All Brandon"s domestics, save the one left with Lucy, stood in awe of him; and it was with some hesitation that his servant ventured to inquire if his master felt well.
Brandon looked at him, but made no reply. He entered his carriage with slight difficulty, and telling the coachman to drive as fast as possible, pulled down (a general custom with him) all the blinds of the windows.
Meanwhile Lord Mauleverer, with six friends, was impatiently awaiting the arrival of the seventh guest.
"Our August friend tarries!" quoth the Bishop of -------, with his hands folded across his capacious stomach. "I fear the turbot your lordship spoke of may not be the better for the length of the trial."
"Poor fellow!" said the Earl of --------, slightly yawning.
"Whom do you mean?" asked Lord Mauleverer, with a smile,--"the bishop, the judge, or the turbot?"
"Not one of the three, Mauleverer,--I spoke of the prisoner."
"Ah, the fine dog! I forgot him," said Mauleverer. "Really, now you mention him, I must confess that he inspires me with great compa.s.sion; but, indeed, it is very wrong in him to keep the judge so long!"
"Those hardened wretches have such a great deal to say," mumbled the bishop, sourly.
"True!" said Mauleverer; "a religious rogue would have had some bowels for the state of the church esurient."
"Is it really true, Mauleverer," asked the Earl of ------, "that Brandon is to succeed?"
"So I hear," said Mauleverer. "Heavens, how hungry I am!"
A groan from the bishop echoed the complaint.
"I suppose it would be against all decorum to sit down to dinner without him?" said Lord --------.
"Why, really, I fear so," returned Mauleverer. "But our health--our health is at stake; we will only wait five minutes more. By Jove, there"s the carriage! I beg your pardon for my heathen oath, my lord bishop."
"I forgive you!" said the good bishop, smiling.
The party thus engaged in colloquy were stationed at a window opening on the gravel road, along which the judge"s carriage was now seen rapidly approaching; this window was but a few yards from the porch, and had been partially opened for the better reconnoitring the approach of the expected guest.
"He keeps the blinds down still! Absence of mind, or shame at unpunctuality,--which is the cause, Mauleverer?" said one of the party.
"Not shame, I fear!" answered Mauleverer. "Even the indecent immorality of delaying our dinner could scarcely bring a blush to the parchment skin of my learned friend."
Here the carriage stopped at the porch; the carriage door was opened.
"There seems a strange delay," said Mauleverer, peevishly. "Why does not he get out?"
As he spoke, a murmur among the attendants, who appeared somewhat strangely to crowd around the carriage, smote the ears of the party.
"What do they say,--what?" said Mauleverer, putting his hand to his ear.
The bishop answered hastily; and Mauleverer, as he heard the reply, forgot for once his susceptibility to cold, and hurried out to the carriage door. His guests followed.
They found Brandon leaning against the farther corner of the carriage,--a corpse. One hand held the check-string, as if he had endeavoured involuntarily but ineffectually to pull it. The right side of his face was partially distorted, as by convulsion or paralysis; but not sufficiently so to destroy that remarkable expression of loftiness and severity which had characterized the features in life. At the same time the distortion which had drawn up on one side the muscles of the mouth had deepened into a startling broadness the half sneer of derision that usually lurked around the lower part of his face. Thus unwitnessed and abrupt had been the disunion of the clay and spirit of a man who, if he pa.s.sed through life a bold, scheming, stubborn, unwavering hypocrite, was not without something high even amidst his baseness, his selfishness, and his vices; who seemed less to have loved sin than by some strange perversion of reason to have disdained virtue, and who, by a solemn and awful suddenness of fate (for who shall venture to indicate the judgment of the arch and unseen Providence, even when it appears to mortal eye the least obscured?), won the dreams, the objects, the triumphs of hope, to be blasted by them at the moment of acquisition!
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
AND LAST.
Subtle, Surly,--Mammon, Dol, Hot Ananias, Dapper, Dragger,--all With whom I traded.
The Alchemist.
