What a wound would it inflict upon our self-love were we occasionally to
know that the concessions we have extorted from our own hearts by
long effort and persuasion would be deemed matters of very doubtful
acceptance by those in whose favor they were made. With what
astonishment should we learn that there was nothing so very noble in our
forgiveness, nothing so very splendid in our generosity! I have been led
to this reflection by thinking over Annesley Beecher's late resolve, and
wondering what effect it might have had on him could he have overheard
what passed in the very chamber next his own.
Though Lizzy Davis was dressed and ready to come down to breakfast, she
felt so ill and depressed that she lay down again on her bed, telling
the maid to close the shutters and leave her to herself.
“What's this, Lizzy? What's the matter, girl?” said Davis, entering, and
taking a seat at her bedside. “Your hand is on fire.”
“I slept badly,--scarcely at all,” said she, faintly, “and my head feels
as if it would split with pain.”
“Poor child!” said he, as he kissed her burning forehead; “I was the
cause of all this. Yes, Lizzy, I know it, but I had been staving off
this hour for many and many a year. I felt in my heart that you were the
only one in all the world who could console or cheer me, and yet I was
satisfied to forego it all--to deny myself what I yearned after--just to
spare you.”
The words came with a slow and faltering utterance from him, and his
lips quivered when he had done speaking.
“I 'm not quite sure the plan was a good one,” said she, in a low voice.
“Nor am I now,” said he, sternly; “but I did it for the best.”
She heaved a heavy sigh, and was silent.
“Mayhap I thought, too,” said he, after a pause, “that when you
looked back at all the sacrifices I had made for you, how I toiled
and labored,--not as other men toil and labor, for _my_ handicraft was
always exercised with a convict ship in the offing--There, you needn't
shudder now; I 'm here beside you safe. Well, I thought you 'd say,
'After all, he gave me every advantage in his power. If he could n't
bestow on me station and riches, he made me equal to their enjoyment if
they ever befell me. He didn't bring me down to his own level, nor to
feel the heartburnings of his own daily life, but he made me, in thought
and feeling, as good as any lady in the land.'”
“And for what--to what end?” said she, wildly.
“That you might be such, one day, girl,” said he, passionately. “Do you
think I have not known every hour, for the last thirty-odd years, what I
might have been, had I been trained, and schooled, and taught the things
that others know? Have I not felt that I had pluck, daring, energy, and
persistence that only wanted knowledge to beat them all, and leave them
nowhere? Have I not said to myself, 'She has every one of these, and she
has good looks to boot; and why shouldn't she go in and carry away the
cup?' And do you think, when I said that, that I was n't striking a
docket of bankruptcy against my own heart forever? for to make _you_
great was to make _me_ childless!”
Lizzy covered her face with her hands, but never uttered a word.
“I did n't need any one to tell me,” resumed he, fiercely, “that
training you up in luxury and refinement was n't the way to make you
satisfied with poverty, or proud of such a father as myself. I knew
deuced well what I was preparing for myself there. 'But no matter,' I
said, 'come what will, _she_ shall have a fair start of it. Show me the
fellow will try a balk,--show me the man will cross the course while
she's running.'”
Startled by the thick and guttural utterance of his words, Lizzy removed
her hands from her face, and stared eagerly at him. Strongly shaken by
passion as he was, every line and lineament tense with emotion, there
was a marvellous resemblance between her beautiful features and the
almost demoniac savagery of his. Had he not been at her side, the
expression was only that of intense pain on a face of surpassing beauty,
but, seen through the baneful interpretation of his look, she seemed the
type of a haughty nature spirited by the very wildest ambition.
“Ay, girl,” said he, with a sigh, “you 've cost me more than money or
money's worth; and if I ever come to have what they call a 'conscience,'
I 'll have an ugly score to settle on your account.”
“Oh, dearest father!” cried she, bitterly, “do not wring my heart by
such words as these.”
“There, you shall hear no more of it,” said he, withdrawing his hand
from her grasp and crossing his arm on his breast.
