A wiser head than that of Annesley Beecher might have felt some confusion on awaking the morning after the events we have just related. Indeed, his first sensations were those of actual bewilderment as he opened his eyes, and beheld the pine-clad mountains rising in endless succession; the deep glens; the gushing streams, crossed by rude bridges of a single tree; the rustic saw-mills all dripping with spray. And trembling with the force of their own machinery. Where was he? What strange land was this? How came he there? Was this in reality the “new world beyond the seas” Davis had so often described to him? By a slow, laborious process, like filtering, stray memories dropped, one by one, through his clouded faculties; and, at length, he remembered the scene of the preceding night, and all that had passed between Davis and himself. Yet, withal, there was much of doubt and uncertainty mixed up, nor could he, by any effort, satisfy himself how much was fact, how much mere speculation. Was it true that Lackington was to lose his peerage? Was it possible such a dreadful blow was to fall on their house? If so, what portion of the estates would follow the title? Would a great part—would all the property be transferred to the new claimant? What length of time, too, might the suit occupy?—such things often lasted for years upon years. Was it too late for a compromise? Could not some arrangement be come to “some way”? Grog was surely the man to decree a plan for this; at all events, he could protract and spin out proceedings. “It's not p.p.; the match may never come off,” muttered Beecher, “and I 'll back old Grog to 'square it' somehow.”
And then the bills, the forged acceptances,—they were actually burned before his face! It was well-nigh incredible; but he had seen them, held them in his own hand, and watched them as the night wind wafted away their blackened embers never more to rise in judgment against him,—never to cost him another night of sleepless terror! Who would have believed Davis capable of such magnanimity? Of all men living, he had deemed him the last to forego any hold over another; and then the act was his own spontaneous doing, without reservation, without condition.
Beecher's heart swelled proudly as he thought over this trait of his friend. Was it that he felt a sense of joy in believing better of mankind? Was it that it awoke within his breast more hopeful thoughts of his fellow-men? Did it appeal to him like a voice, saying, “Despair of no man; there are touches of kindliness in natures the very roughest, that redeem whole lives of harshness”? No, my good reader, it would be unfair and unjust to you were I to say that such sentiments as these swayed him. Annesley Beecher's thoughts flowed in another and very different channel. The words he whispered to his heart were somewhat in this wise: “What a wonderful fellow must you be, Beecher, to acquire such influence over a man like Davis; what marvellous gifts must you not be endowed with! Is it any wonder that Grog predicts a brilliant future to him who can curb to his will the most stubborn of natures, and elicit traits of sacrifice out of the most selfish of men? Who but yourself could work this miracle?” Mean and ignoble as such a mode of arguing may seem, take my word for it, most patient reader, it is not unfrequent in this world of ours, nor is Annesley Beecher the only one who has ascribed all his good fortune to his own deservings.
“Shrewd fellow, that Davis! He always saw what stuff was in me; he recognized the real metal, while others were only sneering at the dross,—just as he knows this moment, that if I start fresh without name, fortune, or title, that I 'm sure to be at the top of the tree at last. Give me his daughter! I should think he would! It's not all up with Lackington yet, dark as it looks; we 're in possession, and there is a 'good line of country' between the Honorable Annesley Beecher, next Viscount in succession, and Kit Davis, commonly called Grog of that ilk! Not that the girl isn't equal to any station,—there's no denying that! Call her a Greville, a Stanley, or a Seymour, and she's a match for the finest man in England! Make her a Countess to-morrow, and she 'll look it!”
It is but fair to acknowledge that Beecher was not bewildered without some due cause; for if Davis had at one time spoken to him as one who no longer possessed claim to rank and station, but was a mere adventurer like himself, at another moment he had addressed him as the future Viscount, and pictured him as hurling a proud defiance to the world in the choice he had made of his wife. This was no blunder on Grog's part. That acute individual had, in the course of his legal experiences, remarked that learned counsel are wont to insert pleas which are occasionally even contradictory, alleging at times that “there was no debt,” and then, that “if there had been, it was already paid.” In the same spirit did Davis embrace each contingency of fortune, showing that, whether Peer or Commoner, Annesley Beecher “stood to win” in making Lizzy his wife. “Scratch the pedigree, and she 'll be a stunning peeress; and if the suit goes against us, show me the girl like her to meet the world!” This was the sum of the reflections that cost him a whole morning's intellectual labor, and more of actual mental fatigue than befalls a great parliamentary leader after a stormy debate.
