Paul Clifford — Complete
breath, all trembling and warm, glowed upon her cheek; and once, and but
once, his lips drew nearer, and breathing aside the dishevelled richness
of her tresses, clung in a long and silent kiss to her own.
Meanwhile, by the help of the footman, who had now somewhat recovered
his astonished senses, the squire descended from his carriage, and
approached with faltering steps the place where his daughter reclined.
At the instant that he took her hand, Lucy began to revive; and the
first action, in the bewildered unconsciousness of awaking, was to throw
her arm around the neck of her supporter.
Could all the hours and realities of hope, joy, pleasure, in Clifford's
previous life have been melted down and concentrated into a single
emotion, that emotion would have been but tame to the rapture of Lucy's
momentary and innocent caress! And at a later yet no distant period,
when in the felon's cell the grim visage of Death scowled upon him, it
may be questioned whether his thoughts dwelt not far more often on
the remembrance of that delightful moment than on the bitterness and
ignominy of an approaching doom.
“She breathes,--she moves,--she wakes!” cried the father; and Lucy,
attempting to rise, and recognizing the squire's voice, said faintly,--
“Thank God, my dear father, you are not hurt! And are they really
gone?--and where--where are we?”
The squire, relieving Clifford of his charge, folded his child in his
arms, while in his own elucidatory manner he informed her where she was,
and with whom. The lovers stood face to face to each other; but what
delicious blushes did the night, which concealed all but the outline of
their forms, hide from the eyes of Clifford!
The honest and kind heart of Mr. Brandon was glad of a release to the
indulgent sentiments it had always cherished towards the suspected and
maligned Clifford, and turning now from Lucy, it fairly poured itself
forth upon her deliverer. He grasped him warmly by the hand, and
insisted upon his accompanying them to Bath in the carriage, and
allowing the footman to ride his horse. This offer was still pending,
when the footman, who had been to see after the health and comfort of
his fellow-servant, came to inform the party, in a dolorous accent, of
something which, in the confusion and darkness of the night, they had
not yet learned,--namely, that the horses and coachman were gone!
“Gone!” said the squire, “gone! Why, the villains can't (for my part,
I never believe, though I have heard such wonders of, those sleight of
hand) have bagged them!”
Here a low groan was audible; and the footman, sympathetically guided to
the spot whence it emanated, found the huge body of the coachman safely
deposited, with its face downward, in the middle of the kennel. After
this worthy had been lifted to his legs, and had shaken himself into
intelligence, it was found that when the robber had detained the horses,
the coachman, who required very little to conquer his more bellicose
faculties, had--he himself said, by a violent blow from the ruffian,
though, perhaps, the cause lay nearer home--quitted the coach-box for
the kennel, the horses grew frightened, and after plunging and rearing
till he cared no longer to occupy himself with their arrest, the
highwayman had very quietly cut the traces, and by the time present,
it was not impossible that the horses were almost at the door of their
stables at Bath.
The footman who had apprised the squire of this misfortune was,
unlike most news-tellers, the first to offer consolation. “There be an
excellent public,” quoth he, “about a half a mile on, where your honour
could get horses; or, mayhap, if Miss Lucy, poor heart, be faint, you
may like to stop for the night.”
Though a walk of half a mile in a dark night and under other
circumstances would not have seemed a grateful proposition, yet at
present, when the squire's imagination had only pictured to him the
alternatives of passing the night in the carriage or of crawling on foot
to Bath, it seemed but a very insignificant hardship; and tucking his
daughter's arm under his own, while in a kind voice he told Clifford “to
support her on the other side,” the squire ordered the footman to lead
the way with Clifford's horse, and the coachman to follow or be d---d,
whichever he pleased.
In silence Clifford offered his arm to Lucy, and silently she accepted
the courtesy. The squire was the only talker; and the theme he chose was
not ungrateful to Lucy, for it was the praise of her lover. But Clifford
scarcely listened, for a thousand thoughts and feelings contested within
him; and the light touch of Lucy's hand upon his arm would alone have
been sufficient to distract and confuse his attention. The darkness of
the night, the late excitement, the stolen kiss that still glowed upon
his lips, the remembrance of Lucy's flattering agitation in the scene
with her at Lord Mauleverer's, the yet warmer one of that unconscious
embrace, which still tingled through every nerve of his frame, all
conspired with the delicious emotion which he now experienced at her
presence and her contact to intoxicate and inflame him. Oh, those
burning moments in love, when romance has just mellowed into passion,
and without losing anything of its luxurious vagueness mingles the
enthusiasm of its dreams with the ardent desires of reality and earth!
That is the exact time when love has reached its highest point,--when
all feelings, all thoughts, the whole soul, and the whole mind, are
seized and engrossed,--when every difficulty weighed in the opposite
scale seems lighter than dust,--when to renounce the object beloved is
the most deadly and lasting sacrifice,--and when in so many breasts,
where honour, conscience, virtue, are far stronger than we can believe
them ever to have been in a criminal like Clifford, honour, conscience,
virtue, have perished at once and suddenly into ashes before that mighty
and irresistible fire.
