THE DISCOVERY.
’Tis not to pray Heav’n’s mercy, or to sit
And droop, or to confess that thou hast sinned;
’Tis to bewail the sins thou didst commit,
And not commit these sins thou hast bewailed.
He that bewails and not forsakes them too,
Confesses rather what he means to do.
SHAKESPEARE.
Valdimir Desparde had found the pamphlet he had so long and so vainly
sought; found it after he had given up the search in despair; found it
when he was least expecting or thinking of it! It had suddenly fallen
into his hands as if it had dropped from the sky!
Yet he handled it with a sense of shrinking, as from something morally
unclean!
The next instant, however, his eyes were fixed spell-bound to the
picture on the cover—the portrait of a man whose criminal life and
tragic death was narrated within.
It was a fine, dark face of wonderful beauty and spirit, which not even
the rude wood engraving could spoil.
But it was not the beauty and passion of the face that fascinated the
gaze of the beholder.
IT WAS ITS AMAZING LIKENESS TO HIS FRIEND, BRANDON COYLE!!
It was a stronger and more striking likeness than any photograph he had
ever seen of the heir of Caveland! There were the same beautiful but
rather sensual features, the same symmetrical, low forehead, the same
straight nose and full, curved lips which the short, well-trimmed
mustache adorned, but did not conceal, the same curling black hair,
thick black eyebrows, long and heavy black eyelashes overhanging large,
luminous, languishing black eyes.
In a word, it was the perfectly pictured face of Brandon Coyle, as no
photographer had ever succeeded in giving it!
Valdimir Desparde’s amazement grew as he gazed! He dropped into a chair,
still holding the portrait before his spell-bound eyes.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked himself again and again, without
obtaining the faintest sign of an answer.
For even then not the slightest forewarning of the ugly fact he was soon
to learn entered his unsuspicious mind.
In his amazement he had forgotten all about the book he had come to
fetch until he was aroused by the shrill treble of his patient, whose
voice was sharpened by sickness, demanding:
“Haven’t you found Wesley’s sermons yet? They are on the bottom shelf,
hanging over the mantle-piece! You can’t miss them!”
Valdimir started up as one awakened from a dream, and snatching the
volume in question from its place, hurried into the adjoining room,
taking also the pamphlet with him.
“Here is the book, Mr. La Motte. And here is a pamphlet that I wish you
would lend me,” said the young gentleman, laying both volumes on the
little stand beside the convalescent’s chair.
La Motte pushed the “Sermons” aside for a moment and took up the
pamphlet to see what it might be.
“I have been hunting for that work for the last four months through
every bookstore and bookstand in the city, and have advertised for it in
every paper,” continued Desparde.
“_This?_” said La Motte, in surprise. “Do you mean _this_? This Life and
Adventures of John Sims?”
“Yes, that very pamphlet!”
“And you might have had a dozen of them. My father-in-law was the
publisher of it!” exclaimed the convalescent.
“Then why in the world didn’t you answer my advertisement when I offered
so high a price for a copy!”
“I never saw the advertisement—wasn’t in the city. Just got back from my
last voyage to the coast of Africa, when I was knocked down by Yellow
Jack! If you want that book you are welcome to it! And a dozen more like
it. My father-in-law died some years ago and his stock in trade was sold
for the benefit of his heirs. A lot of rubbish was left on hand as
unsalable, however, and a few dozens of _that_ among it! Help yourself,
my friend! Take an armful of ‘John Simses’ if you want them!”
“Thanks, very much, but this one book is quite sufficient,” said
Desparde.
“Well, I should think it might be of _him_!” replied La Motte.
“—And while you read ‘Wesley,’ will you excuse me if I look over this?”
demanded Desparde, in feverish anxiety to peruse the pamphlet.
“See here, my young friend,” said La Motte, taking the book of sermons
and putting it out of sight in the stand drawer, “I have lost my
inclination to study the great evangelist now. Your interest in this
fellow Sims has interested _me_! You can take that book away with you,
if you please; but you needn’t take the trouble to read it, because it
isn’t more than half true; or, if it is, the truth is so painted and
varnished as to be hardly recognizable! Now, if you want the _whole
plain truth_ about the fellow, I can give it to you!”
“_You!_” exclaimed Desparde.
“Yes, _I_! Of course, I don’t know why you should care to know it, or
whether you mean to write a novel or a drama founded on it; but I _do_
know I can give you all the real facts, if you want to know them.”
