THE BIOGRAPHY OF A SCOUNDREL.
The weakness and the languor that kept Homer Sivewright a prisoner in
his bedroom were not the tokens of mortal illness. Death kept as yet at
a respectful distance. The patient’s life might be prolonged even to
man’s appointed measure of three score and ten, with care and skilful
treatment. There was organic disease, but of a mild type. Lucius was
not without hopes of a rally—that a period of perfect repose and quiet
might, in some measure, restore the enfeebled frame—which, gaunt and
wasted by sickness, was yet so mighty a skeleton. The man was tough; a
creature of strong fibres, and muscles that had once been like iron.
Above all, his life had been strictly temperate. Lucius augured well
from these facts. The disease would remain always, more or less subject
to treatment, but there might be a partial recovery.
‘You need not be anxious,’ he said, when Lucille questioned him
earnestly about her grandfather. ‘Mr. Sivewright will be a long time
dying. Or, in other words, he will fight hard with Death. We may keep
him alive for some years longer, Lucille, if we take trouble.’
‘I shall not think anything a trouble. I do not forget how good he
has been to me, in his own cold way. But he has seemed so much weaker
lately.’
‘Only because he has at last consented to succumb to Nature. He would
not before admit, even to himself, that he is an old man. Nature
counselled him to rest, but it pleased him better to go on labouring,
and, as it were, pretending to be still young. He has given in at last;
and Nature, the great restorer, may do much for him, always assisted
by careful nursing—and I think you are the best nurse I ever met with,
Lucille.’
‘I have not much experience, but I do my best.’
‘And your best is better than other people’s. You have the soft low
voice, the gentle footstep, which make a woman’s help precious in a
sick-room. Don’t be anxious about your grandfather, dearest. We shall
pull him through, rely upon it.’
There was that in his protecting tone, the fond look in the grave eyes,
which told how secure the lover felt, despite that hard condition
wherewith Lucille had hampered the promise of her love. Thus time went
on in the dull old house, which to these two was not all gloomy—which
to one at least was full of hope and pleasant thoughts, and bright
dreams of a fair life to come.
Propriety, as known in what is called society, had no bondage for
these lovers. In their lives there was actually no Mrs. Grundy; not
even a next-door neighbour of the maiden-lady persuasion to keep
count of Mr. Davoren’s visits, and to wonder what old Mr. Sivewright
meant by allowing such an outrage of the proprieties under his very
nose. Lucius came and went as he pleased, stayed as long as he liked,
within reasonable limits. He read Shakespeare to Lucille in the summer
gloaming; he poured out all the wealth of his mind to her in long
conversations that were almost monologues, the girl eager to learn, he
eager to teach; or rather to make the woman he loved a sharer in all
his thoughts, fancies, creeds, and dreams—verily the better and purer
half of himself. At other times they wandered about the bare old garden
together, or sat in the ruined summer-house; and happy in that complete
and perfect universe which they possessed in each other, forgot that
the mud-bespattered wharf was not the Rialto, the slimy water that
stagnated beneath the barges something less lovely than the Adriatic’s
sunlit blue.
They talk much of the future, after the manner of lovers. Although they
were so completely happy in each other’s company, and in that calm
security which blesses innocent reciprocal love, this little spot of
time, the present, counted for nothing in their scheme of life. It may
be said that they were happy without being aware of their happiness.
And this is true of many lives. The one happy hour in the long dull
life slips by unnoted, like water-drops running between one’s fingers.
And then years after—when, remembering that brief glimpse of paradise,
we look back and would fain return to that green spot beside life’s
long dusty beaten turnpike-road—the grass is withered, or the Commons
Enclosure Act has swallowed up our pleasant resting-place: or where
Poetry’s fairy palace shone radiant in youth’s morning sunlight, there
is now only the cold marble of a Tomb.
