Part 32 (2/2)
”To be sure,” rejoined the dame. ”They who lag late on the road may want money for supper!”
”Ha! which road?”
”You are a pretty fellow for captain!” rejoined the dame, with a good-natured sarcasm in her tone. ”Why, Captain Gloak, poor fellow! knew every turn of his men to a hair, and never needed to ask what they were about. Ah, he was a fellow! none of your girl-faced mudgers, who make love to ladies, forsooth,--a pretty woman need not look far for a kiss when he was in the room, I warrant, however coa.r.s.e her duds might be; and lauk! but the captain was a sensible man, and liked a cow as well as a calf.”
”So, so! on the road, are they?” cried Clifford, musingly, and without heeding the insinuated attack on his decorum. ”But answer me, what is the plan? Be quick!”
”Why,” replied the dame, ”there's some swell cove of a lord gives a blow-out to-day; and the lads, dear souls! think to play the queer on some straggler.”
Without uttering a word, Clifford darted from the house, and was remounted before the old lady had time to recover her surprise.
”If you want to see them,” cried she, as he put spurs to his horse, ”they ordered me to have supper ready at------” The horse's hoofs drowned the last words of the dame; and carefully rebolting the door, and muttering an invidious comparison between Captain Clifford and Captain Gloak, the good landlady returned to those culinary operations destined to rejoice the hearts of Tomlinson and Pepper.
Return we ourselves to Lucy. It so happened that the squire's carriage was the last to arrive; for the coachman, long uninitiated among the shades of Warlock into the dissipation of fas.h.i.+onable life, entered on his debut at Bath, with all the vigorous heat of matured pa.s.sions for the first time released, into the festivities of the ale-house, and having a milder master than most of his comrades, the fear of displeasure was less strong in his aurigal bosom than the love of companions.h.i.+p; so that during the time this gentleman was amusing himself, Lucy had ample leisure for enjoying all the thousand-and-one reports of the scene between Mauleverer and Clifford which regaled her ears. Nevertheless, whatever might have been her feelings at these pleasing recitals, a certain vague joy predominated over all. A man feels but slight comparative happiness in being loved, if he know that it is in vain; but to a woman that simple knowledge is sufficient to destroy the memory of a thousand distresses, and it is not till she has told her heart again and again that she is loved, that she will even begin to ask if it be in vain.
It was a partially starlight yet a dim and obscure night, for the moon had for the last hour or two been surrounded by mist and cloud, when at length the carriage arrived; and Mauleverer, for the second time that evening playing the escort, conducted Lucy to the vehicle. Anxious to learn if she had seen or been addressed by Clifford, the subtle earl, as he led her to the gate, dwelt particularly on the intrusion of that person, and by the trembling of the hand which rested on his arm, he drew no delicious omen for his own hopes. ”However,” thought he, ”the man goes to-morrow, and then the field will be clear; the girl's a child yet, and I forgive her folly.” And with an air of chivalric veneration, Mauleverer bowed the object of his pardon into her carriage.
As soon as Lucy felt herself alone with her father, the emotions so long pent within her forced themselves into vent, is and leaning back against the carriage, she wept, though in silence, tears, burning tears, of sorrow, comfort, agitation, anxiety.
The good old squire was slow in perceiving his daughter's emotion; it would have escaped him altogether, if, actuated by a kindly warming of the heart towards her, originating in his new suspicion of her love for Clifford, he had not put his arm round her neck; and this unexpected caress so entirely unstrung her nerves that Lucy at once threw herself upon her father's breast, and her weeping, hitherto so quiet, became distinct and audible.
”Be comforted, my dear, dear child!” said the squire, almost affected to tears himself; and his emotion, arousing him from his usual mental confusion, rendered his words less involved and equivocal than they were wont to be. ”And now I do hope that you won't vex yourself; the young man is indeed--and, I do a.s.sure you, I always thought so--a very charming gentleman, there's no denying it. But what can we do? You see what they all say of him, and it really was--we must allow that--very improper in him to come without being asked. Moreover, my dearest child, it is very wrong, very wrong indeed, to love any one, and not know who he is; and--and--but don't cry, my dear love, don't cry so; all will be very well, I am sure,--quite sure!”
As he said this, the kind old man drew his daughter nearer him, and feeling his hand hurt by something she wore unseen which pressed against it, he inquired, with some suspicion that the love might have proceeded to love-gifts, what it was.
