Book: Paul Clifford, Volume 2.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Paul Clifford, Volume 2.




'Mong the pals of the prince I have heard it's the go,
Before they have tippled enough,
To smarten their punch with the best curagoa,
More conish to render the stuff.
I boast not such lush; but whoever his glass
Does not like, I'll be hanged if I press him!
Upstanding, my kiddies,--round, round let it pass!
Here's to Gentleman George,--God bless him!
God bless him, God bless him!
Here's to Gentleman George,-God bless him!

See, see, the fine fellow grows weak on his stumps;
Assist him, ye rascals, to stand!
Why, ye stir not a peg! Are you all in the dumps?
Fighting Attie, go, lend him a hand!

(The robbers crowd around Gentleman George, each, under pretence of
supporting him, pulling him first one way and then another.)

Come, lean upon me,--at your service I am!
Get away from his elbow, you whelp! him
You'll only upset,--them 'ere fellows but sham!
Here's to Gentleman George,--God help him!
God help him, God help him!
Here's to Gentleman George, God help him!





CHAPTER XI.

I boast no song in magic wonders rife;
But yet, O Nature! is there nought to prize,
Familiar in thy bosom scenes of life?
And dwells in daylight truth's salubrious skies
No form with which the soul may sympathize?
Young, innocent, on whose sweet forehead mild
The parted ringlet shone in simplest guise,
An inmate in the home of Albert smiled,
Or blessed his noonday walk,--she was his only child.

Gertrude of Wyoming.

O time, thou hast played strange tricks with us; and we bless the stars
that made us a novelist, and permit us now to retaliate. Leaving Paul to
the instructions of Augustus Tomlinson and the festivities of the Jolly
Angler, and suffering him, by slow but sure degrees, to acquire the
graces and the reputation of the accomplished and perfect appropriator of
other men's possessions, we shall pass over the lapse of years with the
same heedless rapidity with which they have glided over us, and summon
our reader to a very different scene from those which would be likely to
greet his eyes, were he following the adventures of our new Telemachus.
Nor wilt thou, dear reader, whom we make the umpire between ourself and
those who never read,--the critics; thou who hast, in the true spirit of
gentle breeding, gone with us among places where the novelty of the scene
has, we fear, scarcely atoned for the coarseness, not giving thyself the
airs of a dainty abigail,--not prating, lacquey-like, on the low company
thou has met,--nor wilt thou, dear and friendly reader, have cause to
dread that we shall weary thy patience by a "damnable iteration" of the
same localities. Pausing for a moment to glance over the divisions of
our story, which lies before us like a map, we feel that we may promise
in future to conduct thee among aspects of society more familiar to thy
habits; where events flow to their allotted gulf through landscapes of
more pleasing variety and among tribes of a more luxurious civilization.

Upon the banks of one of fair England's fairest rivers, and about fifty
miles distant from London, still stands an old-fashioned abode, which we
shall here term Warlock Manorhouse. It is a building of brick, varied by
stone copings, and covered in great part with ivy and jasmine. Around it
lie the ruins of the elder part of the fabric; and these are sufficiently
numerous in extent and important in appearance to testify that the
mansion was once not without pretensions to the magnificent. These
remains of power, some of which bear date as far back as the reign of
Henry the Third, are sanctioned by the character of the country
immediately in the vicinity of the old manor-house. A vast tract of
waste land, interspersed with groves of antique pollards, and here and
there irregular and sinuous ridges of green mound, betoken to the
experienced eye the evidence of a dismantled chase or park, which must
originally have been of no common dimensions. On one side of the house
the lawn slopes towards the river, divided from a terrace, which forms
the most important embellishment of the pleasure-grounds, by that fence
to which has been given the ingenious and significant name of "ha-ha!"
A few scattered trees of giant growth are the sole obstacles that break
the view of the river, which has often seemed to us, at that particular
passage of its course, to glide with unusual calmness and serenity.
On the opposite side of the stream there is a range of steep hills,
celebrated for nothing more romantic than their property of imparting to
the flocks that browse upon that short and seemingly stinted herbage a
flavour peculiarly grateful to the lovers of that pastoral animal which
changes its name into mutton after its decease. Upon these hills the
vestige of human habitation is not visible; and at times, when no boat
defaces the lonely smoothness of the river, and the evening has stilled
the sounds of labour and of life, we know few scenes so utterly tranquil,
so steeped in quiet, as that which is presented by the old, quaint-
fashioned house and its antique grounds,--the smooth lawn, the silent,
and (to speak truly, though disparagingly) the somewhat sluggish river,
together with the large hills (to which we know, from simple though
metaphysical causes, how entire an idea of quiet and immovability
peculiarly attaches itself), and the white flocks,--those most peaceful
of God's creatures,--that in fleecy clusters stud the ascent.