Lucius and Lucille talked of their future—the fame that he was to win,
the good that he was to do; noble schemes for the welfare of others,
to be realised when fame and wealth were gained; cottage hospitals in
pleasant suburban spots, near enough at hand for the sick or worn-out
Londoner, and yet with green fields and old trees and song birds
about them; chosen retreats where the country yet lingered; little
bits of rustic landscape over which the enterprising builder had not
yet spread his lime-whitened paw; meadows whose hawthorn hedges were
undefiled by smoke, across whose buttercups and crimson sorrel-flowers
no speculative eye had yet ranged with a view to ground rents.
The young surgeon had various schemes for the improvement of his
fellow-creatures’ condition—some wholly philanthropic, others
scientific. To all Lucille listened with the same eager interest,
worshipping him in her loving womanly way, as if he had been as wise
as Socrates. After that first confession of her love, wrung from
unwilling lips, there had been no more reserve. She made no mystery of
her affection, which was childlike in its simple reverence for those
lofty qualities that women are apt to perceive in the object of their
regard some time before the rest of the world has awakened to a sense
thereof. But she held firmly by the condition which she had imposed on
her lover. She would never be his wife, she would begin no new stage of
existence, until the mystery of her father’s fate had been solved.
The time had now come when Lucius deemed it a point of honour to inform
Mr. Sivewright of this engagement, but not of the condition attaching
thereto. He had not forgotten what the old man had said in the first
instance, ‘My granddaughter is disposed of;’ but this he imagined was
only an idle threat. Day by day he found himself more necessary to the
invalid. Mr. Sivewright looked anxiously for his visits, detained him
as long as it was possible for him to stay, would have him come back
in the evening to sit for an hour or so in the sick-room, talking,
or reading the day’s news to him; proved himself, in fact, the most
exacting of patients. But in all their intercourse he had expressed
no dislike to that intimacy between Lucius and Lucille which he must
needs have been aware of; since he saw them together daily, and must
have been blind if he failed to see that they were something nearer and
dearer to each other than common friends.
‘He cannot be very much surprised when he hears the truth,’ thought
Lucius, and only deferred his confession until he perceived a marked
improvement in his patient.
This arose a little later in the summer, when the old man was able to
come down-stairs again, now and then, and even creep about the dreary
waste he called his garden.
One evening, in the very spot where he had first told his love to
Lucille, Lucius mustered courage and took Mr. Sivewright into his
confidence, only reserving that hard condition which Lucille had
attached to her promise.
The old man received this communication with a cynical grin.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I have seen it all along. As if one ever could
trust a young man and a young woman to play at being brother and sister
without their exchanging that sentimental make-believe for the reality
of love-making! Well, I am not angry. I told you my granddaughter was
disposed of. That was true so far as it went. I had views for her; but
they were vague, and hinged upon my own health and vigour. I thought I
had a stronger part to play in life’s drama. Well,’ with a faint sigh,
‘I can afford to resign those old hopes. You may marry Lucille whenever
you can afford to keep her in comfort and respectability. Now, my dear
Mr. Davoren,’ turning to the surgeon with a look of infinite cunning in
his keen eyes, ‘I daresay you think you have made a lucky hit—that, in
spite of all I have told you, this show of poverty is only a miser’s
pretence: that I have railway shares and consols and debentures and
Heaven knows what in my shabby old desk, and that I shall die worth
half-a-million. Dismiss that delusion from your mind at once and for
ever. If you take Lucille Sivewright for your wife you take a pauper.
My collection is all I possess: and I shall leave that most likely to a
museum.’
Thus ungraciously did Mr. Sivewright receive Lucius into the bosom of
his family. Yet, in his own eccentric fashion, he seemed attached to
the young man; courted his society, and had evidently an exalted belief
in his honour.
Nothing had Lucius yet done towards even the beginning of that
endeavour to which he had pledged himself; but he had thought deeply
and constantly of the task that had been imposed upon him, and had
tried to see his way to its accomplishment.
