Come, the plot thickens! and another fold
Of the warm cloak of mystery wraps us around.
..................
And for their loves?
Behold the seal is on them!
Tanner of Tyburn.
We must not suppose that Clifford's manner and tone were towards Lucy
Brandon such as they seemed to others. Love refines every roughness; and
that truth which nurtures tenderness is never barren of grace. Whatever
the habits and comrades of Clifford's life, he had at heart many
good and generous qualities. They were not often perceptible, it is
true,--first, because he was of a gay and reckless turn; secondly,
because he was not easily affected by any external circumstances; and
thirdly, because he had the policy to affect among his comrades only
such qualities as were likely to give him influence with them. Still,
however, his better genius broke out whenever an opportunity presented
itself. Though no “Corsair,” romantic and unreal, an Ossianic shadow
becoming more vast in proportion as it recedes from substance; though
no grandly-imagined lie to the fair proportions of human nature, but an
erring man in a very prosaic and homely world,--Clifford still mingled
a certain generosity and chivalric spirit of enterprise even with the
practices of his profession. Although the name of Lovett, by which he
was chiefly known, was one peculiarly distinguished in the annals of
the adventurous, it had never been coupled with rumours of cruelty
or outrage; and it was often associated with anecdotes of courage,
courtesy, good humour, or forbearance. He was one whom a real love
was peculiarly calculated to soften and to redeem. The boldness, the
candour, the unselfishness of his temper, were components of nature
upon which affection invariably takes a strong and deep hold. Besides,
Clifford was of an eager and aspiring turn; and the same temper and
abilities which had in a very few years raised him in influence and
popularity far above all the chivalric band with whom he was connected,
when once inflamed and elevated by a higher passion, were likely to
arouse his ambition from the level of his present pursuits, and reform
him, ere too late, into a useful, nay, even an honourable member of
society. We trust that the reader has already perceived that, despite
his early circumstances, his manner and address were not such as to
unfit him for a lady's love. The comparative refinement of his exterior
is easy of explanation, for he possessed a natural and inborn gentility,
a quick turn for observation, a ready sense both of the ridiculous and
the graceful; and these are materials which are soon and lightly wrought
from coarseness into polish. He had been thrown, too, among the leaders
and heroes of his band; many not absolutely low in birth, nor debased in
habit. He had associated with the Barringtons of the day,--gentlemen who
were admired at Ranelagh, and made speeches worthy of Cicero, when they
were summoned to trial. He had played his part in public places; and
as Tomlinson was wont to say after his classic fashion, “the triumphs
accomplished in the field had been planned in the ball-room.” In short,
he was one of those accomplished and elegant highwaymen of whom we yet
read wonders, and by whom it would have been delightful to have been
robbed: and the aptness of intellect which grew into wit with his
friends, softened into sentiment with his mistress. There is something,
too, in beauty (and Clifford's person, as we have before said, was
possessed of even uncommon attractions) which lifts a beggar into
nobility; and there was a distinction in his gait and look which
supplied the air of rank and the tone of courts. Men, indeed, skilled
like Mauleverer in the subtleties of manner, might perhaps have easily
detected in him the want of that indescribable essence possessed only
by persons reared in good society; but that want being shared by so
many persons of indisputable birth and fortune, conveyed no particular
reproach. To Lucy, indeed, brought up in seclusion, and seeing at
Warlock none calculated to refine her taste in the fashion of an air
or phrase to a very fastidious standard of perfection, this want
was perfectly imperceptible; she remarked in her lover only a figure
everywhere unequalled, an eye always eloquent with admiration, a step
from which grace could never be divorced, a voice that spoke in a silver
key, and uttered flatteries delicate in thought and poetical in word;
even a certain originality of mind, remark, and character, occasionally
approaching to the bizarre, yet sometimes also to the elevated,
possessed a charm for the imagination of a young and not unenthusiastic
female, and contrasted favourably, rather than the reverse, with the
dull insipidity of those she ordinarily saw. Nor are we sure that the
mystery thrown about him, irksome as it was to her, and discreditable as
it appeared to others, was altogether ineffectual in increasing her
love for the adventurer; and thus Fate, which transmutes in her magic
crucible all opposing metals into that one which she is desirous to
produce, swelled the wealth of an ill-placed and ominous passion by the
very circumstances which should have counteracted and destroyed it.
We are willing, by what we have said, not to defend Clifford, but to
redeem Lucy in the opinion of our readers for loving so unwisely; and
when they remember her youth, her education, her privation of a mother,
of all female friendship, even of the vigilant and unrelaxing care of
some protector of the opposite sex, we do not think that what was so
natural will be considered by any inexcusable.
