The Disowned, Volume 8.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> The Disowned, Volume 8.

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CHAPTER LXXXII.

Plot on thy little hour, and skein on skein
Weave the vain mesh, in which thy subtle soul
Broods on its venom! Lo! behind, before,
Around thee, like an armament of cloud,
The black Fate labours onward--ANONYMOUS.

The dusk of a winter's evening gathered over a room in Crauford's
house in town, only relieved from the closing darkness by an expiring
and sullen fire, beside which Mr. Bradley sat, with his feet upon the
fender, apparently striving to coax some warmth into the icy palms of
his spread hands. Crauford himself was walking up and down the room
with a changeful step, and ever and anon glancing his bright, shrewd
eye at the partner of his fraud, who, seemingly unconscious of the
observation he underwent, appeared to occupy his attention solely with
the difficulty of warming his meagre and withered frame.

"Ar'n't you very cold there, sir?" said Bradley, after a long pause,
and pushing himself farther into the verge of the dying embers, "may I
not ring for some more coals?"

"Hell and the--: I beg your pardon, my good Bradley, but you vex me
beyond patience; how can you think of such trifles when our very lives
are in so imminent a danger?"

"I beg your pardon, my honoured benefactor, they are indeed in
danger!"

"Bradley, we have but one hope,--fidelity to each other. If we
persist in the same story, not a tittle can be brought home to us,--
not a tittle, my good Bradley; and though our characters may be a
little touched, why, what is a character? Shall we eat less, drink
less, enjoy less, when we have lost it? Not a whit. No, my friend,
we will go abroad: leave it to me to save from the wreck of our
fortunes enough to live upon like princes."

"If not like peers, my honoured benefactor."

"'Sdeath!--yes, yes, very good,--he! he! he! if not peers. Well, all
happiness is in the senses, and Richard Crauford has as many senses as
Viscount Innisdale; but had we been able to protract inquiry another
week, Bradley, why, I would have been my Lord, and you Sir John."

"You bear your losses like a hero, sir," said Mr. Bradley. To be
sure: there is no loss, man, but life,--none; let us preserve that--
and it will be our own fault if we don't--and the devil take all the
rest. But, bless me, it grows late, and, at all events, we are safe
for some hours; the inquiry won't take place till twelve to-morrow,
why should we not feast till twelve to-night? Ring, my good fellow:
dinner must be nearly ready."

"Why, honoured sir," said Bradley, "I want to go home to see my wife
and arrange my house. Who knows but I may sleep in Newgate to-
morrow?"

Crauford, who had been still walking to and fro, stopped abruptly at
this speech; and his eye, even through the gloom, shot out a livid and
fierce light, before which the timid and humble glance of Mr. Bradley
quailed in an instant.

"Go home!--no, my friend, no: I can't part with you tonight, no, not
for an instant. I have many lessons to give you. How are we to learn
our parts for to-morrow, if we don't rehearse them beforehand? Do you
not know that a single blunder may turn what I hope will be a farce
into a tragedy? Go home!--pooh! pooh! why, man, I have not seen my
wife, nor put my house to rights, and if you do but listen to me I
tell you again and again that not a hair of our heads can be touched."

"You know best, honoured sir; I bow to your decision."

"Bravo, honest Brad! and now for dinner. I have the most glorious
champagne that ever danced in foam to your lip. No counsellor like
the bottle, believe me!"

And the servant entering to announce dinner, Crauford took Bradley's
arm, and leaning affectionately upon it, passed through an obsequious
and liveried row of domestics to a room blazing with light and plate.
A noble fire was the first thing which revived Bradley's spirit; and,
as he spread his hands over it before he sat down to the table, he
surveyed, with a gleam of gladness upon his thin cheeks, two vases of
glittering metal formerly the boast of a king, in which were immersed
the sparkling genii of the grape.

Crauford, always a gourmand, ate with unusual appetite, and pressed
the wine upon Bradley with an eager hospitality, which soon somewhat
clouded the senses of the worthy man. The dinner was removed, the
servants retired, and the friends were left alone.

"A pleasant trip to France!" cried Crauford, filling a bumper.
"That's the land for hearts like ours. I tell you what, little Brad,
we will leave our wives behind us, and take, with a new country and
new names, a new lease of life. What will it signify to men making
love at Paris what fools say of them in London? Another bumper,
honest Brad,--a bumper to the girls! What say you to that, eh?"

"Lord, sir, you are so facetious, so witty! It must be owned that a
black eye is a great temptation,--Lira-lira, la-la!" and Mr. Bradley's
own eyes rolled joyously.