“They—the real facts—are just exactly what I want to know. And you say
you can tell them?”
“Yes. I knew John Sims from the day of his birth to the day of his
death. My father’s farm joined his old master’s plantation.”
“Tell me all you know.”
“Well, his father was a gentleman of high position, great family, vast
wealth and very great pride, and a very domineering will! Yes, sir! His
father was all that, and his mother was a pretty mulatto slave, with a
temper like gun-cotton! Those were his parents, Mr. Adams!”
“Is it possible!” muttered the young man to himself.
“Yes, sir! He was the son of a gentleman, of a very proud and arrogant
race, and yet he was born a slave; for in our part of the country the
children are born into the condition of the mother.”
“I know it,” muttered Valdimir.
“Think, sir, what such a boy, the offspring of such opposite and jarring
elements of character, must have been! Think of the slave son of the
slave mother inheriting the haughty spirit and domineering temper of the
master father! Do you wonder he grew up ‘neither fearing God nor
regarding man,’ and with a hatred of the whole human race burning in his
heart? Do you wonder that, while yet a lad, he became a fugitive from
slavery, and that he ended his career by slaying his young master?—and
let the terrible truth be known, _his brother_—for, sir, they were the
sons of one father. But do you wonder at this?”
“I do not,” replied Valdimir, in a low voice.
“No, nor do I. I only wonder such fearful crimes are not oftener
committed under the same circumstances. Yet no one would have predicated
crime of the little lad we all used to like so well! Why, Johnnie was
the pet of the neighborhood. He was a beautiful boy, with regular
features and large, soft dark eyes, and a shower of long, silky, black
ringlets covering his head and falling around his face. He was the pet
of the plantation and of the farm alike. Everybody loved the boy, and he
warmly responded to all love. He was his pretty, affectionate mother all
over again! But the demon was in him, for all that, sir! His father’s
demon was in him! And being in him, of course it had to come out of
him.”
“Of course,” mechanically assented Desparde.
“Well, sir, when the boy was about thirteen years old, his poor, little,
pretty mother died. He had no brother or sister, no acknowledged tie on
earth but his mother. When she was gone, all ties between him and the
plantation were broken. He availed himself of the first opportunity to
escape from the slavery that was too galling to his father’s arrogance
within him. The opportunity soon came. The family went to Niagara that
summer, as was their custom every year. And for the first time his old
master took Johnnie as his own ‘body-servant.’ The young master was then
at Yale College; but he joined his family at the Falls during the
vacation.”
“I am sure I do not know why I should ask you; but who were the members
of that family at that time?” inquired Valdimir Desparde.
“Well, there was the old master, old Mr. Millerue, his wife, two sons
and three daughters. The young man at Yale was the oldest; the others
were growing girls and boys; and they were all at Niagara together on
this summer of which I speak.”
“Yes, thank you. Pray, go on!”
“Well, I can only tell you from hearsay what happened at the Falls. If
seems that the beauty and brightness of the quadroon boy attracted
attention even there, especially from a Canadian philanthropist, who
first of all, wanted to buy Johnnie and take him to Canada to be
educated; but, bless your life and soul, the Millerues received the
offer as an insult, and young Millerue challenged the Canadian to fight
a duel.”
“And did they do so?”
“Lord, love you, no, sir! The cowardly Canadian handed over the young
Southerner to the police, and he had to pay an enormous fine, or else go
to prison, for sending a challenge. He preferred to pay the fine.”
“And what next?”
“A few days after that the boy was missed and could not be found. Old
Mr. Millerue offered a reward for his apprehension—not as a _slave_, you
observe, sir—for that would have availed him nothing in that latitude;
for as he had voluntarily brought the slave upon free soil, as a _slave_
he could have abandoned his master if he had pleased to do so, and his
master could have had no remedy; but Johnnie was a _minor_, and his
master advertised him as a fugitive or an abducted _ward_, and offered a
large sum of money for his apprehension. You see the point, Mr. Adams?”
“Yes, I see.”
“Well, sir, nothing came of the reward offered; nothing more was heard
of the boy. It was, of course, believed that the Canadian had spirited
him away across the boundary line.”
“An easy thing to do at that point,” observed Desparde.
“Quite easy, sir,” assented La Motte.
“But I wonder that the Canadian was not summoned by writ of _habeas
corpus_ to produce the boy in court,” said Valdimir.