As when some rural citizen-retired for a fleeting holiday, far from the cares of the world strepitumque Romae,--["And the roar of Rome."]--to the sweet shades of Pentonville or the remoter plains of Clapham--conducts some delighted visitor over the intricacies of that Daedalian masterpiece which he is pleased to call his labyrinth or maze,--now smiling furtively at his guest"s perplexity, now listening with calm superiority to his futile and erring conjectures, now maliciously accompanying him through a flattering path in which the baffled adventurer is suddenly checked by the blank features of a thoroughfareless hedge, now trembling as he sees the guest stumbling unawares into the right track, and now relieved as he beholds him after a pause of deliberation wind into the wrong,--even so, O pleasant reader! doth the sage novelist conduct thee through the labyrinth of his tale, amusing himself with thy self-deceits, and spinning forth, in prolix pleasure, the quiet yarn of his entertainment from the involutions which occasion thy fretting eagerness and perplexity. But as when, thanks to the host"s good-nature or fatigue, the mystery is once unravelled, and the guest permitted to penetrate even into the concealed end of the leafy maze, the honest cit, satisfied with the pleasant pains he has already bestowed upon his visitor, puts him not to the labour of retracing the steps he hath so erratically trod, but leads him in three strides, and through a simpler path, at once to the mouth of the maze, and dismisseth him elsewhere for entertainment; even so will the prudent narrator, when the intricacies of his plot are once unfolded, occasion no stale and profitless delays to his wearied reader, but conduct him, with as much brevity as convenient, without the labyrinth which has ceased to retain the interest of a secret.
We shall therefore, in pursuance of the t.i.t"s policy, relate as rapidly as possible that part of our narrative which yet remains untold. On Brandon"s person was found the paper which had contained so fatal an intelligence of his son; and when brought to Lord Mauleverer, the words struck that person (who knew Brandon had been in search of his lost son, whom we have seen that he had been taught however to suppose illegitimate, though it is probable that many doubts whether he had not been deceived must have occurred to his natural sagacity) as sufficiently important to be worth an inquiry after the writer. Dummie was easily found, for he had not yet turned his back on the town when the news of the judge"s sudden death was brought back to it; and taking advantage of that circ.u.mstance, the friendly Dunnaker remained altogether in the town (albeit his long companion deserted it as hastily as might be), and whiled the time by presenting himself at the jail, and after some ineffectual efforts winning his way to Clifford. Easily tracked by the name he had given to the governor of the jail, he was conducted the same day to Lord Mauleverer; and his narrative, confused as it was, and proceeding even from so suspicious a quarter, thrilled those digestive organs, which in Mauleverer stood proxy for a heart, with feelings as much resembling awe and horror as our good peer was capable of experiencing. Already shocked from his worldly philosophy of indifference by the death of Brandon, he was more susceptible to a remorseful and salutary impression at this moment than he might have been at any other; and he could not, without some twinges of conscience, think of the ruin he had brought on the mother of the being he had but just prosecuted to the death. He dismissed Dummie, and after a little consideration he ordered his carriage, and leaving the funeral preparations for his friend to the care of his man of business, he set off for London, and the house, in particular, of the Secretary of the Home Department. We would not willingly wrong the n.o.ble penitent; but we venture a suspicion that he might not have preferred a personal application for mercy to the prisoner to a written one, had he not felt certain unpleasant qualms in remaining in a country-house overshadowed by ceremonies so gloomy as those of death. The letter of Brandon and the application of Mauleverer obtained for Clifford a relaxation of his sentence. He was left for perpetual transportation. A ship was already about to sail; and Mauleverer, content with having saved his life, was by no means anxious that his departure from the country should be saddled with any superfluous delay.
Meanwhile the first rumour that reached London respecting Brandon"s fate was that he had been found in a fit, and was lying dangerously ill at Mauleverer"s; and before the second and more fatally sure report arrived, Lucy had gathered from the visible dismay of Barlow, whom she anxiously cross-questioned, and who, really loving his master, was easily affected into communication, the first and more flattering intelligence. To Barlow"s secret delight, she insisted instantly on setting off to the supposed sick man; and accompanied by Barlow and her woman, the affectionate girl hastened to Mauleverer"s house on the evening after the day the earl left it. Lucy had not proceeded far before Barlow learned, from the gossip of the road, the real state of the case. Indeed, it was at the first stage that with a mournful countenance he approached the door of the carriage, and announcing the inutility of proceeding farther, begged of Lucy to turn back. So soon as Miss Brandon had overcome the first shock which this intelligence gave her, she said with calmness,--
"Well, Barlow, if it be so, we have still a duty to perform. Tell the postboys to drive on!"
"Indeed, madam, I cannot see what use it can be fretting yourself,--and you so poorly. If you will let me go, I will see every attention paid to the remains of my poor master."
"When my father lay dead," said Lucy, with a grave and sad sternness in her manner, "he who is now no more sent no proxy to perform the last duties of a brother; neither will I send one to discharge those of a niece, and prove that I have forgotten the grat.i.tude of a daughter.
Drive on!"
