Part 33 (1/2)
”I cannot,--I cannot!” said Lucy, grasping her treasure with both her hands; ”it is my mother's picture, and my mother is dead!”
”The wants of others, madam,” returned Tomlinson, who could not for the life of him rob immorally, ”are ever more worthy your attention than family prejudices. Seriously, give it, and that instantly; we are in a hurry, and your horses are plunging like devils: they will break your carriage in an instant,--despatch!”
The squire was a brave man on the whole, though no hero; and the nerves of an old fox-hunter soon recover from a little alarm. The picture of his buried wife was yet more inestimable to him than it was to Lucy, and at this new demand his spirit was roused within him.
He clenched his fists, and advancing himself as it were on his seat, he cried in a loud voice,--
”Begone, fellow! I have given you--for my own part I think so--too much already; and, by G.o.d, you shall not have the picture!”
”Don't force me to use violence,” said Augustus; and putting one foot on the carriage-step, he brought his pistol within a few inches of Lucy's breast, rightly judging, perhaps, that the show of danger to her would be the best method to intimidate the squire. At that instant the valorous moralist found himself suddenly seized with a powerful gripe on the shoulder; and a low voice, trembling with pa.s.sion, hissed in his ear. Whatever might be the words that startled his organs, they operated as an instantaneous charm; and to their astonishment, the squire and Lucy beheld their a.s.sailant abruptly withdraw. The door of the carriage was clapped to, and scarcely two minutes had elapsed before, the robber having remounted, his comrade, hitherto stationed at the horses' heads, set spurs to his own steed, and the welcome sound of receding hoofs smote upon the bewildered ears of the father and daughter.
The door of the carriage was again opened; and a voice, which made Lucy paler than the preceding terror, said,--
”I fear, Mr. Brandon, the robbers have frightened your daughter. There is now, however, nothing to fear; the ruffians are gone.”
”G.o.d bless me!” said the squire; ”why, is that Captain Clifford?”
”It is; and he conceives himself too fortunate to have been of the smallest service to Mr. and Miss Brandon.”
On having convinced himself that it was indeed to Mr. Clifford that he owed his safety as well as that of his daughter, whom he believed to have been in a far more imminent peril than she really was,--for to tell thee the truth, reader, the pistol of Tomlinson was rather calculated for show than use, having a peculiarly long bright barrel with nothing in it,--the squire was utterly at a loss how to express his grat.i.tude; and when he turned to Lucy to beg she would herself thank their gallant deliverer, he found that, overpowered with various emotions, she had, for the first time in her life, fainted away.
”Good heavens!” cried the alarmed father, ”she is dead,--my Lucy, my Lucy, they have killed her!”
To open the door nearest to Lucy, to bear her from the carriage in his arms, was to Clifford the work of an instant. Utterly unconscious of the presence of any one else,--unconscious even of what he said, he poured forth a thousand wild, pa.s.sionate, yet half-audible expressions; and as he bore her to a bank by the roadside, and seating himself supported her against his bosom, it would be difficult perhaps to say, whether something of delight--of burning and thrilling delight--was not mingled with his anxiety and terror. He chafed her small hands in his own; his breath, all trembling and warm, glowed upon her cheek; and once, and but once, his lips drew nearer, and breathing aside the dishevelled richness of her tresses, clung in a long and silent kiss to her own.
Meanwhile, by the help of the footman, who had now somewhat recovered his astonished senses, the squire descended from his carriage, and approached with faltering steps the place where his daughter reclined.
At the instant that he took her hand, Lucy began to revive; and the first action, in the bewildered unconsciousness of awaking, was to throw her arm around the neck of her supporter.
Could all the hours and realities of hope, joy, pleasure, in Clifford's previous life have been melted down and concentrated into a single emotion, that emotion would have been but tame to the rapture of Lucy's momentary and innocent caress! And at a later yet no distant period, when in the felon's cell the grim visage of Death scowled upon him, it may be questioned whether his thoughts dwelt not far more often on the remembrance of that delightful moment than on the bitterness and ignominy of an approaching doom.
”She breathes,--she moves,--she wakes!” cried the father; and Lucy, attempting to rise, and recognizing the squire's voice, said faintly,--
”Thank G.o.d, my dear father, you are not hurt! And are they really gone?--and where--where are we?”