Given a man who had been missing twelve years, who in person,
profession, and surroundings was utterly unknown to him, and who had
cut every tie that bound him to kindred or home; who might be in any
quarter of the globe, or in his grave—and how to set about the work of
finding him? That was the problem which Lucille had proposed to him as
calmly as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
A very little consideration showed him that his only hope lay in
beginning his investigation close at home. Unless he could obtain
certain details from the old man—unless he could overcome Homer
Sivewright’s objection to the subject, and induce him to talk freely
about his missing son—the case seemed beyond all measure hopeless. And
even if the father could be made to speak, even if Lucius could learn
all that was to be told of Ferdinand Sivewright’s history at the time
he left his home in Bond-street, there would be still a dreary gulf of
twelve years to be bridged over.
To question the old man was, however, the easiest and most obvious
course. He might or might not remain obstinately dumb.
One morning, when the patient’s case seemed more than usually
promising—pain banished, and something of his old strength
regained—Lucius made his first approach to this difficult subject.
Their conversation, which was apt to wander widely, from the sordid
business of life to the loftiest regions of metaphysical speculation,
had on this occasion drifted into a discussion of the Christian faith.
Mr. Sivewright contemplated that mighty theme from a purely critical
standpoint; talked of the Gospel as he talked of the _Iliad_; admitted
this and denied that; brought the hard dry logic of an unpoetical mind,
the narrow scepticism of a suspicious nature, to bear upon divine
truths. Lucius spoke with the quiet conviction of a man who believed
and was not ashamed to stand to his colours. From a theological
argument he led the old man to the question of Christian charity, as
distinguished from mere Pagan humanitarianism; and here he found his
opportunity.
‘I have often wondered,’ he said, ‘that you—who seem in most things a
man of a calm temperament, even if somewhat stern—should yet cherish
a lifelong anger against an only son. Forgive me for touching upon a
subject which I know is painful to you—’
‘It is not painful,’ answered Sivewright sharply; ‘no more painful than
if you spoke to me of any scoundrel in the next street whose face I
had never seen. Do you think that hearts are everlasting wear? There
was a time when to think of my false, ungrateful guilty son was like
the smart of a gun-shot wound. But that was years ago. All the tissues
of my body have been changed since he deserted me. Do you suppose that
regret and affection and shame, and the sense of kinship, do not wear
out as well as flesh and blood? Twelve years ago Homer Sivewright
lamented the only son who had disgraced him. I, the man who speaks to
you to-day,’ touching his breast with his lean hand, ‘have no son.’
‘A hard saying,’ replied Lucius compassionately, for there was more
real feeling in this man’s assumed coldness than in many a loud-spoken
and demonstrative grief; ‘yet I can but believe—unworthy as he may have
seemed to you—he still holds a corner in your heart.’
A cloud came over the keen eyes, the gray head drooped, but Homer
Sivewright made no admission of weakness.
‘Seemed unworthy,’ he repeated; ‘he _was_ unworthy.’
‘You have never told me his crime.’
The old man lifted his head, and looked at the speaker with those
penetrating eyes of his, for an instant resentfully, then with the
cynicism which was his second nature.
‘What, are you curious?’ he said. ‘Well, I suppose you have a right to
know something of the family you propose to honour with your alliance.
Know, then, that the father of your intended wife was a liar and a
thief.’
Lucius recoiled as if some outrageous insult had been offered to
himself.
‘I cannot believe—’ he began.
‘Wait till you have heard the story before you attempt to dispute the
facts. You know what my youth was—laborious, self-denying. I married
early, but my marriage was a disappointment. I made the somewhat
common error of taking a handsome face as a certificate of womanly
excellence. My wife was a Spanish American, with a face like an old
Italian picture. Unhappily, she had a temper which made her own life
a burden, and produced a corresponding effect upon the lives of other
people. She had an infinite capacity for discontent. She could he
spasmodically gay under the influence of what is called pleasure, but
happy never. Had I been monarch of the world, I doubt if I could have
ever gratified half her wishes, or charmed the sullen demon in her
breast. She rarely desired anything that was not unattainable. Judge,
then, how she endured the only kind of existence I could offer her.