“Nay,” said she, fondly, “you shall tell me all and everything. It has
cost you heavily to make this confidence to me. Let us try if it cannot
requite us both. I know the worst. No?” cried she, in terror, as he
shook his head; “why, what is there remains behind?”
“How shall I tell you what remains behind?” broke he in, sternly; “how
shall I teach you to know the world as I know it,--to feel that
every look bent on me is insult,--every word uttered as I pass a
sarcasm,--that fellows rise from the table when I sit down at it? and
though, now and then, I 'm lucky enough to catch one who goes too far,
and make him a warning to others, they can do enough to spite me,
and yet never come within twelve paces of me. I went over to Neuwied
yesterday to fetch my letters from the post. You 'd fancy that in a
little village on this untravelled bank of the Rhine I might have rested
an hour to bait my horse and eat my breakfast unmolested and without
insult. You 'd say that in a secluded spot like that I would be safe.
Not a bit of it. Scandal has its hue and cry, and every man that walks
the earth is its agent. Two young fellows fresh from England--by their
dress, their manner, and their bad French, I judged them to be young
students from Oxford or Cambridge--breakfasted in the same room with
me, and deeming me a foreigner, and therefore--for it is a right English
conclusion--unable to understand them, talked most freely of events and
people before me. I paid little attention to their vapid talk till my
ear caught the name of Beecher. They were discussing him and a lady who
had been seen in his company at Aix-la-Chapelle. Yes, they had seen her
repeatedly in her rides and drives, followed her to the Cursaal, and
stared at her at the opera. They were quite enthusiastic about her
beauty, and only puzzled to know who this mysterious creature might be
that looked like a queen and dressed like a queen. One averred she was
not Beecher's sister,--the peerage told them that; as little was she his
wife. Then came the other and last alternative. And I had to sit still
and listen to every _pro_ and _con_ of this stupid converse,--their
miserable efforts to reason, or their still more contemptible attempts
to jest, and dare not stand up before them and say, 'Hold your
slanderous tongues, for she is my daughter,' because, to the
first question they would put to me, I must say, 'My name is
Davis--Christopher Davis'--ay, 'Grog Davis,' if they would have it so.
No, no, girl, all your beauty, all your grace, all your fascinations
would not support such a name,--the best horse that ever won the
Derby will break down if you overweight him; and so I had to leave my
breakfast uneaten and come away how I could. For one brief moment I was
irresolute. I felt that if I let them off so easily I 'd pine and fret
over it after, and maybe give way to passion some other time with less
excuse; but my thoughts came back to you, Lizzy, and I said, 'What
signifies about me? I have no object, no goal in life, but her. She must
not be talked of, nor made matter for newspaper gossip. She will one
day or other hold a place at which slander and malevolence only talk in
whispers, and even these must be uttered with secrecy!' I could n't help
laughing as I left the room. One of them declined to eat salad because
it was unwholesome. Little he knew on what a tiny chance it depended
whether that was to be his last breakfast. The devilish pleasure of
turning back and telling him so almost overcame my resolution.”
“There was, then, an impropriety in my living at Aix as I did?” asked
Lizzy, calmly.
“The impropriety, as you call it, need not have been notorious,”
said he, in angry confusion. “If people will attract notice by an
ostentatious display,--horses, equipage, costly dressing, and so
on,--the world will talk of them. You could n't know this, but Beecher
did. It was his unthinking folly drew these bad tongues on you. It is a
score he 'll have to settle with me yet.”
“But, dearest papa, let me bear the blame that is my due. It was I--I
myself--who encouraged, suggested these extravagances. I fancied myself
possessed of boundless wealth; he never undeceived me; nay, he would not
even answer my importunate questions as to my family, my connections,
whence we came, and of what county.”
“If he had,” muttered Grog, “I 'd be curious to have heard his
narrative.”
“I saw, at last, that there was a secret, and then I pressed him no
more.”
“And you did well. Had you importuned, and had he yielded, it had been
worse for _him_.”
