Paul Clifford — Complete
of the deceased, and after a long silence burst into a passion of tears.
“My father!” she sobbed,--“my kind, good father! who will love me now?”
“I!” said Brandon, deeply affected; and passing round the bed, he took
his niece in his arms: “I will be your father, Lucy, and you--the last
of our race--shall be to me as a daughter!”
CHAPTER XXV.
Falsehood in him was not the useless lie
Of boasting pride or laughing vanity:
It was the gainful, the persuading art, etc.
CRABBE.
On with the horses--off to Canterbury,
Tramp, tramp o'er pebble, and splash, splash thro' puddle;
Hurrah! how swiftly speeds the post so merry!
...............
“Here laws are all inviolate: none lay
Traps for the traveller; every highway's clear;
Here--” he was interrupted by a knife,
With “D---your eyes! your money or your life!”
Don Juan.
Misfortunes are like the creations of Cadmus,--they destroy one another!
Roused from the torpor of mind occasioned by the loss of her lover at
the sudden illness of the squire, Lucy had no thought for herself, no
thought for any one, for anything but her father, till long after the
earth had closed over his remains. The very activity of the latter grief
was less dangerous than the quiet of the former; and when the first
keenness of sorrow passed away, and her mind gradually and mechanically
returned to the remembrance of Clifford, it was with an intensity less
strong, and less fatal to her health and happiness than before. She
thought it unnatural and criminal to allow anything else to grieve her,
while she had so sacred a grief as that of her loss; and her mind, once
aroused into resistance to passion, betrayed a native strength little to
have been expected from her apparent character. Sir William Brandon
lost no time in returning to town after the burial of his brother.
He insisted upon taking his niece with him; and, though with real
reluctance, she yielded to his wishes, and accompanied him. By the
squire's will, indeed, Sir William was appointed guardian to Lucy,
and she yet wanted more than a year of her majority. Brandon, with
a delicacy very uncommon to him where women (for he was a confirmed
woman-hater) were concerned, provided everything that he thought could
in any way conduce to her comfort. He ordered it to be understood in
his establishment that she was its mistress. He arranged and furnished,
according to what he imagined to be her taste, a suite of apartments
for her sole accommodation; a separate carriage and servants were
appropriated to her use; and he sought, by perpetual presents of books
or flowers or music, to occupy her thoughts, and atone for the solitude
to which his professional duties obliged him so constantly to consign
her. These attentions, which showed this strange man in a new light,
seemed to bring out many little latent amiabilities, which were usually
imbedded in the callosities of his rocky nature; and, even despite her
causes for grief and the deep melancholy which consumed her, Lucy was
touched with gratitude at kindness doubly soothing in one who, however
urbane and polished, was by no means addicted to the little attentions
that are considered so gratifying by women, and yet for which they so
often despise, while they like, him who affords them. There was much
in Brandon that wound itself insensibly around the heart. To one more
experienced than Lucy, this involuntary attraction might not have been
incompatible with suspicion, and could scarcely have been associated
with esteem; and yet for all who knew him intimately, even for
the penetrating and selfish Mauleverer, the attraction existed.
Unprincipled, crafty, hypocritical, even base when it suited his
purpose; secretly sneering at the dupes he made, and knowing no code
save that of interest and ambition; viewing men only as machines, and
opinions only as ladders,--there was yet a tone of powerful feeling
sometimes elicited from a heart that could at the same moment have
sacrificed a whole people to the pettiest personal object: and sometimes
with Lucy the eloquence or irony of his conversation deepened into a
melancholy, a half-suppressed gentleness of sentiment, that accorded
with the state of her own mind and interested her kind feelings
powerfully in his. It was these peculiarities in his converse which made
Lucy love to hear him; and she gradually learned to anticipate with a
gloomy pleasure the hour in which, after the occupations of the day, he
was accustomed to join her.
“You look unwell, uncle, to-night,” she said, when one evening he
entered the room with looks more fatigued than usual; and rising, she
leaned tenderly over him, and kissed his forehead.
“Ay!” said Brandon, utterly unwon by, and even unheeding, the caress,
“our way of life soon passes into the sear and yellow leaf; and when
Macbeth grieved that he might not look to have that which should
accompany old age, he had grown doting, and grieved for what was
worthless.”
“Nay, uncle, 'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,' these surely
were worth the sighing for?”
“Pooh! not worth a single sigh! The foolish wishes we form in youth have
something noble and something bodily in them; but those of age are utter
shadows, and the shadows of pygmies! Why, what is honour, after all?
What is this good name among men? Only a sort of heathenish idol, set
up to be adored by one set of fools and scorned by another. Do you not
observe, Lucy, that the man you hear most praised by the party you meet
to-day is most abused by that which you meet to-morrow? Public men are
only praised by their party; and their party, sweet Lucy, are such base
minions that it moves one's spleen to think one is so little as to be
useful to them. Thus a good name is only the good name of a sect, and
the members of that sect are only marvellous proper knaves.”