‘I did all in my power to make her life pleasant, or at least
tolerable. As my means improved I gave her the command of money;
bought birds and flowers for her sitting-room, and furnished it with
my choicest Buhl cabinets, my prettiest Louis-Seize sofa, the spoil
of French palaces; but she laughed to scorn my attempts to beautify
a home above a shop. Her father—a planter, and when I married her a
bankrupt—had once been rich. The days of his prosperity had scarcely
outlasted her childhood, but they had lasted long enough to accustom
her to habits of recklessness and extravagance which no after
experience could eradicate. I soon found that to give her freedom in
money matters would be to accomplish my own ruin. From an indulgent
husband I became what she called a miserly tyrant. Passive discontent
now changed to active aversion; and she began a series of quarrels
which, on more than one occasion, ended in her running away from home,
and taking refuge with a distant relation of her mother’s—a frivolous
extravagant widow whom I detested. I followed and brought her back from
these flights; but she returned unwillingly, and each occasion widened
the breach.
‘Our child made no link between us. When the boy grew old enough to
take any part in our quarrels, he invariably sided with his mother.
Naturally enough, since he was always with her, heard her complaints of
my ill-usage, was indulged by her with wanton folly, and gratified with
pleasures that were paid for with money stolen from me. Yes, that was
the beginning of his unprincipled career. The mother taught her son to
plunder my cash-box or my till.’
‘Very horrible!’ said Lucius.
‘Even to him, however,’ continued Mr. Sivewright, who, having once
drifted into the story of his domestic wrongs, waxed garrulous, ‘even
to him she was violent; and I discovered ere long that there was often
ill-blood between them. Taunts, innuendoes, sneers, diversified the
sullen calm of our wretched hearth; and one day the boy, Ferdinand,
came to me and entreated me to send him to school; he could not endure
life with his mother any longer. “Why, I thought you doated on her,”
said I. “I am fond enough of _her_,” he answered, “but I can’t stand
her temper. You’d better send me to school, father, or something
unpleasant may happen. I threw a knife at her after dinner yesterday.
You remember what you told me about that Roman fellow whose head you
showed me on a coin the other day—the man who murdered his mother. I’m
not likely to go in for the business in his cold-blooded way; but if
she goes on provoking me as she does sometimes, I may be goaded into
stabbing her.”
‘He wound up this cool avowal by informing me that he would like to
complete his education in Germany. He was at this time about twelve.’
‘You complied, I suppose?’ suggested Lucius.
‘Not entirely. I wished my son to be an English gentleman. I wanted,
if possible, to eradicate the South American element, which had
already exhibited itself in violent passions and an inordinate love
of pleasure. One talent, and one only, he had displayed to any great
extent; and that was a talent, or, as his mother and her few friends
declared, a genius for music. From five years old his chief delight was
scraping a fiddle or strumming on his mother’s piano. Now, for my own
part,’ added Mr. Sivewright candidly, ‘I hate music.’
‘And I have loved it,’ said Lucius thoughtfully. ‘Yet it is strange
that the darkest memories of my life are associated with music.’
‘I didn’t want the son for whom I had toiled, and was willing to go on
toiling for the rest of my days, to become a fiddler. I told him as
much in the plainest words, and sent him to a private tutor; in that
manner beginning an education which was to cost me as much as if I had
been a man of wealth and position. I hoped that education might cure
the vices of his childhood, and make him a good man. From the tutor he
went to Harrow, from Harrow to Oxford, your own college, Balliol. But
before this period of his life his mother ran away from me for the last
time. I declined to go through the usual business of bringing her home
again, but gave her a small allowance and requested her to remain away.