That Davis had no intention to intimidate him was clearly shown by his destroying the acceptances: had he wished to lean on coercion, here was the means. Take your choice between matrimony and a felony, was a short and easy piece of argumentation, such as would well have suited Grog's summary notions; and yet he had, of his own accord, freely and forever relinquished this vantage ground. Beecher was now free. For the first time for many a long year of life he arose from his bed without a fear of the law and its emissaries. The horrible nightmare that had scared him so often, dashing the wildest moments of dissipation with sudden fear, deepening the depths of despondency with greater gloom, had all fled, and he awoke to feel that there was no terror in a “Beak's” eye, nothing to daunt him in the shrewd glances of a detective. They who have lived years long of insecurity, tortured by the incessant sense of an impending peril, to befall them to-day, tomorrow, or next day, become at length so imbued with fear that when the hour of their emancipation arrives, they are not able for a considerable time to assure themselves of their safety. The captive dreams of his chains through many a night after he has gained his liberty; the shipwrecked sailor can never forget the raft and the lone ocean on which he tossed; nor was it altogether easy for Beecher to convince himself that he could walk the world with his head high, and bid defiance to Crown prosecutors and juries!
“I 'm out of your debt, Master Grog,” said he, with a pleasant laugh to himself; “catch me if you can running up another score in your books. Wait till you see me slipping my neck into a noose held by your fingers. You made me feel the curb pretty sharp for many a long day, and might still, if you had n't taken off the bridle with your own hands; but I 'm free now, and won't I show you a fair pair of heels! Who could blame me, I 'd like to know? When a fellow gets out of jail, does he take lodgings next door to the prison? I never asked him to burn those bills. It was all his own doing. I conclude that a fellow as shrewd as he knew what he was about. Mayhap he said to himself, 'Beecher's the downiest cove going. It will be a deuced sight better to have him as my friend and pal than to send him to break stones in Australia. I can stand to win a good thing on him, and why should I send him over seas just out of spite? I'll come the grand magnanimous dodge over him,—destroy the papers before his face, and say, “Now, old fellow, what do you say to that for a touch of generosity?”'
“'Well, I'll tell you what I say, Master Davis,'” said he, drawing himself up, and speaking boldly out. “'I say that you're a regular trump, and no mistake; but you 're not the sharp fellow I took you for. No, no, old gent, you 're no match for A. B.! He's been running in bandages all this time past; and now that his back sinews are all right, you'll see if he hasn't a turn of speed in him.' And what is more, I 'd say to him, 'Look here, Grog, we've jogged along these ten or twelve years or so without much profit to either of us,—what say you if we dissolve the partnership and let each do a little business on his own account? If I should turn out anything very brilliant, you 'll be proud of me, just as England says she is when a young colony takes a great spring of success, and say, “Ay, he was one of my rearing!”' Of course all dictation, all that bullying intolerance is at an end now, and time it was! Wasn't I well weary of it! wasn't I actually sick of life with it! I couldn't turn to anything, could n't think of anything, with that eternal fear before me, always asking myself, 'Is he going to do it now?' It is very hard to believe it's all over.” And he heaved a deep sigh as though disburdening his heart of its last load of sorrow.
“Davis is very wide awake,” continued he; “he 'll soon see how to trim his sails to this new wind; he 'll know that he can't bully, can't terrorize.”
A sharp quick report of a pistol, with a clanging crash, and then a faint tinkle of a bell, cut short his musings, and Beecher hastened to the window and looked out. It was Davis in the vine alley practising with the pistol; he had just sent a ball through the target, the bell giving warning that the shot had pierced the very centre. Beecher watched him as he levelled again; he thought he saw a faint tremor of the hand, a slight unsteadiness of the wrist; vain illusion,—bang went the weapon, and again the little bell gave forth the token of success.
“Give me the word—one—two,” cried out Davis to the man who loaded and handed him the pistols. “One—two,” called out the other; and the same instant rang out the bell, and the ball was true to its mark.
“What a shot,—what a deadly shot!” muttered Beecher, as a cold shudder came over him.