Mauleverer woke the morning after the ball in better health than usual,
and consequently more in love than ever. According to his resolution the
night before, he sat down to write a long letter to William Brandon: it
was amusing and witty as usual; but the wily nobleman succeeded, under
the cover of wit, in conveying to Brandon's mind a serious apprehension
lest his cherished matrimonial project should altogether fail. The
account of Lucy and of Captain Clifford contained in the epistle
instilled, indeed, a double portion of sourness into the professionally
acrid mind of the lawyer; and as it so happened that he read the letter
just before attending the court upon a case in which he was counsel to
the crown, the witnesses on the opposite side of the question felt the
full effects of the barrister's ill humour. The case was one in which
the defendant had been engaged in swindling transactions to a very large
amount; and among his agents and assistants was a person of the very
lowest orders, but who, seemingly enjoying large connections, and
possessing natural acuteness and address, appeared to have been of
great use in receiving and disposing of such goods as were fraudulently
obtained. As a witness against the latter person appeared a pawnbroker,
who produced certain articles that had been pledged to him at different
times by this humble agent. Now, Brandon, in examining the guilty
go-between, became the more terribly severe in proportion as the man
evinced that semblance of unconscious stolidity which the lower orders
can so ingeniously assume, and which is so peculiarly adapted to enrage
and to baffle the gentlemen of the bar. At length, Brandon entirely
subduing and quelling the stubborn hypocrisy of the culprit, the man
turned towards him a look between wrath and beseechingness, muttering,--
“Aha! if so be, Counsellor Prandon, you knew vat I knows. You vould not
go for to bully I so!”
“And pray, my good fellow, what is it that you know that should make me
treat you as if I thought you an honest man?”
The witness had now relapsed into sullenness, and only answered by
a sort of grunt. Brandon, who knew well how to sting a witness
into communicativeness, continued his questioning till the witness,
re-aroused into anger, and it may be into indiscretion, said in a low
voice,--
“Hax Mr. Swoppem the pawnbroker what I sold 'im on the 15th hof
February, exactly twenty-three yearn ago.” Brandon started back, his
lips grew white, he clenched his hands with a convulsive spasm; and
while all his features seemed distorted with an earnest yet fearful
intensity of expectation, he poured forth a volley of questions, so
incoherent and so irrelevant that he was immediately called to order
by his learned brother on the opposite side. Nothing further could be
extracted from the witness. The pawnbroker was resummoned: he appeared
somewhat disconcerted by an appeal to his memory so far back as
twenty-three years; but after taking some time to consider, during which
the agitation of the usually cold and possessed Brandon was remarkable
to all the court, he declared that he recollected no transaction
whatsoever with the witness at that time. In vain were all Brandon's
efforts to procure a more elucidatory answer. The pawnbroker was
impenetrable, and the lawyer was compelled reluctantly to dismiss
him. The moment the witness left the box, Brandon sank into a gloomy
abstraction,--he seemed quite to forget the business and the duties of
the court; and so negligently did he continue to conclude the case, so
purposeless was the rest of his examination and cross-examination, that
the cause was entirely marred, and a verdict “Not guilty” returned by
the jury.
The moment he left the court, Brandon repaired to the pawnbroker's; and
after a conversation with Mr. Swoppem, in which he satisfied that honest
tradesman that his object was rather to reward than intimidate, Swoppem
confessed that twenty-three years ago the witness had met him at a
public-house in Devereux Court, in company with two other men, and sold
him several articles in plate, ornaments, etc. The great bulk of these
articles had, of course, long left the pawnbroker's abode; but he still
thought a stray trinket or two, not of sufficient worth to be reset or
remodelled, nor of sufficient fashion to find a ready sale, lingered in
his drawers. Eagerly, and with trembling hands, did Brandon toss over
the motley contents of the mahogany reservoirs which the pawnbroker now
submitted to his scrutiny. Nothing on earth is so melancholy a
prospect as a pawnbroker's drawer! Those little, quaint, valueless
ornaments,--those true-lovers' knots, those oval lockets, those battered
rings, girdled by initials, or some brief inscription of regard or of
grief,--what tales of past affections, hopes, and sorrows do they not
tell! But no sentiment of so general a sort ever saddened the hard mind
of William Brandon, and now less than at any time could such reflections
have occurred to him. Impatiently he threw on the table, one after
another, the baubles once hoarded perchance with the tenderest respect,
till at length his eyes sparkled, and with a nervous gripe he seized
upon an old ring which was inscribed with letters, and circled a heart
containing hair. The inscription was simply, “W. B. to Julia.” Strange
and dark was the expression that settled on Brandon's face as he
regarded this seemingly worthless trinket. After a moment's gaze, he
uttered an inarticulate exclamation, and thrusting it into his pocket,
renewed his search. He found one or two other trifles of a similar
nature; one was an ill-done miniature set in silver, and bearing at
the back sundry half-effaced letters, which Brandon construed at once
(though no other eye could) into “Sir John Brandon, 1635, AEtat. 28;”
the other was a seal stamped with the noble crest of the house of
Brandon, 'A bull's head, ducally crowned and armed, Or.' As soon as
Brandon had possessed himself of these treasures, and arrived at the
conviction that the place held no more, he assured the conscientious
Swoppem of his regard for that person's safety, rewarded him
munificently, and went his way to Bow Street for a warrant against the
witness who had commended him to the pawnbroker. On his road thither,
a new resolution occurred to him. “Why make all public,” he muttered
to himself, “if it can be avoided? and it may be avoided!” He paused a
moment, then retraced his way to the pawnbroker's, and, after a brief
mandate to Mr. Swoppem, returned home. In the course of the same
evening the witness we refer to was brought to the lawyer's house by Mr.
