Paul Clifford — CompleteLytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Paul Clifford — Complete
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Brigands and robbers -- Fiction
We must pass over Lucy's arrival at Lord Mauleverer's house; we must
pass over the weary days which elapsed till that unconscious body was
consigned to dust with which, could it have retained yet one spark of
its haughty spirit, it would have refused to blend its atoms. She had
loved the deceased incomparably beyond his merits, and resisting all
remonstrance to the contrary and all the forms of ordinary custom, she
witnessed herself the dreary ceremony which bequeathed the human remains
of William Brandon to repose and to the worm. On that same day Clifford
received the mitigation of his sentence, and on that day another trial
awaited Lucy. We think briefly to convey to the reader what that scene
was; we need only observe that Dummie Dunnaker, decoyed by his great
love for little Paul, whom he delightedly said he found not the least
“stuck up by his great fame and helewation,” still lingered in the
town, and was not only aware of the relationship of the cousins, but had
gleaned from Long Ned, as they journeyed down to ------, the
affection entertained by Clifford for Lucy. Of the manner in which the
communication reached Lucy, we need not speak; suffice it to say, that
on the day in which she had performed the last duty to her uncle, she
learned for the first time her lover's situation.
On that evening, in the convict's cell, the cousins met.
Their conference was low, for the jailer stood within hearing; and it
was broken by Lucy's convulsive sobs. But the voice of one whose iron
nerves were not unworthy of the offspring of William Brandon, was clear
and audible to her ear, even though uttered in a whisper that scarcely
stirred his lips. It seemed as if Lucy, smitten to the inmost heart by
the generosity with which her lover had torn himself from her at the
time that her wealth might have raised him in any other country far
above the perils and the crimes of his career in this; perceiving now,
for the first time, and in all their force, the causes of his mysterious
conduct; melted by their relationship, and forgetting herself utterly in
the desolation and dark situation in which she beheld one who, whatever
his crimes, had not been criminal towards her;--it seemed as if, carried
away by these emotions, she had yielded altogether to the fondness and
devotion of her nature,--that she had wished to leave home and friends
and fortune, and share with him his punishment and his shame.
“Why,” she faltered,--“why--why not? We are all that is left to each
other in the world! Your father and mine were brothers; let me be to you
as a sister. What is there left for me here? Not one being whom I love,
or who cares for me,--not one!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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