As quickly as he could take the weapons, Davis now fired; four—five—six balls went in succession through the tiny circle, the bell tinkling on and never ceasing, so rapidly did shot follow upon shot, till, as if sated with success, he turned away, saying, “I' ll try to-morrow blindfold!”
“I'm certain,” muttered Beecher, “no man is bound to go out with a fellow like that. A duel is meant to be a hazard, not a dead certainty! To stand before him at twenty—ay, forty paces, is a suicide, neither more nor less; he must kill you. I'd insist on his fighting across a handkerchief. I 'd say, 'Let us stand foot to foot!'” No, Beecher, not a bit of it; you 'd say nothing of the kind, nor, if you did, would it avail you! Your craven heart could not beat were those stern gray eyes fixed upon you, looking death into you from a yard off. He 'd shoot you down as pitilessly, too, at one distance as at the other.
Was it in the fulness of a conviction that his faltering lips tried to deny, that he threw himself back upon a chair, while a cold, clammy sweat covered his face and forehead, a sickness like death crept over him, objects grew dim to his eyes, and the room seemed to turn and swim before him? Where was his high daring now? Where the boastful spirit in which he had declared himself free, no more the slave of Grog's insolent domination, nor basely cowering before his frown? Oh, the ineffable bitterness. Of that thought, coming, too, in revulsion to all his late self-gratulations! Where was the glorious emancipation he had dreamed of, now? He could not throw him into prison, it is true, but he could lay him in a grave.
“But I 'd not meet him,” whispered he to himself. “One is not bound to meet a man of this sort.”
There is something marvellously accommodating and elastic in the phrase, “One is not bound” to do this, that, and t' other. As the said bond is a contract between oneself and an imaginary world, its provisions are rarely onerous or exacting. Life is full of things “one is not bound to do.” You are “not bound,” for instance, to pay your father's debts, though, it might be, they were contracted in your behalf and for your benefit. You are not bound to marry the girl whose affections have been your own for years if you can do better in another quarter, and she has nothing in your handwriting to establish a contract. You are not bound,—good swimmer though you be,—to rescue a man from drowning, lest he should clutch too eagerly and peril your safety. You are not bound to risk the chance of a typhus by visiting a poor friend on his sick-bed. You are not bound to aid charities you but half approve,—to assist people who have been improvident,—to associate with many who are uninteresting to you. But why go on with this expurgatorial catalogue? It is quite clear the only things “one is bound” to do are those the world will enforce at his hands; and let our selfishness be ever so inveterate, and ever so crafty, the majority will beat us, and the Ayes have it at last!
Now, few men had a longer list of the things they were “not bound to do” than Annesley Beecher; in reality, if the balance were to be struck between them and those he acknowledged to be obligatory, it would have been like Falstaff's sack to the miserable morsel of bread. Men of his stamp fancy themselves very wise in their generation. They are not easy-natured, open, trustful, and free-handed, like that Pharisee! Take my word for it, the system works not so well as it looks, and they pass their existence in a narrow prison-ward of their own selfish instincts,—their fears their fetters, their cowardly natures heavy as any chains!
