Paul Clifford — Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

“Well, Juvenal's wisdom be yours, mine be Horace's!” rejoined Mauleverer, as he picked his teeth; “but I am glad you see the absolute necessity of keeping this secret from Lucy's suspicion. She never reads the papers, I suppose? Girls never do!”

“No! and I will take care not to have them thrown in her way; and as, in consequence of my poor brother's recent death, she sees nobody but us, there is little chance, should Lovett's right to the name of Clifford be discovered, that it should reach her ears.”

“But those confounded servants?”

“True enough! But consider that before they know it, the newspapers will; so that, should it be needful, we shall have our own time to caution them. I need only say to Lucy's woman, 'A poor gentleman, a friend of the late squire, whom your mistress used to dance with, and you must have seen,—Captain Clifford,—is to be tried for his life. It will shock her, poor thing! in her present state of health, to tell her of so sad an event to her father's friend; therefore be silent, as you value your place and ten guineas,'—and I may be tolerably sure of caution!”

“You ought to be chairman to the Ways and Means Committee!” cried Mauleverer. “My mind is now easy; and when once poor Clifford is gone,—fallen from a high estate,—we may break the matter gently to her; and as I intend thereon to be very respectful, very delicate, etc., she cannot but be sensible of my kindness and real affection!”

“And if a live dog be better than a dead lion,” added Brandon, “surely a lord in existence will be better than a highwayman hanged!”

“According to ordinary logic,” rejoined Mauleverer, “that syllogism is clear enough; and though I believe a girl may cling now and then to the memory of a departed lover, I do not think she will when the memory is allied with shame. Love is nothing more than vanity pleased; wound the vanity, and you destroy the love! Lucy will be forced, after having made so bad a choice of a lover, to make a good one in a husband, in order to recover her self-esteem!”

“And therefore you are certain of her!” said Brandon, ironically.

“Thanks to my star,—my garter,—my ancestor, the first baron, and myself, the first earl,—I hope I am,” said Mauleverer; and the conversation turned. Mauleverer did not stay much longer with the judge; and Brandon, left alone, recurred once more to the perusal of his letters.

We scarcely know what sensations it would have occasioned in one who had known Brandon only in his later years, could he have read those letters referring to so much earlier a date. There was in the keen and arid character of the man so little that recalled any idea of courtship or youthful gallantry that a correspondence of that nature would have appeared almost as unnatural as the loves of plants, or the amatory softenings of a mineral. The correspondence now before Brandon was descriptive of various feelings, but all appertaining to the same class; most of them were apparent answers to letters from him. One while they replied tenderly to expressions of tenderness, but intimated a doubt whether the writer would be able to constitute his future happiness, and atone for certain sacrifices of birth and fortune and ambitious prospects, to which she alluded: at other times, a vein of latent coquetry seemed to pervade the style,—an indescribable air of coolness and reserve contrasted former passages in the correspondence, and was calculated to convey to the reader an impression that the feelings of the lover were not altogether adequately returned. Frequently the writer, as if Brandon had expressed himself sensible of this conviction, reproached him for unjust jealousy and unworthy suspicion. And the tone of the reproach varied in each letter; sometimes it was gay and satirizing; at others soft and expostulatory; at others gravely reasoning, and often haughtily indignant. Still, throughout the whole correspondence, on the part of the mistress, there was a sufficient stamp of individuality to give a shrewd examiner some probable guess at the writer's character. He would have judged her, perhaps, capable of strong and ardent feeling, but ordinarily of a light and capricious turn, and seemingly prope to imagine and to resent offence. With these letters were mingled others in Brandon's writing,—of how different, of how impassioned a description! All that a deep, proud, meditative, exacting character could dream of love given, or require of love returned, was poured burningly over the pages; yet they were full of reproach, of jealousy, of a nice and torturing observation, as calculated to wound as the ardour might be fitted to charm; and often the bitter tendency to disdain that distinguished his temperament broke through the fondest enthusiasm of courtship or the softest outpourings of love.