 Chapter 32 Part 1 of Paul Clifford by Edward Bower Lytton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 32. Lose I not with him what fortune could in life allot. Lose I not hope, life's cordial. In fact, the lessons he from Prudence took were written in his mind as in a book. There, what to do, he read, and what to shun, and all commanded was with promptness done, he seemed without a passion to proceed. Yet some believed those passions only slept. Crab. Relics of love and life's enchanted spring. A watts on burning a packet of letters. Many and sad and deep were the thoughts folded in thy silent breast. Thou too couldst watch and weep, Mrs. Hemmons. While Sir William Brandon was pursuing his ambitious schemes and notwithstanding Lucy's firm and steady refusal of Lord Molleverer was still determined on that ill assorted marriage, while Molleverer himself day after day attended at the judge's house, and though he spoke not of love, looked it with all his might, it became obvious to everyone but the lover and the guardian that Lucy herself was rapidly declining in appearance and health. Ever since the day she'd last seen Clifford, her spirits before greatly shattered had refused to regain even a likeness to their naturally cheerful and happy tone. She became silent and abstracted. Even her gentleness of temper altered at times into a moody and fretful humor. Neither to books nor music nor any art, by which time as beguiled she recurred for a momentary alleviation of the bitter feelings at her heart or for a transient forgetfulness of their sting. The whole world of her mind had been shaken. Her pride was wounded. Her love galled. Her faith in Clifford gave way at length to gloomy and dark suspicion. Nothing she now felt but a name as well as fortunes utterly abandoned could have justified him for the stubbornness of heart in which he had fled and deserted her. Her own self acquittal no longer consoled her in affliction. She condemned herself for her weakness from the birth of her ill start affection to the crisis it had now acquired. Why did I not wrestle with it at first? She said bitterly. Why did I allow myself so easily to love one unknown to me and equivocal in station despite the cautions of my uncle and the whispers of the world? Alas, Lucy did not remember that at the time she was guilty of this weakness, she had not learned to reason as she since reasoned. Her faculties were but imperfectly awakened. Her experience of the world was utter ignorance. She scarcely knew that she loved and she knew not at all that the delicious and excited sentiment which filled her being could ever become as productive of evil and peril as it had done now and even had her reason been more developed and her resolutions more strong does the exertion of reason and resolution always avail against the master passion. Love it is true is not unconquerable but how few have ever mind and soul coveted the conquest. Disappointment makes a vow but the heart records it not or in the noble image of one who has so tenderly and so truly portrayed the feelings of her own sex. We make a ladder of our thoughts where angels step but sleep ourselves at the foot. The history of the liar by L.E.L. Before Clifford had last seen her, we have observed that Lucy had and it was a consolation clung to the belief that despite of appearances and his own confession, his past life had not been such as to place him without the pale of her just affections and there were frequent moments when remembering that the death of her father had removed the only being who could assert an unanswerable claim to the dictation of her actions. She thought that Clifford hearing her hand was utterly at her own disposal might again appear and again urge a suit which he felt so few circumstances could induce her to deny. All this half acknowledged yet Ernest's train of reasoning and hope vanished from the moment he had quitted her uncle's house. His words bore no misinterpretation. He had not yielded even to her own condescension and her cheek burned as she recalled it. Yet he loved her. She saw, she knew it in his every word and look. Bitter then and dark must be that remorse which could have conquered every argument but that which urged him to leave her when he might have claimed her forever. True that when his letter formally bad her farewell the same self-accusing language was recurred to the same dark hints and illusions to infamy or guilt. Yet never till now had she interpreted them rigidly and never till now had she dreamed how far their meaning could extend. Still what crimes could he have committed? The true ones never occurred to Lucy. She shuddered to ask herself and hushed her doubts in a gloomy and torpid silence. But through all her accusations against herself and through all her awakened suspicions against Clifford she could not but acknowledge that something noble and not unworthy of her mingled in his conduct and occasioned his resistance to her and to himself. And this belief perhaps irritated even while it touched her and kept her feelings in her perpetual struggle and conflict which her delicate frame and soft mind were little able to endure. When the nerves once break how breaks the character with them, how many aesthetics withered and soured do we meet in the world who but for one shock to the heart and form might have erred on the side of meekness. Whether it come from woe or disease the stroke which marrs a single fiber plays strange havoc with the mind. The slaves we are to our muscles and puppets to the spring of the capricious blood and the great soul with all its capacities, its solemn attributes and sounding claims is while on earth but a jest to this mount-a-bank, the body. From the dream which toys with it for an hour to the lunacy which shivers it into a driveler laughing as it plays with its own fragments and reeling benighted and blinded to the grave. We have before said that Lucy was fond both of her uncle and his society and still whenever the subject of Lord Molleverer and his suit was left untouched there was that in the conversation of Sir William Brandon which aroused an interest in her mind engrossed and self-consuming as it had become. Sorrow indeed and Sorrow's companion reflection made her more and more capable of comprehending a very subtle and intricate character. There is no secret for discovering the human heart-like affliction, especially the affliction with springs from passion. Does a writer startle you with his insight into your nature? Be sure that he has mourned. Such lore is the alchemy of tears. Hence the insensible and almost universal confusion of idea which confounds melancholy with depth and finds but hollow inanity in the symbol of a laugh. Pitiable error reflection first leads us to gloom but its next stage is to brightness. The laughing philosopher had reached the goal of wisdom. Heraclitus whimpered at the starting post but enough for Lucy to gain even the vestibule of philosophy. Notwithstanding the soreness we naturally experienced towards all who pertinaciously aroused an unpleasant subject and in spite therefore of Brandon's furtherance of a leverish courtship, Lucy felt herself inclined strangely and with something of a daughter's affection towards this enigmatical being. In spite too of all the cold and measured vice of his character, the hard and wintry grayness of heart with which he regarded the welfare of others or the substances of truth, honor and virtue, the callousness of his fossilized affections which no human being saw from but for a moment and no warm and helpful impulse struck save into an evanescent and idle flash. In spite of this consummate obduracy and worldliness of temperament, it is not paradoxical to say that there was something in the man which Lucy found at times analogous to her own vivid and generous self. This was however only noticeable when she led him to talk over earlier days and when by degrees the sarcastic lawyer forgot the present and grew eloquent not over the actions but the feelings of the past. He would speak to her for hours of his youthful dreams, his occupations or his projects as a boy. Above all he loved to converse with her upon warlock, its remains of ancient magnificence, the green banks of the Placid River that enriched its domains and the summer pomp of wood in Eathland amidst which his noonday visions had been nursed. When he spoke of these scenes and days, his countenance softened and something in its expression recalling to Lucy the image of one still beer made her yearn to him the more. An ice seemed broken from his mind and streams of released and gentle feelings mingled with kindly and generous sentiment flowed forth. Suddenly a thought, a word brought him back to the present, his features withered abruptly into their cold placidity or latent sneer. The seal closed suddenly on the broken spell and like the victim of a fairy tale condemned at a stated hour to assume another shape, the very being you had listened to seemed vanished and replaced by one whom you startled to behold. But there was one epoch of his life on which he was always silent and that was his first onset into the actual world, the period of his early struggle into wealth and fame, all that space of time seemed as a dark gulf over which he had passed and become changed at once as a traveler landing in a strange climate may adopt the moment he touches its shore, its costume and its language. All men, the most modest, have a common failing but it is one which often assumes the domino and mask, pride. Brandon was however proud to a degree very rare in men who have risen and flourished in the world. Out of the wrecks of all other feelings, this imperial survivor made one great palace for its residents and called the fabric disdain. Scorn was the real essence of Brandon's nature even in the blandest disguises, the smoothness of his voice, the insinuation of his smile, the popular and supple graces of his manners and oily derision floated rarely discernible, it is true but proportioning its strength and quantum to the calm it produced. In the interim while his character thus displayed and contradicted itself in private life, his fame was rapidly rising in public estimation. Unlike many of his brethren, the brilliant lawyer had exceeded expectation and shown even yet more conspicuously in the less adventitiously aided duties of the judge Enby itself and Brandon's political virulence had despite his personal affability made him many foes was