Paul Clifford — Complete
common vicissitudes of Fortune, the estate of the ancient Brandons has
now, we perceive by a weekly journal, just passed into the hands of a
wealthy alderman.
It was nearly a year since Brandon's death when a letter bearing a
foreign postmark came to Lucy. From that time her spirits--which before,
though subject to fits of abstraction, had been even and subdued, not
sad--rose into all the cheerfulness and vivacity of her earliest youth.
She busied herself actively in preparations for her departure from this
country; and at length the day was fixed, and the vessel was engaged.
Every day till that one, did Lucy walk to the seaside, and ascending the
highest cliff, spend hours, till the evening closed, in watching, with
seemingly idle gaze, the vessels that interspersed the sea; and with
every day her health seemed to strengthen, and the soft and lucid colour
she had once worn, to rebloom upon her cheek.
Previous to her departure Miss Brandon dismissed her servants, and only
engaged one female, a foreigner, to accompany her. A certain tone of
quiet command, formerly unknown to her, characterized these measures,
so daringly independent for one of her sex and age. The day arrived,--it
was the anniversary of her last interview with Clifford. On entering the
vessel it was observed that she trembled violently, and that her face
was as pale as death. A stranger, who had stood aloof wrapped in
his cloak, darted forward to assist her; that was the last which her
discarded and weeping servants beheld of her from the pier where they
stood to gaze.
Nothing more in this country was ever known of the fate of Lucy Brandon;
and as her circle of acquaintances was narrow, and interest in her fate
existed vividly in none save a few humble breasts, conjecture was never
keenly awakened, and soon cooled into forgetfulness. If it favoured,
after the lapse of years, any one notion more than another, it was that
she had perished among the victims of the French Revolution.
Meanwhile let us glance over the destinies of our more subordinate
acquaintances.
Augustus Tomlinson, on parting from Long Ned, had succeeded in reaching
Calais; and after a rapid tour through the Continent, he ultimately
betook himself to a certain literary city in Germany, where he became
distinguished for his metaphysical acumen, and opened a school of morals
on the Grecian model, taught in the French tongue. He managed, by the
patronage he received and the pupils he enlightened, to obtain a very
decent income; and as he wrote a folio against Locke, proved that men
had innate feelings, and affirmed that we should refer everything not to
reason, but to the sentiments of the soul, he became greatly respected
for his extraordinary virtue. Some little discoveries were made after
his death, which perhaps would have somewhat diminished the general
odour of his sanctity, had not the admirers of his school carefully
hushed up the matter, probably out of respect for the “sentiments of the
soul!”
Pepper, whom the police did not so anxiously desire to destroy as they
did his two companions, might have managed, perhaps many years longer,
to graze upon the public commons, had not a letter, written somewhat
imprudently, fallen into wrong hands. This, though after creating a
certain stir it apparently died away, lived in the memory of the
police, and finally conspired, with various peccadilloes, to produce
his downfall. He was seized, tried, and sentenced to seven years'
transportation. He so advantageously employed his time at Botany
Bay, and arranged things there so comfortably to himself, that at
the expiration of his sentence he refused to return home. He made an
excellent match, built himself an excellent house, and remained in “the
land of the blest” to the end of his days, noted to the last for the
redundance of his hair and a certain ferocious coxcombry of aspect.
As for Fighting Attie and Gentleman George, for Scarlet Jem and for Old
Bags, we confess ourselves destitute of any certain information of their
latter ends. We can only add, with regard to Fighting Attie, “Good luck
be with him wherever he goes!” and for mine host of the Jolly Angler,
that, though we have not the physical constitution to quaff “a bumper
of blue ruin,” we shall be very happy, over any tolerable wine and
in company with any agreeable convivialist, to bear our part in the
polished chorus of--
“Here's to Gentleman George, God bless him!”
Mrs. Lobkins departed this life like a lamb; and Dummie Dunnaker
obtained a license to carry on the business at Thames Court. He boasted,
to the last, of his acquaintance with the great Captain Lovett, and
of the affability with which that distinguished personage treated him.
Stories he had, too, about Judge Brandon, but no one believed a syllable
of them; and Dummie, indignant at the disbelief, increased, out of
vehemence, the marvel of the stories, so that, at length, what was added
almost swallowed up what was original, and Dummie himself might have
been puzzled to satisfy his own conscience as to what was false and what
was true.
The erudite Peter MacGrawler, returning to Scotland, disappeared by
the road. A person singularly resembling the sage was afterward seen at
Carlisle, where he discharged the useful and praiseworthy duties of Jack
Ketch. But whether or not this respectable functionary was our identical
Simon Pure, our ex-editor of “The Asinaeum,” we will not take upon
ourselves to assert.
Lord Mauleverer, finally resolving on a single life, passed the
remainder of his years in indolent tranquillity. When he died, the
newspapers asserted that his Majesty was deeply affected by the loss
of so old and valued a friend. His furniture and wines sold remarkably
high; and a Great Man, his particular intimate, who purchased his books,
startled to find, by pencil marks, that the noble deceased had read some
of them, exclaimed, not altogether without truth,
“Ah! Mauleverer might have been a deuced clever fellow--if he had liked
it!”