“Just as little did I suspect,” continued she, rapidly, “that any
reproach could attach to my living in his society; he was your friend;
it was at your desire he accepted this brief guardianship; he never, by
a word, a look, transgressed the bounds of respectful courtesy; and
I felt all the unconstrained freedom of old friendship in our
intercourse.”
“All his reserve and all your delicacy won't silence evil tongues, girl.
I intended you to have stayed a day or two, at most, at Aix. You passed
weeks there. Whose fault that, you say? Mine,--of course, mine, and no
one else's. But what but my fault every step in your whole life? Why
was n't I satisfied to bring you up in my own station, with rogues and
swindlers for daily associates? Then I might have had a daughter who
would not be ashamed to own me.”
“Oh, that I am not; that I will never be,” cried she, throwing her arm
around his neck. “What has your whole life been but a sacrifice to me?
It may be that you rate too highly these great prizes of life; that
you attach to the station you covet for me a value I cannot concur in.
Still, I feel that it was your love for me prompted this hope, and that
while _you_ trod the world darkly and painfully, you purchased a path of
light and pleasantness for _me_.”
“You have paid me for it all by these words,” said he, drawing his hand
across his eyes. “I 'd work as a daily laborer on the road, I'd be a
sailor before the mast, I'd take my turn with the chain-gang and eat
Norfolk Island biscuit, if it could help to place you where I seek to
see you.”
“And what is this rank to which you aspire so eagerly?”
“I want you to be a peeress, girl. I want you to be one of the
proudest guild the world ever yet saw or heard of; to have a station so
accredited that every word you speak, every act you do, goes forth with
its own authority.”
“But stay!” broke she in, “men's memories will surely carry them back to
who I was.”
“Let them, girl. Are you the stuff to be chilled by that? Have I made
you what you are, that you cannot play their equal? There are not many
of them better looking; are there any cleverer or better informed? Even
those Oxford boys said you looked like an empress. If insult will crush
you, girl, you 've got little of _my_ blood in you.”
Lizzy's face flushed scarlet, and her eyes glittered wildly, as they
seemed to say, “Have no fears on that score.” Then, suddenly changing to
an ashy pallor, and in a voice trembling with intense feeling, she said:
“But why seek out an existence of struggle and conflict? It is for me
and my welfare that all your anxieties are exercised. Is it not possible
that these can be promoted without the dangerous risk of this ambition?
You know life well; tell me, then, are there not some paths a woman may
tread for independence, and yet cause no blush to those who love her
best? Of the acquirements you have bestowed upon me, are there not some
which could be turned to this account? I could be a governess.”
“Do you know what a governess is, girl?--a servant in the garb of a
lady; one whose mind has been cultivated, not to form resources for
herself, but to be drained and drawn on by others. They used to kill a
serf, in the middle ages, that a noble might warm his feet in the hot
entrails; our modern civilization is satisfied by driving many a poor
girl crazy, to cram some stupid numbskull with a semblance of knowledge.
You shall not be a governess.”
“There is the stage, then,” cried she. “I'm vain enough to imagine I
should succeed there.”
“I'll not hear of it,” broke in Davis, passionately. “If I was certain
you could act like Siddons herself, you should not walk the boards. _I_
know what a theatre is. I know the life of coarse familiarity it leads
to. The corps is a family gathered together like what jockeys call 'a
scratch team,'--a wheeler here, and a leader there, with just smartness
enough to soar above the level of a dull audience, crammed with the
light jest of low comedy, and steered by no higher ambition than a
crowded benefit, or a junketing at Greenwich. How would _you_ consort
with these people?”
“Still, if I achieved success--”
“I won't have it,--that's enough. I tell you, girl, that there is but
one course for _you_. You must be declared winner at the stand-house
before you have been seen on the ground. If you have to run the gauntlet
through all the slanders and stories they will rake up of _me_,--if,
before you reach the goal, you have to fight all the lost battles of
_my_ life over again,--you 'll never see the winning-post.”