"Bravo, Brad!--a song, a song! but treason to King Burgundy! Your
glass is--"

"Empty, honoured sir, I know it!--Lira-lira la!--but it is easily
filled! We who have all our lives been pouring from one vessel into
another know how to keep it up to the last!

'Courage then, cries the knight, we may yet be forgiven,
Or at worst buy the bishop's reversion in heaven;
Our frequent escapes in this world show how true 't is
That gold is the only Elixir Salutis.
Derry down, Derry down.'

'All you who to swindling conveniently creep,
Ne'er piddle; by thousands the treasury sweep
Your safety depends on the weight of the sum,
For no rope was yet made that could tie up a plum.
Derry down, etc.'"
[From a ballad called "The Knight and the Prelate."]

"Bravissimo, little Brad!--you are quite a wit! See what it is to
have one's faculties called out. Come, a toast to old England, the
land in which no man ever wants a farthing who has wit to steal it,--
'Old England forever!' your rogue is your only true patriot!" and
Crauford poured the remainder of the bottle, nearly three parts full,
into a beaker, which he pushed to Bradley. That convivial gentleman
emptied it at a draught, and, faltering out, "Honest Sir John!--room
for my Lady Bradley's carriage," dropped down on the floor insensible.

Crauford rose instantly, satisfied himself that the intoxication was
genuine, and giving the lifeless body a kick of contemptuous disgust,
left the room, muttering, "The dull ass, did he think it was on his
back that I was going to ride off? He! he! he! But stay, let me feel
my pulse. Too fast by twenty strokes! One's never sure of the mind
if one does not regulate the body to a hair! Drank too much; must
take a powder before I start."

Mounting by a back staircase to his bedroom, Crauford unlocked a
chest, took out a bundle of clerical clothes, a large shovel hat, and
a huge wig. Hastily, but not carelessly, induing himself in these
articles of disguise, he then proceeded to stain his fair cheeks with
a preparation which soon gave them a swarthy hue. Putting his own
clothes in the chest, which he carefully locked (placing the key in
his pocket), he next took from a desk on his dressing-table a purse;
opening this, he extracted a diamond of great size and immense value,
which, years before, in preparation of the event that had now taken
place, he had purchased.

His usual sneer curled his lip as he gazed at it. "Now," said he, "is
it not strange that this little stone should supply the mighty wants
of that grasping thing, man? Who talks of religion, country, wife,
children? This petty mineral can purchase them all! Oh, what a
bright joy speaks out in your white cheek, my beauty! What are all
human charms to yours? Why, by your spell, most magical of talismans,
my years may walk, gloating and revelling, through a lane of beauties,
till they fall into the grave! Pish! that grave is an ugly thought,--
a very, very ugly thought! But come, my sun of hope, I must eclipse
you for a while! Type of myself, while you hide, I hide also; and
when I once more let you forth to the day, then shine out Richard
Crauford,--shine out!" So saying, he sewed the diamond carefully in
the folds of his shirt; and, rearranging his dress, took the cooling
powder, which he weighed out to a grain, with a scrupulous and
untrembling hand; descended the back stairs; opened the door, and
found himself in the open street.

The clock struck ten as he entered a hackney-coach and drove to
another part of London. "What, so late!" thought he; "I must be at
Dover in twelve hours: the vessel sails then. Humph! some danger yet!
What a pity that I could not trust that fool! He! he! he!--what will
he think tomorrow, when he wakes and finds that only one is destined
to swing!"

The hackney-coach stopped, according to his direction, at an inn in
the city. Here Crauford asked if a note had been left for Dr.
Stapylton. One (written by himself) was given to him.

"Merciful Heaven!" cried the false doctor, as he read it, "my daughter
is on a bed of death!"

The landlord's look wore anxiety; the doctor seemed for a moment
paralyzed by silent woe. He recovered, shook his head piteously, and
ordered a post-chaise and four on to Canterbury without delay.

"It is an ill wind that blows nobody good!" thought the landlord, as
he issued the order into the yard.

The chaise was soon out; the doctor entered; off went the post-boys;
and Richard Crauford, feeling his diamond, turned his thoughts to
safety and to France.

A little, unknown man, who had been sitting at the bar for the last
two hours sipping brandy and water, and who from his extreme
taciturnity and quiet had been scarcely observed, now rose.
"Landlord," said he, "do you know who that gentleman is?"

"Why," quoth Boniface, "the letter to him was directed, 'For the Rev.
Dr. Stapylton; will be called for.'"