In Warlock House, at the time we refer to, lived a gentleman of the name
of Brandon. He was a widower, and had attained his fiftieth year without
casting much regret on the past or feeling much anxiety for the future.
In a word, Joseph Brandon was one of those careless, quiescent,
indifferent men, by whom a thought upon any subject is never recurred to
without a very urgent necessity. He was good-natured, inoffensive, and
weak; and if he was not an incomparable citizen, he was at least an
excellent vegetable. He was of a family of high antiquity, and formerly
of considerable note. For the last four or five generations, however,
the proprietors of Warlock House, gradually losing something alike from
their acres and their consequence, had left to their descendants no
higher rank than that of a small country squire. One had been a
Jacobite, and had drunk out half-a-dozen farms in honour of Charley over
the water; Charley over the water was no very dangerous person, but
Charley over the wine was rather more ruinous. The next Brandon had been
a fox-hunter, and fox-hunters live as largely as patriotic politicians.
Pausanias tells us that the same people; who were the most notorious for
their love of wine were also the most notorious for their negligence of
affairs. Times are not much altered since Pausanias wrote, and the
remark holds as good with the English as it did with the Phigalei. After
this Brandon came one who, though he did not scorn the sportsman, rather
assumed the fine gentleman. He married an heiress, who of course
assisted to ruin him; wishing no assistance in so pleasing an occupation,
he overturned her (perhaps not on purpose), in a new sort of carriage
which he was learning to drive, and the good lady was killed on the spot.
She left the fine gentleman two sons,--Joseph Brandon, the present
thane,--and a brother some years younger. The elder, being of a fitting
age, was sent to school, and somewhat escaped the contagion of the
paternal mansion. But the younger Brandon, having only reached his fifth
year at the time of his mother's decease, was retained at home. Whether
he was handsome or clever or impertinent, or like his father about the
eyes (that greatest of all merits), we know not; but the widower became
so fond of him that it was at a late period and with great reluctance
that he finally intrusted him to the providence of a school.

Among harlots and gamblers and lords and sharpers, and gentlemen of the
guards, together with their frequent accompaniments,--guards of the
gentlemen, namely, bailiffs,--William Brandon passed the first stage of
his boyhood. He was about thirteen when he was sent to school; and being
a boy of remarkable talents, he recovered lost time so well that when at
the age of nineteen he adjourned to the University, he had scarcely
resided there a single term before he had borne off two of the highest
prizes awarded to academical merit. From the University he departed on
the "grand tour," at that time thought so necessary to complete the
gentleman; he went in company with a young nobleman, whose friendship he
had won at the University, stayed abroad more than two years, and on his
return he settled down to the profession of the law.

Meanwhile his father died, and his fortune, as a younger brother, being
literally next to nothing, and the family estate (for his brother was not
unwilling to assist him) being terribly involved, it was believed that he
struggled for some years with very embarrassed and penurious
circumstances. During this interval of his life, however, he was absent
from London, and by his brother supposed to have returned to the
Continent; at length, it seems, he profited by a renewal of his
friendship with the young nobleman who had accompanied him abroad,
reappeared in town, and obtained through his noble friend one or two
legal appointments of reputable emolument. Soon afterwards he got a
brief on some cause where a major had been raising a corps to his brother
officer, with the better consent of the brother-officer's wife than of
the brother officer himself. Brandon's abilities here, for the first
time in his profession, found an adequate vent; his reputation seemed
made at once, he rose rapidly in his profession, and, at the time we now
speak of, he was sailing down the full tide of fame and wealth, the envy
and the oracle of all young Templars and barristers, who, having been
starved themselves for ten years, began now to calculate on the
possibility of starving their clients. At an early period in his career
he had, through the good offices of the nobleman we have mentioned,
obtained a seat in the House of Commons; and though his eloquence was
of an order much better suited to the bar than the senate, he had
nevertheless acquired a very considerable reputation in the latter, and
was looked upon by many as likely to win to the same brilliant fortunes
as the courtly Mansfield,--a great man, whose political principles and
urbane address Brandon was supposed especially to affect as his own
model. Of unblemished integrity in public life,--for, as he supported
all things that exist with the most unbending rigidity, he could not be
accused of inconsistency,--William Brandon was (as we have said in a
former place of unhappy memory to our hero) esteemed in private life the
most honourable, the most moral, even the most austere of men; and his
grave and stern repute on this score, joined to the dazzle of his
eloquence and forensic powers, had baffled in great measure the rancour
of party hostility, and obtained for him a character for virtues almost
as high and as enviable as that which he had acquired for abilities.

