Paul Clifford — Complete
“No! and I will take care not to have them thrown in her way; and as, in
consequence of my poor brother's recent death, she sees nobody but us,
there is little chance, should Lovett's right to the name of Clifford be
discovered, that it should reach her ears.”
“But those confounded servants?”
“True enough! But consider that before they know it, the newspapers
will; so that, should it be needful, we shall have our own time to
caution them. I need only say to Lucy's woman, 'A poor gentleman, a
friend of the late squire, whom your mistress used to dance with, and
you must have seen,--Captain Clifford,--is to be tried for his life. It
will shock her, poor thing! in her present state of health, to tell her
of so sad an event to her father's friend; therefore be silent, as
you value your place and ten guineas,'--and I may be tolerably sure of
caution!”
“You ought to be chairman to the Ways and Means Committee!” cried
Mauleverer. “My mind is now easy; and when once poor Clifford is
gone,--fallen from a high estate,--we may break the matter gently to
her; and as I intend thereon to be very respectful, very delicate, etc.,
she cannot but be sensible of my kindness and real affection!”
“And if a live dog be better than a dead lion,” added Brandon, “surely a
lord in existence will be better than a highwayman hanged!”
“According to ordinary logic,” rejoined Mauleverer, “that syllogism is
clear enough; and though I believe a girl may cling now and then to the
memory of a departed lover, I do not think she will when the memory is
allied with shame. Love is nothing more than vanity pleased; wound the
vanity, and you destroy the love! Lucy will be forced, after having made
so bad a choice of a lover, to make a good one in a husband, in order to
recover her self-esteem!”
“And therefore you are certain of her!” said Brandon, ironically.
“Thanks to my star,--my garter,--my ancestor, the first baron, and
myself, the first earl,--I hope I am,” said Mauleverer; and the
conversation turned. Mauleverer did not stay much longer with the
judge; and Brandon, left alone, recurred once more to the perusal of his
letters.
We scarcely know what sensations it would have occasioned in one who had
known Brandon only in his later years, could he have read those letters
referring to so much earlier a date. There was in the keen and arid
character of the man so little that recalled any idea of courtship
or youthful gallantry that a correspondence of that nature would have
appeared almost as unnatural as the loves of plants, or the amatory
softenings of a mineral. The correspondence now before Brandon was
descriptive of various feelings, but all appertaining to the same class;
most of them were apparent answers to letters from him. One while they
replied tenderly to expressions of tenderness, but intimated a doubt
whether the writer would be able to constitute his future happiness,
and atone for certain sacrifices of birth and fortune and ambitious
prospects, to which she alluded: at other times, a vein of latent
coquetry seemed to pervade the style,--an indescribable air of coolness
and reserve contrasted former passages in the correspondence, and was
calculated to convey to the reader an impression that the feelings
of the lover were not altogether adequately returned. Frequently the
writer, as if Brandon had expressed himself sensible of this conviction,
reproached him for unjust jealousy and unworthy suspicion. And the
tone of the reproach varied in each letter; sometimes it was gay
and satirizing; at others soft and expostulatory; at others gravely
reasoning, and often haughtily indignant. Still, throughout the whole
correspondence, on the part of the mistress, there was a sufficient
stamp of individuality to give a shrewd examiner some probable guess at
the writer's character. He would have judged her, perhaps, capable of
strong and ardent feeling, but ordinarily of a light and capricious
turn, and seemingly prope to imagine and to resent offence. With these
letters were mingled others in Brandon's writing,--of how different,
of how impassioned a description! All that a deep, proud, meditative,
exacting character could dream of love given, or require of love
returned, was poured burningly over the pages; yet they were full
of reproach, of jealousy, of a nice and torturing observation, as
calculated to wound as the ardour might be fitted to charm; and often
the bitter tendency to disdain that distinguished his temperament broke
through the fondest enthusiasm of courtship or the softest outpourings
of love.
“You saw me not yesterday,” he wrote in one letter, “but I saw you;
all day I was by you: you gave not a look which passed me unnoticed;
you made not a movement which I did not chronicle in my memory.
Julia, do you tremble when I tell you this? Yes, if you have a
heart, I know these words would stab it to the core! You may affect
to answer me indignantly! Wise dissembler! it is very skilful,
very, to assume anger when you have no reply. I repeat during the
whole of that party of pleasure (pleasure! well, your tastes, it
must be acknowledged, are exquisite!) which you enjoyed yesterday,
and which you so faintly asked me to share, my eye was on you. You
did not know that I was in the wood when you took the grin of the
incomparable Digby, with so pretty a semblance of alarm at the
moment the snake which my foot disturbed glided across your path.