"Ah," said the little man, yawning, "I shall have a long night's work
of it. Have you another chaise and four in the yard?"

"To be sure, sir, to be sure!" cried the landlord in astonishment.

"Out with it, then! Another glass of brandy and water,--a little
stronger, no sugar!"

The landlord stared; the barmaid stared; even the head-waiter, a very
stately person, stared too.

"Hark ye," said the little man, sipping his brandy and water, "I am a
deuced good-natured fellow, so I'll make you a great man to-night; for
nothing makes a man so great as being let into a great secret. Did
you ever hear of the rich Mr. Crauford?"

"Certainly: who has not?"

"Did you ever see him?"

"No! I can't say I ever did."

"You lie, landlord: you saw him to-night."

"Sir!" cried the landlord, bristling up.

The little man pulled out a brace of pistols, and very quietly began
priming them out of a small powder-flask.

The landlord started back; the head-waiter cried "Rape!" and the
barmaid "Murder!"

"Who the devil are you, sir?" cried the landlord.

"Mr. Tickletrout! the celebrated officer,--thief-taker, as they call
it. Have a care, ma'am, the pistols are loaded. I see the chaise is
out; there's the reckoning, landlord."

"O Lord! I'm sure I don't want any reckoning: too great an honour for
my poor house to be favoured with your company; but [following the
little man to the door] whom did you please to say you were going to
catch?"

"Mr. Crauford, alias Dr. Stapylton."

"Lord! Lord! to think of it,--how shocking! What has he done?"

"Swindled, I believe."

"My eyes! And why, sir, did not you catch him when he was in the
bar?"

"Because then I should not have got paid for my journey to Dover.
Shut the door, boy; first stage on to Canterbury." And, drawing a
woollen nightcap over his ears, Mr. Tickletrout resigned himself to
his nocturnal excursion.

On the very day on which the patent for his peerage was to have been
made out, on the very day on which he had afterwards calculated on
reaching Paris, on that very day was Mr. Richard Crauford lodged in
Newgate, fully committed for a trial of life and death.

CHAPTER LXXXIII.

There, if, O gentle love! I read aright
The utterance that sealed thy sacred bond,
'T was listening to those accents of delight
She hid upon his breast those eyes, beyond
Expression's power to paint, all languishingly fond.--CAMPBELL.

"And you will positively leave us for London," said Lady Flora,
tenderly, "and to-morrow too!" This was said to one who under the name
of Clarence Linden has played the principal part in our drama, and
whom now, by the death of his brother succeeding to the honours of his
house, we present to our reader as Clinton L'Estrange, Earl of
Ulswater.

They were alone in the memorable pavilion; and though it was winter
the sun shone cheerily into the apartment; and through the door, which
was left partly open, the evergreens, contrasting with the leafless
boughs of the oak and beech, could be just descried, furnishing the
lover with some meet simile of love, and deceiving the eyes of those
willing to be deceived with a resemblance to the departed summer. The
unusual mildness of the day seemed to operate genially upon the
birds,--those children of light and song; and they grouped blithely
beneath the window and round the door, where the hand of the kind
young spirit of the place had so often ministered to their wants.
Every now and then, too, you might hear the shrill glad note of the
blackbird keeping measure to his swift and low flight, and sometimes a
vagrant hare from the neighbouring preserves sauntered fearlessly by
the half-shut door, secure, from long experience, of an asylum in the
vicinity of one who had drawn from the breast of Nature a tenderness
and love for all its offspring.

Her lover sat at Flora's feet; and, looking upward, seemed to seek out
the fond and melting eyes which, too conscious of their secret, turned
bashfully from his gaze. He had drawn her arm over his shoulder; and
clasping that small and snowy hand, which, long coveted with a miser's
desire, was at length won, he pressed upon it a thousand kisses,
sweeter beguilers of time than even words. All had been long
explained; the space between their hearts annihilated; doubt, anxiety,
misconstruction, those clouds of love, had passed away, and left not a
wreck to obscure its heaven.

"And you will leave us to-morrow; must it be to-morrow?"

"Ah! Flora, it must; but see, I have your lock of hair--your
beautiful, dark hair--to kiss, when I am away from you, and I shall
have your letters, dearest,--a letter every day; and oh! more than
all, I shall have the hope, the certainty, that when we meet again,
you will be mine forever."

"And I, too, must, by seeing it in your handwriting, learn to
reconcile myself to your new name. Ah! I wish you had been still
Clarence,--only Clarence. Wealth, rank, power,--what are all these
but rivals to poor Flora?"

