"/Miramont./--Do they chafe roundly?
/Andrew./--As they were rubbed with soap, sir,
And now they swear aloud, now calm again
Like a ring of bells, whose sound the wind still utters,
And then they sit in council what to do,
And then they jar again what shall be done?"
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
OH! what a picture of human nature it was when the banker and the
vagabond sat together in that little drawing-room, facing each
other,--one in the armchair, one on the sofa! Darvil was still employed
on some cold meat, and was making wry faces at the very indifferent
brandy which he had frightened the formal old servant into buying at the
nearest public-house; and opposite sat the respectable--highly
respectable man of forms and ceremonies, of decencies and quackeries,
gazing gravely upon this low, daredevil ruffian:--the well-to-do
hypocrite--the penniless villain;--the man who had everything to
lose--the man who had nothing in the wide world but his own mischievous,
rascally life, a gold watch, chain and seals, which he had stolen the
day before, and thirteen shillings and threepence halfpenny in his left
breeches pocket!
The man of wealth was by no means well acquainted with the nature of the
beast before him. He had heard from Mrs. Leslie (as we remember) the
outline of Alice's history, and ascertained that their joint
/protegee's/ father was a great blackguard; but he expected to find Mr.
Darvil a mere dull, brutish villain--a peasant-ruffian--a blunt serf,
without brains, or their substitute, effrontery. But Luke Darvil was a
clever, half-educated fellow: he did not sin from ignorance, but had wit
enough to have bad principles, and he was as impudent as if he had lived
all his life in the best society. He was not frightened at the banker's
drab breeches and imposing air--not he! The Duke of Wellington would
not have frightened Luke Darvil, unless his grace had had the constables
for his /aides-de-camp/.
The banker, to use a homely phrase, was "taken aback."
"Look you here, Mr. What's-your-name!" said Darvil, swallowing a glass
of the raw alcohol as if it had been water--"look you now--you can't
humbug me. What the devil do you care about my daughter's
respectability or comfort, or anything else, grave old dog as you are!
It is my daughter herself you are licking your brown old chaps at!--and,
'faith, my Alley is a very pretty girl--very--but queer as moonshine.
You'll drive a much better bargain with me than with her."
The banker coloured scarlet--he bit his lips and measured his companion
from head to foot (while the latter lolled on the sofa), as if he were
meditating the possibility of kicking him down-stairs. But Luke Darvil
would have thrashed the banker and all his clerks into the bargain. His
frame was like a trunk of thews and muscles, packed up by that careful
dame, Nature, as tightly as possible; and a prizefighter would have
thought twice before he had entered the ring against so awkward a
customer. The banker was a man prudent to a fault, and he pushed his
chair six inches back, as he concluded his survey.
"Sir," then said he, very quietly, "do not let us misunderstand each
other. Your daughter is safe from your control--if you molest her, the
law will protect--"
"She is not of age," said Darvil. "Your health, old boy."
"Whether she is of age or not," returned the banker, unheeding the
courtesy conveyed in the last sentence, "I do not care three straws--I
know enough of the law to know that if she have rich friends in this
town, and you have none, she will be protected and you will go to the
treadmill."
"That is spoken like a sensible man," said Darvil, for the first time
with a show of respect in his manner; "you now take a practical view of
matters, as we used to say at the spouting-club."
"If I were in your situation, Mr. Darvil, I tell you what I would do. I
would leave my daughter and this town to-morrow morning, and I would
promise never to return, and never to molest her, on condition she
allowed me a certain sum from her earnings, paid quarterly."
"And if I preferred living with her?"
"In that case, I, as a magistrate of this town, would have you sent away
as a vagrant, or apprehended--"
"Ha!"
"Apprehended on suspicion of stealing that gold chain and seals which
you wear so ostentatiously."
"By goles, but you're a clever fellow," said Darvil, involuntarily; "you
know human natur."
The banker smiled: strange to say, he was pleased with the compliment.
"But," resumed Darvil, helping himself to another slice of beef, "you
are in the wrong box--planted in Queer Street, as /we/ say in London;
for if you care a d--n about my daughter's respectability, you will
never muzzle her father on suspicion of theft--and so there's tit for
tat, my old gentleman!"
"I shall deny that you are her father, Mr. Darvil; and I think you will
find it hard to prove the fact in any town where I am a magistrate."
"By goles, what a good prig you would have made! You are as sharp as a
gimlet. Surely you were brought up at the Old Bailey!"
"Mr. Darvil, be ruled. You seem a man not deaf to reason, and I ask you
whether, in any town in this country, a poor man in suspicious
circumstances can do anything against a rich man whose character is
established? Perhaps you are right in the main: I have nothing to do
with that. But I tell you that you shall quit this house in half an
hour--that you shall never enter it again but at your peril; and if you
do--within ten minutes from that time you shall be in the town gaol. It
is no longer a contest between you and your defenceless daughter; it is
a contest between--"
"A tramper in fustian, and a gemman as drives a coach," interrupted
Darvil, laughing bitterly, yet heartily. "Good--good!"
The banker rose. "I think you have made a very clever definition,"
said he. "Half an hour--you recollect--good evening."