driven into acknowledging the profundity of his legal knowledge and in admiring the manner in which the peculiar functions of his novel dignity were discharged. No juvenile lawyer browbeat, no hackneyed casuist puzzled him. Even his attention never wandered from the dullest case subjected to his tribunal. A painter desirous of stamping on his canvas the portrait of an upright judge could scarcely have found a finer realization for his bow ideal than the austere collected keen, yet majestic countenance of Sir William Brandon such as it seemed in the trappings of office and from the seat of justice. The newspapers were not slow in recording the singular capture of the notorious Lovett. The boldness with which he had planned and executed the rescue of his comrades joined to the suspense in which his wound for some time kept the public as to his escape from one death by the poster gate of another caused a very considerable ferment and excitation in the popular mind. And to feed the impulse, the journalists were a little slothful and retailing every anecdote true or false which they could collect touching the past adventures of the daring highway man. Many a good story then came to light which part took as much of the comic as the tragedy for not a single one of the robbers adventures was noted for cruelty or bloodshed. Many of them betokened rather and hilarious and jovial spirit of mirthful enterprise. It seemed as if he had thought the highway, a capital arena for jokes and only robbed for the sake of venting a redundant affection for jesting. Persons felt it rather a sin to be severe with a man of soap marry a disposition. And it was especially observable that not one of the ladies who had been dispoiled by the robber could be prevailed on to prosecute. On the contrary, they always talked of the event as one of the most agreeable remembrances in their lives and seemed to bear a provoking gratitude to the comely offender rather than resentment. All the gentlemen were not, however, of so plackable a temper and two sturdy farmers with a grazier to boot were ready to swear through thick and thin to the identity of the prisoner with a horseman who had civilly born each of them company for an hour in their several homeward rides from certain fairs and had carried the pleasure of his society. They very gravely asserted considerably beyond a joke so that the state of the prisoner's affairs took a very somber aspect and the council, an old hand entrusted with his cause, declared confidentially that there was not a chance. But a yet more weighty accusation because it came from a much nobler quarter, a weighty Clifford, in the robber's cavern were found several articles answering exactly to the description of those valuables feloniously abstracted from the person of Lord Maleverer. That noblemen attended to inspect the articles and to view the prisoner. The former he found himself able to swear to with a very tranquilized conscience. The latter he beheld feverish, attenuated and in a moment of delirium on the sickbed to which his wound had brought him. He was at no loss however to recognize in the imprisoned felon the gay and conquering Clifford. We had once even honored with his envy. Although his former dim and vague suspicions of Clifford were thus confirmed, the good nature of Pierre felt some slight compunction had appearing as his prosecutor. This compunction however vanished the moment he left the sick man's apartment. And after a little patriotic conversation with the magistrates about the necessity of public duty, a theme which brought virtuous tears into the eyes of those respectable functionaries. He re-entered his carriage, returned to town and after a lively dinner, tete a tete with an old cher ami who of all her charms had preserved only the attraction of conversation and the capacity of relishing of salami. Malevera the very evening of his return but took himself to the house of Sir William Brandon. When he entered the hall, Barlow, the judge's favorite servant, met him with rather a confused and mysterious air and arresting him as he was sauntering into Brandon's library, informed him that Sir William was particularly engaged but would join his lordship in the drawing room. While Barlow was yet speaking and Malevera was bending his right ear with which he heard the best towards him, the library door opened and a man in a very coarse and ruffianly garb awkwardly bowed himself out. So this is the particular engagement thought Malevera, a strange Sir Pandaris but those old fellows have drolled tastes. I may go in now, my good fellow, I suppose, said his lordship to Barlow and without waiting an answer, he entered the library. He found Brandon alone and bending earnestly over some letters which strewed his table. Malevera carelessly approached and threw himself into an opposite chair. Sir William lifted his head as he heard the movement. And Malevera reckless as was that personage was chilled and almost awed by the expression of his friend's countenance. Brandon's face was one which, however pliant, nearly always wore one pervading character, calmness, whether in the smoothness of social courtesy or the austerity of his official station or the bitter sarcasm which escaped him at no unfrequent interval, still a certain heart and inflexible dryness stamped both his features and his air. But at this time a variety of feelings not ordinarily eloquent in the outward man struggled in his dark face, expressive of all the energy and passion of his powerful and masculine nature. There seemed to speak from his features and eyes something of shame and anger and triumph and regret and scorn, all these various emotions which it appears almost a paradox to assert met in the same expression nevertheless were so individually and almost fearfully stamped as to convey at once their signification to the mind of Malevera. He glanced towards the letters in which the writing seemed faint and discolored by time or damp. And then once more regarding the face of Brandon said in rather an anxious and subdued tone, Heaven's Brandon, are you ill? Or has anything happened? You alarm me. Do you recognize these locks? Said Brandon in a hollow voice and from under the letters he drew some ringlets of an Auburn hue and pushed them with an averted face towards Malevera. The Earl took them up, regarded them for a few moments, changed color but shook his head with a negative gesture as he laid them once more on the table. This handwriting then renewed the judge in a yet more impressive and painful voice and he pointed to the letters. Malevera raised one of them and held it between his face and the lamp so that whatever his features might have betrayed was hidden from his companion. At length he dropped the letter with an affected nonchalance and said, ah, I know the writing even at this distance of time. This letter is directed to you. It is, so are all these, said Brandon, with the same voice of preternatural and strained composure. They have come back to me after an absence of nearly 25 years. They are the letters she wrote to me in the days of our courtship. Here, Brandon laughed scornfully. She carried them away with her. You know, when, and a pretty clod of consistency is woman, she kept them, it seems, to her dying day. The subject in discussion, whatever it might be, appeared a sore one to Malevera. He turned uneasily on his chair and said at length, well, poor creature, these are painful remembrances since it turned out so unhappily. But it was not our fault, dear Brandon. We were men of the world. We knew the value of women and treated them accordingly. Right, right, right, right, Brandon, vehemently laughing in a wild and loud disdain, the intense force of which it would be in vain to attempt expressing. Right in faith, my Lord, I repine not, nor repent. So, so that's well, said Malever, still not a disease and hastening to change the conversation. But, my dear Brandon, I have strange news for you. You remember that fellow Clifford who had the insolence to address himself to your adorable niece? I told you I suspected that long friend of his of having made my acquaintance somewhat unpleasantly, and I therefore doubted of Clifford himself. Well, my dear friend, this Clifford is, whom do you think? No other than Mr. Lovett of Nuget Celebrity. You do not say so, rejoin Brandon apathetically, as he slowly gathered his papers together and deposited them in a drawer. Indeed, it is true, and what is more, Brandon, this fellow is one of the very identical highwaymen who robbed me on my road from Bath. No doubt he did meet the same kind of office on my road to Malevera Park. Possibly, said Brandon, who appeared absorbed in a reverie. I, answered Malever, peaked at this indifference, but do you not see the consequences to your niece? My niece, repeated Brandon, rousing himself. Certainly I grieved to say it, my dear friend, but she was young, very young, when at Bath, she suffered this fellow to address her too openly. Nay, for I will be frank, she was suspected of being in love with him. She was in love with him, said Brandon dryly, and fixing the malignant coldness of his eye upon the suitor. And for ought I know, Adahee, she is so at this moment. You are cruel, said Malevera, disconcerted. I trust not for the sake of my continued addresses. My dear Lord, said Brandon, urbanely taking the cordier's hand, while the anguish and herba of his sneer played around his compressed lips. My dear Lord, we are old friends and need not deceive each other. You wish to marry my niece because she is an heiress of great fortune. And you suppose that my wealth will, in all probability, swell her own. Moreover, she is more beautiful than any other young lady of your acquaintance, and polished by your example, may do honor to your taste as well as your prudence. Under these circumstances, you will, I am quite sure, look with lenity on our girlish heirs and not lover the less, because her foolish fancy persuades her that she is in love with another. I am, said Malevera, you view the matter with more sense than sentiment, but look, you, Brandon, we must try, for both our sakes, if possible, to keep the identity of Leavitt with Clifford from being known. I do not see why it should be, no doubt, he was on his guard while playing the gallant, and committed no atrocity at bath. The name of Clifford is hitherto perfectly unsullied. No fraud nor violence are attached to the appellation, and if the rug will but keep his