While William was thus treading a noted and an honourable career, his
elder brother, who had married into a clergyman's family, and soon lost
his consort, had with his only child, a daughter named Lucy, resided in
his paternal mansion in undisturbed obscurity. The discreditable
character and habits of the preceding lords of Warlock, which had sunk
their respectability in the county as well as curtailed their property,
had rendered the surrounding gentry little anxious to cultivate the
intimacy of the present proprietor; and the heavy mind and retired
manners of Joseph Brandon were not calculated to counterbalance the
faults of his forefathers, nor to reinstate the name of Brandon in its
ancient popularity and esteem. Though dull and little cultivated, the
squire was not without his "proper pride;" he attempted not to intrude
himself where he was unwelcome, avoided county meetings and county balls,
smoked his pipe with the parson, and not unoften with the surgeon and the
solicitor, and suffered his daughter Lucy to educate herself with the
help of the parson's wife, and to ripen (for Nature was more favourable
to her than Art) into the very prettiest girl that the whole county--we
long to say the whole country--at that time could boast of. Never did
glass give back a more lovely image than that of Lucy Brandon at the age
of nineteen. Her auburn hair fell in the richest luxuriance over a brow
never ruffled, and a cheek where the blood never slept; with every
instant the colour varied, and at every variation that smooth, pure;
virgin cheek seemed still more lovely than before. She had the most
beautiful laugh that one who loved music could imagine,--silvery, low,
and yet so full of joy! All her movements, as the old parson said,
seemed to keep time to that laugh, for mirth made a great part of her
innocent and childish temper; and yet the mirth was feminine, never loud,
nor like that of young ladies who had received the last finish at
Highgate seminaries. Everything joyous affected her, and at once,--air,
flowers, sunshine, butterflies. Unlike heroines in general, she very
seldom cried, and she saw nothing charming in having the vapours. But
she never looked so beautiful as in sleep; and as the light breath came
from her parted lips, and the ivory lids closed over those eyes which
only in sleep were silent,--and her attitude in her sleep took that
ineffable grace belonging solely to childhood, or the fresh youth into
which childhood merges,--she was just what you might imagine a sleeping
Margaret, before that most simple and gentle of all a poet's visions of
womanhood had met with Faust, or her slumbers been ruffled with a dream
of love.

We cannot say much for Lucy's intellectual acquirements; she could,
thanks to the parson's wife, spell indifferently well, and write a
tolerable hand; she made preserves, and sometimes riddles,--it was more
difficult to question the excellence of the former than to answer the
queries of the latter. She worked to the admiration of all who knew her,
and we beg leave to say that we deem that "an excellent thing in woman."
She made caps for herself and gowns for the poor, and now and then she
accomplished the more literary labour of a stray novel that had wandered
down to the Manorhouse, or an abridgment of ancient history, in which was
omitted everything but the proper names. To these attainments she added
a certain modicum of skill upon the spinet, and the power of singing old
songs with the richest and sweetest voice that ever made one's eyes
moisten or one's heart beat.

Her moral qualities were more fully developed than her mental. She was
the kindest of human beings; the very dog that had never seen her before
knew that truth at the first glance, and lost no time in making her
acquaintance. The goodness of her heart reposed upon her face like
sunshine, and the old wife at the lodge said poetically and truly of the
effect it produced, that "one felt warm when one looked on her." If we
could abstract from the description a certain chilling transparency, the
following exquisite verses of a forgotten poet might express the purity
and lustre of her countenance:--

"Her face was like the milky way i' the sky,
A meeting of gentle lights without a name."

