Paul Clifford — Complete
rigidity of mouth, which made the most conspicuous feature in Brandon,
and which was the only point that deteriorated from the singular beauty
of Clifford. But, above all, the same inflexible, defying, stubborn
spirit, though in Brandon it assumed the stately cast of majesty, and in
Clifford it seemed the desperate sternness of the bravo, stamped itself
in both. Though Clifford ceased, he did not resume his seat, but stood
in the same attitude as that in which he had reversed the order of
things, and merged the petitioner in the accuser; and Brandon himself,
without speaking or moving, continued still to survey him; so, with
erect fronts and marble countenances, in which what was defying and
resolute did not altogether quell the mortal leaven of pain and dread,
they looked as might have looked the two men in the Eastern story who
had the power of gazing each other unto death.
What at that moment was raging in Brandon's heart, it is in vain to
guess. He doubted not for a moment that he beheld before him his long
lost, his anxiously demanded son! Every fibre, every corner of his
complex and gloomy soul, that certainly reached, and blasted with a
hideous and irresistible glare. The earliest, perhaps the strongest,
though often the least acknowledged principle of his mind was the desire
to rebuild the fallen honours of his house; its last scion he now beheld
before him, covered with the darkest ignominies of the law! He had
coveted worldly honours; he beheld their legitimate successor in a
convicted felon! He had garnered the few affections he had spared from
the objects of pride and ambition, in his son. That son he was about
to adjudge to the gibbet and the hangman! Of late he had increased the
hopes of regaining his lost treasure, even to an exultant certainty. Lo!
the hopes were accomplished! How? With these thoughts warring, in what
manner we dare not even by an epithet express, within him, we may cast
one hasty glance on the horror of aggravation they endured, when he
heard the prisoner accuse Him as the cause of his present doom, and felt
himself at once the murderer and the judge of his son!
Minutes had elapsed since the voice of the prisoner ceased; and Brandon
now drew forth the black cap. As he placed it slowly over his brows, the
increasing and corpse-like whiteness of his face became more glaringly
visible, by the contrast which this dread head-gear presented. Twice as
he essayed to speak his voice failed him, and an indistinct murmur came
forth from his hueless lips, and died away like a fitful and feeble
wind. But with the third effort the resolution and long self-tyranny of
the man conquered, and his voice went clear and unfaltering through the
crowd, although the severe sweetness of its wonted tones was gone, and
it sounded strange and hollow on the ears that drank it.
“Prisoner at the bar! it has become my duty to announce to you the close
of your mortal career. You have been accused of a daring robbery, and
after an impartial trial a jury of your countrymen and the laws of your
country have decided against you. The recommendation to mercy” (here,
only throughout his speech, Brandon gasped convulsively for breath) “so
humanely added by the jury, shall be forwarded to the supreme power; but
I cannot flatter you with much hope of its success.” (The lawyers
looked with some surprise at each other; they had expected a far more
unqualified mandate, to abjure all hope from the jury's recommendation.)
“Prisoner, for the opinions you have expressed, you are now only
answerable to your God; I forbear to arraign them. For the charge you
have made against me, whether true or false, and for the anguish it has
given me, may you find pardon at another tribunal! It remains for me
only--under a reserve too slight, as I have said, to afford you a fair
promise of hope--only to--to” (all eyes were on Brandon; he felt it,
exerted himself for a last effort, and proceeded)--“to pronounce on
you the sharp sentence of the law! It is, that you be taken back to the
prison whence you came, and thence (when the supreme authority shall
appoint) to the place of execution, to be there hanged by the neck till
you are dead; and the Lord God Almighty have mercy on your soul!”
With this address concluded that eventful trial; and while the crowd, in
rushing and noisy tumult, bore towards the door, Brandon, concealing
to the last with a Spartan bravery the anguish which was gnawing at his
entrails, retired from the awful pageant. For the next half-hour he was
locked up with the strange intruder on the proceedings of the court. At
the end of that time the stranger was dismissed; and in about double the
same period Brandon's servant re-admitted him, accompanied by another
man, with a slouched hat and in a carman's frock. The reader need not be
told that the new comer was the friendly Ned, whose testimony was indeed
a valuable corroborative to Dummie's, and whose regard for Clifford,
aided by an appetite for rewards, had induced him to venture to the
town of -----, although he tarried concealed in a safe suburb, until
reassured by a written promise from Brandon of safety to his person,
and a sum for which we might almost doubt whether he would not have
consented (so long had he been mistaking means for an end) to be hanged
himself. Brandon listened to the details of these confederates; and when
they had finished, he addressed them thus: “I have heard you, and am
convinced you are liars and impostors. There is the money I promised
you” (throwing down a pocket-book),--“take it; and, hark you, if ever
you dare whisper, ay, but a breath of the atrocious lie you have now
forged, be sure I will have you dragged from the recess or nook of
infamy in which you may hide your heads, and hanged for the crimes you
have already committed. I am not the man to break my word. Begone! quit
this town instantly! If in two hours hence you are found here, your
blood be on your own heads! Begone, I say!”