own counsel, we may hang him out of the way without the secret transpiring. But if I remember right, said Brandon, the newspapers say that this Leavitt will be tried some seventy or eighty miles only from bath, and that gives a chance of recognition. Aye, but he will be devilishly altered, I imagine, for his wound has already been but a bad beautifier to his face. Moreover, if the dog has any delicacy, he will naturally dislike to be known as the gallant of that gay city where he's shown so successfully, and will disguise himself as well as he is able. I hear wonders of his powers of self-transformation, but he may commit himself on the point between this and his trials, said Brandon. I think of ascertaining how far that is likely by sending my ballet down to him. You know, one treats these gentlemen highwaymen with a certain consideration, and hangs them with all due respect to their feelings, to hint that it will be doubtless, very unpleasant to him under his present unfortunate circumstances is not that the phrase to be known as the gentleman who enjoyed so deserved a popularity at bath, and that though the laws of my country compel me to prosecute him, yet should he desire it, he may be certain that I will preserve his secret. Come, Brandon, what say you to that maneuver? He will answer my purpose and make the gentleman for doubtless he is all sensibility, shed tears at my generous forbearance. It is no bad ideas, said Brandon. I commend you for it. At all events, it is necessary that my niece should not know the situation of her lover. She is a girl of a singular turn of mind, and fortune has made her independent, who knows but that she might commit some folly or another, write petitions to the king and beg me to present them or go, for she has a world of romance in her, to prison to console him. Or at all events, she would beg my kind offices on his behalf, I request peculiarly, awkward, as in all probability, I shall have the honor of trying him. I, by the by, so you will, and I fancy the poor rogue's audacity will not cause you to be less severe than you usually are. They say you promise to make more human pendulums than any of your brethren. They do say that, do they, said Brandon? Well, I own, I have a bile against my species. I loathe their folly and their half vices. Redet et odit, elas and hates, is my motto, and I allow that it is not the philosophy that makes men merciful. Well, juveniles' wisdom be yours, mine be whores's. Rejoin the lever as he picked his teeth, but I'm 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's little chance she'd love its 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 it your place, and ten guineas, and I may be tolerably sure of caution. You ought to be chairman to the Ways and Means Committee, who I'm a leverer, my mind is now easy, and when once poor Clifford is gone, fallen from a higher state, we may break the matter gently to her, and as I intend there on to be very respectful, very delicate, et cetera, she cannot but be sensible of my kindness and real affection. And if a live dog be better than a deadline, added Brandon, surely a lord in existence will be better than a high woman hanged. According to ordinary logic rejoin me leverer, 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 my leverer, and the conversation turned. My leverer did not stay much longer with the judge, and Brandon left alone, recurred once more to the perusal of his letters. End of chapter 32, part one. Chapter 32, part two of Paul Clifford by Edward Bower Lytton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 32, part two. 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 softening 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 and 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 expository, at others gravely reasoning and often heartily 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 about light and capricious turn and seemingly proper to imagine and to resent offense. With these letters were mingled others in Brandon's writing of how different, of how impassioned a description, all but a deep, proud, meditative, exacting character to 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 ardor might be fitted to charm. And often the bitter tendency to disdain that distinguished is temperament broke through the fondest enthusiasm of courtship or the softest outpourings of love. You saw me not yesterday, he wrote in one letter, but I saw you all day, I was by you. You gave not a look which passed me unnoticed. You made not a movement which I did not chronicle in my memory. Julia, do you tremble when I tell you this? Yes, if you have a heart, I know these words would stab it to the core. You may affect to answer me indignantly. Wise, dissimilar, it is very skillful, very to assume anger when you have no reply. I repeat during the whole of that party of pleasure, pleasure, well, your tastes, it must be acknowledged are exquisite, which you enjoyed yesterday and which you so faintly asked me to share, my eye was on you. You did not know that I was in the wood when you took the grin of the incomparable digby with so pretty a semblance of alarm at the moment, the snake which my foot disturbed glided across your path. You did not know I was within hearing of the tent where you made so agreeable a repast and from which your laughter sent peels so many and so numerous. Laughter, oh Julia, can you tell me that you love and yet be happy even to mirth when I am away? Love, oh God, how different a sensation is mine. Mine makes my whole principle of life yours. I tell you that I think at moments I would rather have your hate than the lukewarm sentiment you bear to me and honor it by the name of affection. Pretty phrase, I have no affection for you. Give me not that sickly word, but try with me, Julia, to invent some expression that has never filtered a paltry meaning through the lips of another affection. My that is a sister's word, a girl's word, to her pet squirrel. Never was it made for that ruby and most right mouth. Shall I come to your house this evening? Your mother has asked me and you, you heard her and said nothing. Oh, but that was made in reserve, was it? And made in reserve caused you to take up a book the moment I left you as if my company made but an ordinary amusement instantly to be replaced by another. When I've seen you, society, books, food, all are hateful to me, but you, sweet Julia, you can read, can you? Why, when I left you, I lingered by the parlor window for hours till dusk and you never once lifted your eyes, nor saw me pass and repass. At least I thought you would have watched my steps when I left the house, but I err, charming, moralist. According to you, that vigilance would have been meanness. In another part of the correspondence, a more grave, if not a deeper gush of feeling, a struggle for expression. You say, Julia, that were you to marry one who thinks so much of what he surrenders for you and who requires from yourself so vast a return of love, you should tremble for the future happiness of both of us. Julia, the triteness of that fear proves that you love not at all. I do not tremble for our future happiness. On the contrary, the intensity of my passion for you makes me know that we never can be happy, never be on the first rapture of our union. Happiness is a quiet and tranquil feeling, no feeling that I can possibly bear to you will ever receive those epithets. I know that I shall be wretched and accursed when I am united to you. Start not, I will presently tell you why, but I do not dream of happiness, neither could you fathom one drop of the dark and limitless ocean of my emotions. Would you name to me that word? It is not the mercantile and callous calculation of chances for future felicity, what homily supplied you with so choice a term that enters into the heart that cherishes an all-pervading love. Passion looks only to one object, to nothing beyond I thirst, I consume not for happiness, but you were your possession inevitably to lead me to a gulf of anguish and shame. Thank you, I should covet it one drop the less. If you carry one thought, one hope, one dim fancy beyond the event that makes you mine, you may be more worthy of the esteem of others, but you are utterly undeserving of my love. I will tell you now why I know we cannot be happy in the first place when you say that I am proud of birth, that I am morbidly ambitious, that I am anxious to shine in the great world, and that after the first intoxication of love has passed away, I shall feel bitterness against one who has so humbled my pride and darkened my prospects. I'm not sure that you wholly err, but I am sure that the instant remedy is in your power. Have you patience due you to listen to a kind of history of myself or rather of my feelings? If so, perhaps it may be the best method of explaining all that I would convey. You will see then that my family pride and my worldly ambition are not founded altogether on those basements which move my laughter in another. If my feelings thereon are really, however, as you would insinuate, equal matter for derision. Behold my Julia, I can laugh equally at them. So pleasant a thing to me is scorn that I would rather despise myself and have no one to despise. To my narrative, we must know that there are but two of us, sons of a country square of old family, which once possessed large possessions and something of historical renown. We lived in an old country place. My father was a convivial dog, a fox hunter, a drunkard, yet in his way a fine gentleman and a very disreputable member of society. The first feelings towards him that I can remember were those of shame. Not much matter of family pride here, you will say, true, and that is exactly the reason which made me cherish family pride elsewhere. My father's house was filled with guests, some high and some low. They are united and ridicule of the host. I soon detected the laughter and you may imagine that it did not please me. Meanwhile, the old huntsman, whose family was about as ancient as ours and whose ancestors had officiated in his capacity for the ancestors of his master time out of mind told me story after story about the brandons of yore. I turned from the stories to more legitimate history and found the legends were tolerably true. I learned to glow at this discovery, the pride humbled when I remembered my sire, revived when I remembered my ancestors. I became resolved to emulate them, to restore a