She stayed with the South American widow in Thistle-grove; spent her
allowance, I fear, chiefly upon brandy, and died in less than a year
after she left me. My son went to see her when she was dying; heard
her last counsel, which doubtless advised him to hate me; and went back
to Harrow, a boy, with the passions of a man.’
There was a pause, and once more the old man’s chin sunk upon his
breast, the cold gray eyes fixed themselves with that far-off gaze
which sees the things that are no more. Then rousing himself with an
impatient sigh he went on.
‘I needn’t trouble you with the details of his University life. Enough
that he contrived to make it an epitome of the vices. He assented
sullenly to adopt a profession—the law; skulked; spent his days and
nights in dissipation; wasted my money; and compelled me at last to
say, “Shut up your books, if you have ever opened them. Nature never
meant you for a lawyer. But you have all the sharpness of your mother’s
wily race. Come home, and in my petty business learn the science of
commerce. You may be a great merchant by and by.”’
‘You must have loved him in those days, or you would hardly have been
so lenient,’ said Lucius.
‘Loved him, yes,’ answered the other, with a long regretful sigh. ‘I
loved him and was proud of him; proud in spite of his vices; proud
of his good looks, his cleverness, his plausible tongue—the tongue
that lied to me and swindled me. God help me, he was the only thing
I had to love! He came home, pretended to take to the business. Never
was a man better qualified to prosper in such a trade. He had a keen
appreciation of art; was quick at learning the jargon which deludes
amateur buyers; and in the business of bargain-driving would have
Jewed the veriest Jew alive. But his habits were against anything like
sustained industry. It was not till after he had won my confidence, and
wheedled me into giving him a partnership, that I discovered how little
he had changed his old ways. As he had robbed me before he was twelve
years old, so he robbed me now; only as his necessities were larger, I
felt his dishonesty more. I saw my stock shrinking, my books doctored.
Vainly I tried to battle with an intellect that was stronger than my
own. Long after I knew him to be a rogue, he was able to demonstrate to
me, by what seemed the soundest logic, that I was mistaken. One day,
when he had been living with me something more than a year, he informed
me, in his easy-going way, that he had married some years before, lost
his wife soon after, and that I was a grandfather. “You’re fond of
children,” he said. “I’ve seen you notice those little curly-headed
beggars next door. You’d better let me send for Lucille.”’
‘You consented?’
‘Of course. Lucille came the same night. A pale melancholy child, in
whose small face I saw no likeness to any of my race. Of her mother
I could ascertain very little. My son was reticent. His wife was of
decent birth, he said, and had possessed a little money, which he had
spent, and that was all he ever told me. Of how or where she died, he
said nothing. Lucille talked of green fields and flowers and the sea;
but knew no more of the whereabouts of her previous home than if she
had come straight from Paradise.’
‘Then you do not even know her mother’s maiden-name?’
‘No. That’s hard upon you, isn’t it? There’ll be a blank in your
children’s pedigree.’
‘I will submit to the blank; only it seems rather hard upon Lucille
that she should never have known her mother’s relatives, that she
should have been cheated of any affection they might have given her.’
‘Affection! the affection of aunts and uncles and cousins!
Milk-and-water!’
‘Well, sir, you and your son contrived to live together for some years.’