"Stay," said Darvil; "you are the first man I have seen for many a year
that I can take a fancy to. Sit down--sit down, I say, and talk a bit,
and we shall come to terms soon, I dare say;--that's right. Lord! how I
should like to have you on the roadside instead of within these four
gimcrack walls. Ha! ha! the argufying would be all in my favour then."
The banker was not a brave man, and his colour changed slightly at the
intimation of this obliging wish. Darvil eyed him grimly and
chucklingly.
The rich man resumed: "That may or may not be, Mr. Darvil, according as
I might happen or not to have pistols about me. But to the point. Quit
this house without further debate, without noise, without mentioning to
any one else your claim upon its owner--"
"Well, and the return?"
"Ten guineas now, and the same sum quarterly, as long as the young lady
lives in this town, and you never persecute her by word or letter."
"That is forty guineas a year. I can't live upon it."
"You will cost less in the House of Correction, Mr. Darvil."
"Come, make it a hundred: Alley is cheap at that."
"Not a farthing more," said the banker, buttoning up his breeches
pockets with a determined air.
"Well, out with the shiners."
"Do you promise or not?"
"I promise."
"There are your ten guineas. If in half an hour you are not gone--why,
then--"
"Then?"
"Why, then you have robbed me of ten guineas, and must take the usual
consequences of robbery."
Darvil started to his feet--his eyes glared--he grasped the
carving-knife before him.
"You are a bold fellow," said the banker, quietly; "but it won't do. It
is not worth your while to murder me; and I am a man sure to be missed."
Darvil sank down, sullen and foiled. The respectable man was more than
a match for the villain.
"Had you been as poor as I,--Gad! what a rogue you would have been!"
"I think not," said the banker; "I believe roguery to be a very bad
policy. Perhaps once I /was/ almost as poor as you are, but I never
turned rogue."
"You never were in my circumstances," returned Darvil, gloomily. "I was
a gentleman's son. Come, you shall hear my story. My father was
well-born, but married a maid-servant when he was at college; his family
disowned him, and left him to starve. He died in the struggle against a
poverty he was not brought up to, and my dam went into service again;
became housekeeper to an old bachelor--sent me to school--but mother had
a family by the old bachelor, and I was taken from school and put to
trade. All hated me--for I was ugly; damn them! Mother cut me--I
wanted money--robbed the old bachelor--was sent to gaol, and learned
there a lesson or two how to rob better in future. Mother died,--I was
adrift on the world. The world was my foe--could not make it up with
the world, so we went to war;--you understand, old boy? Married a poor
woman and pretty;--wife made me jealous--had learned to suspect every
one. Alice born--did not believe her mine: not like me--perhaps a
gentleman's child. I hate--I loathe gentlemen. Got drunk one
night--kicked my wife in the stomach three weeks after her confinement.
Wife died--tried for my life--got off. Went to another county--having
had a sort of education, and being sharp eno', got work as a mechanic.
Hated work just as I hated gentlemen--for was I not by blood a
gentleman? There was the curse. Alice grew up; never looked on her as
my flesh and blood. Her mother was a w----! Why should not /she/ be
one? There, that's enough. Plenty of excuse, I think, for all I have
ever done. Curse the world--curse the rich--curse the handsome--curse
--curse all!"
"You have been a very foolish man," said the banker; "and seem to me to
have had very good cards, if you had known how to play them. However,
that is your lookout. It is not yet too late to repent; age is creeping
on you.--Man, there is another world."
The banker said the last words with a tone of solemn and even dignified
adjuration.
"You think so--do you?" said Darvil, staring at him.
"From my soul I do."
"Then you are not the sensible man I took you for," replied Darvil,
drily; "and I should like to talk to you on that subject."
But our Dives, however sincere a believer, was by no means one
"At whose control
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul."
He had words of comfort for the pious, but he had none for the
sceptic--he could soothe, but he could not convert. It was not in his
way; besides, he saw no credit in making a convert of Luke Darvil.
Accordingly, he again rose with some quickness, and said:
"No, sir; that is useless, I fear, and I have no time to spare; and so
once more good night to you."
"But you have not arranged where my allowance is to be sent."
"Ah! true; I will guarantee it. You will find my name sufficient
security."
"At least, it is the best I can get," returned Darvil, carelessly; "and
after all, it is not a bad chance day's work. But I'm sure I can't say
where the money shall be sent. I don't know a man who would not grab
it."
"Very well, then--the best thing (I speak as a man of business) will be
to draw on me for ten guineas quarterly. Wherever you are staying, any
banker can effect this for you. But mind, if ever you overdraw the
account stops."
"I understand," said Darvil; "and when I have finished the bottle I
shall be off."
"You had better," replied the banker, as he opened the door.
The rich man returned home hurriedly. "So Alice, after all, has some
gentle blood in her veins," thought he. "But that father--no, it will
never do. I wish he were hanged and nobody the wiser. I should very
much like to arrange the matter without marrying; but then --scandal--scandal--scandal.
After all, I had better give up all
thoughts of her. She is monstrous handsome, and so--humph:--I shall
never grow an old man."