Beecher reasoned somewhat in this wise. Grog was “not bound” to destroy the acceptances. He might have held them in terrorism over him for a long life, and used them, at last, if occasion served. At all events, they were valuable securities, which it was pure and wanton waste to burn. Still, the act being done, Beecher was “bound” in the heaviest recognizances to his own heart to profit by the motion; and the great question with him was, what was the best and shortest road to that desirable object? Supposing Lackington all right,—no disputed claim to the title, no litigation of the estate,—Beecher's best course had possibly been to slip his cable, make all sail, and part company with Davis forever. One grave difficulty, however, opposed itself to this scheme. How was it possible for any man walking the earth to get out of reach of Grog Davis? Had there been a planet allotted for the special use of peers,—were there some bright star above to which they could betake themselves and demand admission by showing their patent, and from which all of inferior birth were excluded, Beecher would assuredly have availed himself of his privilege; but, alas! whatever inequalities pervade life, there is but one earth to bear us living, and cover us when dead! Now, the portion of that earth which constitutes the continent of Europe Davis knew like a detective. A more hopeless undertaking could not be imagined than to try to escape him. Great as was his craft, it was nothing to his courage,—a courage that gave him a sort of affinity to a wild animal, so headlong, reckless, and desperate did it seem. Provoke him, he was ever ready for the conflict; outrage him, and only your life's blood could be the expiation. And what an outrage had it been if Beecher had taken this moment,—the first, perhaps the only one in all his life, in which Davis had accomplished a noble and generous action,—to desert him! How he could picture to his mind Grog, when the tidings were told him!—not overwhelmed by astonishment, not stunned by surprise, not irresolute even for a second, but starting up like a wounded tiger, and eager for pursuit, his fierce eyeballs glaring, and his sinewy hands closed with a convulsive grip. It was clear, therefore, that escape was impossible. What, then, was the alternative that remained? To abide,—sign a lifelong partnership with Grog, and marry Lizzy. “A stiff line of country,—a very stiff line of country, Annesley, my boy,” said he, addressing himself: “many a dangerous rasper, many a smashing fence there,—have you nerve for it?” Now Beecher knew life well enough to see that such an existence was, in reality, little else than a steeple-chase, and he questioned himself gravely whether he possessed head or hand for the effort. Grog, to be sure, was a marvellous trainer, and Lizzy,—what might not Lizzy achieve of success, with her beauty, her gracefulness, and her genius! It was not till after a long course of reflection that her image came up before him; but when once it did come, it was master of the scene. How he recalled all her winning ways, her siren voice, her ready wit, her easy, graceful motion, her playful manner, that gave to her beauty so many new phases of attraction! What a fascination was it that in her company he never remembered a sorrow,—nay, to think of her was the best solace he had ever found against the pain of gloomy reveries. She was never out of humour, never out of spirits,—always brilliant, sparkling, and happy-minded.
What a glorious thing to obtain a share of such a nature,—the very next best thing to having it oneself! “But all this was not Love,” breaks in my impatient reader. Very true; I admit it in all humility. It was not what you, nor perhaps I, would call by that name; but yet it was all that Annesley Beecher had to offer in that regard.
Have you never remarked the strange and curious efforts made by men who have long lived on narrow fortunes to acquit themselves respectably on succeeding to larger means? They know well enough that they need not pinch and screw and squeeze any longer,—that fortune has enlarged her boundaries, and that they can enter into wider, richer, and pleasanter pasturage,—and yet, for the life of them, they cannot make the venture! or if they do, it is with a sort of convulsive, spasmodic effort far more painful than pleasurable. Their old instincts press heavily upon them, and bear down all the promptings of their present prosperity; they really do not want all these bounties of fate,—they are half crashed by the shower of blessings. So is it precisely with your selfish man in his endeavors to expand into affection, and so was it with Beecher when he tried to be a lover.
Some moralists tell us that, even in the best natures, love is essentially a selfish passion. What amount of egotism, then, does it not include in those who are far—very far—from being “the best”? With all this, let us be just to poor Beecher. Whatever there was of heart about him, she had touched; whatever of good or kind or gentle in his neglected being existed, she had found the way to it. If he were capable of being anything better, she alone could have aided the reformation. If he were not to sink still lower and lower, it was to her helping hand his rescue would be owing. And somehow—though I cannot explain how—he felt and knew this to be the case. He could hear generous sentiments from her, and not deem them hypocrisy. He could listen to words of trust and hopefulness, and yet not smile at her credulity. She had gained that amount of ascendancy over his mind which subjugated all his own prejudices to her influence, and, like all weak natures, he was never so happy as in slavery. Last of all, what a prize it would be to be the husband of the most beautiful woman in Europe! There was a notoriety in that, far above the fame of winning “Derbys” or breaking Roulette Banks; and he pictured to himself how they would journey through the Continent, admired, worshipped, and envied,—for already he had invested himself with the qualities of his future wife, and gloried in the triumphs she was so sure to win.
“By Jove! I'll do it,” cried he, at last, as he slapped his hand on the table. “I don't care what they'll say, I will do it; and if there's any fellow dares to scoff or sneer at it, Grog shall shoot him. I'll make that bargain with him; and he 'll like it, for he loves fighting.” He summed up his resolution by imagining that the judgment of the world would run somehow in this fashion: “Wonderful fellow, that Annesley Beecher! It's not above a year since his brother lost the title, and there he is now, married to the most splendid woman in all Europe, living like a prince,—denying himself nothing, no matter what it cost,—and all by his own wits! Show me his equal anywhere! Lackington used to call him a 'flat.' I wonder what he 'd say now!”