“Yes, sir; but, you see, ‘before you cook your rabbit you must first
catch it.’ You can’t serve a writ on a man until you find him. The
Canadian had disappeared. No, sir; you may depend that everything was
done that could be done by those obstinate, domineering, persevering
Millerues to recover the fugitive, for, besides valuing him highly as a
piece of property, they all liked him very much for himself. They came
home that autumn in a fine rage, and never ceased to rail at the
treacherous Canadian until the illness and death of the old man gave
them something else to think about. The young master came home from
college to attend his father’s funeral, and never returned North. He
remained on the plantation to oversee the overseer, and to protect and
console his mother and sisters; but nothing more was heard of Johnnie
Sims for years after his flight—not, indeed, until he was arrested under
another name. Let me see that pamphlet for an instant, Mr. Adams. Ah,
thank you, that was the name—Valdimir Desparde. It was a queer name, and
I had nearly forgotten it. He was arrested under the name of Valdimir
Desparde, and brought to trial for the murder of his master, then the
younger Millerue.”
The face of our young exile must have betrayed the deep and strong
emotion that shook his soul like a tempest, had he not turned in his
seat so as to place his back to the light, before asking the next
question:
“When and under what circumstances did he assume that alias?”
“Oh, you shall hear, sir! You will see what good use he made of that
aristocratic foreign name. Why, sir, what with his beauty and his
brightness, his college education, and his fine name, he, a fugitive
slave from Louisiana, actually married a young English girl of good
family. Ran away with her, I grant you, but married her all the same!”
“That was terrible!” muttered Desparde, with a shudder.
“It made a sensation down in these parts when it became known, I can
tell you that, Mr. Adams. But—”
“Let me interrupt you for a moment. Did that most unhappy young lady
know the antecedents of the man she so fatally entrusted with her
happiness and honor?”
“No, sir; it appears that she believed him to be a Polish exile of rank.
No, sir, she didn’t know his beginning, but it is certain she did know
his end. He had left her months before in Washington City, where she was
reduced to such extreme poverty that the clergyman, or the physician, or
somebody who attended her in her last illness, wrote over to the old
country to her nearest relation to send her some relief, and he—the rich
relation—came over in person to take her and her two children back with
him. But, Lord love you, sir, she was too far gone in a decline to
undertake the voyage; so the best he could do for _her_ was to move her
to better lodgings and make her comfortable as long as she lived. After
her death that same rich relation took the boy and girl home with him to
England.”
Our exile bowed his smitten head under the force of this corroborating
testimony to the truth of his own early recollections. Did he not
remember the last illness of his mother, the visit of the clergyman, the
letter written by her bedside, the arrival some time later of the
wealthy relative, their removal from squalor to splendor, then the death
and funeral of their mother, and the departure and sea voyage of himself
and his sister under the guardianship of their wealthy relative? Did he
not remember the severe reticence of their guardian upon all subjects
connected with the early life of himself and his sister?
As he remembered these circumstances and compared them with the present
statement of La Motte, the faint hope that had arisen in his heart—the
hope that, after all, the felon who had taken his name for an alias
might really not be anything to him—sank under the overwhelming weight
of the circumstantial evidence. But here a question occurred to him:
“Since all this happened to the ill-fated young lady in Washington City,
and you were in New Orleans at the time, how did you become acquainted
with the circumstances?”
La Motte stared at his questioner for a moment, and then answered:
“Why, through the Washington correspondents of the New Orleans papers to
be sure! Why, sir, do you think such a sensational story as _that_,
connected with a criminal trial, could be corked up in a bottle even?”
“I suppose not. But will you tell me something of this man’s history
between the time of his flight from his master at the age of thirteen
and his execution at the age of thirty-three? Something else, I mean,
beyond the one bald fact of his having run away with a young English
lady whom he courted under a false name. I could, of course, read this
pamphlet, and I shall do so after a while. But, in the meanwhile, I wish
to have _your_ account, which, you say, will be the most truthful of the
two.”
“Yes, sir, for it will be given from my own knowledge, or from evidence
heard by me in court.”
“Then I shall thank you for the authentic narrative, I assure you.”
“One thing I must specify of this young man from the beginning—that,
notwithstanding his really brilliant genius and his college education,
he had the streak of an idiot or a maniac in him, or he never _could_
have acted the mad part he did in conducting himself with such a
reckless disregard of consequences.”
“Is not _all_ crime insanity? Are not all criminals maniacs?” put in
Desparde.
