Paul Clifford — Complete
girlish and harmonized order, which lovers and poets would express by
the word “angelic;” and as Welford looked upon her face, hushed and
almost hallowed by slumber, a certain weakness and irresolution might
have been discernible in the strong lines of his haughty features. At
that moment, as if forever to destroy the return of hope or virtue
to either, her lips moved, they uttered one word,--it was the name of
Welford's courtly guest.
About three weeks from that evening Mrs. Welford eloped with the young
nobleman, and on the morning following that event the distracted husband
with his child disappeared forever from the town of -----. From that day
no tidings whatsoever respecting him ever reached the titillated ears
of his anxious neighbours; and doubt, curiosity, discussion, gradually
settled into the belief that his despair had hurried him into suicide.
Although the unfortunate Mrs. Welford was in reality of a light and
frivolous turn, and, above all, susceptible to personal vanity, she was
not without ardent affections and keen sensibilities. Her marriage had
been one of love,--that is to say, on her part, the ordinary love of
girls, who love not through actual and natural feeling so much as forced
predisposition. Her choice had fallen on one superior to herself in
birth, and far above all, in person and address, whom she had habitually
met. Thus her vanity had assisted her affection, and something strange
and eccentric in the temper and mind of Welford had, though at times it
aroused her fear, greatly contributed to inflame her imagination. Then,
too, though an uncourtly, he had been a passionate and a romantic lover.
She was sensible that he gave up for her much that he had previously
conceived necessary to his existence; and she stopped not to inquire how
far this devotion was likely to last, or what conduct on her part might
best perpetuate the feelings from which it sprang. She had eloped with
him. She had consented to a private marriage. She had passed one happy
month, and then delusion vanished! Mrs. Welford was not a woman who
could give to reality, or find in it, the charm equal to delusion. She
was perfectly unable to comprehend the intricate and dangerous character
of her husband.
She had not the key to his virtues, nor the spell for his vices. Neither
was the state to which poverty compelled them one well calculated
for that tender meditation, heightened by absence and cherished in
indolence, which so often supplies one who loves with the secret to the
nature of the one beloved. Though not equal to her husband in birth or
early prospects, Mrs. Welford had been accustomed to certain comforts,
often more felt by those who belong to the inferior classes than by
those appertaining to the more elevated, who in losing one luxury will
often cheerfully surrender all. A fine lady can submit to more hardships
than her woman; and every gentleman who travels smiles at the privations
which agonize his valet. Poverty and its grim comrades made way for a
whole host of petty irritations and peevish complaints; and as no
guest or visitor ever relieved the domestic discontent, or broke on the
domestic bickering, they generally ended in that moody sullenness which
so often finds love a grave in repentance. Nothing makes people tire of
each other like a familiarity that admits of carelessness in quarrelling
and coarseness in complaining. The biting sneer of Welford gave acrimony
to the murmur of his wife; and when once each conceived the other the
injurer, or him or herself the wronged, it was vain to hope that one
would be more wary, or the other more indulgent. They both exacted too
much, and the wife in especial conceded too little. Mrs. Welford was
altogether and emphatically what a libertine calls “a woman,”--such as
a frivolous education makes a woman,--generous in great things, petty
in small; vain, irritable, full of the littleness of herself and her
complaints, ready to plunge into an abyss with her lover, but equally
ready to fret away all love with reproaches when the plunge had been
made. Of all men, Welford could bear this the least. A woman of a
larger heart, a more settled experience, and an intellect capable of
appreciating his character and sounding all his qualities, might have
made him perhaps a useful and a great man, and, at least, her lover for
life. Amidst a harvest of evil feelings the mere strength of his nature
rendered him especially capable of intense feeling and generous emotion.
One who relied on him was safe; one who rebelled against him trusted
only to the caprice of his scorn. Still, however, for two years, love,
though weakening with each hour, fought on in either breast, and could
scarcely be said to be entirely vanquished in the wife, even when she
eloped with her handsome seducer. A French writer has said pithily
enough: “Compare for a moment the apathy of a husband with the
attention, the gallantry, the adoration of a lover, and can you ask the
result?” He was a French writer; but Mrs. Welford had in her temper much
of the Frenchwoman. A suffering patient, young, handsome, well versed
in the arts of intrigue, contrasted with a gloomy husband whom she
had never comprehended, long feared, and had lately doubted if she
disliked,--ah! a much weaker contrast has made many a much better
woman food for the lawyers! Mrs. Welford eloped; but she felt a revived
tenderness for her husband on the very morning that she did so. She
carried away with her his letters of love as well as her own, which
when they first married she had in an hour of fondness collected
together,--then an inestimable board!--and never did her new lover
receive from her beautiful lips half so passionate a kiss as she left on
the cheek of her infant. For some months she enjoyed with her paramour
all for which she had sighed in her home. The one for whom she had
forsaken her legitimate ties was a person so habitually cheerful,
courteous, and what is ordinarily termed “good-natured” (though he
had in him as much of the essence of selfishness as any nobleman can
decently have), that he continued gallant to her without an effort long
after he had begun to think it possible to tire even of so lovely a
face. Yet there were moments when the fickle wife recalled her husband
with regret, and contrasting him with her seducer, did not find all the
colourings of the contrast flattering to the latter. There is something
in a powerful and marked character which women and all weak natures feel
themselves constrained to respect; and Welford's character thus stood in
bold and therefore advantageous though gloomy relief when opposed to the
levities and foibles of this guilty woman's present adorer. However this
be, the die was cast; and it would have been policy for the lady to have
made the best of her present game. But she who had murmured as a wife
was not complaisant as a mistress. Reproaches made an interlude to
caresses, which the noble lover by no means admired. He was not a man
to retort, he was too indolent; but neither was he one to forbear.
