Paul Clifford — Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

If afterwards, but long afterwards, Lucy, recalling the mystery of his words, confessed to herself that they betrayed guilt, she was then too much affected to think of anything but her love and his emotion. She bent down, and with a girlish and fond self-abandonment which none could have resisted, placed both her hands on his. Clifford started, looked up, and in the next moment he had clasped her to his heart; and while the only tears he had shed since his career of crime fell fast and hot upon her countenance, he kissed her forehead, her cheek, her lips in a passionate and wild transport. His voice died within him,—he could not trust himself to speak; only one thought, even in that seeming forgetfulness of her and of himself, stirred and spoke at his breast,—flight. The more he felt he loved, the more tender and the more confiding the object of his love, the more urgent became the necessity to leave her. All other duties had been neglected, but he loved with a real love; and love, which taught him one duty, bore him triumphantly through its bitter ordeal.

“You will hear from me to-night,” he muttered; “believe that I am mad, accursed, criminal, but not utterly a monster! I ask no more merciful opinion!” He drew himself from his perilous position, and abruptly departed.

When Clifford reached his home, he found his worthy coadjutors waiting for him with alarm and terror on their countenances. An old feat, in which they had signalized themselves, had long attracted the rigid attention of the police, and certain officers had now been seen at Bath, and certain inquiries had been set on foot, which portended no good to the safety of the sagacious Tomlinson and the valorous Pepper. They came, humbly and penitentially demanding pardon for their unconscious aggression of the squire's carriage, and entreating their captain's instant advice. If Clifford had before wavered in his disinterested determination,—if visions of Lucy, of happiness, and reform had floated in his solitary ride too frequently and too glowingly before his eyes,—the sight of these men, their conversation, their danger, all sufficed to restore his resolution. “Merciful God!” thought he, “and is it to the comrade of such lawless villains, to a man, like them, exposed hourly to the most ignominious of deaths, that I have for one section of a moment dreamed of consigning the innocent and generous girl, whose trust or love is the only crime that could deprive her of the most brilliant destiny?”

Short were Clifford's instructions to his followers, and so much do we do mechanically, that they were delivered with his usual forethought and precision. “You will leave the town instantly; go not, for your lives, to London, or to rejoin any of your comrades. Ride for the Red Cave; provisions are stored there, and, since our late alteration of the interior, it will afford ample room to conceal your horses. On the night of the second day from this I will join you. But be sure that you enter the cave at night, and quit it upon no account till I come!”

“Yes!” said he, when he was alone, “I will join you again, but only to quit you. One more offence against the law, or at least one sum wrested from the swollen hands of the rich sufficient to equip me for a foreign army, and I quit the country of my birth and my crimes. If I cannot deserve Lucy Brandon, I will be somewhat less unworthy. Perhaps—why not? I am young, my nerves are not weak, my brain is not dull,—perhaps I may in some field of honourable adventure win a name that before my death-bed I may not blush to acknowledge to her!”

While this resolve beat high within Clifford's breast, Lucy sadly and in silence was continuing with the squire her short journey to Bath. The latter was very inquisitive to know why Clifford had gone, and what he had avowed; and Lucy, scarcely able to answer, threw everything on the promised letter of the night.

“I am glad,” muttered the squire to her, “that he is going to write; for, somehow or other, though I questioned him very tightly, he slipped through my cross-examination, and bursting out at once as to his love for you, left me as wise about himself as I was before: no doubt (for my own part I don't see what should prevent his being a great man incog.)this letter will explain all!”

Late that night the letter came. Lucy, fortunately for her, was alone in her room; she opened it, and read as follows:—

