Paul Clifford — Complete
string of dialogues, written in a tone of broad humour, namely,
broad Scotch (with Scotchmen it is all the same thing), despite these
invaluable miscellanies, to say nothing of some glorious political
articles, in which it was clearly proved to the satisfaction of
the rich, that the less poor devils eat the better for their
constitutions,--despite, we say, these great acquisitions to British
literature, “The Asinaeum” tottered, fell, buried its bookseller, and
crushed its author. MacGrawler only,--escaping, like Theodore from the
enormous helmet of Otranto,--MacGrawler only survived. “Love,” says Sir
Philip Sidney, “makes a man see better than a pair of spectacles.”
Love of life has a very different effect on the optics,--it makes a
man wofully dim of inspection, and sometimes causes him to see his own
property in another man's purse! This deceptio visus, did it impose upon
Peter MacGrawler? He went to Ranelagh. Reader, thou knowest the rest!
Wine and the ingenuity of the robbers having extorted this narrative
from MacGrawler, the barriers of superfluous delicacy were easily done
away with.
Our heroes offered to the sage an introduction to their club; the offer
was accepted; and MacGrawler, having been first made drunk, was next
made a robber. The gang engaged him in various little matters, in which
we grieve to relate that though his intentions were excellent, his
success was so ill as thoroughly to enrage his employers; nay, they were
about at one time, when they wanted to propitiate justice, to hand him
over to the secular power, when Clifford interposed in his behalf. From
a robber the sage dwindled into a drudge; menial offices (the robbers,
the lying rascals, declared that such offices were best fitted to the
genius of his country!) succeeded to noble exploits, and the worst of
robbers became the best of cooks. How vain is all wisdom but that of
long experience! Though Clifford was a sensible, and keen man, though he
knew our sage to be a knave, he never dreamed he could be a traitor.
He thought him too indolent to be malicious, and--short-sighted
humanity!--too silly to be dangerous. He trusted the sage with the
secret of the cavern; and Augustus, who was a bit of an epicure,
submitted, though forebodingly, to the choice, because of the
Scotchman's skill in broiling.
But MacGrawler, like Brutus, concealed a scheming heart under a stolid
guise. The apprehension of the noted Lovett had become a matter of
serious desire; the police was no longer to be bribed, nay, they were
now eager to bribe. MacGrawler had watched his time, sold his chief, and
was now on the road to Reading to meet and to guide to the cavern Mr.
Nabbem of Bow Street and four of his attendants.
Having thus, as rapidly as we were able, traced the causes which brought
so startlingly before your notice the most incomparable of critics, we
now, reader, return to our robbers.
“Hist, Lovett!” said Tomlinson, half asleep, “methought I heard
something in the outer cave.”
“It is the Scot, I suppose,” answered Clifford: “you saw, of course, to
the door?”
“To be sure!” muttered Tomlinson, and in two minutes more he was asleep.
Not so Clifford: many and anxious thoughts kept him waking. At one
while, when he anticipated the opening to a new career, somewhat of
the stirring and high spirit which still moved amidst the guilty and
confused habits of his mind made his pulse feverish and his limbs
restless; at another time, an agonizing remembrance,--the remembrance
of Lucy in all her charms, her beauty, her love, her tender and innocent
heart,--Lucy all perfect, and lost to him forever,--banished every other
reflection, and only left him the sick sensation of despondency and
despair. “What avails my struggle for a better name?” he thought.
“Whatever my future lot, she can never share it. My punishment is
fixed,--it is worse than a death of shame; it is a life without hope!
Every moment I feel, and shall feel to the last, the pressure of a chain
that may never be broken or loosened! And yet, fool that I am! I cannot
leave this country without seeing her again, without telling her that I
have really looked my last. But have I not twice told her that? Strange
fatality! But twice have I spoken to her of love, and each time it was
to tear myself from her at the moment of my confession. And even now
something that I have no power to resist compels me to the same idle and
weak indulgence. Does destiny urge me? Ay, perhaps to my destruction!
Every hour a thousand deaths encompass me. I have now obtained all for
which I seemed to linger. I have won, by a new crime, enough to bear me
to another land, and to provide me there a soldier's destiny. I should
not lose an hour in flight, yet I rush into the nest of my enemies, only
for one unavailing word with her; and this, too, after I have already
bade her farewell! Is this fate? If it be so, what matters it? I no
longer care for a life which, after all, I should reform in vain if I
could not reform it for her; yet--yet, selfish and lost that I am!
will it be nothing to think hereafter that I have redeemed her from the
disgrace of having loved an outcast and a felon? If I can obtain honour,
will it not, in my own heart at least,--will it not reflect, however
dimly and distantly, upon her?”
Such, bewildered, unsatisfactory, yet still steeped in the colours
of that true love which raises even the lowest, were the midnight
meditations of Clifford; they terminated, towards the morning, in an
uneasy and fitful slumber. From this he was awakened by a loud yawn from
the throat of Long Ned, who was always the earliest riser of his set.
“Hullo!” said he, “it is almost daybreak; and if we want to cash our
notes and to move the old lord's jewels, we should already be on the
start.”
“A plague on you!” said Tomlinson, from under cover of his woollen
nightcap; “it was but this instant that I was dreaming you were going to
be hanged, and now you wake me in the pleasantest part of the dream!”