”It is my mother's picture,” said Lucy, simply, and putting it aside.
The old squire had loved his wife tenderly; and when Lucy made this reply, all the fond and warm recollections of his youth rushed upon him. He thought, too, how earnestly on her death-bed that wife had recommended to his vigilant care their only child now weeping on his bosom: he remembered how, dwelling on that which to all women seems the grand epoch of life, she had said, ”Never let her affections be trifled with,--never be persuaded by your ambitious brother to make her marry where she loves not, or to oppose her, without strong reason, where she does: though she be but a child now, I know enough of her to feel convinced that if ever she love, she will love too well for her own happiness, even with all things in her favour.” These words, these recollections, joined to the remembrance of the cold-hearted scheme of William Brandon, which he had allowed himself to favour, and of his own supineness towards Lucy's growing love for Clifford, till resistance became at once necessary and too late, all smote him with a remorseful sorrow, and fairly sobbing himself, he said, ”Thy mother, child! ah, would that she were living, she would never have neglected thee as I have done!”
The squire's self-reproach made Lucy's tears cease on the instant; and as she covered her father's hands with kisses, she replied only by vehement accusations against herself, and praises of his too great fatherly fondness and affection. This little burst, on both sides, of honest and simple-hearted love ended in a silence full of tender and mingled thoughts; and as Lucy still clung to the breast of the old man, uncouth as he was in temper, below even mediocrity in intellect, and altogether the last person in age or mind or habit that seemed fit for a confidant in the love of a young and enthusiastic girl, she felt the old homely truth that under all disadvantages there are, in this hollow world, few in whom trust can be so safely reposed, few who so delicately and subtilely respect the confidence, as those from whom we spring.
The father and daughter had been silent for some minutes, and the former was about to speak, when the carriage suddenly stopped. The squire heard a rough voice at the horses' heads; he looked forth from the window to see, through the mist of the night, what could possibly be the matter, and he encountered in this action, just one inch from his forehead, the protruded and s.h.i.+ning barrel of a horse-pistol. We may believe, without a reflection on his courage, that Mr. Brandon threw himself back into his carriage with all possible despatch; and at the same moment the door was opened, and a voice said, not in a threatening but a smooth accent,--
”Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry to disturb you, but want is imperious; oblige me with your money, your watches, your rings, and any other little commodities of a similar nature!”
So delicate a request the squire had not the heart to resist, the more especially as he knew himself without any weapons of defence; accordingly he drew out a purse, not very full, it must be owned,--together with an immense silver hunting-watch, with a piece of black ribbon attached to it.
”There, sir,” said he, with a groan, ”don't frighten the young lady.”
The gentle applicant, who indeed was no other than the specious Augustus Tomlinson, slid the purse into his waistcoat-pocket, after feeling its contents with a rapid and scientific finger.
”Your watch, sir,” quoth he,--and as he spoke he thrust it carelessly into his coat-pocket, as a school-boy would thrust a peg-top,--”is heavy; but trusting to experience, since an accurate survey is denied me, I fear it is more valuable from its weight than its workmans.h.i.+p: however, I will not wound your vanity by affecting to be fastidious. But surely the young lady, as you call her,--for I pay you the compliment of believing your word as to her age, inasmuch as the night is too dark to allow me the happiness of a personal inspection,--the young lady has surely some little trinket she can dispense with. 'Beauty when unadorned,' you know, etc.”
Lucy, who, though greatly frightened, lost neither her senses nor her presence of mind, only answered by drawing forth a little silk purse, that contained still less than the leathern convenience of the squire; to this she added a gold chain; and Tomlinson, taking them with an affectionate squeeze of the hand and a polite apology, was about to withdraw, when his sagacious eyes were suddenly stricken by the gleam of jewels. The fact was that in altering the position of her mother's picture, which had been set in the few hereditary diamonds possessed by the Lord of Warlock, Lucy had allowed it to hang on the outside of her dress, and bending forward to give the robber her other possessions, the diamonds at once came in full sight, and gleamed the more invitingly from the darkness of the night.
”Ah, madam,” said Tomlinson, stretching forth his hand, ”you would play me false, would you? Treachery should never go unpunished. Favour me instantly with the little ornament round your neck!”
<script>