Paul Clifford — Complete
transient; it vanished before the first thought of Clifford, and never
suggested to her even a doubt as to the suit of Mauleverer.
When the day arrived for Sir William Brandon to set out on the circuit,
he called Barlow, and enjoined on that acute and intelligent servant the
strictest caution with respect to Lucy. He bade him deny her to every
one, of whatever rank, and carefully to look into every newspaper that
was brought to her, as well as to withhold every letter, save such
as were addressed to her in the judge's own handwriting. Lucy's maid
Brandon had already won over to silence; and the uncle now pleased
himself with thinking that he had put an effectual guard to every chance
of discovery. The identity of Lovett with Clifford had not yet even
been rumoured; and Mauleverer had rightly judged of Clifford, when he
believed the prisoner would himself take every precaution against the
detection of that fact. Clifford answered the earl's note, and promised,
in a letter couched in so affecting yet so manly a tone of gratitude
that even Brandon was touched when he read it. And since his confinement
and partial recovery of health, the prisoner had kept himself closely
secluded, and refused all visitors. Encouraged by this reflection, and
the belief in the safety of his precautions, Brandon took leave of Lucy.
“Farewell!” said he, as he embraced her affectionately. “Be sure that
you write to me, and forgive me if I do not answer you punctually. Take
care of yourself, my sweet niece, and let me see a fresher colour on
that soft cheek when I return!”
“Take care of yourself rather, my dear, dear uncle,” said Lucy, clinging
to him and weeping, as of late her weakened nerves caused her to do at
the least agitation. “Why may I not go with you? You have seemed to
me paler than usual the last three or four days, and you complained
yesterday. Do let me go with you. I will be no trouble, none at all; but
I am sure you require a nurse.”
“You want to frighten me, my pretty Lucy,” said Brandon, shaking his
head with a smile. “I am well, very well. I felt a strange rush of blood
towards the head yesterday, it is true; but I feel to-day stronger and
lighter than I have done for years. Once more, God bless you, my child!”
And Brandon tore himself away, and commenced his journey.
The wandering and dramatic course of our story now conducts us to an
obscure lane in the metropolis, leading to the Thames, and makes us
spectators of an affecting farewell between two persons, whom the
injustice of fate and the persecutions of men were about perhaps forever
to divide.
“Adieu, my friend!” said Augustus Tomlinson, as he stood looking full on
that segment of the face of Edward Pepper which was left unconcealed by
a huge hat and a red belcher handkerchief. Tomlinson himself was attired
in the full costume of a dignified clergyman. “Adieu, my friend, since
you will remain in England,--adieu! I am, I exult to say, no less
sincere a patriot than you. Heaven be my witness, how long I looked
repugnantly on poor Lovett's proposal to quit my beloved country. But
all hope of life here is now over; and really, during the last ten days
I have been so hunted from corner to corner, so plagued with polite
invitations, similar to those given by a farmer's wife to her ducks,
'Dilly, dilly, dilly, come and be killed!' that my patriotism has
been prodigiously cooled, and I no longer recoil from thoughts of
self-banishment. 'The earth,' my dear Ned, as a Greek sage has very well
observed,--'the earth is the same everywhere!' and if I am asked for my
home, I can point, like Anaxagoras, to heaven!”
“'Pon my soul, you affect me!” said Ned, speaking thick, either from
grief or the pressure of the belcher handkerchief on his mouth; “it is
quite beautiful to hear you talk!”
“Bear up, my dear friend,” continued Tomlinson; “bear up against your
present afflictions. What, to a man who fortifies himself by reason and
by reflection on the shortness of life, are the little calamities of the
body? What is imprisonment or persecution or cold or hunger? By the by,
you did not forget to put the sandwiches into my coat-pocket!”
“Hush!” whispered Ned, and he moved on involuntarily; “I see a man at
the other end of the street.”
“Let us quicken our pace,” said Tomlinson; and the pair proceeded
towards the river.
“And now,” began Ned, who thought he might as well say something about
himself; for hitherto Augustus, in the ardour of his friendship, had
been only discussing his own plans,--“and now,--that is to say, when I
leave you,--I shall hasten to dive for shelter, until the storm blows
over. I don't much like living in a cellar and wearing a smock frock;
but those concealments have something interesting in them, after all!
The safest and snuggest place I know of is the Pays Bas, about Thames
Court; so I think of hiring an apartment underground, and taking my
meals at poor Lovett's old quarters, the Mug,--the police will never
dream of looking in these vulgar haunts for a man of my fashion.”
“You cannot then tear yourself from England?” said Tomlinson.
“No, hang it! the fellows are so cursed unmanly on the other side of the
water. I hate their wine and their parley woo. Besides, there is no fun
there.”
Tomlinson, who was absorbed in his own thoughts, made no comment on his
friend's excellent reasons against travel; and the pair now approached
the brink of the river. A boat was in waiting to receive and conduct to
the vessel in which he had taken his place for Calais the illustrious
emigrant. But as Tomlinson's eye fell suddenly on the rude boatmen and
the little boat which were to bear him away from his native land; as
he glanced, too, across the blue waters, which a brisk wind wildly
agitated, and thought how much rougher it would be at sea, where “his
soul” invariably “sickened at the heaving wave,”--a whole tide of deep
and sorrowful emotions rushed upon him.
