Paul Clifford — Complete
my only familiar, my only friend, Robin; we two shall be strangers in a
foreign land. But thou wilt make thyself welcome easier than thy lord,
Robin; and thou wilt forget the old days and thine old comrades
and thine old loves, when--Ha!” and Clifford turned abruptly to his
attendant, who addressed him; “It is late, you say. True! Look you, it
will be unwise for us both to quit London together. You know the sixth
milestone; join me there, and we can proceed in company!”
Not unwilling to linger for a parting cup, the comrade assented to the
prudence of the plan proposed; and after one or two additional words of
caution and advice, Clifford mounted and rode from the yard of the
inn. As he passed through the tall wooden gates into the street, the
imperfect gleam of the wintry sun falling over himself and his steed, it
was scarcely possible, even in spite of his disguise and rude garb, to
conceive a more gallant and striking specimen of the lawless and daring
tribe to which he belonged; the height, strength, beauty, and exquisite
grooming visible in the steed; the sparkling eye, the bold profile,
the sinewy chest, the graceful limbs, and the careless and practised
horsemanship of the rider.
Looking after his chief with a long and an admiring gaze, the robber
said to the hostler of the inn, an aged and withered man, who had seen
nine generations of highwaymen rise and vanish,--
“There, Joe, when did you ever look on a hero like that? The bravest
heart, the frankest hand, the best judge of a horse, and the handsomest
man that ever did honour to Hounslow!”
“For all that,” returned the hostler, shaking his palsied head, and
turning back to the tap-room,--“for all that, master, his time be up.
Mark my whids, Captain Lovett will not be over the year,--no, nor mayhap
the month!”
“Why, you old rascal, what makes you so wise? You will not peach, I
suppose!”
“I peach! Devil a bit! But there never was the gemman of the road, great
or small, knowing or stupid, as outlived his seventh year. And this will
be the captain's seventh, come the 21st of next month; but he be a fine
chap, and I'll go to his hanging!”
“Pish!” said the robber, peevishly,--he himself was verging towards the
end of his sixth year,--“pish!”
“Mind, I tells it you, master; and somehow or other I thinks--and I has
experience in these things--by the fey, of his eye and the drop of his
lip, that the captain's time will be up to-day!”
[Fey--A word difficult to translate; but the closest interpretation
of which is, perhaps, “the ill omen.”]
Here the robber lost all patience, and pushing the hoary boder of evil
against the wall, he turned on his heel, and sought some more agreeable
companion to share his stirrup-cup.
It was in the morning of the day following that in which the above
conversations occurred, that the sagacious Augustus Tomlinson and the
valorous Edward Pepper, handcuffed and fettered, were jogging along the
road in a postchaise, with Mr. Nabbem squeezed in by the side of the
former, and two other gentlemen in Mr. Nabbem's confidence mounted on
the box of the chaise, and interfering sadly, as Long Ned growlingly
remarked, with “the beauty of the prospect.”
“Ah, well!” quoth Nabbem, unavoidably thrusting his elbow into
Tomlinson's side, while he drew out his snuffbox, and helped himself
largely to the intoxicating dust; “you had best prepare yourself, Mr.
Pepper, for a change of prospects. I believes as how there is little to
please you in guod [prison].”
“Nothing makes men so facetious as misfortune to others!” said Augustus,
moralizing, and turning himself, as well as he was able, in order to
deliver his body from the pointed elbow of Mr. Nabbem. “When a man
is down in the world, all the bystanders, very dull fellows before,
suddenly become wits!”
“You reflects on I,” said Mr. Nabbem. “Well, it does not sinnify a
pin; for directly we does our duty, you chaps become howdaciously
ungrateful!”
“Ungrateful!” said Pepper; “what a plague have we got to be grateful
for? I suppose you think we ought to tell you you are the best friend
we have, because you have scrouged us, neck and crop, into this horrible
hole, like turkeys fatted for Christmas. 'Sdeath! one's hair is flatted
down like a pancake; and as for one's legs, you had better cut them off
at once than tuck them up in a place a foot square,--to say nothing of
these blackguardly irons!”
“The only irons pardonable in your eyes, Ned,” said Tomlinson, “are the
curling-irons, eh?”
“Now, if this is not too much!” cried Nabbem, crossly; “you objects to
go in a cart like the rest of your profession; and when I puts myself
out of the way to obleedgie you with a shay, you slangs I for it!”
“Peace, good Nabbem!” said Augustus, with a sage's dignity; “you must
allow a little bad humour in men so unhappily situated as we are.”
The soft answer turneth away wrath. Tomlinson's answer softened Nabbem;
and by way of conciliation, he held his snuff-box to the nose of his
unfortunate prisoner. Shutting his eyes, Tomlinson long and earnestly
sniffed up the luxury, and as soon as, with his own kerchief of spotted
yellow, the officer had wiped from the proboscis some lingering grains,
Tomlinson thus spoke:
“You see us now, Mr. Nabbem, in a state of broken-down opposition; but
our spirits are not broken too. In our time we have had something to do
with the administration; and our comfort at present is the comfort of
fallen ministers!”
“Oho! you were in the Methodist line before you took to the road?” said
Nabbem.