Lady Flora sighed, and the next moment blushed; and, what with the
sigh and the blush, Clarence's lips wandered from the hands to the
cheek, and thence to a mouth on which the west wind seemed to have
left the sweets of a thousand summers.

CHAPTER LXXXIV.

A Hounsditch man, one of the devil's near kinsmen,--a broker.--Every
Man in His Humour.

We have here discovered the most dangerous piece of lechery that ever
was known in the commonwealth.--Much Ado about Nothing.

It was an evening of mingled rain and wind, the hour about nine, when
Mr. Morris Brown, under the shelter of that admirable umbrella of sea-
green silk, to which we have before had the honour to summon the
attention of our readers, was, after a day of business, plodding
homeward his weary way. The obscure streets through which his course
was bent were at no time very thickly thronged, and at the present
hour the inclemency of the night rendered them utterly deserted. It
is true that now and then a solitary female, holding up, with one
hand, garments already piteously bedraggled, and with the other
thrusting her umbrella in the very teeth of the hostile winds, might
be seen crossing the intersected streets, and vanishing amid the
subterranean recesses of some kitchen area, or tramping onward amidst
the mazes of the metropolitan labyrinth, till, like the cuckoo,
"heard," but no longer "seen," the echo of her retreating pattens made
a dying music to the reluctant ear; or indeed, at intervals of
unfrequent occurrence, a hackney vehicle jolted, rumbling, bumping
over the uneven stones, as if groaning forth its gratitude to the
elements for which it was indebted for its fare. Sometimes also a
chivalrous gallant of the feline species ventured its delicate paws
upon the streaming pavement, and shook, with a small but dismal cry,
the raindrops from the pyramidal roofs of its tender ears.

But, save these occasional infringements on its empire, solitude,
dark, comfortless, and unrelieved, fell around the creaking footsteps
of Mr. Morris Brown. "I wish," soliloquized the worthy broker, "that
I had been able advantageously to dispose of this cursed umbrella of
the late Lady Waddilove; it is very little calculated for any but a
single lady of slender shape, and though it certainly keeps the rain
off my hat, it only sends it with a double dripping upon my shoulders.
Pish, deuce take the umbrella! I shall catch my death of cold."

These complaints of an affliction that was assuredly sufficient to
irritate the naturally sweet temper of Mr. Brown, only ceased as that
industrious personage paused at the corner of the street, for the
purpose of selecting the driest path through which to effect the
miserable act of crossing to the opposite side. Occupied in
stretching his neck over the kennel, in order to take the fullest
survey of its topography which the scanty and agitated lamps would
allow, the unhappy wanderer, lowering his umbrella, suffered a cross
and violent gust of wind to rush, as if on purpose, against the
interior. The rapidity with which this was done, and the sudden
impetus, which gave to the inflated silk the force of a balloon,
happening to occur exactly at the moment Mr. Brown was stooping with
such wistful anxiety over the pavement, that gentleman, to his
inexpressible dismay, was absolutely lifted, as it were, from his
present footing, and immersed in a running rivulet of liquid mire,
which flowed immediately below the pavement. Nor was this all: for
the wind, finding itself somewhat imprisoned in the narrow receptacle
it had thus abruptly entered, made so strenuous an exertion to
extricate itself, that it turned Lady Waddilove's memorable relic
utterly inside out; so that when Mr. Brown, aghast at the calamity of
his immersion, lifted his eyes to heaven, with a devotion that had in
it more of expostulation than submission, he beheld, by the melancholy
lamps, the apparition of his umbrella,--the exact opposite to its
legitimate conformation, and seeming, with its lengthy stick and
inverted summit, the actual and absolute resemblance of a gigantic
wineglass.

"Now," said Mr. Brown, with that ironical bitterness so common to
intense despair, "now, that's what I call pleasant."

As if the elements were guided and set on by all the departed souls of
those whom Mr. Brown had at any time overreached in his profession,
scarcely had the afflicted broker uttered this brief sentence, before
a discharge of rain, tenfold more heavy than any which had yet fallen,
tumbled down in literal torrents upon the defenceless head of the
itinerant.

"This won't do," said Mr. Brown, plucking up courage and splashing out
of the little rivulet once more into terra firma, "this won't do: I
must find a shelter somewhere. Dear, dear, how the wet runs down me!
I am for all the world like the famous dripping well in Derbyshire.
What a beast of an umbrella! I'll never buy one again of an old lady:
hang me if I do."