She was surrounded by pets of all kinds, ugly and handsome,--from Ralph
the raven to Beauty the pheasant, and from Bob, the sheep-dog without a
tail, to Beau, the Blenheim with blue ribbons round his neck; all things
loved her, and she loved all things. It seemed doubtful at that time
whether she would ever have sufficient steadiness and strength of
character. Her beauty and her character appeared so essentially
womanlike--soft yet lively, buoyant yet caressing--that you could
scarcely place in her that moral dependence that you might in a character
less amiable but less yieldingly feminine. Time, however, and
circumstance, which alter and harden, were to decide whether the inward
nature did not possess some latent and yet undiscovered properties. Such
was Lucy Brandon in the year ----; and in that year, on a beautiful
autumnal evening, we first introduce her personally to our readers.

She was sitting on a garden-seat by the river side, with her father, who
was deliberately conning the evening paper of a former week, and gravely
seasoning the ancient news with the inspirations of that weed which so
bitterly excited the royal indignation of our British Solomon. It
happens, unfortunately for us,--for outward peculiarities are scarcely
worthy the dignity to which comedy, whether in the drama or the
narrative, aspires,--that Squire Brandon possessed so few distinguishing
traits of mind that he leaves his delineator little whereby to designate
him, save a confused and parenthetical habit of speech, by which he very
often appeared to those who did not profit by long experience or close
observation, to say exactly, and somewhat ludicrously, that which he did
not mean to convey.

"I say, Lucy," observed Mr. Brandon, but without lifting his eyes from
the paper,--"I say, corn has fallen; think of that, girl, think of that!
These times, in my opinion (ay, and in the opinion of wiser heads than
mine, though I do not mean to say that I have not some experience in
these matters, which is more than can be said of all our neighbours),
are very curious and even dangerous."

"Indeed, Papa!" answered Lucy.

"And I say, Lucy, dear," resumed the squire, after a short pause, "there
has been (and very strange it is, too, when one considers the crowded
neighbourhood--Bless me! what times these are!) a shocking murder
committed upon (the tobacco stopper,--there it is)--think, you know,
girl,--just by Epping!--an old gentleman!"

"Dear, how shocking! By whom?"

"Ay, that's the question! The coroner's inquest has (what a blessing it
is to live in a civilized country, where a man does not die without
knowing the why and the wherefore!) sat on the body, and declared (it is
very strange, but they don't seem to have made much discovery; for why?
we knew as much before) that the body was found (it was found on the
floor, Lucy) murdered; murderer or murderers (in the bureau, which was
broken open, they found the money left quite untouched) unknown!"

Here there was again a slight pause; and passing to another side of the
paper, Mr. Brandon resumed, in a quicker tone,--"Ha! well, now this is
odd! But he's a deuced clever fellow, Lucy! That brother of mine has
(and in a very honourable manner, too, which I am sure is highly
creditable to the family, though he has not taken too much notice of me
lately,--a circumstance which, considering I am his elder brother, I am a
little angry at) distinguished himself in a speech, remarkable, the paper
says, for its great legal (I wonder, by the by, whether William could get
me that agistment-money! 't is a heavy thing to lose; but going to law,
as my poor father used to say, is like fishing for gudgeons [not a bad
little fish; we can have some for supper] with, guineas) knowledge, as
well as its splendid and overpowering (I do love Will for keeping up the
family honour; I am sure it is more than I have done, heigh-ho!),
eloquence!"

"And on what subject has he been speaking, Papa?"

"Oh, a very fine subject; what you call a (it is astonishing that in this
country there should be such a wish for taking away people's characters,
which, for my part, I don't see is a bit more entertaining than what you
are always doing,--playing with those stupid birds) libel!"

"But is not my uncle William coming down to see us? He promised to do
so, and it made you quite happy--, Papa, for two days. I hope he will
not disappoint you; and I am sure that it is not his fault if he ever
seems to neglect you. He spoke of you to me, when I saw him, in the
kindest and most affectionate manner. I do think, my dear father, that
he loves you very much."

"Ahem!" said the squire, evidently flattered, and yet not convinced. "My
brother Will is a very acute fellow, and I make no--my dear little girl--
question, but that (when you have seen as much of the world as I have,
you will grow suspicious) he thought that any good word said of me to my
daughter would (you see, Lucy, I am as clear-sighted as my neighbours,
though I don't give myself all their airs; which I very well might do,
considering my great-great-great-grandfather, Hugo Brandon, had a hand in
detecting the gunpowder plot) he told to me again!"