These words, aided by a countenance well adapted at all times to
expressions of a menacing and ruthless character, at once astounded and
appalled the accomplices. They left the room in hasty confusion; and
Brandon, now alone, walked with uneven steps (the alarming weakness and
vacillation of which he did not himself feel) to and fro the apartment.
The hell of his breast was stamped upon his features, but he uttered
only one thought aloud,--
“I may,--yes, yes,--I may yet conceal this disgrace to my name!”
His servant tapped at the door to say that the carriage was ready,
and that Lord Mauleverer had bid him remind his master that they dined
punctually at the hour appointed.
“I am coming!” said Brandon, with a slow and startling emphasis on each
word. But he first sat down and wrote a letter to the official quarter,
strongly aiding the recommendation of the Jury; and we may conceive how
pride clung to him to the last, when he urged the substitution for death
of transportation for life! As soon as he had sealed this letter,
he summoned an express, gave his orders coolly and distinctly, and
attempted with his usual stateliness of step to walk through a long
passage which led to the outer door. He found himself fail. “Come
hither,” he said to his servant, “give me your arm!”
All Brandon's domestics, save the one left with Lucy, stood in awe
of him; and it was with some hesitation that his servant ventured to
inquire if his master felt well.
Brandon looked at him, but made no reply. He entered his carriage
with slight difficulty, and telling the coachman to drive as fast as
possible, pulled down (a general custom with him) all the blinds of the
windows.
Meanwhile Lord Mauleverer, with six friends, was impatiently awaiting
the arrival of the seventh guest.
“Our August friend tarries!” quoth the Bishop of -------, with his hands
folded across his capacious stomach. “I fear the turbot your lordship
spoke of may not be the better for the length of the trial.”
“Poor fellow!” said the Earl of --------, slightly yawning.
“Whom do you mean?” asked Lord Mauleverer, with a smile,--“the bishop,
the judge, or the turbot?”
“Not one of the three, Mauleverer,--I spoke of the prisoner.”
“Ah, the fine dog! I forgot him,” said Mauleverer. “Really, now you
mention him, I must confess that he inspires me with great compassion;
but, indeed, it is very wrong in him to keep the judge so long!”
“Those hardened wretches have such a great deal to say,” mumbled the
bishop, sourly.
“True!” said Mauleverer; “a religious rogue would have had some bowels
for the state of the church esurient.”
“Is it really true, Mauleverer,” asked the Earl of ------, “that Brandon
is to succeed?”
“So I hear,” said Mauleverer. “Heavens, how hungry I am!”
A groan from the bishop echoed the complaint.
“I suppose it would be against all decorum to sit down to dinner without
him?” said Lord --------.
“Why, really, I fear so,” returned Mauleverer. “But our health--our
health is at stake; we will only wait five minutes more. By Jove,
there's the carriage! I beg your pardon for my heathen oath, my lord
bishop.”
“I forgive you!” said the good bishop, smiling.
The party thus engaged in colloquy were stationed at a window opening on
the gravel road, along which the judge's carriage was now seen rapidly
approaching; this window was but a few yards from the porch, and had
been partially opened for the better reconnoitring the approach of the
expected guest.
“He keeps the blinds down still! Absence of mind, or shame at
unpunctuality,--which is the cause, Mauleverer?” said one of the party.
“Not shame, I fear!” answered Mauleverer. “Even the indecent immorality
of delaying our dinner could scarcely bring a blush to the parchment
skin of my learned friend.”
Here the carriage stopped at the porch; the carriage door was opened.
“There seems a strange delay,” said Mauleverer, peevishly. “Why does not
he get out?”
As he spoke, a murmur among the attendants, who appeared somewhat
strangely to crowd around the carriage, smote the ears of the party.
“What do they say,--what?” said Mauleverer, putting his hand to his ear.
The bishop answered hastily; and Mauleverer, as he heard the reply,
forgot for once his susceptibility to cold, and hurried out to the
carriage door. His guests followed.
They found Brandon leaning against the farther corner of the
carriage,--a corpse. One hand held the check-string, as if he had
endeavoured involuntarily but ineffectually to pull it. The right side
of his face was partially distorted, as by convulsion or paralysis; but
not sufficiently so to destroy that remarkable expression of loftiness
and severity which had characterized the features in life. At the same
time the distortion which had drawn up on one side the muscles of the
mouth had deepened into a startling broadness the half sneer of derision
that usually lurked around the lower part of his face. Thus unwitnessed
and abrupt had been the disunion of the clay and spirit of a man who, if
he passed through life a bold, scheming, stubborn, unwavering
hypocrite, was not without something high even amidst his baseness, his
selfishness, and his vices; who seemed less to have loved sin than by
some strange perversion of reason to have disdained virtue, and who, by
a solemn and awful suddenness of fate (for who shall venture to indicate
the judgment of the arch and unseen Providence, even when it appears
to mortal eye the least obscured?), won the dreams, the objects, the
triumphs of hope, to be blasted by them at the moment of acquisition!
CHAPTER XXXVI.
AND LAST.
Subtle, Surly,--Mammon, Dol,
Hot Ananias, Dapper, Dragger,--all
With whom I traded.