‘Yes, it lasted a long time—I knowing I was cheated, yet unable to
prove it; he spending his days in sloth, his nights in dissipation,
yet every now and then, by some brilliant stroke of business,
compelling me to admire him. My customers liked him, the young men
especially; for he had all those modern ideas which were as strange
to me as a Cuneiform inscription. Somehow he brought grist to the
mill. His University friends found him out, made my shop a lounge,
borrowed my money, and paid me a protective rate of interest. We had
our quarrels—not violent and noisy, like the quarrels in which women
are concerned, but perhaps all the more lasting in their effect. Where
he went at night I knew not, until going into his room very early one
morning to wake him—there was to be a great picture-sale twenty miles
from London that day, and I wanted him to attend it—I saw some gold
and notes scattered on the table by his bedside. From that moment I
knew the worst of his vices. He was a gambler. Where he played or with
whom I never knew. I never played the spy upon him, or attempted to
get at his secrets in any underhand manner. One day I taxed him with
this vice. He shrugged his shoulders, and affected supreme candour. “I
play a little sometimes,” he said—“games of skill, not chance. It is
impossible to keep such company as I keep and not take an occasional
hand at whist or écarté. And you ought not to forget that my friends
have been profitable to you.” A year after this I had occasion to sell
a portion of my stock at Christie’s, in order to obtain ready money to
purchase the lease of premises adjoining my own—premises which would
enable me to enlarge my art gallery. The things were sold, and, a few
days afterwards, settled for. I brought home the money—between five and
six hundred pounds—locked it in my safe, impregnable even to my junior
partner, and sat down to dinner with the key in my pocket, and, as I
believed, my money secure.’
Again there was a pause, painful recollections contracting the
deeply-lined brow, gloomy thoughts clouding the eyes.
‘Well, I had come home late; the child was in bed, and my son and I
dined together by the fire in the little parlour behind the shop—my
wife’s fine drawing-room had been absorbed long ago into the art
gallery. Never had Ferdinand been so genial or so gay. He was full
of talk about the extension of our premises; discussed our chances
of success like a thorough man of business. We had a bottle of good
old burgundy in honour of our brilliant prospects. I did not drink
more than usual; yet half an hour after dinner I was in the deepest
sleep that ever stole my senses, and reduced me to the condition of a
lifeless log. In a word, the wine had been drugged, and by the hand of
my son. When I awoke it was long after midnight, the hearth was black
and cold, the candles had burned down to the sockets. I woke with a
violent headache, and that nausea which is the after-taste of opium or
morphine. I sat for some minutes shivering, and wondering what was the
matter with me. Almost mechanically I felt in my pocket for the key
of the safe. Yes, there it lay, snug enough. I staggered up to bed,
surprised at the unusual effect of a couple of glasses of burgundy, and
was so ill next morning that my old housekeeper sent for the nearest
apothecary. He felt my pulse, looked at my eyes, and asked if I had
taken an opiate. Then it flashed upon me in a moment that I had been
drugged. The instant the apothecary left me I got out of bed, dragged
on my clothes, and went down to examine my safe. The money was gone.
Ferdinand knew when I was to receive the cash, and knew my habits well
enough to know where I should put it, careful as I had been not to let
him see me dispose of it. I had been robbed—dexterously—by my own son.’
‘Scoundrel!’ muttered Lucius.
‘Yes. I might have stomached the theft; I couldn’t forgive the opiate.
That stung me to the quick. A man who would do that would poison me,
I thought; and I plucked my only son out of my heart, as you drag up a
foul weed whose roots have gone deep and have a tough hold in a clay
soil. It was a wrench, and left a feeling of soreness for after years;
but I think my love for him died in that hour. Could one love so paltry
a villain? I made no attempt to pursue him, nor to regain my money. One
can hardly deliver one’s own flesh and blood to the tender mercies of
the criminal code.’
‘You never told his daughter?’
‘No; I was not cruel enough for that. I did my best to impress upon her
mind that he was unworthy of affection or regret, without stating the
nature of his offence. Unhappily, with her romantic temperament, to be
unfortunate is to be worthy of compassion. I know that she has wept for
him and regretted him, and even set up his image in her heart, in spite
of me.’
‘How much do you know of your son’s fate?’
‘Almost nothing. By mere accident I heard that he went to America
within a month of the day on which he robbed me. More than that I never
heard.’
‘Do you remember the name of the ship—or steamer—in which he went?’
‘That’s a curious question; however, I don’t mind answering it. He
went in a Spanish sailing-ship, El Dorado, bound for Rio.’
This was all—a poor clue wherewith to discover the whereabouts of a man
who had been missing twelve years.