"Nay, but I am quite sure my uncle never spoke of you to me with that
intention."

"Possibly, my dear child; but when (the evenings are much shorter than
they were!) did you talk with your uncle about me?

"Oh, when staying with Mrs. Warner, in London; to be sure, it is six
years ago, but I remember it perfectly. I recollect, in particular, that
he spoke of you very handsomely to Lord Mauleverer, who dined with him
one evening when I was there, and when my uncle was so kind as to take me
to the play. I was afterwards quite sorry that he was so good-natured,
as he lost (you remember I told you the story) a very valuable watch."

"Ay, ay, I remember all about that, and so (how long friendship lasts
with some people!) Lord Mauleverer dined with William! What a fine thing
it is for a man (it is what I never did, indeed; I like being what they
call 'Cock of the Walk'--let me see, now I think of it, Pillum comes
to-night to play a hit at backgammon) to make friends with a great man
early in (yet Will did not do it very early, poor fellow! He struggled
first with a great deal of sorrow--hardship, that is) life! It is many
years now since Will has been hand-and-glove with my ('t is a bit of a
puppy) Lord Mauleverer. What did you think of his lordship?"

"Of Lord Mauleverer? Indeed I scarcely observed him; but he seemed a
handsome man, and was very polite. Mrs. Warner said he had been a very
wicked person when he was young, but he seems good-natured enough now,
Papa."

"By the by," said the squire, "his lordship has just been made (this new
ministry seems very unlike the old, which rather puzzles me; for I think
it my duty, d'ye see, Lucy, always to vote for his Majesty's government,
especially seeing that old Hugo Brandon had a hand in detecting the gun
powder plot; and it is a little odd-at least, at first-to think that good
now which one has always before been thinking abominable) Lord Lieutenant
of the county."

"Lord Mauleverer our Lord Lieutenant?"

"Yes, child; and since his lordship is such a friend of my brother, I
should think, considering especially what an old family in the county we
are,--not that I wish to intrude myself where I am not thought as fine as
the rest,--that he would be more attentive to us than Lord -------- was;
but that, my dear Lucy, puts me in mind of Pillum; and so, perhaps, you
would like to walk to the parson's, as it is a fine evening. John shall
come for you at nine o'clock with (the moon is not up then) the lantern."

Leaning on his daughter's willing arm, the good old man then rose and
walked homeward; and so soon as she had wheeled round his easy-chair,
placed the backgammon board on the table, and wished the old gentleman an
easy victory over his expected antagonist, the apothecary, Lucy tied down
her bonnet, and took her way to the rectory.

When she arrived at the clerical mansion and entered the drawing-room,
she was surprised to find the parson's wife, a good, homely, lethargic
old lady, run up to her, seemingly in a state of great nervous agitation
and crying,--

"Oh, my dear Miss Brandon! which way did you come? Did you meet nobody
by the road? Oh, I am so frightened! Such an accident to poor dear Dr.
Slopperton! Stopped in the king's highway, robbed of some tithe-money he
had just received from Farmer Slowforth! If it had not been for that
dear angel, good young man, God only knows whether I might not have been
a disconsolate widow by this time!"

While the affectionate matron was thus running on, Lucy's eye glancing
round the room discovered in an armchair the round and oily little person
of Dr. Slopperton, with a countenance from which all the carnation hues,
save in one circular excrescence on the nasal member, that was left, like
the last rose of summer, blooming alone, were faded into an aspect of
miserable pallor. The little man tried to conjure up a smile while his
wife was narrating his misfortune, and to mutter forth some syllable of
unconcern; but he looked, for all his bravado, so exceedingly scared that
Lucy would, despite herself, have laughed outright, had not her eye
rested upon the figure of a young man who had been seated beside the
reverend gentleman, but who had risen at Lucy's entrance, and who now
stood gazing upon her intently, but with an air of great respect.
Blushing deeply and involuntarily, she turned her eyes hastily away, and
approaching the good doctor, made her inquiries into the present state of
his nerves, in a graver tone than she had a minute before imagined it
possible that she should have been enabled to command.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.