He turned away. The spot on which he stood was a piece of ground to be
let (as a board proclaimed) upon a building lease; below, descended the
steps which were to conduct him to the boat; around, the desolate space
allowed him to see in far and broad extent the spires and domes and
chimneys of the great city whose inhabitants he might never plunder
more. As he looked and looked, the tears started to his eyes, and with
a gust of enthusiasm, little consonant with his temperate and
philosophical character, he lifted his right hand from his black
breeches-pocket, and burst into the following farewell to the metropolis
of his native shores:--
“Farewell, my beloved London, farewell! Where shall I ever find a city
like you? Never, till now, did I feel how inexpressibly dear you were to
me. You have been my father and my brother and my mistress and my tailor
and my shoemaker and my hatter and my cook and my wine-merchant! You and
I never misunderstood each other. I did not grumble when I saw what fine
houses and good strong boxes you gave to other men. No! I rejoiced at
their prosperity. I delighted to see a rich man,--my only disappointment
was in stumbling on a poor one. You gave riches to my neighbours; but,
O generous London, you gave those neighbours to me! Magnificent streets,
all Christian virtues abide within you! Charity is as common as smoke!
Where, in what corner of the habitable world, shall I find human
beings with so many superfluities? Where shall I so easily decoy, from
benevolent credulity, those superfluities to myself? Heaven only knows,
my dear, dear, darling London, what I lose in you! O public charities!
O public institutions! O banks that belie mathematical axioms and make
lots out of nothing! O ancient constitution always to be questioned! O
modern improvements that never answer! O speculations! O companies! O
usury laws which guard against usurers, by making as many as possible!
O churches in which no one profits, save the parson, and the old women
that let pews of an evening! O superb theatres, too small for parks,
too enormous for houses, which exclude comedy and comfort, and have
a monopoly for performing nonsense gigantically! O houses of plaster,
built in a day! O palaces four yards high, with a dome in the middle,
meant to be invisible!
[We must not suppose this apostrophe to be an anachronism.
Tomlinson, Of course, refers to some palace of his day; one of the
boxes--Christmas boxes--given to the king by his economical nation
of shopkeepers. We suppose it is either pulled down or blown down
long ago; it is doubtless forgotten by this time, except by
antiquaries. Nothing is so ephemeral as great houses built by the
people. Your kings play the deuce with their playthings!]
“O shops worth thousands, and O shopkeepers not worth a shilling! O
system of credit by which beggars are princes, and princes are beggars!
O imprisonment for debt, which lets the mare be stolen, and then locks
up the bridle! O sharpers, bubbles, senators, beaux, taverns, brothels,
clubs, houses private and public!---O LONDON, in a word, receive my last
adieu! Long may you flourish in peace and plenteousness! May your knaves
be witty, and your fools be rich! May you alter only two things,--your
damnable tricks of transportation and hanging! Those are your sole
faults; but for those I would never desert you. Adieu!”
Here Tomlinson averted his head, and then hastily shaking the hand of
Long Ned with a tremulous and warm grasp, he hurried down the stairs and
entered the boat. Ned remained motionless for some moments, following
him with his eyes as he sat at the end of the boat, waving a white
pocket-handkerchief. At length a line of barges snatched him from the
sight of the lingerer; and Ned, slowly turning away, muttered,--“Yes,
I have always heard that Dame Lobkins's was the safest asylum for
misfortune like mine. I will go forthwith in search of a lodging, and
to-morrow I will make my breakfast at the Mug!”
Be it our pleasing task, dear reader, to forestall the good robber,
and return, at the hour of sunrise on the day following Tomlinson's
departure, to the scene at which our story commenced. We are now once
more at the house of Mrs. Margery Lobkins.
The room which served so many purposes was still the same as when Paul
turned it into the arena of his mischievous pranks. The dresser,
with its shelves of mingled delf and pewter, occupied its ancient and
important station. Only it might be noticed that the pewter was more
dull than of yore, and that sundry cracks made their erratic wanderings
over the yellow surface of the delf. The eye of the mistress had
become less keen than heretofore, and the care of the hand maid had, of
necessity, relaxed. The tall clock still ticked in monotonous warning;
the blanket-screen, haply innocent of soap since we last described it,
many-storied and polyballaded, still unfolded its ample leaves “rich
with the spoils of time;” the spit and the musket yet hung from the wall
in amicable proximation. And the long, smooth form, “with many a holy
text thereon bestrewn,” still afforded rest to the weary traveller, and
an object to the vacant stare of Mrs. Margery Lobkins, as she lolled in
her opposite seat and forgot the world. But poor Piggy Lob!---there
was the alteration! The soul of the woman was gone; the spirit had
evaporated from the human bottle! She sat, with open mouth and glassy
eye, in her chair, sidling herself to and fro, with the low, peevish
sound of fretful age and bodily pain; sometimes this querulous
murmur sharpened into a shrill but unmeaning scold: “There now, you
gallows-bird! you has taken the swipes without chalking; you wants to
cheat the poor widow; but I sees you, I does! Providence protects the
aged and the innocent--Oh, oh! these twinges will be the death o' me.