Swoppem, and there held a long and private conversation with Brandon;
the result of this seemed a compact to their mutual satisfaction, for
the man went away safe, with a heavy purse and a light heart, although
sundry shades and misgivings did certainly ever and anon cross the
latter; while Brandon flung himself back in his seat with the triumphant
air of one who has accomplished some great measure, and his dark face
betrayed in every feature a joyousness and hope which were unfrequent
guests, it must be owned, either to his countenance or his heart.
So good a man of business, however, was William Brandon that he allowed
not the event of that day to defer beyond the night his attention to his
designs for the aggrandizement of his niece and house. By daybreak the
next morning he had written to Lord Mauleverer, to his brother, and to
Lucy. To the last his letter, couched in all the anxiety of fondness and
the caution of affectionate experience, was well calculated to occasion
that mingled shame and soreness which the wary lawyer rightly judged
would be the most effectual enemy to an incipient passion. “I have
accidentally heard,” he wrote, “from a friend of mine, just arrived from
Bath, of the glaring attentions paid to you by a Captain Clifford; I
will not, my dearest niece, wound you by repeating what also I heard of
your manner in receiving them. I know the ill-nature and the envy of the
world; and I do not for a moment imagine that my Lucy, of whom I am so
justly proud, would countenance, from a petty coquetry, the advances
of one whom she could never marry, or evince to any suitor partiality
unknown to her relations, and certainly placed in a quarter which could
never receive their approbation. I do not credit the reports of the
idle, my dear niece; but if I discredit, you must not slight them. I
call upon your prudence, your delicacy, your discretion, your sense of
right, at once and effectually to put a stop to all impertinent rumours:
dance with this young man no more; do not let him be of your party in
any place of amusement, public or private; avoid even seeing him if you
are able, and throw in your manner towards him that decided coldness
which the world cannot mistake.” Much more did the skilful uncle write,
but all to the same purpose, and for the furtherance of the same design.
His letter to his brother was not less artful. He told him at once
that Lucy's preference of the suit of a handsome fortune-hunter was
the public talk, and besought him to lose not a moment in quelling the
rumour. “You may do so easily,” he wrote, “by avoiding the young man;
and should he be very importunate, return at once to Warlock. Your
daughter's welfare must be dearer to you than anything.”
To Mauleverer, Brandon replied by a letter which turned first on
public matters, and then slid carelessly into the subject of the earl's
information.
Among the admonitions which he ventured to give Mauleverer, he dwelt,
not without reason, on the want of tact displayed by the earl in not
manifesting that pomp and show which his station in life enabled him
to do. “Remember,” he urged, “you are not among your equals, by whom
unnecessary parade begins to be considered an ostentatious vulgarity.
The surest method of dazzling our inferiors is by splendour, not taste.
All young persons--all women in particular--are caught by show, and
enamoured of magnificence. Assume a greater state, and you will be more
talked of; and notoriety wins a woman's heart more than beauty or youth.