“You be shot!” said Ned, turning one leg out of bed; “by the by, you
took more than your share last night, for you owed me three guineas
for our last game at cribbage! You'll please to pay me before we part
to-day: short accounts make long friends!”
“However true that maxim may be,” returned Tomlinson, “I know one much
truer,--namely, long friends will make short accounts! You must ask Jack
Ketch this day month if I'm wrong!”
“That's what you call wit, I suppose!” retorted Ned, as he now,
struggling into his inexpressibles, felt his way into the outer cave.
“What, ho, Mac!” cried he, as he went, “stir those bobbins of thine,
which thou art pleased to call legs; strike a light, and be d---d to
you!”
“A light for you,” said Tomlinson, profanely, as he reluctantly left his
couch, “will indeed be a 'light to lighten the Gentiles!'”
“Why, Mac, Mac!” shouted Ned, “why don't you answer? faith, I think the
Scot's dead!”
“Seize your men!--Yield, sirs!” cried a stern, sudden voice from the
gloom; and at that instant two dark lanterns were turned, and their
light streamed full upon the astounded forms of Tomlinson and his gaunt
comrade! In the dark shade of the background four or five forms were
also indistinctly visible; and the ray of the lanterns glimmered on
the blades of cutlasses and the barrels of weapons still less easily
resisted.
Tomlinson was the first to recover his self-possession. The light
just gleamed upon the first step of the stairs leading to the stables,
leaving the rest in shadow. He made one stride to the place beside the
cart, where, we have said, lay some of the robbers' weapons; he had
been anticipated,--the weapons were gone. The next moment Tomlinson had
sprung up the steps.
“Lovett! Lovett! Lovett!” shouted he.
The captain, who had followed his comrades into the cavern, was already
in the grasp of two men. From few ordinary mortals, however, could any
two be selected as fearful odds against such a man as Clifford,--a man
in whom a much larger share of sinews and muscle than is usually the
lot even of the strong had been hardened, by perpetual exercise, into
a consistency and iron firmness which linked power and activity into a
union scarcely less remarkable than that immortalized in the glorious
beauty of the sculptured gladiator. His right hand is upon the throat of
one assailant; his left locks, as in a vice, the wrist of the other; you
have scarcely time to breathe! The former is on the ground, the pistol
of the latter is wrenched from his grip, Clifford is on the step;
a ball--another--whizzes by him; he is by the side of the faithful
Augustus!
“Open the secret door!” whispered Clifford to his friend; “I will draw
up the steps alone.”
Scarcely had he spoken, before the steps were already, but slowly,
ascending beneath the desperate strength of the robber. Meanwhile Ned
was struggling, as he best might, with two sturdy officers, who appeared
loath to use their weapons without an absolute necessity, and who
endeavoured, by main strength, to capture and detain their antagonist.
“Look well to the door!” cried the voice of the principal officer, “and
hang out more light!”
Two or three additional lanterns were speedily brought forward; and over
the whole interior of the cavern a dim but sufficient light now rapidly
circled, giving to the scene and to the combatants a picturesque and
wild appearance.
The quick eye of the head-officer descried in an instant the rise of the
steps, and the advantage the robbers were thereby acquiring. He and two
of his men threw themselves forward, seized the ladder, if so it may be
called, dragged it once more to the ground, and ascended. But Clifford,
grasping with both hands the broken shaft of a cart that lay in reach,
received the foremost invader with a salute that sent him prostrate and
senseless back among his companions. The second shared the same fate;
and the stout leader of the enemy, who, like a true general, had kept
himself in the rear, paused now in the middle of the steps, dismayed
alike by the reception of his friends and the athletic form towering
above, with raised weapons and menacing attitude. Perhaps that moment
seemed to the judicious Mr. Nabbem more favourable to parley than to
conflict. He cleared his throat, and thus addressed the foe:
“You, sir, Captain Lovett, alias Howard, alias Jackson, alias Cavendish,
alias Solomons, alias Devil,--for I knows you well, and could swear to
you with half an eye, in your clothes or without,--you lay down your
club there, and let me come alongside of you, and you'll find me as
gentle as a lamb; for I've been used to gemmen all my life, and I knows
how to treat 'em when I has 'em!”
“But if I will not let you 'come alongside of me,' what then?”
“Why, I must send one of these here pops through your skull, that's
all!”
“Nay, Mr. Nabbem, that would be too cruel! You surely would not harm one
who has such an esteem for you? Don't you remember the manner in which
I brought you off from Justice Burnflat, when you were accused, you know
whether justly or--”
“You're a liar, Captain!” cried Nabbem, furiously, fearful that
something not meet for the ears of his companions should transpire.
“You knows you are! Come down, or let me mount; otherwise I won't be
'sponsible for the consequences!”
Clifford cast a look over his shoulder. A gleam of the gray daylight
already glimmered through a chink in the secret door, which Tomlinson
had now unbarred and was about to open.
“Listen to me, Mr. Nabbem,” said he, “and perhaps I may grant what you
require! What would you do with me if you had me?”
“You speaks like a sensible man now,” answered Nabbem; “and that's after
my own heart. Why, you sees, Captain, your time is come, and you can't