sunken name and vowed a world of nonsense on the subject. The habit of brooding over these ideas grew on me. I never heard a jest broken on my paternal guardian. I never caught the modern look of his reeling eyes, nor listened to some exquisite inanity from his besotted lips, but that my thoughts flew instantly back to the sire Charles's and the sire Robert's of my race. And I comforted myself with the hope that the present degeneracy should pass away. Hence, Julia, my family pride, hence to another feeling you dislike in me disdain. I first learned to despise my father, the host and I then despised my acquaintances, his guests, for I saw while they laughed at him that they flattered and that their merriment was not the only thing suffered to feed at his expense. Best contempt grew up with me and I had nothing to check it for when I looked around, I saw not one living thing that I could respect. This father of mine had the sense to think I was no idiot. He was proud poor man of my talents, namely a prize is won at school and congratulatory letters from my masters. He sent me to college. My mind took a leap there. I will tell you prettiest what it was before I went into there. I had some fine vague visions about virtue. I thought to revive my ancestral honors by being good. In short, I was an embryo king pep and I woke from this dream at the university. There for the first time, I perceived the real consequence of rank. At school, you know, Julia boys cared nothing for a Lord. A good cricketer and excellent fellow is worth all the earls in the peerage, but at college, all that ceases, bats and balls sink into the nothingness in which corals and bells had sunk before. One grows manly and worships, cornets and carriages. I saw it was a fine thing to get a prize, but it was 10 times a finer thing to get drunk with a peer. So when I had done the first, my resolve to be worthy of my sires made me do the second, not indeed exactly. I never got drunk. My father discussed with me with that vice the times to his gluttony. I owe my vegetable diet and do his inebriity, my addiction to water. No, I did not get drunk with peers, but I was just as agreeable to them as if I had been equally embroidered. I knew intimately all the hats in the university and I was henceforth looked up to by the cats as if my head had gained the height of every hat that I knew. At Cambridge, the sons of noblemen and the eldest sons of baronets are allowed to wear hats instead of the academical cap. But I did not do this immediately. I must tell you two little anecdotes that first initiated me into the secret of real greatness. The first was this, I was sitting at dinner with some fellows of a college, brave men and clever, two of them not knowing me were conversing about me. They heard they said that I should never be so good a fellow as my father, have such a cellar or keep such a house. I've met six orals there and a Marquis, both the other senior and his son returned the first don only keeps company with sizers, I believe. So then said I to myself to deserve the praise even of clever men, one must have good wines, no plenty of orals and four swear sizers. Nothing could be truer than my conclusion. An anecdote the second is this, on the day I gained a high university prize, I invited my friends to dine with me. Four of them refused because they were engaged. They had been asked since I asked them to whom the richest man at the university. These occurrences happening at the same time through me into a profound reverie. I awoke and became a man of the world and no longer resolved to be virtuous and to hunt after the glory of your Romans and your Athenians, I resolved to become rich, powerful and a worldly repute. I abjured my honest sizers and as I said before I courted some rich hats, behold my first grand step in the world, I became the parasite and the flatterer. What, would my pride suffer this? Barely yes, my pride delighted in it, for it soothed my spirit. I have contempt to put these fine fellows to my use. It soothed me to see how easily I could cajole them into what a variety of purposes I could apply even though we're as some disgust of their acquaintance. Nothing is so foolish as to say the idle great are of no use, they can be put to any use whatsoever that a wise man is inclined to make of them. Well, do you loathe my character, already formed the family pride, disdain and worldly ambition? There it is for you. After circumstances only strengthened the impression already made. I desired I'm leaving college to go abroad. My father had no money to give me, but signified that I looked carelessly around for some wealthier convenience than the paternal board. I found it in a Lord, the leverer. He'd been at college with me and I endured him easily as a companion for he had accomplishments wit and good nature. I made him wish to go abroad and I made him think he should dive on we if I did not accompany him to his request to that effect. I reluctantly agreed and saw everything in Europe which he neglected to see at his expense. What amused me the most was the perception that I the parasite was respected by him and he the patron was ridiculed by me. It would not have been so if I had depended on my virtue. Well, Swedish Julia the world as I have said gave to my college experience a sacred authority. I returned to England and my father died leaving to me not a sixpence and to my brother in a state so mortgage that he could not enjoy it and so restricted that he could not sell it. It was now the time for me to profit by the experience I boasted of. I saw that it was necessary I should take some profession. Professions are the masks to your proper road. They give respectability to cheating and a diploma to feed upon others. I analyzed my talents and looked to the customs of my country. The result was my resolution to take to the bar. I had an inexhaustible power of application. I was keen, shrewd and audacious. All these qualities tell at the courts of justice. I kept my legitimate number of terms. I was called and went to the circuit. I obtained not a brief, not a brief, Julia. My health never robust gave way beneath study and irritation. I was ordered to protect myself to the country. I came to this village as one both salubrious and obscure. I locked in the house of your aunt. You came hither daily, I saw you, you know the rest. But where all this time were my noble friends, you will say. It's death. Since we had left college they had learned a little of the wisdom I had then possessed. They were not disposed to give something for nothing. They had younger brothers and cousins and mistresses and, for all I know, children to provide for. Besides, they had their own expenses. The richer a man is, the less he has to give. One of them would have bestowed on me a living if I had gone into the church. Another commissioned if I had joined his regiment. But I knew the day was past both for priest and soldier and it was not merely to live, no, nor to live comfortably but to enjoy power that I desired. So I declined these offers. Others of my friends would have been delighted to have kept me in their house, feasted me, joked with me, rode with me, nothing more. But I had already the sense to see that if a man dances himself into distinction, it is never by the steps of attendance. One must receive favors and court patronage, but it must be with the air of an independent man. My old friends thus rendered useless. My legal studies forbade me to make new. Nay, they even estranged me from the old for people may say what they please about a similarity of opinions being necessary to friendship, a similarity of habits is much more so. It is the man you dine, breakfast and lodge with, rock, rock, gamble or thieve with that is your friend, not the man who likes Virgil as well as you do and agrees with you in an admiration of handle. Meanwhile, my chief pray Lord Malevolent was gone. He had taken another man's docenia and sought out a bower in Italy. From that time to this, I've never heard of him or seen him. I know not even his address with the exception of a few straight leanings from my brother who good easy man. I could plunder more where I not resolve not to ruin the family stock. I've been thrown on myself. The result is that though as clever as my fellows, I've narrowly shun starvation. Had my wants been less simple, there would have been no shunning in the case, but a man is not easily starved who drinks water and eats by the ounce. A more effectual fate might have befalling me. Disappointment, wrath, baffled hope, mortified pride, all these which gnawed at my heart might have consumed it long ago. I might have fretted away as a garment which the moth eateth. Had it not been for that fund of obstinate and iron hardness which nature, I beg pardon, there is no nature circumstance bestowed upon me. This has borne me up and will bear me yet through time and shame and bodily weakness and mental fever until my ambition has won a certain height in my disdain of human pettiness rioted in the external sources of fortune as well as an inward fountain of bitter and self-fed consolation. Yet, O Julia, I know not if even this would have supported me if at that epoch of life, when I was most wounded, most stricken in body, most soured in mind, my heart had not met and fastened itself to yours. I saw you, loved you, and life became to me a new object. Even now, as I write to you, all my bitterness, my pride, vanish. Everything I have longed for disappears. My very ambition is gone. I have no hope but for you, Julia, beautiful adored Julia, when I love you, I love even my kind. O you know not the power you possess over me. Do not betray it. You can yet make me all that my boyhood once dreamed or you can harden every thought, feeling sensation into stone. I was to tell you why I look not for happiness in our union. You have now seen my nature. You have traced the history of my life by tracing the history of my character. You see what I surrender in gaining you. I do not deny the sacrifice. I surrender the very essentials of my present mind and soul. I cease to be worldly. I cannot raise myself. I cannot revive my ancestral name. Nay, I shall relinquish it forever. I shall adopt a disguised appellation. I shall sink into another great of life in some remote village by means of some humbler profession than that I now follow. We must earn our subsistence and smile at ambition. I tell you frankly, Julia, when I close the eyes