PAUL CLIFFORD, BY LYTTON, V5 ***
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PAUL CLIFFORD, Volume 5.
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
CHAPTER XXII.
Outlaw. Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about you!
Val. Ruffians, forego that rude, uncivil touch!
The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
On leaving the scene in which he had been so unwelcome a guest, Clifford hastened to the little inn where he had left his horse. He mounted and returned to Bath. His thoughts were absent, and he unconsciously suffered the horse to direct its course whither it pleased. This was naturally towards the nearest halting-place which the animal remembered; and this halting-place was at that illustrious tavern, in the suburbs of the town, in which we have before commemorated Clifford's re-election to the dignity of chief. It was a house of long-established reputation; and here news of any of the absent confederates was always to be obtained. This circumstance, added to the excellence of its drink, its ease, and the electric chain of early habits, rendered it a favourite haunt, even despite their present gay and modish pursuits, with Tomlinson and Pepper; and here, when Clifford sought the pair at unseasonable hours, was he for the most part sure to find them. As his meditations were interrupted by the sudden stopping of his horse beneath the well-known sign, Clifford, muttering an angry malediction on the animal, spurred it onward in the direction of his own home. He had already reached the end of the street, when his resolution seemed to change, and muttering to himself, "Ay, I might as well arrange this very night for our departure!" he turned his horse's head backward, and was once more at the tavern door. He threw the bridle over an iron railing, and knocking with a peculiar sound at the door, was soon admitted.
Are ------ and ------- here?" asked he of the old woman, as he entered, mentioning the cant words by which, among friends, Tomlinson and Pepper were usually known.
"They are both gone on the sharps to-night," replied the old lady, lifting her unsnuffed candle to the face of the speaker with an intelligent look; Oliver (the moon) is sleepy, and the lads will take advantage of his nap."
"Do you mean," answered Clifford, replying in the same key, which we take the liberty to paraphrase, "that they are out on any actual expedition?"
"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 coarse 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.