CLIFFORD'S LETTER.
I have promised to write to you, and I sit down to perform that
promise. At this moment the recollection of your goodness, your
generous consideration, is warm within me: and while I must choose
calm and common words to express what I ought to say, my heart is
alternately melted and torn by thoughts which would ask words, oh
how different! Your father has questioned me often of my parentage
and birth,—I have hitherto eluded his interrogatories. Learn now
who I am. In a wretched abode, surrounded by the inhabitants of
poverty and vice, I recall my earliest recollections. My father is
unknown to me as to every one; my mother,—to you I dare not mention
who or what she was,—she died in my infancy. Without a name, but
not without an inheritance (my inheritance was large,—it was
infamy!), I was thrown upon the world. I had received by accident
some education, and imbibed some ideas not natural to my situation;
since then I have played many parts in life. Books and men I have
not so neglected but that I have gleaned at intervals some little
knowledge from both. Hence, if I have seemed to you better than I
am, you will perceive the cause. Circumstances made me soon my own
master; they made me also one whom honest men do not love to look
upon; my deeds have been, and my character is, of a par with my
birth and my fortunes. I came, in the noble hope to raise and
redeem myself by gilding my fate with a wealthy marriage, to this
city. I saw you, whom I had once before met. I heard you were
rich. Hate me, Miss Brandon, hate me!—I resolved to make your ruin
the cause of my redemption. Happily for you, I scarcely knew you
before I loved you; that love deepened,—it caught something pure
and elevated from yourself. My resolution forsook me; even now I
could throw myself on my knees and thank God that you—you, dearest
and noblest of human beings—are not my wife. Now, is my conduct
clear to you? If not, imagine me all that is villanous, save in one
point, where you are concerned, and not a shadow of mystery will
remain. Your kind father, overrating the paltry service I rendered
you, would have consented to submit my fate to your decision. I
blush indignantly for him—for you—that any living man should have
dreamed of such profanation for Miss Brandon. Yet I myself was
carried away and intoxicated by so sudden and so soft a hope,—even
I dared to lift my eyes to you, to press you to this guilty heart,
to forget myself, and to dream that you might be mine! Can you
forgive me for this madness? And hereafter, when in your lofty and
glittering sphere of wedded happiness, can you remember my
presumption and check your scorn? Perhaps you think that by so late
a confession I have already deceived you. Alas! you know not what
it costs me now to confess! I had only one hope in life,—it was
that you might still, long after you had ceased to see me, fancy me
not utterly beneath the herd with whom you live. This burning yet
selfish vanity I tear from me, and now I go where no hope can pursue
me. No hope for myself, save one which can scarcely deserve the
name, for it is rather a rude and visionary wish than an
expectation,—it is that under another name and under different
auspices you may hear of me at some distant time; and when I apprise
you that under that name you may recognize one who loves you better
than all created things, you may feel then, at least, no cause for
shame at your lover. What will you be then? A happy wife, a
mother, the centre of a thousand joys, beloved, admired, blest when
the eye sees you and the ear hears! And this is what I ought to
hope, this is the consolation that ought to cheer me; perhaps a
little time hence it will. Not that I shall love you less, but that
I shall love you less burningly, and therefore less selfishly. I
have now written to you all that it becomes you to receive from me.
My horse waits below to bear me from this city, and forever from
your vicinity. For ever!—-ay, you are the only blessing forever
forbidden me. Wealth I may gain, a fair name, even glory I may
perhaps aspire to,—to heaven itself I may find a path; but of you
my very dreams cannot give me the shadow of a hope. I do not say,
if you could pierce my soul while I write, that you would pity me.
You may think it strange, but I would not have your pity for worlds;
I think I would even rather have your hate,—pity seems so much like
contempt. But if you knew what an effort has enabled me to tame
down my language, to curb my thoughts, to prevent me from embodying
that which now makes my brain whirl, and my hand feel as if the
living fire consumed it; if you knew what has enabled me to triumph
over the madness at my heart, and spare you what, if writ or spoken,
would seem like the ravings of insanity, you would not and you could
not despise me, though you might abhor.
And now Heaven guard and bless you! Nothing on earth could injure
you. And even the wicked who have looked upon you learn to pray,—I
have prayed for you!

Thus, abrupt and signatureless, ended the expected letter. Lucy came down the next morning at her usual hour, and, except that she was very pale, nothing in her appearance seemed to announce past grief or emotion. The squire asked her if she had received the promised letter. She answered, in a clear though faint voice, that she had,—that Mr. Clifford had confessed himself of too low an origin to hope for marriage with Mr. Brandon's family; that she trusted the squire would keep his secret; and that the subject might never again be alluded to by either. If in this speech there was something alien to Lucy's ingenuous character, and painful to her mind, she felt it as it were a duty to her former lover not to betray the whole of that confession so bitterly wrung from him. Perhaps, too, there was in that letter a charm which seemed to her too sacred to be revealed to any one; and mysteries were not excluded even from a love so ill-placed and seemingly so transitory as hers.