“But posterity does justice to those who really deserve fame.”
“Posterity! Can you believe that a man who knows what life is cares
for the penny whistles of grown children after his death? Posterity,
Lucy,--no! Posterity is but the same perpetuity of fools and rascals;
and even were justice desirable at their hands, they could not deal it.
Do men agree whether Charles Stuart was a liar or a martyr? For how
many ages have we believed Nero a monster! A writer now asks, as if
demonstrating a problem, what real historian could doubt that Nero was
a paragon? The patriarchs of Scripture have been declared by modern
philosophy to be a series of astronomical hieroglyphs; and, with greater
show of truth, we are assured that the patriot Tell never existed!
Posterity! the word has gulled men enough without my adding to the
number. I, who loathe the living, can scarcely venerate the unborn.
Lucy, believe me that no man can mix largely with men in political life,
and not despise everything that in youth he adored! Age leaves us only
one feeling,--contempt!”
“Are you belied, then?” said Lucy, pointing to a newspaper, the organ of
the party opposed to Brandon: “are you belied when you are here called
'ambitious'? When they call you 'selfish' and 'grasping,' I know they
wrong you; but I confess that I have thought you ambitious; yet can he
who despises men desire their good opinion?”
“Their good opinion!” repeated Brandon, mockingly: “do we want the bray
of the asses we ride? No!” he resumed, after a pause. “It is power, not
honour; it is the hope of elevating oneself in every respect, in the
world without as well as in the world of one's own mind: it is this hope
which makes me labour where I might rest, and will continue the labour
to my grave. Lucy,” continued Brandon, fixing his keen eyes on his
niece, “have you no ambition,--have power and pomp and place no charm
for your mind?”
“None!” said Lucy, quietly and simply.
“Indeed! yet there are times when I have thought I recognized my blood
in your veins. You are sprung from a once noble, but a fallen race. Are
you ever susceptible to the weakness of ancestral pride?”
“You say,” answered Lucy, “that we should care not for those who live
after us; much less, I imagine, should we care for those who have lived
ages before!”
“Prettily answered,” said Brandon, smiling. “I will tell you at one time
or another what effect that weakness you despise already once had, long
after your age, upon me. You are early wise on some points; profit by my
experience, and be so on all.”
“That is to say, in despising all men and all things!” said Lucy, also
smiling.
“Well, never mind my creed,--you may be wise after your own; but trust
one, dearest Lucy, who loves you purely and disinterestedly, and who has
weighed with scales balanced to a hair all the advantages to be gleaned
from an earth in which I verily think the harvest was gathered before we
were put into it,--trust me, Lucy, and never think love, that maiden's
dream, so valuable as rank and power: pause well before you yield to the
former; accept the latter the moment they are offered you. Love puts
you at the feet of another, and that other a tyrant; rank puts others at
your feet, and all those thus subjected are your slaves!”
Lucy moved her chair so that the new position concealed her face, and
did not answer; and Brandon, in an altered tone, continued,--
“Would you think, Lucy, that I once was fool enough to imagine that love
was a blessing, and to be eagerly sought for? I gave up my hopes, my
chances of wealth, of distinction,--all that had burned from the years
of boyhood into my very heart. I chose poverty, obscurity, humiliation;
but I chose also love. What was my reward? Lucy Brandon, I was
deceived,--deceived!”
Brandon paused; and Lucy took his hand affectionately, but did not break
the silence. Brandon resumed:--
“Yes, I was deceived! But I in my turn had a revenge, and a fitting
revenge; for it was not the revenge of hatred, but” (and the speaker
laughed sardonically) “of contempt. Enough of this, Lucy! What I wished
to say to you is this,--grown men and women know more of the truth of
things than ye young persons think for. Love is a mere bauble, and
no human being ever exchanged for it one solid advantage without
repentance. Believe this; and if rank ever puts itself under those
pretty feet, be sure not to spurn the footstool.”
So saying, with a slight laugh, Brandon lighted his chamber candle, and
left the room for the night.
As soon as the lawyer reached his own apartment, he indited to Lord
Mauleverer the following epistle:
“Why, dear Mauleverer, do you not come to town? I want you, your
party wants you; perhaps the K--g wants you; and certainly, if you
are serious about my niece, the care of your own love-suit should
induce you yourself to want to come hither. I have paved the way
for you; and I think, with a little management, you may anticipate a
speedy success. But Lucy is a strange girl; and, perhaps, after
all, though you ought to be on the spot, you had better leave her as
much as possible in my hands. I know human nature, Mauleverer, and
that knowledge is the engine by which I will work your triumph. As
for the young lover, I am not quite sure whether it be not better
for our sake that Lucy should have experienced a disappointment on
that score; for when a woman has once loved, and the love is utterly
hopeless, she puts all vague ideas of other lovers altogether out of
her head; she becomes contented with a husband whom she can esteem!
Sweet canter! But you, Mauleverer, want Lucy to love you! And so
she will--after you have married her! She will love you partly from