“And is it not better to confront the storm, and risk one's chances with
the elements, than suffer shipwreck at once? I tell you, father,” cried
she, eagerly, “I 'll face all the perils you speak of, boldly; I'll
brave insolence, neglect, sarcasm,--what they will,--only let me feel
one honest spot in my heart, and be able to say to myself, 'You have
toiled lowly, and fared ill; you have dared a conflict and been worsted;
but you have not made traffic of your affections, nor bought success by
that which makes it valueless.'”
“These are the wild romances of a girl's fancy,” said Davis. “Before a
twelvemonth was over, you could n't say, on your oath, whether you had
married for love or interest, except that poverty might remind you of
the one, and affluence suggest the other. Do you imagine that the
years stop short with spring, and that one is always in the season of
expectancy? No, no; months roll along, and after summer comes autumn,
and then winter, and the light dress you fancied that you never need
change would make but scanty clothing.”
“But if I am not able to bring myself to this?”
“Are you certain you will be able to bring _me_ to worse?” said he,
solemnly. “Do you feel, Lizzy, as if you could repay my long life of
sacrifice and struggle by what would undo them all? Do you feel strong
enough to say, 'My old father was a fool to want to make _me_ better
than himself; I can descend to the set he is ashamed of; and, more
still, I can summon courage to meet taunts and insults on him, which,
had I station to repel them from, had never been uttered'?”
“Oh, do not tempt me this way!” cried she, bitterly.
“But I will, girl; I will leave nothing unsaid that may induce you to
save yourself from misery, and _me_ from disgrace. I tell you, girl, if
I face the world again, it must be with such security as only you can
give me,--you, a lady high in rank and position, can then save _me_. My
enemies will know that their best game will not be to ruin me.”
“And are you sure it would save you?” said she, sternly and coldly.
“I am,” said he, in a voice like her own.
“Will you take a solemn oath to me that you see no other road out of
these difficulties, whatever they are, than by my doing this?”
“I will swear it as solemnly as ever words were sworn. I believe--before
Heaven I say it--that there's not another chance in life by which your
future lot can be secured.”
“Do not speak of mine; think solely of your fortunes, and say if this
alone can save them.”
“Just as firmly do I say, then, that once in the position I mean, you
can rescue me out of every peril. You will be rich enough to pay some,
powerful enough to promote others, great enough to sway and influence
all.”
“Good God! what have you done, then, that it is only by sacrificing all
my hopes of happiness that you can be ransomed?” cried she, with a burst
of irrepressible passion.
“You want a confession, then,” said Davis, in a tone of most savage
energy; “you 'd like to hear my own indictment of myself. Well, there
are plenty of counts in it.”
“Stand forward, Kit Davis. You are charged with various acts of swindling
and cheating,--light offences, all of them,--committed in the best of
company, and in concert with honorable and even noble colleagues. By the
virtue of your oath, Captain Davis, how many horses have you poisoned,
how many jockeys have you drugged, what number of men have you hocussed
at play, what sums have you won from others in a state of utter
insensibility? Can you state any case where you enforced a false
demand by intimidation? Can you charge your memory with any instance of
shooting a man who accused you of foul play? What names besides your own
have you been in the habit of signing to bills? Have you any revelations
to make about stock transferred under forgery? Will you kiss the
book, and say that nineteen out of twenty at the hulks have not done a
fiftieth part of what you have done? Will you solemnly take oath that
there are not ten, fifteen, twenty charges, which might be prosecuted
against you, to transportation for life? and are there not two--or,
certainly, is there not one--with a heavier forfeiture on it? Are there
not descriptions of you in almost every police bureau in Europe, and
photographic likenesses, too, on frontier passport-offices of little
German States, that Hesse and Cassel and Coburgh should not be ravaged
by the wolf called Grog Davis?”
“And if this be so, to what end do I sacrifice myself?” cried she, in
bitter anguish. “Were it not better to seek out some far-away land where
we cannot be traced? Let us go to America, to Australia,--I don't care
how remote it be,--the country that will shelter us--”
“Not a step. I'll not budge out of Europe; win or lose, here I stay! Do
as I tell you, girl, and the game is our own. It has been my safety this
many a year that I could compromise so many in my own fall. Well, time
has thinned the number marvellously. Many have died. The Cholera, the
Crimea, the Marshalsea, broken hearts, and what not, have done their
work; and of the few remaining, some have grown indifferent to exposure,
others have dropped out of view, and now it would be as much as I could
do to place four or five men of good names in the dock beside me. That
ain't enough. I must have connections.