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.
The little Hermitage of Glengariff, with its wooded park, its winding river, its deep solitudes fragrant with wild-rose and honeysuckle, is familiar to my reader. He has lingered there with me, strolling through leafy glades, over smooth turf, catching glimpses of blue sea through the dark foliage, and feeling all the intense ecstasy of a spot that seemed especially created for peaceful enjoyment. What a charm was in those tangled pathways, overhung with jessamine and arbutus, or now flanked by moss-clad rock, through whose fissures small crystal rivulets trickled slowly down into little basins beneath. How loaded the air with delicious perfume; what a voluptuous sense of estrangement from all passing care crept over one as he stole noiselessly along over the smooth sward, and drank in the mellow blackbird's note, blended with the distant murmur of the rippling river! And where is it all now? The park is now traversed in every direction with wide, unfinished roads; great open spaces appear at intervals, covered with building materials; yawning sand-quarries swarming with men; great brick-fields smoking in all the reeking oppression of that filthy manufacture; lime-kilns spreading their hateful breath on every side; vast cliffs of slate and granite-rock, making the air resound with their discordant crash, with all the vulgar tumult of a busy herd. If you turn seaward, the same ungraceful change is there: ugly and misshapen wharfs have replaced the picturesque huts of the fishermen; casks and hogsheads and bales and hampers litter the little beach where once the festooned net was wont to hang, and groups of half-drunken sailors riot and dispute where once the merry laugh of sportive childhood was all that woke the echoes. If the lover of the picturesque could weep tears of bitter sorrow over these changes, to the man of speculation and progress they were but signs of a glorious prosperity. The Grand Glengariff Villa Allotment and Marine Residence Company was a splendid scheme, whose shares were eagerly sought after at a high premium. Mr. Dunn must assuredly have lent all his energies to the enterprise, for descriptions of the spot were to be found throughout every corner of the three kingdoms. Colored lithographs and stereoscopes depicted its most seductive scenes through the pages of popular “weeklies,” and a dropping fire of interesting paragraphs continued to keep up the project before the public through the columns of the daily press. An “Illustrated News” of one week presented its subscribers with an extra engraving of the “Yachts entering Glengariff harbor after the regatta;” the next, it was a finished print of the “Lady Augusta Arden laying the foundation-stone of the Davenport Obelisk.” At one moment the conflict between wild nature and ingenious art would be shown by a view of a clearing in Glengariff forest, where the solid foundations of some proud edifice were seen rising amidst prostrate pines and fallen oak-trees, prosaic announcements in advertising columns giving to these pictorial devices all the solemn stability of fact, so that such localities as “Arden Terrace,” “Lackington Avenue,” “Glengariff Crescent,” and “Davenport Heights” became common and familiar to the public ear.
The imaginative literature of speculation—industrial fiction it might be called—has reached a very high development in our day. Not content with enlisting all the graces of fancy in the cause of enterprise, heightening the charms of scenery and aiding the interests of romance by historic association, it actually allies itself with the slighter infirmities of our social creed, and exalts the merits of certain favored spots by the blessed assurance that they are patronized by our betters. Amongst the many advantages fortune bestowed upon the grand Glengariff scheme was conspicuously one,—Dukes had approved, and Earls admired it “We are happy to learn,” said the “Post,” “that the Marquis of Duckington has intrusted the construction of his marine villa at Glengariff to the exquisite skill and taste of Sir Jeffrey Blocksley, who is, at present, engaged in preparing Noodleton Hall for his Grace the Duke of Rowood, at the same charming locality.” In the “Herald” we find: “The Earl of Hanaper is said to have paid no less than twelve thousand guineas for the small plot of land in which his bathing-lodge at Glengariff is to stand. It is only right to mention that the view from his windows will include the entire bay, from the Davenport Obelisk to Dunn Lighthouse,—a prospect unequalled, we venture to assert, in Europe.” And, greater than these, the “Chronicle” assures us, the arrival of a Treasury Lord, accompanied by the Chairman of the Board of Works, on Monday last, at Glengariff, proclaimed the gracious intention of her Majesty to honor this favored spot by selecting it for a future residence. “'Queen's Cot,' as it will be styled, will stand exactly on the site formerly occupied by the late residence of Lord Glengariff, well known as the Hermitage, and be framed and galleried in wood in the style so frequently seen in the Tyrol.”