of my heart, when I shut you from my gaze, this sacrifice appalls me. But even then you force yourself before me and I feel that one glance from your eye is more to me than all. If you could bear with me, if you could soothe me, if when a cloud is on me, you could suffer it to pass away unnoticed and smile on me the moment it is gone. Oh, Julia, there would be then no extreme of poverty, no abasement of fortune, no abandonment of early dreams which would not seem to me rapture if coupled with the bliss of knowing that you are mine. Never should my lip, never should my eye tell you that there is that thing on earth for which I repine or which I could desire. No, Julia, could I fly to my heart with this hope? You would not find me dream of unhappiness than you, United, but I trembled you when I think of your temper and my own. You will conceive a gloomy look from one never mirthful is an insult and you will feel every vent of passion, unfortunate or on others as a reproach to you. Then, too, you cannot enter into my nature. You cannot descend into its caverns. You cannot behold much less can you deign to lull the exacting and link's eye jealousy that dwells there. Sweet as Julia, every breath of yours, every touch of yours, every look of yours, I yearn for, beyond all, a mother's longing for the child that has been torn from her for years. Your head leaned upon an old tree. Do you remember it near? Blank. And I went every day after seeing you to kiss it. Do you wonder that I am jealous? How can I love you as I do and be otherwise? My whole being is intoxicated with you. This, then, your pride in mine, your pleasure in the admiration of others, your likeness to you, make me foresee an eternal and gushing source of torture to my mind. I care not, I care for nothing, so that you are mine, if but for one hour. It seems that despite the strange, sometimes the unlover-like and fiercely selfish nature of these letters from Brandon, something of a genuine tone of passion, perhaps their originality aided, no doubt, by some uttered eloquence of the writer and some treacherous inclination on the part of the mistress ultimately conquered, and that a union so little likely to receive the smile of a prosperous star was at length concluded. The letter which terminated the correspondence was from Brandon. It was written on the evening before the marriage, which had appeared by the same letter. It was to be private and concealed after a rapturous burst of hope and joy. It continued thus, Yes, Julia, I recant my words. I have no belief that you or I shall ever have cause hereafter for unhappiness. Those eyes that dwelt so tenderly on mine, that hand whose pressure lingers yet in every nerve of my frame, those lips turned so coyly, yet shall I say reluctantly from me, all tell me that you love me and my fears are banished. Love which conquered my nature will conquer the only thing I would desire to see altered in yours. Nothing could ever make me adore you less, though you effect to dread it, nothing but a knowledge that you are unworthy of me, that you have a thought for another, then I should not hate you. No, the privilege of my past existence would revive. I should revel in a luxury of contempt. I should despise you. I should mock you. And I should be once more what I was before I knew you. But why do I talk thus? My bribe, my blessing, forgive me. In concluding our extracts from this correspondence, we wish the reader to note first that the love professed by Brandon seems of that vehement and corporeal nature, which, while it is often the least durable, is often the most susceptible of the fiercest extremes of hatred or even of disgust. Secondly, that the character open by this sarcastic candor evidently required in a mistress either an utter devotion or a skillful address. And thirdly, that we have hinted at such qualities in the fair correspondent as did not seem sanguinely to promise either of these essentials. While with a curled yet often with a quivering lip, the austere and sarcastic Brandon slowly compelled himself to the task of proceeding through these monuments of former folly and youthful emotion, the further elucidation of those events, now rapidly urging on a fatal and dread catastrophe, spreads before us a narrative occurring many years prior to the time at which we are present arrived. End of Chapter 32, Part 2. Chapter 33 of Paul Clifford by Edward Bower Lytton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 33. Clem, lift the dark veil of years behind what waits, a human heart, vast city where reside all glories and all vilenesses, while foul yet silent through the roar of passions rolls the river of the darling sin and bears a life and yet a poison on its tide. Clem, thy wife, vict of aunt, I've changed that word to scorn. Clem, thy child, vict, I, that strikes home. My child, my child, love and hatred by blank. To an obscure town in Blankshire, there came to reside a young couple whose appearance and habits drew towards them from the neighboring gossip some more than ordinary attention. They bore the name of Welford. The man assumed a profession of a solicitor. He came without introduction or recommendation. His manner of life bespoke poverty. His address was reserved and even sour. And despite the notice and scrutiny with which he was regarded, he gained no clients and made no lawsuits. The want of all those decent charlatanisms, which men of every profession are almost necessitated to employ and the sudden and an ushered nature of his coming were perhaps the cause of this ill success. His house was too small, people said for respectability and little good could be got from a solicitor. The very rails round whose door were so sadly in want of repainting. Then to Mrs. Welford made a vast number of enemies. She was beyond all expression beautiful. And there was a certain coquetry in her manner which showed she was aware of her attractions. All the ladies of Blanks hated her. A few people called on the young couple. Welford received them coldly. Their invitations were unaccepted. And what was worse, they were never returned. The devil himself could not have supported an attorney under such circumstances. Reserved, shabby, poor, rude, introductionless, a bad house and unpainted railing and a beautiful wife. Nevertheless, though Welford was not employed, he was as we have said, watched. On their first arrival, which was in summer, the young pair were often seen walking together in the fields or groves which surrounded their home. Sometimes they walked affectionately together and it was observed with what care Welford adjusted his wife's cloak or shawl around her slender shape as the cool of the evening increased. But often his arm was withdrawn. He lingered behind and they continued their walk or returned homeward in silence and depart. By degrees, whispers circulated throughout the town that the new merry couple lived by no means happily. The men laid the fault on the stern-looking husband, the women on the minks of a wife. However, the solitary servant whom they kept declared that though Mr. Welford did sometimes frown and Mrs. Welford did sometimes weep, they were extremely attached to each other and only quarreled through love. The maid had had four lovers herself and was possibly experienced in such matters. They received no visitors near or from a distance and the postman declared he had never seen a letter directed to either. Thus a kind of mystery hung over the pair and made them still more gazed on and still more disliked, which is saying a great deal than they would have otherwise been. Poor as Welford was, his air and walk eminently bespoke what common person's term gentility. And in this he had greatly the advantage of his beautiful wife, who though there was certainly nothing vulgar or plebeian in her aspect altogether wanted the refinement of manner, look and phrase which characterized Welford. For about two years they lived in this manner and so frugally and tranquilly that though Welford had not any visible means of subsistence no one could well wonder in what manner they did subsist. About the end of that time Welford suddenly embarked a small sum in a county speculation. In the course of this adventure to the great surprise of his neighbors he events an extraordinary turn for calculation and his habits plainly bespoke a man both of business and ability. This disposal of capital brought a sufficient return to support the Welfords if they had been so disposed in rather better style than here to four. They remained however in much the same state and the only difference that the event produced was the retirement of Mr. Welford from the profession he had embraced. He was no longer a solicitor. It must be allowed that he resigned no great advantages in this retirement. About this time some officers were quartered at blank and one of them a handsome lieutenant was so struck with the charms of Mrs. Welford whom he saw at church that he lost no opportunity of testifying his admiration. It was maliciously yet not unfoundedly remarked that though no absolute impropriety could be detected in the manner of Mrs. Welford she certainly seemed far from displeased with the evident homage of the young lieutenant. A blush tinged her cheek when she saw him and the gallant cockscomb asserted that the blush was not always without a smile emboldened by the interpretations of his vanity in contrasting as everyone else did his own animated face and glittering garb with the ascetic and gloomy countenance the unstudied dress and austere gait which destroyed in Welford the effect of a really handsome person our lieutenant thought to express his passion by a letter which he conveyed to Mrs. Welford's pew. Mrs. Welford went not to church that day the letter was found by a good-natured neighbor and enclosed anonymously to the husband. Whatever in the secrecy of domestic intercourse took place on this event was necessarily unknown but the next Sunday the face of Mr. Welford which had never before appeared at church was discerned by one vigilant neighbor probably the anonymous friend not in the same pew with his wife but in a remote corner of the sacred house and once when the lieutenant was watching to read and Mrs. Welford's face some answer to his epistle the same obliging inspector declared that Welford's countenance assumed a sardonic and withering sneer that made his very blood to creep. However this be the lieutenant left his quarters and Mrs. Welford's reputation