The earl was accustomed to show as a curiosity a ring of great value,
which he had received in rather a singular manner. One morning a packet
was brought him which he found to contain a sum of money, the ring
mentioned, and a letter from the notorious Lovett, in which that
person in begging to return his lordship the sums of which he had
twice assisted to rob him, thanked him, with earnest warmth, for the
consideration testified towards him in not revealing his identity with
Captain Clifford; and ventured, as a slight testimony of respect, to
inclose the aforesaid ring with the sum returned.
About the time Mauleverer received this curious packet, several
anecdotes of a similar nature appeared in the public journals; and
it seemed that Lovett had acted upon a general principle of
restitution,--not always, it must be allowed, the offspring of a
robber's repentance. While the idle were marvelling at these anecdotes,
came the tardy news that Lovett, after a single month's sojourn at his
place of condemnation, had, in the most daring and singular manner,
effected his escape. Whether, in his progress up the country, he had
been starved or slain by the natives, or whether, more fortunate, he had
ultimately found the means of crossing seas, was as yet unknown. There
ended the adventures of the gallant robber; and thus, by a strange
coincidence, the same mystery which wrapped the fate of Lucy involved
also that of her lover. And here, kind reader, might we drop the curtain
on our closing scene, did we not think it might please thee to hold it
up yet one moment, and give thee another view of the world behind.
In a certain town of that Great Country where shoes are imperfectly
polished--[See Captain Hall's late work on America]--and opinions are
not prosecuted, there resided, twenty years after the date of Lucy
Brandon's departure from England, a man held in high and universal
respect, not only for the rectitude of his conduct, but for the energies
of his mind, and the purposes to which they were directed. If you asked
who cultivated that waste, the answer was, “Clifford!” who procured the
establishment of that hospital, “Clifford!” who obtained the redress of
such a public grievance, “Clifford!” who struggled for and won such a
popular benefit, “Clifford!” In the gentler part of his projects and his
undertakings--in that part, above all, which concerned the sick or the
necessitous--this useful citizen was seconded, or rather excelled, by a
being over whose surpassing loveliness Time seemed to have flown with a
gentle and charming wing. There was something remarkable and touching
in the love which this couple (for the woman we refer to was Clifford's
wife) bore to each other; like the plant on the plains of Hebron, the
time which brought to that love an additional strength brought to it
also a softer and a fresher verdure. Although their present neighbours
were unacquainted with the events of their earlier life previous to
their settlement at ----------, it was known that they had been wealthy
at the time they first came to reside there, and that, by a series
of fatalities, they had lost all. But Clifford had borne up manfully
against fortune; and in a new country, where men who prefer labour to
dependence cannot easily starve, he had been enabled to toil upward
through the severe stages of poverty and hardship with an honesty and
vigour of character which won him, perhaps, a more hearty esteem for
every successive effort than the display of his lost riches might ever
have acquired him. His labours and his abilities obtained gradual but
sure success; and he now enjoyed the blessings of a competence earned
with the most scrupulous integrity, and spent with the most kindly
benevolence. A trace of the trials they had passed through was
discernible in each; those trials had stolen the rose from the wife's
cheek, and had sown untimely wrinkles in the broad brow of Clifford.
There were moments, too, but they were only moments, when the latter
sank from his wonted elastic and healthful cheerfulness of mind into a
gloomy and abstracted revery; but these moments the wife watched with a
jealous and fond anxiety, and one sound of her sweet voice had the
power to dispel their influence; and when Clifford raised his eyes,
and glanced from her tender smile around his happy home and his growing
children, or beheld through the very windows of his room the public
benefits he had created, something of pride and gladness glowed on his
countenance, and he said, though with glistening eyes and subdued voice,
as his looks returned once more to his wife, “I owe these to thee!”
One trait of mind especially characterized Clifford,--indulgence to the
faults of others. “Circumstances make guilt,” he was wont to say; “let
us endeavour to correct the circumstances, before we rail against the
guilt!” His children promised to tread in the same useful and honourable
path that he trod himself. Happy was considered that family which had
the hope to ally itself with his.
Such was the after-fate of Clifford and Lucy. Who will condemn us for
preferring the moral of that fate to the moral which is extorted
from the gibbet and the hulks,--which makes scarecrows, not beacons;
terrifies our weakness, not warms our reason. Who does not allow that
it is better to repair than to perish,--better, too, to atone as the
citizen than to repent as the hermit? Oh, John Wilkes, Alderman of
London, and Drawcansir of Liberty, your life was not an iota too
perfect,--your patriotism might have been infinitely purer, your morals
would have admitted indefinite amendment, you are no great favourite
with us or with the rest of the world,--but you said one excellent
thing, for which we look on you with benevolence, nay, almost with