“My charming friend,” said he one day, after a scene, “you weary of
me,--nothing more natural! Why torment each other? You say I have ruined
you; my sweet friend, let me make you reparation. Become independent; I
will settle an annuity upon you; fly me,--seek happiness elsewhere, and
leave your unfortunate, your despairing lover to his fate.”
“Do you taunt me, my lord?” cried the angry fair; “or do you believe
that money can replace the rights of which you have robbed me? Can you
make me again a wife,--a happy, a respected wife? Do this, my lord, and
you atone to me!”
The nobleman smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. The lady yet more
angrily repeated her question. The lover answered by an innuendo,
which at once astonished and doubly enraged her. She eagerly demanded
explanation; and his lordship, who had gone further than he intended,
left the room. But his words had sunk deep into the breast of this
unhappy woman, and she resolved to procure an elucidation. Agreeably to
the policy which stripped the fabled traveller of his cloak, she laid
aside the storm and preferred the sunshine: she watched a moment of
tenderness, turned the opportunity to advantage, and by little and
little she possessed herself of a secret which sickened her with shame,
disgust, and dismay. Sold! bartered! the object of a contemptuous
huxtering to the purchaser and the seller, sold, too, with a lie that
debased her at once into an object for whom even pity was mixed with
scorn! Robbed already of the name and honour of a wife, and transferred
as a harlot from the wearied arms of one leman to the capricious
caresses of another! Such was the image that rose before her; and while
it roused at one moment all her fiercer passions into madness, humbled,
with the next, her vanity into the dust. She, who knew the ruling
passion of Welford, saw at a glance the object of scorn and derision
which she had become to him. While she imagined herself the betrayer,
she had been betrayed; she saw vividly before her (and shuddered as she
saw) her husband's icy smile, his serpent eye, his features steeped in
sarcasm, and all his mocking soul stamped upon the countenance, whose
lightest derision was so galling. She turned from this picture, and
saw the courtly face of the purchaser,--his subdued smile at her
reproaches,--his latent sneer at her claims to a station which he had
been taught by the arch plotter to believe she had never possessed.
She saw his early weariness of her attractions, expressed with respect
indeed,--an insulting respect,--but felt without a scruple of remorse.
She saw in either--as around--only a reciprocation of contempt. She was
in a web of profound abasement. Even that haughty grief of conscience
for crime committed to another, which if it stings humbles not, was
swallowed up in a far more agonizing sensation, to one so vain as
the adulteress,--the burning sense of shame at having herself, while
sinning, been the duped and deceived. Her very soul was appalled with
her humiliation. The curse of Welford's vengeance was on her, and it
was wreaked to the last! Whatever kindly sentiment she might have
experienced towards her protector, was swallowed up at once by this
discovery. She could not endure the thought of meeting the eye of one
who had been the gainer by this ignominious barter; the foibles and
weaknesses of the lover assumed a despicable as well as hateful dye. And
in feeling herself degraded, she loathed him. The day after she had made
the discovery we have referred to, Mrs. Welford left the house of her
protector, none knew whither. For two years from that date, all trace
of her history was lost. At the end of that time what was Welford? A man
rapidly rising in the world, distinguished at the Bar, where his first
brief had lifted him into notice, commencing a flattering career in
the senate, holding lucrative and honourable offices, esteemed for the
austere rectitude of his moral character, gathering the golden opinions
of all men, as he strode onward to public reputation. He had re-assumed
his hereditary name; his early history was unknown; and no one in the
obscure and distant town of ------ had ever guessed that the humble
Welford was the William Brandon whose praise was echoed in so many
journals, and whose rising genius was acknowledged by all. That
asperity, roughness, and gloom which had noted him at ------, and which,
being natural to him, he deigned not to disguise in a station ungenial
to his talents and below his hopes, were now glitteringly varnished over
by an hypocrisy well calculated to aid his ambition. So learnedly could
this singular man fit himself to others that few among the great met him
as a companion, nor left him without the temper to become his friend.