The servant, who had had previous opportunities of ascertaining the
topography of the “public” of which he spake, and who was perhaps
tolerably reconciled to his late terror in the anticipation of renewing
his intimacy with “the spirits of the past,” now directed the attention
of our travellers to a small inn just before them. Mine host had not yet
retired to repose, and it was not necessary to knock twice before the
door was opened.
A bright fire, an officious landlady, a commiserate landlord, a warm
potation, and the promise of excellent beds, all appeared to our squire
to make ample amends for the intelligence that the inn was not licensed
to let post-horses; and mine host having promised forthwith to send
two stout fellows, a rope, and a cart-horse to bring the carriage under
shelter (for the squire valued the vehicle because it was twenty years
old), and moreover to have the harness repaired, and the horses ready
by an early hour the next day, the good humour of Mr. Brandon rose into
positive hilarity. Lucy retired under the auspices of the landlady to
bed; and the squire having drunk a bowl of bishop, and discovered a
thousand new virtues in Clifford, especially that of never interrupting
a good story, clapped the captain on the shoulder, and making him
promise not to leave the inn till he had seen him again, withdrew
also to the repose of his pillow. Clifford remained below, gazing
abstractedly on the fire for some time afterwards; nor was it till the
drowsy chambermaid had thrice informed him of the prepared comforts of
his bed, that he adjourned to his chamber. Even then it seems that sleep
did not visit his eyelids; for a wealthy grazier, who lay in the room
below, complained bitterly the next morning of some person walking
overhead “in all manner of strides, just for all the world like a
happarition in boots.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
Viola. And dost thou love me?
Lysander.... Love thee, Viola? Do I not fly thee when my
being drinks Light from thine eyes?--that flight is all my answer!
The Bride, Act ii. sc. 1.
The curtain meditations of the squire had not been without the produce
of a resolve. His warm heart at once reopened to the liking he had
formerly conceived for Clifford; he longed for an opportunity to atone
for his past unkindness, and to testify his present gratitude; moreover,
he felt at once indignant at, and ashamed of, his late conduct in
joining the popular, and, as he now fully believed, the causeless
prepossession against his young friend, and before a more present and
a stronger sentiment his habitual deference for his brother's counsels
faded easily away. Coupled with these favourable feelings towards
Clifford were his sagacious suspicions, or rather certainty, of Lucy's
attachment to her handsome deliverer; and he had at least sufficient
penetration to perceive that she was not likely to love him the less for
the night's adventure. To all this was added the tender recollection of
his wife's parting words; and the tears and tell-tale agitation of Lucy
in the carriage were sufficient to his simple mind, which knew not how
lightly maiden's tears are shed and dried, to confirm the prediction
of the dear deceased. Nor were the squire's more generous and kindly
feelings utterly unmixed with selfish considerations. Proud, but not
the least ambitious, he was always more ready to confer an honour
than receive one, and at heart he was secretly glad at the notion of
exchanging, as a son-in-law, the polished and unfamiliar Mauleverer for
the agreeable and social Clifford. Such in “admired disorder,” were the
thoughts which rolled through the teeming brain of Joseph Brandon; and
before he had turned on his left side, which he always did preparatory
to surrendering himself to slumber, the squire had fully come to a
determination most fatal to the schemes of the lawyer and the hopes of
the earl.
The next morning, as Lucy was knitting
“The loose train of her amber-dropping hair”
before the little mirror of her chamber, which even through its dimmed
and darkened glass gave back a face which might have shamed a Grecian
vision of Aurora, a gentle tap at her door announced her father.
There was in his rosy and comely countenance that expression generally
characteristic of a man pleased with himself, and persuaded that he is
about to give pleasure.
“My dear child,” said the squire, fondly stroking down the luxuriance of
his Lucy's hair, and kissing her damask cheek, “I am come to have some
little conversation with you. Sit down now, and (for my part, I love
to talk at my ease; and, by the by, shut the window, my love, it is
an easterly wind) I wish that we may come to a clear and distinct
understanding. Hem!--give me your hand, my child,--I think on these
matters one can scarcely speak too precisely and to the purpose;
although I am well aware (for, for my own part, I always wish to act
to every one, to you especially, my dearest child, with the greatest
consideration) that we must go to work with as much delicacy as
conciseness. You know this Captain Clifford,--'t is a brave youth, is
it not? Well--nay, never blush so deeply; there is nothing (for in these
matters one can't have all one's wishes, one can't have everything) to
be ashamed of! Tell me now, child, dost think he is in love with thee?”
If Lucy did not immediately answer by words, her pretty lips moved as if
she could readily reply; and finally they settled into so sweet and
so assured a smile that the squire, fond as he was of “precise”
information, was in want of no fuller answer to his question.
“Ay, ay, young lady,” said he, looking at her with all a father's
affection, “I see how it is. And, come now, what do you turn away for?
Dost think, if, as I believe, though there are envious persons in