“I want those relations that can't afford disgrace. Let me only have
_them_, they 'll take care of their own reputations. You don't know, but
I know, what great folk can do in England. There 's not a line in the
Ten Commandments they could n't legalize with an Act of Parliament. They
can marry and unmarry, bind and loosen, legitimize or illegitimize, by a
vote 'of the House;' and by a vote of society they can do just as much:
make a swindling railroad contractor the first man in London, and, if
they liked it, and saw it suited their book, they could make Kit Davis
a member of White's, or the Carlton; and once they did it, girl, they 'd
think twice before they 'd try to undo it again. All I say is, give me a
Viscount for a son-in-law, and see if I don't 'work the oracle.' Let me
have just so much backing as secures a fair fight, and my head be
on't if they don't give in before I do! They 're very plucky with one
another, girl, because they keep within the law; but mark how they
tremble before the fellow that does n't mind the law,--that goes through
it, at one side of it, or clean over it. That's the pull _I_ have over
them. The man that don't mind a wetting can always drag another into the
water; do you see that?”
Davis had now so worked upon himself that he walked the room with
hasty steps, his cheeks burning, and his eyes wildly, fiercely glaring.
Amongst the traits which characterize men of lawless and depraved lives,
none is more remarkable than the boastful hardihood with which they will
at times deploy all the resources of their iniquity, even exaggerating
the amount of the wrongs they have inflicted on society. There is
something actually satanic in their exultation over a world they have
cheated, bullied, injured, and insulted, so that, in their infernal
code, honesty and trustfulness seem only worthy of contempt, and he
alone possessed of true courage who dares and defies the laws that bind
his fellow-men.
Davis was not prone to impulsiveness; very few men were less the slaves
of rash or intemperate humors. He had been reared in too stern a school
to let mere temper master him; but his long practised self-restraint
deserted him here. In his eagerness to carry his point, he was borne
away beyond all his prudence, and once launched into the sea of his
confessions, he wandered without chart or compass. Besides this, there
was that strange, morbid sense of vanity which is experienced in giving
a shock to the fears and sensibilities of another. The deeper the tints
of his own criminality, the more terrible the course he had run in life,
so much the more was he to be feared and dreaded. If he should fail to
work upon her affections, he might still hope to extract something from
her terror; for who could say of what a man like him was not capable?
And last of all, he had thrown off the mask, and he did not care to
retain a single rag of the disguise he so long had worn; thus was
it, then, that he stood before her in all the strong light of his
iniquities,--a criminal, whose forfeitures would have furnished Guilt
for fifty.
“Shall I go on?” said he, in a voice of thick and labored utterance, “or
is this enough?”
“Oh, is it not enough?” cried she, bitterly.
“You asked me to tell you all,--everything,--and now that you 've
only caught a passing glimpse of what I could reveal, you start back
affrighted. Be it so; there are, at least, no concealments between us
now; and harsh as my lesson has been, it is not a whit harsher than if
the world had given it I 've only one word more to say, girl,” said he,
as he drew nigh the door and held his hand on the lock; “if it be your
firm resolve to reject this fortune, the sooner you let me know it the
better. I have said all that I need say; the rest is within your own
hands; only remember that if such be your determination, give me the
earliest notice, for I, too, must take my measures for the future.”
If there was nothing of violence in the manner he uttered these
words, there was a stern, impassive serenity that made them still more
impressive; and Lizzy, without a word of reply, buried her face between
her hands and wept.
Davis stood irresolute; for a moment it seemed as if his affection had
triumphed, for he made a gesture as though he would approach her; then,
suddenly correcting himself with a start, he muttered, below his breath,
“It is done now,” and left the room.