Paul Clifford — Complete
paintless railings around Mr. Welford's house. Welford himself came
out at the time, and felt compelled--for he was by no means one whose
sympathetic emotions flowed easily--to give a glance to the condition
of a man who lay motionless before his very door. The horseman quickly
recovered his senses, but found himself unable to rise; one of his legs
was broken. Supported in the arms of his groom, he looked around, and
his eye met Welford's. An instant recognition gave life to the face
of the former, and threw a dark blush over the sullen features of the
latter.
“Heavens!” said the cavalier, “is that--”
“Hist, my lord!” cried Welford, quickly interrupting him, and glancing
round. “But you are hurt,--will you enter my house?”
The horseman signified his assent, and, between the groom and Welford,
was borne within the shabby door of the ex-solicitor. The groom was
then despatched with an excuse to the party, many of whom were already
hastening around the house; and though one or two did force themselves
across the inhospitable threshold, yet so soon as they had uttered a few
expletives, and felt their stare sink beneath the sullen and chilling
asperity of the host, they satisfied themselves that though it was d---d
unlucky for their friend, yet they could do nothing for him at present;
and promising to send to inquire after him the next day, they remounted
and rode homeward, with an eye more attentive than usual to the motion
of their steeds. They did not, however, depart till the surgeon of the
town had made his appearance, and declared that the patient must not on
any account be moved. A lord's leg was a windfall that did not happen
every day to the surgeon of -------. All this while we may imagine the
state of anxiety experienced in the town, and the agonized endurance of
those rural nerves which are produced in scanty populations, and have
so Taliacotian a sympathy with the affairs of other people. One day,
two days, three days, a week, a fortnight, nay, a month, passed, and the
lord was still the inmate of Mr. Welford's abode. Leaving the gossips to
feed on their curiosity,--“cannibals of their own hearts,”--we must
give a glance towards the interior of the inhospitable mansion of the
ex-solicitor.
It was towards evening, the sufferer was supported on a sofa, and the
beautiful Mrs. Welford, who had officiated as his nurse, was placing the
pillow under the shattered limb. He himself was attempting to seize her
hand, which she coyly drew back, and uttering things sweeter and more
polished than she had ever listened to before. At this moment Welford
softly entered; he was unnoticed by either; and he stood at the door
contemplating them with a smile of calm and self-hugging derision. The
face of Mephistopheles regarding Margaret and Faust might suggest some
idea of the picture we design to paint; but the countenance of Welford
was more lofty, as well as comelier, in character, though not less
malignant in expression, than that which the incomparable Retsch has
given to the mocking fiend. So utter, so congratulatory, so lordly was
the contempt on Welford's dark and striking features, that though he
was in that situation in which ridicule usually attaches itself to the
husband, it was the gallant and the wife that would have appeared to the
beholder in a humiliating and unenviable light.
After a momentary pause Welford approached with a heavy step. The wife
started; but with a bland and smooth expression, which since his sojourn
in the town of had been rarely visible in his aspect, the host joined
the pair, smiled on the nurse, and congratulated the patient on his
progress towards recovery. The nobleman, well learned in the usages
of the world, replied easily and gayly; and the conversation flowed
on cheerfully enough till the wife, who had sat abstracted and apart,
stealing ever and anon timid glances towards her husband and looks of a
softer meaning towards the patient, retired from the room. Welford
then gave a turn to the conversation; he reminded the nobleman of the
pleasant days they had passed in Italy,--of the adventures they had
shared, and the intrigues they had enjoyed. As the conversation warmed,
it assumed a more free and licentious turn; and not a little, we ween,
would the good folks of -----have been amazed, could they have listened
to the gay jests and the libertine maxims which flowed from the thin
lips of that cold and severe Welford, whose countenance gave the lie to
mirth. Of women in general they spoke with that lively contempt which is
the customary tone with men of the world; only in Welford it assumed
a bitterer, a deeper, and a more philosophical cast than it did in his
more animated yet less energetic guest.