“Hum-m-me!” muttered La Motte, slowly. “All crime may be moral insanity,
if you please, but not mental insanity. What I meant to say of the man
in question is this—that he was not only morally perverted, but mentally
unsound, as you will see before we have done with his story. You want me
to begin with this from the time of his flight from Niagara Falls?”
“I do.”
“Well, Mr. Adams, as it turned out, the master’s suspicion was the
truth—the Canadian _had_ assisted him to flee into Canada. The Canadian
met him at some given point on the route and took him to Montreal.”
“Yes.”
“When they arrived at that city his benefactor interested certain
reformers, philanthropists, and abolitionists in his favor, and they
placed the boy in the Jesuit College there to be educated. And there he
remained for eight years—beginning his education in the lowest class of
the preparatory school, and ascending gradually to the highest, winning
through his whole school and college career ‘golden opinions’ from
classmates, professors and patrons. Ambition seemed to be the ruling
passion of the youth—pride inherited from his father’s haughty race,
sir. You see that?”
“Yes,” sighed Desparde.
“Well, sir, at the end of eight years he graduated with the highest
honors of his college. Ah! were not his philanthropic patrons proud of
their work when they looked at this youth rescued from bondage and
educated to become an honor to his race!”
“I presume they were,” languidly assented Valdimir.
“But I am not so sure they did not alter their opinion about the
possibility of making a ‘silk purse out of a swine’s ear’ before all was
over, sir. However, it was an experiment, and apparently a successful
one. And so the experimentors petted the experiment. After he had
graduated with such distinguished honor, his patrons put their heads
together to provide for his future. They gave him the choice of three
learned professions—law, medicine and theology. He chose the law as
offering the finest field for his talents and his ambition. And, sir, he
was placed in one of the best law schools in the country. There, also,
he did amazing credit to his patrons, and finally graduated with the
highest honors.”
“It is strange that a young man of such brilliant talents and such
excellent patronage should have fallen into such degradation and crime,”
commented Desparde.
“No, Mr. Adams, I do not think that it is strange. If he had been taken
younger—a great deal younger, before he could have had any knowledge of
his birth and parentage—he might have done better. But he was thirteen
years old at the time of the great change in his fortune, with the full
memory of his degraded childhood, and with all his inherited pride. So
the higher he rose in social position the deeper to him seemed the
disgrace of his origin. The more honor he gained in his youth, the more
shame he felt in the memory of his childhood. Thus pride and shame made
perpetual discord in his soul. Surely you can understand this.”
“Yes, I can understand _him_, with the evils of two opposite races in
his organization.”
“Well, after he had been admitted to the bar he opened an office on Main
street; but clients did not crowd to his chambers with the enthusiasm
expected by the young man or his admirers. He got very little to do.
‘Satan finds some mischief,’ etc. You know the proverb. The time that
should have been devoted to knotty law points—to ‘making the worse
appear the better cause,’ etc.—was wasted in amusement. Money that could
not be made by law was won by gambling. He got into bad company; then
into worse. Bah! what is the use of describing every mile-stone that
measures the distance down the broad road that leads to destruction? You
will find it all in that pamphlet in your hand. _That_ part of the story
seems to be faithfully enough related.”
Valdimir looked at the book, but made no reply.
La Motte continued:
“One day all the world was startled by the shock of a tremendous bank
robbery—by far the greatest haul that had ever been known in the
Canadas, and which utterly baffled the police from that day to the day
when that confession you hold in your hand was published—when, of
course, it was too late to bring the robbers to punishment.”
“Do you mean to say that young Sims was concerned in the robbery?”
inquired Valdimir.
“Yes, of course, though he never was suspected of it. That robbery was
not committed by any ordinary burglars, but by young men who held
responsible positions—and who, therefore, were never suspected. However,
a few months after it had been committed, whether it was from fear of
discovery, or what not, Sims determined to leave Montreal. The excuse he
made to his patrons, who were in blissful ignorance of his wild life,
was that he had no success in Montreal, and wished to try his fortune in
Quebec. They gave him letters to persons of distinction in that city. He
went hither, but did not present any of his letters, for the reason that
he did not intend to stay there. He had a very large sum of money in
gold, and he determined to travel and see the world. He sailed for
England, and he spent months in traveling both over frequented and
unfrequented routes. It was at Gibraltar that he made the acquaintance
of a young English gentleman, an officer in the 000th Regiment, then
stationed in the garrison there. Well, it seems that this Captain
Desparde—”
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]