“Ay, I take you,” said Tomlinson, following Clifford out of the room,
and shutting the door after him. “Ay, I take you!” added he, in a
whisper, as he arrested Clifford at the head of the stairs. “But tell
me, how do you get on with the heiress?”
Smothering that sensation at his heart which made Clifford, reckless as
he was, enraged and ashamed, whenever through the lips of his comrades
there issued any allusion to Lucy Brandon, the chief replied: “I fear,
Tomlinson, that I am already suspected by the old squire! All of a
sudden he avoids me, shuts his door against me; Miss Brandon goes
nowhere, and even if she did, what could I expect from her after this
sudden change in the father?”
Tomlinson looked blank and disconcerted. “But,” said he, after a
moment's silence, “why not put a good face on the matter, walk up to the
squire, and ask him the reason of his unkindness?”
“Why, look you, my friend; I am bold enough with all others, but this
girl has made me as bashful as a maid in all that relates to herself.
Nay, there are moments when I think I can conquer all selfish feeling
and rejoice for her sake that she has escaped me. Could I but see her
once more, I could--yes! I feel--I feel I could--resign her forever!”
“Humph!” said Tomlinson; “and what is to become of us? Really, my
captain, your sense of duty should lead you to exert yourself; your
friends starve before your eyes, while you are shilly-shallying about
your mistress. Have you no bowels for friendship?”
“A truce with this nonsense!” said Clifford, angrily.
“It is sense,--sober sense,--and sadness too,” rejoined Tomlinson.
“Ned is discontented, our debts are imperious. Suppose, now,--just
suppose,--that we take a moonlight flitting from Bath, will that tell
well for you whom we leave behind? Yet this we must do, if you do not
devise some method of refilling our purses. Either, then, consent to
join us in a scheme meet for our wants, or pay our debts in this city,
or fly with us to London, and dismiss all thoughts of that love which is
so seldom friendly to the projects of ambition.”
Notwithstanding the manner in which Tomlinson made this threefold
proposition, Clifford could not but acknowledge the sense and justice
contained in it; and a glance at the matter sufficed to show how ruinous
to his character, and therefore to his hopes, would be the flight of his
comrades and the clamour of their creditors.
“You speak well, Tomlinson,” said he, hesitating; “and yet for the life
of me I cannot aid you in any scheme which may disgrace us by detection.
Nothing can reconcile me to the apprehension of Miss Brandon's
discovering who and what was her suitor.”
“I feel for you,” said Tomlinson, “but give me and Pepper at least
permission to shift for ourselves; trust to my known prudence for
finding some method to raise the wind without creating a dust; in other
words (this cursed Pepper makes one so vulgar!), of preying on the
public without being discovered.”
“I see no alternative,” answered Clifford, reluctantly; “but if
possible, be quiet for the present. Bear with me for a few days longer,
give me only sufficient time once more to see Miss Brandon, and I will
engage to extricate you from your difficulties!”
“Spoken like yourself, frankly and nobly,” replied Tomlinson; “no one
has a greater confidence in your genius, once exerted, than I have!”
So saying, the pair shook hands and parted. Tomlinson rejoined Mr.
Pepper.
“Well, have you settled anything?” quoth the latter.
“Not exactly; and though Lovett has promised to exert himself in a few
days, yet, as the poor man is in love, and his genius under a cloud, I
have little faith in his promises.”
“And I have none!” said Pepper; “besides, time presses! A few days!--a
few devils! We are certainly scented here, and I walk about like a
barrel of beer at Christmas, under hourly apprehension of being tapped!”
“It is very strange,” said the philosophic Augustus; “but I think there
is an instinct in tradesmen by which they can tell a rogue at first
sight; and I can get (dress I ever so well) no more credit with my
laundress than my friends the Whigs can with the people.”
“In short, then,” said Ned, “we must recur at once to the road; and on
the day after to-morrow there will be an excellent opportunity. The
old earl with the hard name gives a breakfast, or feast, or some such
mummery. I understand people will stay till after nightfall; let us
watch our opportunity, we are famously mounted, and some carriage later
than the general string may furnish us with all our hearts can desire!”
“Bravo!” cried Tomlinson, shaking Mr. Pepper heartily by the hand; “I
give you joy of your ingenuity, and you may trust to me to make our
peace afterwards with Lovett. Any enterprise that seems to him gallant
he is always willing enough to forgive; and as he never practises
any other branch of the profession than that of the road (for which I
confess that I think him foolish), he will be more ready to look
over our exploits in that line than in any other more subtle but less
heroic.”
“Well, I leave it to you to propitiate the cove or not, as you please;
and now that we have settled the main point, let us finish the lush!”
“And,” added Augustus, taking a pack of cards from the chimney-piece,
“we can in the mean while have a quiet game at cribbage for shillings.”
“Done!” cried Ned, clearing away the dessert.
If the redoubted hearts of Mr. Edward Pepper, and that Ulysses of
robbers, Augustus Tomlinson, beat high as the hours brought on Lord
Mauleverer's fete, their leader was not without anxiety and expectation
for the same event. He was uninvited, it is true, to the gay scene;
but he had heard in public that Miss Brandon, recovered from her late
illness, was certainly to be there; and Clifford, torn with suspense,
and eager once more, even if for the last time, to see the only person
who had ever pierced his soul with a keen sense of his errors or crimes,
resolved to risk all obstacles and meet her at Mauleverer's.
“My life,” said he, as he sat alone in his apartment, eying the
falling embers of his still and lethargic fire, “may soon approach its
termination; it is, indeed, out of the chances of things that I can
long escape the doom of my condition; and when, as a last hope to raise
myself from my desperate state into respectability and reform, I came
hither, and meditated purchasing independence by marriage, I was
blind to the cursed rascality of the action! Happy, after all, that my
intentions were directed against one whom I so soon and so adoringly
learned to love! Had I wooed one whom I loved less, I might not have
scrupled to deceive her into marriage. As it is,--well, it is idle in
me to think thus of my resolution, when I have not even the option to
choose; when her father, perhaps, has already lifted the veil from my
assumed dignities, and the daughter already shrinks in horror from my
name. Yet I will see her! I will look once more upon that angel face, I
will hear from her own lips the confession of her scorn, I will see that
bright eye flash hatred upon me, and I can then turn once more to my
fatal career, and forget that I have ever repented that it was begun.
Yet, what else could have been my alternative? Friendless, homeless,
nameless,--an orphan, worse than an orphan,--the son of a harlot, my
father even unknown; yet cursed with early aspirings and restlessness,
and a half glimmering of knowledge, and an entire lust of whatever
seemed enterprise,--what wonder that I chose anything rather than daily
labour and perpetual contumely? After all, the fault is in fortune and
the world, not me! Oh, Lucy! had I but been born in your sphere, had
I but possessed the claim to merit you, what would I not have done and
dared and conquered for your sake!”
Such, or similar to these, were the thoughts of Clifford during the
interval between his resolution of seeing Lucy and the time of effecting
it. The thoughts were of no pleasing though of an exciting nature;
nor were they greatly soothed by the ingenious occupation of cheating
himself into the belief that if he was a highwayman, it was altogether
the fault of the highways.
CHAPTER XXI.
Dream. Let me but see her, dear Leontins.
Humorous Lieutenant.
Hempskirke. It was the fellow, sure.