As the miserable Morris uttered these sentences, which gushed out, one
by one, in a broken stream of complaint, he looked round and round--
before, behind, beside--for some temporary protection or retreat. In
vain: the uncertainty of the light only allowed him to discover houses
in which no portico extended its friendly shelter, and where even the
doors seemed divested of the narrow ledge wherewith they are, in more
civilized quarters, ordinarily crowned.

"I shall certainly have the rheumatism all this winter," said Mr.
Brown, hurrying onward as fast as he was able. Just then, glancing
desperately down a narrow lane, which crossed his path, he perceived
the scaffolding of a house in which repair or alteration had been at
work. A ray of hope flashed across him; he redoubled his speed, and,
entering the welcome haven, found himself entirely protected from the
storm. The extent of the scaffolding was, indeed, rather
considerable; and though the extreme narrowness of the lane and the
increasing gloom of the night left Mr. Brown in almost total darkness,
so that he could not perceive the exact peculiarities of his
situation, yet he was perfectly satisfied with the shelter he had
obtained; and after shaking the rain from his hat, squeezing his coat
sleeves and lappets, satisfying himself that it was only about the
shoulders that he was thoroughly wetted, and thrusting two pocket-
handkerchiefs between his shirt and his skin, as preventives to the
dreaded rheumatism, Mr. Brown leaned luxuriously back against the wall
in the farthest corner of his retreat, and busied himself with
endeavouring to restore his insulted umbrella to its original utility
of shape.

Our wanderer had been about three minutes in this situation; when he
heard the voices of two men, who were hastening along the lane.

"But do stop," said one; and these were the first words distinctly
audible to the ear of Mr. Brown, "do stop, the rain can't last much
longer, and we have a long way yet to go."

"No, no," said the other, in a voice more imperious than the first,
which was evidently plebeian and somewhat foreign in its tone, "no, we
have no time. What signify the inclemencies of weather to men feeding
upon an inward and burning thought, and made, by the workings of the
mind, almost callous to the contingencies of the frame?"

"Nay, my very good friend," said the first speaker, with positive
though not disrespectful earnestness, "that may be all very fine for
you, who have a constitution like a horse; but I am quite a--what call
you it--an invalid, eh? and have a devilish cough ever since I have
been in this d--d country; beg your pardon, no offence to it; so I
shall just step under cover of this scaffolding for a few minutes, and
if you like the rain so much, my very good friend, why, there is
plenty of room in the lane to--(ugh! ugh! ugh!) to enjoy it."

As the speaker ended, the dim light, just faintly glimmering at the
entrance of the friendly shelter, was obscured by his shadow, and
presently afterwards his companion, joining him, said,--

"Well, if it must be so; but how can you be fit to brave all the
perils of our scheme, when you shrink, like a palsied crone, from the
sprinkling of a few water-drops?"

"A few water-drops, my very good friend," answered the other, "a few--
what call you them, ay, water-falls rather; (ugh! ugh!) but let me
tell you, my brother citizen, that a man may not like to get his skin
wet with waters and would yet thrust his arm up to the very elbow in
blood! (ugh! ugh!)"

"The devil!" mentally ejaculated Mr. Brown, who at the word "scheme"
had advanced one step from his retreat, but who now at the last words
of the intruder drew back as gently as a snail into his shell; and
although his person was far too much enveloped in shade to run the
least chance of detection, yet the honest broker began to feel a
little tremor vibrate along the chords of his thrilling frame, and a
new anathema against the fatal umbrella rise to his lips.

"Ah!" quoth the second, "I trust that it may be so; but, to return to
our project, are you quite sure that these two identical ministers are
in the regular habit of walking homeward from that Parliament which
their despotism has so degraded?"

"Sure? ay, that I am; Davidson swears to it!"

"And you are also sure of their persons, so that, even in the dusk,
you can recognize them? for you know I have never seen them."

"Sure as fivepence!" returned the first speaker, to whose mind the
lives of the persons referred to were of considerably less value than
the sum elegantly specified in his metaphorical reply.

"Then," said the other, with a deep, stern determination of tone,
"then shall this hand, by which one of the proudest of our oppressors
has already fallen, be made a still worthier instrument of the wrath
of Heaven!"

"You are a d--d pretty shot, I believe," quoth the first speaker, as
indifferently as if he were praising the address of a Norfolk squire.

"Never did my eye misguide me, or my aim swerve a hair's-breadth from
its target! I thought once, when I learned the art as a boy, that in
battle, rather than in the execution of a single criminal, that skill
would avail me."

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