We have said that there were times when a spirit was stricken from Lucy little common to her in general; and now the command of her uncle sat upon her brow. On sped the horses, and for several minutes Lucy remained silent. Her woman did not dare to speak. At length Miss Brandon turned, and, covering her face with her hands, burst into tears so violent that they alarmed her attendant even more than her previous stillness. "My poor, poor uncle!" she sobbed; and those were all her words.
We must pa.s.s over Lucy"s arrival at Lord Mauleverer"s house; we must pa.s.s over the weary days which elapsed till that unconscious body was consigned to dust with which, could it have retained yet one spark of its haughty spirit, it would have refused to blend its atoms. She had loved the deceased incomparably beyond his merits, and resisting all remonstrance to the contrary and all the forms of ordinary custom, she witnessed herself the dreary ceremony which bequeathed the human remains of William Brandon to repose and to the worm. On that same day Clifford received the mitigation of his sentence, and on that day another trial awaited Lucy. We think briefly to convey to the reader what that scene was; we need only observe that Dummie Dunnaker, decoyed by his great love for little Paul, whom he delightedly said he found not the least "stuck up by his great fame and helewation," still lingered in the town, and was not only aware of the relationship of the cousins, but had gleaned from Long Ned, as they journeyed down to ------, the affection entertained by Clifford for Lucy. Of the manner in which the communication reached Lucy, we need not speak; suffice it to say, that on the day in which she had performed the last duty to her uncle, she learned for the first time her lover"s situation.
On that evening, in the convict"s cell, the cousins met.
Their conference was low, for the jailer stood within hearing; and it was broken by Lucy"s convulsive sobs. But the voice of one whose iron nerves were not unworthy of the offspring of William Brandon, was clear and audible to her ear, even though uttered in a whisper that scarcely stirred his lips. It seemed as if Lucy, smitten to the inmost heart by the generosity with which her lover had torn himself from her at the time that her wealth might have raised him in any other country far above the perils and the crimes of his career in this; perceiving now, for the first time, and in all their force, the causes of his mysterious conduct; melted by their relationship, and forgetting herself utterly in the desolation and dark situation in which she beheld one who, whatever his crimes, had not been criminal towards her;--it seemed as if, carried away by these emotions, she had yielded altogether to the fondness and devotion of her nature,--that she had wished to leave home and friends and fortune, and share with him his punishment and his shame.
"Why," she faltered,--"why--why not? We are all that is left to each other in the world! Your father and mine were brothers; let me be to you as a sister. What is there left for me here? Not one being whom I love, or who cares for me,--not one!"
It was then that Clifford summoned all his courage, as he answered.
Perhaps, now that he felt (though here his knowledge was necessarily confused and imperfect) his birth was not unequal to hers; now that he read, or believed he read, in her wan cheek and attenuated frame that desertion to her was death, and that generosity and self-sacrifice had become too late,--perhaps these thoughts, concurring with a love in himself beyond all words, and a love in her which it was above humanity to resist, altogether conquered and subdued him. Yet, as we have said, his voice breathed calmly in her ear; and his eye only, which brightened with a steady and resolute hope, betrayed his mind. "Live, then!" said he, as he concluded. "My sister, my mistress, my bride, live! In one year from this day--I repeat--I promise it thee!"
The interview was over, and Lucy returned home with a firm step. She was on foot. The rain fell in torrents, yet even in her precarious state her health suffered not; and when within a week from that time she read that Clifford had departed to the bourne of his punishment, she read the news with a steady eye and a lip that, if it grew paler, did not quiver.
Shortly after that time Miss Brandon departed to an obscure town by the seaside; and there, refusing all society, she continued to reside.
As the birth of Clifford was known but to few, and his legitimacy was unsuspected by all except, perhaps, by Mauleverer, Lucy succeeded to the great wealth of her uncle; and this circ.u.mstance made her more than ever an object of attraction in the eyes of her n.o.ble adorer. Finding himself unable to see her, he wrote to her more than one moving epistle; but as Lucy continued inflexible, he at length, disgusted by her want of taste, ceased his pursuit, and resigned himself to the continued sterility of unwedded life. As the months waned, Miss Brandon seemed to grow weary of her retreat; and immediately on attaining her majority, which she did about eight months after Brandon"s death, she transferred the bulk of her wealth to France, where it was understood (for it was impossible that rumour should sleep upon an heiress and a beauty) that she intended in future to reside. Even Warlock (that spell to the proud heart of her uncle) she ceased to retain. It was offered to the nearest relation of the family at a sum which he did not hesitate to close with; and by the common vicissitudes of Fortune, the estate of the ancient Brandons has now, we perceive by a weekly journal, just pa.s.sed 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 s.e.x 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 a.s.sist 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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.