remained dissatisfactorily untarnished. Shortly after this the county speculation failed and it was understood that the Welford's were about to leave the town with a non-new. Some said to jail but then unhappily no debts could be discovered. Their bills had been next to nothing but at least they had been regularly paid however before the rumored emigration took place a circumstance equally wonderful to the good people of Blank occurred. One bright spring morning a party of pleasure from a great house in the vicinity passed through that town. Most conspicuous of these was a young horseman richly dressed and about remarkably showy and handsome appearance. Not a little sensible of the sensation he created this cavalier lingered behind his companions in order to eye more deliberately certain dams all stationed in a window and who were quite ready to return his glances with interest. At this moment the horse which was spreading itself fiercely against the rain that restrained it from its fellows took a fright at a knife grinder started violently to one side and the graceful cavalier who had been thinking not of the attitude best adapted to preserve his equilibrium but to display his figure was thrown with some force upon a heap of bricks and rubbish which had long to the scandal of the neighborhood stood before the painless railings around Mr. Welford's house. Welford himself came out at the time and felt compelled for he was by no means one whose sympathetic emotions flowed easily to give a glance to the condition of a man who lay motionless before his very door. The horseman quickly recovered his senses but found himself unable to rise. One of his legs was broken supported in the arms of his groom he looked around in his eye met Welford's an instant recognition gave life to the face of the former and through a dark blush over the sullen features of the latter. Heavens said the cavalier is that hissed my Lord cried Welford quickly interrupting him and glancing round but you are heard will you enter my house. The horseman signified his ascent in between the groom and Welford was born within the shabby door of the ex solicitor. The groom was then dispatched with an excuse to the party many of whom were already hastening around the house and their one or two did force themselves across the inhospitable threshold yet so soon as they had uttered a few expletives and felt their stare sink beneath the sullen and chilling asperity of the host they satisfied themselves that though it was darned unlucky for their friend yet they could do nothing for him at present. And promising to send to inquire after him the next day they remounted and rode homeward with an eye more attentive than usual to the motion of their steeds. They did not however depart till the surgeon of the town and made his appearance and declared that the patient must not on any account be moved. A Lord's leg was a windfall that did not happen every day to the surgeon of blank. All this while we may imagine the state of anxiety experienced in the town and the agonized endurance of those rural nerves which are produced in scanty populations and have so tally at caution a sympathy with the affairs of other people. One day, two days, three days a week or fortnight, nay a month passed and the Lord was still the inmate of Mr. Welford's abode leaving the gossips to feed on their curiosity, cannibals of their own hearts. We must give a glance towards the interior of the inhospitable mansion of the ex-solicitor. It was towards evening the sufferer was supported on a sofa and the beautiful Mrs. Welford who had officiated as his nurse was placing the pillow under the shattered limb. He himself was attempting to seize her hand which she coily drew back and uttering things sweeter and more polished than she had ever listened to before. At this moment, Welford softly entered. He was unnoticed by either and he stood at the door contemplating them with a smile of calm and self-hugging derision. The face of Mephistopheles regarding Margaret and Faust might suggest some idea of the picture we designed to paint but the countenance of Welford was more lofty as well as comlier in character though not less malignant in an expression than that which the incomparable wretch has given to the mocking fiend. So utter, so congratulatory, so lordly was the contempt on Welford's dark and striking features that though he was in that situation in which ridicule usually attaches itself to the husband it was the gallant and the wife that would have appeared to the beholder in a humiliating and unenviable light. After a momentary pause, Welford approached with a heavy step. The wife started but with a bland and smooth expression which since his sojourn in the town of Blank had been rarely visible in his aspect the host joined the pair, smiled on the nurse and congratulated the patient on his progress towards recovery. The nobleman well-learned in the usages of the world replied easily and gaily and the conversation flowed on cheerfully enough till the wife who had sat abstracted and apart stealing ever and a non timid glances towards her husband and looks of a softer meaning towards the patient retired from the room. Welford then gave a turn to the conversation he reminded the nobleman of the pleasant days that had passed in Italy of the adventures that had shared and the intrigues that had enjoyed as the conversation warmed it assumed a more free and licentious turn and not a little we weaned with the good folks of Blank have been amazed could they have listened to the gay Jess and the libertine Maxims which flowed from the thin lips of that cold and severe Welford whose countenance gave the lie to mirth of women in general they spoke with that lively contempt which is the customary tone with men of the world only in Welford it assumed a bitterer a deeper and a more philosophical cast than it did in his more animated yet less energetic guest. The nobleman seemed charmed with his friend the conversation was just to his taste and when Welford had supported him up to bed he shook that person cordially by the hand and hoped he should soon see him in very different circumstances. When the pier's door was closed on Welford he stood motionless for some moments he then with a soft step ascended to his own chamber. His wife slept soundly beside the bed was the infant's cradle as his eyes fell on the ladder the rigid irony now habitual to his features relaxed he bent over the cradle long and in deep silence the mother's face blended with the sire's was stamped on the sleeping and cherubic countenance before him. And as at length rousing from his reverie he kissed it gently he murmured when I look on you I will believe that she once loved me. Pa he said abruptly and rising this fatherly sentiment for a blank's offering is exquisite in me. So saying without glancing towards his wife he disturbed by the loudness of his last words stirred uneasily he left the room and descended into that where he had conversed with his guests. He shut the door with caution and striding to and fro the humble apartment gave vent to thoughts marshaled somewhat in the broken array in which they now appeared to the reader. I, I, she has been my ruin and if I were one of your weak fools who make a gospel of the silliest and most mawkish follies of this social state she would now be my disgrace. But instead of my disgrace I will make her my footstool to honor and well. And then to the devil with the footstool yes two years I have borne what was enough to turn my whole blood into gall in activity hopelessness a wasted heart and life in myself contumely from the world coldness bickering in gratitude from the one for whom oh ass that I was I gave up the most cherished part of my nature rather my nature itself. Two years I've borne this and now will I have my revenge I will sell her, sell her, God I will sell her like the commonest beast of a market and this paltry piece of false coin shall buy me my world. Other men's vengeance comes from hatred a base, rage, unphilosophical sentiment mine comes from scorn the only wise state for the reason to rest in other men's vengeance ruins themselves mine shall save me ha how my soul chuckles when I look at this pitiful pair who think I see them not and know that every moment they make is on a mesh of my web. Yet and well for Paul slowly yet I cannot but mawk myself when I think of the arch gall that this boy's madness, love, love indeed the very word turns me sick with loathing made of me had that woman, silly, weak, automatal as she is, really loved me had she been sensible of the unspeakable sacrifice I had made to her Antony's was nothing to it he lost a real world only mine was the world of imagination had she but condescended to learn my nature to subdue the woman's devil at her own I could have lived on in this babbling hermitage forever and fancied myself happy and resigned I could have become a different being I fancy I could have become what your moralists quacks call good but this fretting frivolity of heart, this lust of fools praise this peevishness of temper, this sulleness in answer to the moody thought which in me she neither fathomed nor forgave this vulgar, daily, hourly pining at the paltry pinches of the body's poverty the domestic wine, the household complaint when I, I have not a thought for such pitiful trials of affection and all this while my curses my buried hope and disguised spirit and sunken name not thought of the magnitude of my surrender to her not even comprehended, nay, her inconveniences a dim heart, I suppose, or a dainty-less table compared I absolutely compared with all which I abandoned for her sake as if it were not enough had I been a fool and ambitionless, soulless fool the mere thought that I had linked my name to that of a tradesman I beg pardon, a retired tradesman as if that knowledge, a knowledge I would strangle my whole race, everyone who has ever met, seen me rather than they should penetrate were not enough when she talks of comparing to make me gnaw the very flesh from my bones no, no, no, never was there so bright a turn in my fate as when this tidal cockscomb with his smooth voice and gaudy fripperies came hither I will make her a tool to carve my escape from this cavern wherein she has plunged me I will foment my Lord's passion till my Lord thinks the passion a butterfly's passion worth any price I will then make my own terms bind my Lord to secrecy and get rid of my wife my shame and