“Not so!” answered Augustus, gravely. “We were the Methodists of
politics, not of the church; namely, we lived upon our flock without a
legal authority to do so, and that which the law withheld from us our
wits gave. But tell me, Mr. Nabbem, are you addicted to politics?”
“Why, they says I be,” said Mr. Nabbem, with a grin; “and for my part, I
thinks all who sarves the king should stand up for him, and take care of
their little families!”
“You speak what others think!” answered Tomlinson, smiling also. “And I
will now, since you like politics, point out to you what I dare say you
have not observed before.”
“What be that?” said Nabbem.
“A wonderful likeness between the life of the gentlemen adorning his
Majesty's senate and the life of the gentlemen whom you are conducting
to his Majesty's jail.”
THE LIBELLOUS PARALLEL OF AUGUSTUS TOMLINSON.
“We enter our career, Mr. Nabbem, as your embryo ministers enter
parliament,--by bribery and corruption. There is this difference,
indeed, between the two cases: we are enticed to enter by the
bribery and corruptions of others; they enter spontaneously by dint
of their own. At first, deluded by romantic visions, we like the
glory of our career better than the profit, and in our youthful
generosity we profess to attack the rich solely from consideration
for the poor! By and by, as we grow more hardened, we laugh at
these boyish dreams,--peasant or prince fares equally at our
impartial hands; we grasp at the bucket, but we scorn not the
thimbleful; we use the word 'glory' only as a trap for proselytes
and apprentices; our fingers, like an office-door, are open for all
that can possibly come into them; we consider the wealthy as our
salary, the poor as our perquisites. What is this, but a picture of
your member of parliament ripening into a minister, your patriot
mellowing into your placeman? And mark me, Mr. Nabbem! is not the
very language of both as similar as the deeds? What is the phrase
either of us loves to employ? 'To deliver.' What? 'The Public.'
And do not both invariably deliver it of the same thing,--namely,
its purse? Do we want an excuse for sharing the gold of our
neighbours, or abusing them if they resist? Is not our mutual, our
pithiest plea, 'Distress'? True, your patriot calls it 'distress of
the country;' but does he ever, a whit more than we do, mean any
distress but his own? When we are brought low, and our coats are
shabby, do we not both shake our heads and talk of 'reform'? And
when, oh! when we are up in the world, do we not both kick 'reform'
to the devil? How often your parliament man 'vacates his seat,'
only for the purpose of resuming it with a weightier purse! How
often, dear Ned, have our seats been vacated for the same end!
Sometimes, indeed, he really finishes his career by accepting the
Hundreds,--it is by 'accepting the hundreds' that ours may be
finished too! [Ned drew a long sigh.] Note us now, Mr. Nabbem, in
the zenith of our prosperity,--we have filled our pockets, we have
become great in the mouths of our party. Our pals admire us, and
our blowens adore. What do we in this short-lived summer? Save and
be thrifty? Ah, no! we must give our dinners, and make light of our
lush. We sport horses on the race-course, and look big at the
multitude we have bubbled. Is not this your minister come into
office? Does not this remind you of his equipage, his palace, his
plate? In both cases lightly won, lavishly wasted; and the public,
whose cash we have fingered, may at least have the pleasure of
gaping at the figure we make with it! This, then, is our harvest of
happiness; our foes, our friends, are ready to eat us with envy,--
yet what is so little enviable as our station? Have we not both our
common vexations and our mutual disquietudes? Do we not both bribe
[Nabbem shook his head and buttoned his waistcoat] our enemies,
cajole our partisans, bully our dependants, and quarrel with our
only friends,--namely, ourselves? Is not the secret question with
each, 'It is all confoundedly fine; but how long will it last?'
Now, Mr. Nabbem, note me,--reverse the portrait: we are fallen, our
career is over,--the road is shut to us, and new plunderers are
robbing the carriages that once we robbed. Is not this the lot of--
No, no! I deceive myself! Your ministers, your jobmen, for the
most part milk the popular cow while there's a drop in the udder.
Your chancellor declines on a pension; your minister attenuates on a
grant; the feet of your great rogues may be gone from the treasury
benches, but they have their little fingers in the treasury. Their
past services are remembered by his Majesty; ours only noted by the
Recorder. They save themselves, for they hang by one another; we go
to the devil, for we hang by ourselves. We have our little day of
the public, and all is over; but it is never over with them. We
both hunt the same fox; but we are your fair riders, they are your
knowing ones,--we take the leap, and our necks are broken; they
sneak through the gates, and keep it up to the last!”
As he concluded, Tomlinson's head dropped on his bosom, and it was easy
to see that painful comparisons, mingled perhaps with secret murmurs at
the injustice of fortune, were rankling in his breast. Long Ned sat in
gloomy silence; and even the hard heart of the severe Mr. Nabbem was
softened by the affecting parallel to which he had listened. They had
proceeded without speaking for two or three miles, when Long Ned, fixing
his eyes on Tomlinson, exclaimed,--
“Do you know, Tomlinson, I think it was a burning shame in Lovett to
suffer us to be carried off like muttons, without attempting to rescue
us by the way! It is all his fault that we are here; for it was he whom
Nabbem wanted, not us.”
“Very true,” said the cunning policeman; “and if I were you, Mr. Pepper,