You did not know I was within hearing of the tent where you made so
agreeable a repast, and from which your laughter sent peals so many
and so numerous. Laughter! O Julia, can you tell me that you love,
and yet be happy, even to mirth, when I am away! Love! O God, how
different a sensation is mine! Mine makes my whole principle of
life! Yours! I tell you that I think at moments I would rather
have your hate than the lukewarm sentiment you bear to me, and
honour by the name of affection.' Pretty phrase! I have no
affection for you! Give me not that sickly word; but try with me,
Julia, to invent some expression that has never filtered a paltry
meaning through the lips of another! Affection! why, that is a
sister's word, a girl's word to her pet squirrel! Never was it made
for that ruby and most ripe mouth! Shall I come to your house this
evening? Your mother has asked me, and you--you heard her, and said
nothing. Oh! but that was maiden reserve, was it? and maiden
reserve caused you to take up a book the moment I left you, as if my
company made but an ordinary amusement instantly to be replaced by
another! When I have seen you, society, books, food, all are
hateful to me; but you, sweet Julia, you can read, can you? Why,
when I left you, I lingered by the parlour window for hours, till
dusk, and you never once lifted your eyes, nor saw me pass and
repass. At least I thought you would have watched my steps when I
left the house; but I err, charming moralist! According to you,
that vigilance would have been meanness.”
In another part of the correspondence a more grave if not a deeper gush
of feeling struggled for expression.
“You say, Julia, that were you to marry one who thinks so much of
what he surrenders for you, and who requires from yourself so vast a
return of love, you should tremble for the future happiness of both
of us. Julia, the triteness of that fear proves that you love not
at all. I do not tremble for our future happiness; on the contrary,
the intensity of my passion for you makes me know that we never can
be happy, never beyond the first rapture of our union. Happiness is
a quiet and tranquil feeling. No feeling that I can possibly bear
to you will ever receive those epithets,--I know that I shall be
wretched and accursed when I am united to you. Start not! I will
presently tell you why. But I do not dream of happiness, neither
(could you fathom one drop of the dark and limitless ocean of my
emotions) would you name to me that word. It is not the mercantile
and callous calculation of chances for 'future felicity' (what
homily supplied you with so choice a term?) that enters into the
heart that cherishes an all-pervading love. Passion looks only to
one object, to nothing beyond; I thirst, I consume, not for
happiness, but you. Were your possession inevitably to lead me to a
gulf of anguish and shame, think you I should covet it one jot the
less! If you carry one thought, one hope, one dim fancy, beyond the
event that makes you mine, you may be more worthy of the esteem of
others, but you are utterly undeserving of my love.
....................
“I will tell you now why I know we cannot be happy. In the first
place, when you say that I am proud of birth, that I am morbidly
ambitious, that I am anxious to shine in the great world, and that
after the first intoxication of love has passed away I shall feel
bitterness against one who has so humbled my pride and darkened my
prospects, I am not sure that you wholly err. But I am sure that
the instant remedy is in your power. Have you patience, Julia, to
listen to a kind of history of myself, or rather of my feelings? If
so, perhaps it may be the best method of explaining all that I would
convey. You will see, then, that my family pride and my worldly
ambition are not founded altogether on those basements which move my
laughter in another; if my feelings thereon are really, however, as
you would insinuate, equal matter for derision, behold, my Julia, I
can laugh equally at them! So pleasant a thing to me is scorn, that
I would rather despise myself than have no one to despise! But to
my narrative! You must know that there are but two of us, sons of a
country squire, of old family, which once possessed large
possessions and something of historical renown. We lived in an old
country-place; my father was a convivial dog, a fox-hunter, a
drunkard, yet in his way a fine gentleman,--and a very disreputable
member of society. The first feelings towards him that I can
remember were those of shame. Not much matter of family pride here,
you will say! True, and that is exactly the reason which made me
cherish family pride elsewhere. My father's house was filled with
guests,--some high and some low; they all united in ridicule of the
host. I soon detected the laughter, and you may imagine that it did
not please me. Meanwhile the old huntsman, whose family was about
as ancient as ours, and whose ancestors had officiated in his
capacity for the ancestors of his master time out of mind, told me
story after story about the Brandons of yore. I turned from the
stories to more legitimate history, and found the legends were
tolerably true. I learned to glow at this discovery; the pride,
humbled when I remembered my sire, revived when I remembered my
ancestors. I became resolved to emulate them, to restore a sunken
name, and vowed a world of nonsense on the subject. The habit of
brooding over these ideas grew on me. I never heard a jest broken
on my paternal guardian, I never caught the maudlin look of his
reeling eyes, nor listened to some exquisite inanity from his
besotted lips, but that my thoughts flew instantly back to the Sir
Charleses and the Sir Roberts of my race, and I comforted myself
with the hope that the present degeneracy should pass away. Hence,