You have, forgive me, played the boy too long; a certain dignity becomes
your manhood; women will not respect you if you suffer yourself to
become 'stale and cheap to vulgar company.' You are like a man who has
fifty advantages, and uses only one of them to gain his point, when you
rely on your conversation and your manner, and throw away the resources
of your wealth and your station. Any private gentleman may be amiable
and witty; but any private gentleman cannot call to his aid the
Aladdin's lamp possessed in England by a wealthy peer. Look to this,
my dear lord! Lucy at heart is vain, or she is not a woman. Dazzle her,
then,--dazzle! Love may be blind, but it must be made so by excess of
light. You have a country-house within a few miles of Bath. Why not take
up your abode there instead of in a paltry lodging in the town? Give
sumptuous entertainments,--make it necessary for all the world to attend
them,--exclude, of course, this Captain Clifford; you will then meet
Lucy without a rival. At present, excepting only your title, you fight
on a level ground with this adventurer, instead of an eminence from
which you could in an instant sweep him away. Nay, he is stronger than
you; he has the opportunities afforded by a partnership in balls where
you cannot appear to advantage; he is, you say, in the first bloom
of youth, he is handsome. Reflect!--your destiny, so far as Lucy is
concerned, is in your hands. I turn to other subjects,” etc. As Brandon
re-read, ere he signed, this last letter, a bitter smile sat on his
harsh yet handsome features. “If,” said he, mentally, “I can effect this
object,--if Mauleverer does marry this girl,--why so much the better
that she has another, a fairer, and a more welcome lover. By the great
principle of scorn within me, which has enabled me to sneer at what
weaker minds adore, and make a footstool of that worldly honour which
fools set up as a throne, it would be to me more sweet than fame--ay,
or even than power--to see this fine-spun lord a gibe in the mouths
of men,--a cuckold, a cuckold!” and as he said the last word Brandon
laughed outright. “And he thinks, too,” added he, “that he is sure of my
fortune; otherwise, perhaps, he, the goldsmith's descendant, would not
dignify our house with his proposals; but he may err there,--he may err
there,” and, finishing his soliloquy, Brandon finished also his letter
by--“Adieu, my dear lord, your most affectionate friend”!
It is not difficult to conjecture the effect produced upon Lucy by
Brandon's letter. It made her wretched; she refused for days to go out;
she shut herself up in her apartment, and consumed the time in tears
and struggles with her own heart. Sometimes what she conceived to be her
duty conquered, and she resolved to forswear her lover; but the night
undid the labour of the day,--for at night, every night, the sound of
her lover's voice, accompanied by music, melted away her resolution, and
made her once more all tenderness and trust. The words, too, sung
under her window were especially suited to affect her; they breathed
a melancholy which touched her the more from its harmony with her own
thoughts. One while they complained of absence, at another they hinted
at neglect; but there was always in them a tone of humiliation, not
reproach; they bespoke a sense of unworthiness in the lover, and
confessed that even the love was a crime: and in proportion as they
owned the want of desert did Lucy more firmly cling to the belief that
her lover was deserving.
The old squire was greatly disconcerted by his brother's letter. Though
impressed with the idea of self-consequence, and the love of tolerably
pure blood, common to most country squires, he was by no means ambitious
for his daughter. On the contrary, the same feeling which at Warlock had
made him choose his companions among the inferior gentry made him
averse to the thought of a son-in-law from the peerage. In spite of
Mauleverer's good-nature, the very ease of the earl annoyed him, and he
never felt at home in his society. To Clifford he had a great liking;
and having convinced himself that there was nothing to suspect in the
young gentleman, he saw no earthly reason why so agreeable a companion
should not be an agreeable son-in-law. “If he be poor,” thought the
squire, “though he does not seem so, Lucy is rich!” And this truism
appeared to him to answer every objection. Nevertheless, William Brandon
possessed a remarkable influence over the weaker mind of his brother;
and the squire, though with great reluctance, resolved to adopt his
advice. He shut his doors against Clifford, and when he met him in the
streets, instead of greeting him with his wonted cordiality, he passed
him with a hasty “Good day, Captain!” which, after the first day or two,
merged into a distant bow. Whenever very good-hearted people are rude,
and unjustly so, the rudeness is in the extreme. The squire felt it so
irksome to be less familiar than heretofore with Clifford, that his
only remaining desire was now to drop him altogether; and to this
consummation of acquaintance the gradually cooling salute appeared
rapidly approaching. Meanwhile Clifford, unable to see Lucy, shunned by
her father, and obtaining in answer to all inquiry rude looks from the
footman, whom nothing but the most resolute command over his muscles
prevented him from knocking down, began to feel perhaps, for the first
time in his life, that an equivocal character is at least no equivocal
misfortune. To add to his distress, “the earnings of his previous
industry”--we use the expression cherished by the wise Tomlinson--waxed
gradually less and less beneath the expenses of Bath; and the murmuring
voices of his two comrades began already to reproach their chief for his
inglorious idleness, and to hint at the necessity of a speedy exertion.