the obscurity of Mr. Welford forever bright, bright prospects let me shut my eyes to enjoy you but softly my noble friend calls himself a man of the world, skilled in human nature and a derider of its prejudices true enough in his own little way thanks not to enlarge views but a vicious experience so he is the book of the world is a vast miscellane he is perfectly well acquainted, doubtless with those pages that treat of the fashions profoundly versed I want in the magazine they mud tacked to the end of the index but shall I even with all the mastership which my mind must exercise over his shall I be able utterly to free myself in this peer of the world's mind from a degrading remembrance cuckold, cuckold, dizz and ugly word a convenient willing cuckold hunk there is no grandeur no philosophical varnish in the phrase let me see yes I have a remedy for all that I was married privately well under disguised names well it was a stolen marriage bar from her town well witnesses unknown to her well proofs easily secured to my possession excellent the fool shall believe it a forged marriage an ingenious gallantry of mine I will wash out the stain cuckold with the water of another word I will make market of a mistress not a wife I will warn him not to acquaint her with this secret let me consider for what reason oh my son's legitimacy may be convenient to me hereafter he will understand that reason and I will have his honor there on and by the way I do care for that legitimacy and will guard the proofs I love my child ambitious men do love their children I may become a lord myself and may wish for a lord to succeed me and that son is mine thank heaven I'm sure on that point the only child to that ever shall arise to me never I swear will I again put myself beyond my own power all my nature save one passion I have hitherto mastered that passion shall hands forth be my slave my only thought be ambition my only mistress be the world as thus terminated the reverie of a man whom the social circumstances of the world were calculated as if by system to render eminently and basely wicked Wilford slowly ascended the stairs and re-entered his chamber his wife was still sleeping her beauty was of the fair and girlish and harmonized order which lovers and poets would express by the word angelic and as Wilford looked upon her face hushed and almost hallowed by slumber a certain weakness and eroded solution might have been discernible in the strong lines of his haughty features at that moment as if forever to destroy the return of hope or virtue to either her lips moved they uttered one word it was the name of Wilford's courtly guest about three weeks from that evening Mrs. Wilford eloped with the young nobleman and on the morning following that event the distracted husband with his child disappeared forever from the town of Blank from that day no tidings whatsoever respecting him ever reached the titillated ears of his anxious neighbors and doubt curiosity discussion gradually settled into the belief that his despair had hurried him into suicide although the unfortunate Mrs. Wilford was in reality of a light and frivolous turn and above all susceptible to personal vanity she was not without ardent affections and keen sensibilities her marriage had been one of love that is to say on her part the ordinary love of girls who love not through actual and natural feeding so much as forced predisposition her choice had fallen on one superior to herself in birth and far above all in personal address whom she had habitually met thus her vanity had assisted her affection and something strange and eccentric in the temper and mind of Wilford had though at times it aroused her fear greatly contributed to inflame her imagination then to the uncourtly he had been a passionate and a romantic lover she was sensible but he gave up for her much that he had previously conceived necessary to his existence and she stopped not to inquire how far this devotion was likely to last or what conduct on her part might best perpetuate the feelings from which it sprang she had a look with him she had consented to a private marriage she had passed one happy month and then delusion vanished Mrs. Wilford was not a woman who could give to reality or find in it the charm equal to delusion she was perfectly unable to comprehend the intricate and dangerous character of her husband she had not the key to his virtues nor the spell for his vices neither was the state to which poverty compelled them one well calculated for that tender meditation heightened by absence and cherished in indolence which so often supplies one who loves with the secret to the nature of the one beloved though not equal to her husband in birth or early prospects Mrs. Wilford had been accustomed to certain comforts often more felt by those who belong to the inferior classes than by those appertaining to the more elevated who in losing one luxury will often cheerfully surrender all a fine lady can submit to more hardships than a woman and every gentleman who travels smiles at the privations which agonize his valet poverty and its grim comrades made way for a whole host of petty irritations and peevish complaints and as no guest or visitor ever relieved the domestic discontent or broke on the domestic bickering they generally ended in that moody sulleness which so often finds love a grave in repentance nothing makes people tire of each other like a familiarity that admits of carelessness and quarreling and coarseness and complaining the biting sneer of Wilford gave acrimony to the murmur of his wife and when once each conceived the other the injurer or him or herself the wrong it was vain to hope that one would be more wary or the other more indulgent they both exacted too much and the wife in a special conceited too little Mrs. Wilford was altogether and emphatically what a libertine calls a woman such as a frivolous education makes a woman generous in great things petty and small vain irritable full of the littleness of herself and her complaints ready to plunge into an abyss with her lover but equally ready to fred away all love with reproaches when the plunge had been made of all men Wilford could bear at this the least a woman of a larger heart a more subtle experience and an intellect capable of appreciating his character and sounding all his qualities might have made him perhaps a useful and a great man and at least her lover for life amidst a harvest of evil feelings the mere strength of his nature rendered him especially capable of intense feeling and generous emotion one who relied on him was safe one who rebelled against him and trusted only to the caprice of his scorn still however for two years loved the weakening with each hour fought on in either breast and could scarcely be said to be entirely vanquished in the wife even when she eloped with her handsome seducer a French writer has said pithily enough compare for a moment the apathy of a husband with the attention the gallantry the adoration of a lover and can you ask the result he was a French writer but Mrs. Wilford had in her temper much of the French woman a suffering patient young handsome well-versed in the arts of intrigue contrasted with a gloomy husband whom she had never comprehended long feared and had lately doubted if she disliked ah a much weaker contrast has made many a much better woman food for the lawyers Mrs. Wilford eloped but she felt a revived tenderness for her husband on the very morning that she did so she carried away with her his letters of love as well as her own which when they first married she had in an hour of fondness collected together then and an estimable board and never did her new lover received from her beautiful lips half so passionate a kiss as she had left on the cheek of her infant for some months she enjoyed with her paramour all for which she had sighed in her home the one for whom she had forsaken her legitimate ties was a person so habitually cheerful courteous and what is ordinarily termed good nature though he had in him as much of the essence of selfishness as any nobleman can decently have that he continued gallant to her without an effort long after he had begun to think it possible to tire even of so lovely a face yet there were moments when the fickle wife recalled her husband with regret in contrasting him with her seducer did not bind all the colorings of the contrast flattering to the latter there's something in a powerful and marked character which women and all weak natures feel themselves constrained to respect in welford's character thus stood in bold and therefore advantageous though gloomy relief when opposed to the levities and foibles of this guilty woman's present adorer however this be the dive was cast and it would have been policy for the lady to have made the best of her present game but she who had murmured as a wife was not complacent as a mistress reproaches made an interlude to caresses which the noble lover by no means admired he was not a man to retort he was too indolent but neither was he one to forbear my charming friend said he one day after a scene you worry of me nothing more natural why torment each other you say I have ruined you my sweet friend let me make you reparation become independent I will settle an annuity upon you fly me seek happiness elsewhere and leave your unfortunate your despairing lover to his fate do you taunt me my lord cried the angry fair or do you believe that money can replace the rights of which you have robbed me can you make me again a wife a happy a respective wife do this my lord and you atone to me the nobleman smiled and shrugged his shoulders the lady yet more angrily repeated her question the lover answered by an innuenda which at once astonished and doubly enraged her she eagerly demanded explanation and his lordship who had gone further than he intended left the room but his words had sunk deep into the breast of this unhappy woman and she resolved to procure an elucidation agreeably to the policy which stripped the fabled traveler of his cloak she laid aside the storm and preferred the sunshine she watched a moment of tenderness she turned the opportunity to advantage and bought little and little she possessed herself of a secret which sickened her with shame, disgust and dismay sold, bartered, the object of a contemptuous huckstring to the purchaser and the seller sold too with a lie that debased her at once into an object for whom even pity was mixed with scorn robbed