The nobleman seemed charmed with his friend; the conversation was just
to his taste; and when Welford had supported him up to bed, he shook
that person cordially by the hand, and hoped he should soon see him
in very different circumstances. When the peer's door was closed on
Welford, he stood motionless for some moments; he then with a soft step
ascended to his own chamber. His wife slept soundly; beside the bed was
the infant's cradle. As his eyes fell on the latter, the rigid irony,
now habitual to his features, relaxed; he bent over the cradle long and
in deep silence. The mother's face, blended with the sire's, was stamped
on the sleeping and cherub countenance before him; and as at length,
rousing from his revery, he kissed it gently, he murmured,--
“When I look on you I will believe that she once loved me. Pah!” he said
abruptly, and rising, “this fatherly sentiment for a -----'s offering
is exquisite in me!” So saying, without glancing towards his wife, who,
disturbed by the loudness of his last words, stirred uneasily, he left
the room, and descended into that where he had conversed with his
guest. He shut the door with caution, and striding to and fro the humble
apartment, gave vent to thoughts marshalled somewhat in the broken array
in which they now appear to the reader:--
“Ay, ay, she has been my ruin! and if I were one of your weak fools who
make a gospel of the silliest and most mawkish follies of this social
state, she would now be my disgrace; but instead of my disgrace, I will
make her my footstool to honour and wealth. And, then, to the devil with
the footstool! Yes! two years I have borne what was enough to turn my
whole blood into gall,--inactivity, hopelessness, a wasted heart
and life in myself; contumely from the world; coldness, bickering,
ingratitude from the one for whom (oh, ass that I was!) I gave up the
most cherished part of my nature,--rather, my nature itself! Two years I
have borne this, and now will I have my revenge. I will sell her,--sell
her! God! I will sell her like the commonest beast of a market! And this
paltry piece of false coin shall buy me--my world! Other men's vengeance
comes from hatred,--a base, rash, unphilosophical sentiment! mine comes
from scorn,--the only wise state for the reason to rest in. Other men's
vengeance ruins themselves; mine shall save me! Ha! how my soul chuckles
when I look at this pitiful pair, who think I see them not, and know
that every movement they make is on a mesh of my web! Yet,” and Welford
paused slowly,--“yet I cannot but mock myself when I think of the arch
gull that this boy's madness, love,--love, indeed! the very word
turns me sick with loathing,--made of me. Had that woman, silly, weak,
automatal as she is, really loved me; had she been sensible of the
unspeakable sacrifice I had made to her (Antony's was nothing to it,--he
lost a real world only; mine was the world of imagination); had she
but condescended to learn my nature, to subdue the woman's devil at
her own,--I could have lived on in this babbling hermitage forever,
and fancied myself happy and resigned,--I could have become a different
being. I fancy I could have become what your moralists (quacks!) call
'good.' But this fretting frivolity of heart, this lust of fool's
praise, this peevishness of temper, this sullenness in answer to the
moody thought, which in me she neither fathomed nor forgave, this
vulgar, daily, hourly pining at the paltry pinches of the body's
poverty, the domestic whine, the household complaint,--when I--I have
not a thought for such pitiful trials of affection; and all this while
my curses, my buried hope and disguised spirit and sunken name not
thought of; the magnitude of my surrender to her not even comprehended;
nay, her 'inconveniences'--a dim hearth, I suppose, or a daintiless
table--compared, ay, absolutely compared, with all which I abandoned for
her sake! As if it were not enough,--had I been a fool, an ambitionless,
soulless fool,-the mere thought that I had linked my name to that of a
tradesman,--I beg pardon, a retired tradesman!--as if that knowledge--a
knowledge I would strangle my whole race, every one who has ever met,
seen me, rather than they should penetrate--were not enough, when she
talks of 'comparing,' to make me gnaw the very flesh from my bones! No,
no, no! Never was there so bright a turn in my fate as when this titled
coxcomb, with his smooth voice and gaudy fripperies, came hither! I
will make her a tool to carve my escape from this cavern wherein she
has plunged me. I will foment 'my lord's' passion, till 'my lord' thinks
'the passion' (a butterfly's passion!) worth any price. I will then
make my own terms, bind 'my lord' to secrecy, and get rid of my wife,
my shame, and the obscurity of Mr. Welford forever. Bright, bright
prospects! let me shut my eyes to enjoy you! But softly! my noble friend
calls himself a man of the world, skilled in human nature, and a derider
of its prejudices; true enough, in his own little way--thanks not to
enlarged views, but a vicious experience--so he is! The book of the
world is a vast miscellany; he is perfectly well acquainted, doubtless,
with those pages that treat of the fashions,--profoundly versed, I
warrant, in the 'Magasin des Modes' tacked to the end of the index. But
shall I, even with all the mastership which my mind must exercise
over his,--shall I be able utterly to free myself in this 'peer of the
world's' mind from a degrading remembrance? Cuckold! cuckold! 't is an
ugly word; a convenient, willing cuckold, humph!--there is no grandeur,
no philosophical varnish in the phrase. Let me see--yes! I have a
remedy for all that. I was married privately,--well! under disguised
names,--well! It was a stolen marriage, far from her town,--well!
witnesses unknown to her,--well! proofs easily secured to my
possession,--excellent! The fool shall believe it a forged marriage, an
ingenious gallantry of mine; I will wash out the stain cuckold with the
water of another word; I will make market of a mistress, not a wife. I
will warn him not to acquaint her with this secret; let me consider for
what reason,--oh! my son's legitimacy may be convenient to me hereafter.
He will understand that reason, and I will have his 'honour' thereon.
And by the way, I do care for that legitimacy, and will guard the
proofs. I love my child,--ambitious men do love their children. I may
become a lord myself, and may wish for a lord to succeed me; and that
son is mine, thank Heaven! I am sure on that point,--the only child,
too, that ever shall arise to me. Never, I swear, will I again put
myself beyond my own power! All my nature, save one passion, I have
hitherto mastered; that passion shall henceforth be my slave, my only
thought be ambition, my only mistress be the world!”
As thus terminated the revery of a man whom the social circumstances
of the world were calculated, as if by system, to render eminently and
basely wicked, Welford slowly ascended the stairs, and re-entered his
chamber. His wife was still sleeping. Her beauty was of the fair and