The squire, relieving Clifford of his charge, folded his child in his arms, while in his own elucidatory manner he informed her where she was, and with whom. The lovers stood face to face to each other; but what delicious blushes did the night, which concealed all but the outline of their forms, hide from the eyes of Clifford!
The honest and kind heart of Mr. Brandon was glad of a release to the indulgent sentiments it had always cherished towards the suspected and maligned Clifford, and turning now from Lucy, it fairly poured itself forth upon her deliverer. He grasped him warmly by the hand, and insisted upon his accompanying them to Bath in the carriage, and allowing the footman to ride his horse. This offer was still pending, when the footman, who had been to see after the health and comfort of his fellow-servant, came to inform the party, in a dolorous accent, of something which, in the confusion and darkness of the night, they had not yet learned,--namely, that the horses and coachman were gone!
”Gone!” said the squire, ”gone! Why, the villains can't (for my part, I never believe, though I have heard such wonders of, those sleight of hand) have bagged them!”
Here a low groan was audible; and the footman, sympathetically guided to the spot whence it emanated, found the huge body of the coachman safely deposited, with its face downward, in the middle of the kennel. After this worthy had been lifted to his legs, and had shaken himself into intelligence, it was found that when the robber had detained the horses, the coachman, who required very little to conquer his more bellicose faculties, had--he himself said, by a violent blow from the ruffian, though, perhaps, the cause lay nearer home--quitted the coach-box for the kennel, the horses grew frightened, and after plunging and rearing till he cared no longer to occupy himself with their arrest, the highwayman had very quietly cut the traces, and by the time present, it was not impossible that the horses were almost at the door of their stables at Bath.
The footman who had apprised the squire of this misfortune was, unlike most news-tellers, the first to offer consolation. ”There be an excellent public,” quoth he, ”about a half a mile on, where your honour could get horses; or, mayhap, if Miss Lucy, poor heart, be faint, you may like to stop for the night.”
Though a walk of half a mile in a dark night and under other circ.u.mstances would not have seemed a grateful proposition, yet at present, when the squire's imagination had only pictured to him the alternatives of pa.s.sing the night in the carriage or of crawling on foot to Bath, it seemed but a very insignificant hards.h.i.+p; and tucking his daughter's arm under his own, while in a kind voice he told Clifford ”to support her on the other side,” the squire ordered the footman to lead the way with Clifford's horse, and the coachman to follow or be d---d, whichever he pleased.
In silence Clifford offered his arm to Lucy, and silently she accepted the courtesy. The squire was the only talker; and the theme he chose was not ungrateful to Lucy, for it was the praise of her lover. But Clifford scarcely listened, for a thousand thoughts and feelings contested within him; and the light touch of Lucy's hand upon his arm would alone have been sufficient to distract and confuse his attention. The darkness of the night, the late excitement, the stolen kiss that still glowed upon his lips, the remembrance of Lucy's flattering agitation in the scene with her at Lord Mauleverer's, the yet warmer one of that unconscious embrace, which still tingled through every nerve of his frame, all conspired with the delicious emotion which he now experienced at her presence and her contact to intoxicate and inflame him. Oh, those burning moments in love, when romance has just mellowed into pa.s.sion, and without losing anything of its luxurious vagueness mingles the enthusiasm of its dreams with the ardent desires of reality and earth!
That is the exact time when love has reached its highest point,--when all feelings, all thoughts, the whole soul, and the whole mind, are seized and engrossed,--when every difficulty weighed in the opposite scale seems lighter than dust,--when to renounce the object beloved is the most deadly and lasting sacrifice,--and when in so many b.r.e.a.s.t.s, where honour, conscience, virtue, are far stronger than we can believe them ever to have been in a criminal like Clifford, honour, conscience, virtue, have perished at once and suddenly into ashes before that mighty and irresistible fire.
The servant, who had had previous opportunities of ascertaining the topography of the ”public” of which he spake, and who was perhaps tolerably reconciled to his late terror in the antic.i.p.ation of renewing his intimacy with ”the spirits of the past,” now directed the attention of our travellers to a small inn just before them. Mine host had not yet retired to repose, and it was not necessary to knock twice before the door was opened.