already of the name and honor of a wife and transferred as a harlot from the wearied arms of one LeMond to the capricious caresses of another such was the image that rose before her and while it roused at one moment all her fiercer passions into madness humbled with the next her vanity into the dust she who knew the ruling passion of Welford saw at a glance the object of scorn and derision which she had become to him while she imagined herself to betray her she had been betrayed she saw vividly before her and shuddered as she saw her husband's icy smile his serpent eye, his features steeped in sarcasm and all his mocking soul stamped upon the countenance whose lightest derision was so galling she turned from this picture and saw the courtly face of the purchaser his subdued smile at her reproaches his latent sneer at her claims to a station which he had been taught by the arch plotter to believe she had never possessed she saw his early weariness of her attractions expressed with respect indeed and insulting respect but felt without a scruple of remorse she saw in either as around only a reciprocation of contempt she was in a web of profound abasement even that hearty grief of conscience for a crime committed to another which if it stings, humbles not was swallowed up in a far more agonizing sensation to one's surveying as the adulteress the burning sense of shame at having herself while sinning been the duped and deceived her very soul was appalled with her humiliation the curse of Welford's vengeance was on her and it was wreaked to the last whatever kindly sentiment she might have experienced towards her protector was swallowed up at once by this discovery she could not endure the thought of meeting the eye of one who had been the gainer by this ignominious barter the foibles and weaknesses of the lover assumed a despicable as well as hateful die and in feeling herself degraded she loathed him the day after she had made the discovery we have referred to Mrs. Welford left the house of her protector, none new with her for two years from that date all trace of her history was lost at the end of that time what was Welford a man rapidly rising in the world distinguished at the bar where his first brief had lifted him into notice commencing a flattering career in the senate holding lucrative and honorable offices esteemed for the austere rectitude of his moral character gathering the golden opinions of all men as he strode onward to public reputation he had re-assumed his hereditary name as early history was unknown and no one in the obscure and distant town of Blank had ever guessed that the humble Welford was the William Brandon whose phrase was echoed in so many journals and his rising genius was acknowledged by all that asperity roughness and gloom which had noted him at Blank and which being natural to him he deigned not to disguise in a station ingenious to his talents and below his hopes were now glitteringly varnished over by an hypocrisy well calculated to aid his ambition so learnedly could this singular man fit himself to others that few among the great met him as a companion so left him without the temper to become his friend through his noble rival that is to make our readers surety doubly sure through Lord Milover he had acquired his first lucrative office a certain patronage from government and a seat in parliament if he had persevered at the bar rather than given himself entirely to state intrigues it was only because his talents were eminently more calculated to advance him in the former path to honor and in the latter so devoted was he to become to public life that he had only permitted himself to cherish one private source of enjoyment his son as no one not even his brother knew he had been married during the two years of his disguise name he had been supposed abroad the appearance of this son made the only piece of scandal whispered against the rigid morality of his fair fame but he himself waiting his own time for a vowing a legitimate air gave out that it was the orphan child of a dear friend whom he had known abroad and the puritan demureness not only of life but manner which he assumed gained a pretty large belief to the statement this son Brandon idolized as we have represented himself to say ambitious men are commonly fond of their children beyond the fondness of other sides the perpetual reference which the ambitious make to posterity is perhaps the main reason for Brandon was also fond of children generally by the progenitiveness was a mark trait in his character and would seem to belie the hardness and artifice belonging to that character were not the same love so frequently noticeable in the harsh and the artificial it seems as if a half conscious but pleasing feeling that they too were once gentle and innocent makes them delight in reviving any sympathy with their early state often after the applause and labor of the day Brandon would repair to his son's chamber and watch his slumber for hours often before his morning toil commenced he would nurse the infant in his arms with all a woman's natural tenderness and gushing joy and often as a grave and more characteristic sentiment stole over him he would mentally say you shall build up our broken name on a better foundation than your sire I begin too late in life and I labor up a painful and stony road but I shall make the journey to fame smooth and accessible for you never too while you aspire to honor shall you steal your heart to tranquility for you my child shall be the joys of home and love and a mind that does not sicken at the past and strain through mere forgetfulness towards a solitary and barren distinction for the future not only what your father gains you shall enjoy but what has cursed him his vigilance shall lead you to shun it was thus not only that his softer feelings but all the better and nobler ones which even in the worst and hardest bosom find some root turned towards his child and that the hollow ambitious man promised to become the affectionate and perhaps the wise parent one night Brandon was returning home on foot from a ministerial dinner the night was frosty and clear the hour was late and his way lay through the longest and best lighted streets of the metropolis he was as usual buried in thought when he was suddenly aroused from his reverie by light touched late on his arm he turned and saw one of the unhappy persons who haunt the midnight streets of cities standing right before his path the gaze of each fell upon the other and it was thus for the first time since they had laid their heads on the same pillow that the husband met the wife the skies were intensely clear and the lamp light was bright and calm upon the faces of both there was no doubt in the mind of either suddenly and with a startling ghastly consciousness they recognized each other the wife staggered and clung to a post for support Brandon's look was calm and unmoved the hour that his bitter and malignant spirit had yearned for was come his nerves expanded in a voluptuous calmness as if to give him a deliberate enjoyment of his hope fulfilled whatever the words that in that unwitnessed and almost awful interview passed between them we may be sure that Brandon spared not one atom of his power the lost and abandoned wife returned home and all her nature and brooded as it had become by guilt and vile habits hardened into revenge that preternatural feeling which may be termed the hope of despair three nights from that meeting Brandon's house was broken into like the houses of many legal men it lay in a dangerous and thinly populated outskirt of the town and was easily accessible to robbery he was awakened by a noise he started and found himself in the grasp of two men at the foot of the bed stood a female raising a light and her face haggard with searing passions and ghastly with the leprous whiteness of disease and approaching death, glared full upon him it is now my turn said the female with a grin of scorn which Brandon himself might have envied you have cursed me and I return the curse you have told me that my child should never name me but to blush fool I triumph over you you he shall never know to his dying day you have told me that to my child and my child's child a long transmission of extracuration my name the name of the wife you basically sold to ruin and to hell should be left as a legacy of odium and shame man you shall teach that child no further lesson whatever you shall know not whether he live or die or have children to carry on your boasted race or whether if you have those children be not al-qas of the earth the accursed of man and God the fit offspring of the thing you have made me wretch I throw back on you the denunciation with which when we met three nights since you would have crushed the victim of your own perfidy you shall tread the path of your ambition childless and opti-gliss and hopeless disease shall set her stamp upon your frame the worms shall batten upon your heart you shall have honors and enjoy them not you shall gain your ambition and despair you shall pine for your sin and find him not or if you find him you shall curse the hour in which he was born mark me man I'm dying while I speak I know that I am a prophet in my curse from this hour I am avenged and you are my scorn as the hardest nature sink a paw before the stony eye of the maniac so in the dead of the night pinion by ruffians the wild and solemn voice sharpened by passion and partial madness of the ghastly figure before him curdling through his veins even the haughty and daring character William Brandon quailed he uttered not a word he was found the next morning bound by strong cords to his bed he spoke not when he was released but went in silence to his child's chamber the child was gone several articles of property were also stolen the desperate tools the mother had employed were not perhaps without their own reward we need scarcity that Brandon set every engine and channel of justice in motion for the discovery of his son all the special shrewdness and keenness of his own character aided by his professional experience he employed for years in the same pursuit every research was holy in vain not the remotest vestige towards discovery could be traced until we're found we have recorded when some of the articles that have been stolen fate treasured in our gloomy womb all together undescribed by man the hour and the scene in which the most ardent wish of William Brandon was to be realized end of chapter 23