Where is the born Briton would not feel the air balmier and the breeze more zephyr-like if he could see that it waved a royal standard? Where the Anglo-Saxon who would not think the sea more salubrious that helped to salt a duke? Where the alley that was not cooler if a marquis walked beneath its shadow? It is not that honest John Bull seeks the intimacy or acquaintance of these great folk; he has no such weakness or ambition,—he neither aspires to know or be known of them; the limit of his desire is to breathe the same mountain air, to walk the same chain pier, to be fed by their poulterer and butcher, and, maybe, buried by their undertaker. Were it the acquaintanceship he coveted, were it some participation in the habits of refined and elegant intercourse, far be it from us to say one word in disparagement of such ambition, satisfied, as we are, that in all that concerns the enjoyment of society, for the charms of a conversation where fewest prejudices prevail, where least exaggerations are found, where good feeling is rarely, good taste never, violated, the highest in rank are invariably the most conspicuous. But, unhappily, these are not the prizes sought after; the grand object being attained if the Joneses and Simpkinses can spend their autumn in the same locality with titled visitors, bathe in the same tides, and take their airings at the same hours. What an unspeakable happiness might it yield them to know they had been “bored” by the same monotony, and exhausted by the same ennuis!
They who were curious in such literature fancied they could detect the fine round hand of Mr. Hankes in the glowing descriptions of Glengariff. Brought up at the feet of that Gamaliel of appraisers, George Robins, he really did credit to his teachings. Nor was it alone the present delights of the spot he dwelled upon, but expatiated on the admirable features of an investment certain to realize, eventually, two or three hundred per cent It was, in fact, like buying uncleared land in the Bush, upon which, within a few years, streets and squares were to be found, purchasing for a mere nominal sum whole territories that to-morrow or next day were to be sold as building lots and valued by the foot.
As in a storm the tiniest creeks and most secluded coves feel in their little bays the wild influence that prevails without, and see their quiet waters ruffled and wave-tossed, so, too, prosperity follows the same law, and spreads its genial sunshine in a wide circle around the spot it brightens. For miles and miles along the shore the grand Glengariff scheme diffused the golden glory of its success. Little fishing-villages, solitary cottages in sequestered glens, lonely creeks, whose yellow strands had seldom seen a foot-track,—all felt it. The patient habits of humble industry seemed contemptible to those who came back to their quiet homesteads after seeing the wondrous doings at Glengariff; and marvellous, indeed, were the narratives of sudden fortunes. One had sold his little “shebeen” for more gold than he knew how to count; another had become rich by the price of the garden before his door; the shingly beach seemed paved with precious stones, the rocks appeared to have grown into bullion. How mean and despicable seemed daily toil; the weary labor of the field, the precarious life of the fisherman, in presence of such easy prosperity, were ignoble drudgery. It savored of superior intelligence to exchange the toil of the hands for the exercise of speculative talents, and each began to compute what some affluent purchaser might not pay for this barren plot, what that bleak promontory might not bring in this market of fanciful bidders.
Let us note the fact that the peasant was not a little amused by the absurd value which the rich man attached to objects long familiar and unprized by himself. The picturesque and the beautiful were elements so totally removed from all his estimate of worth, that he readily ascribed to something very like insanity the great man's fondness for them. That a group of stone pines on a jutting cliff, a lone and rocky island, a ruined wall, an ancient well canopied by a bower of honeysuckle, should be deemed objects of price, appeared to be the most capricious of all tastes; and, in his ignorance as to what imparted this value, he glutted the market with everything that occurred to him. Spots of ground the least attractive, tenements occupying the most ill-chosen sites, ugly and misshapen remains of cottages long deserted, were all vaunted as fully as good or better than their neighbors had sold for thousands. It must be owned, the market price of any article seemed the veriest lottery imaginable. One man could actually find no purchaser for four acres of the finest potato-garden in the county; another got a hundred guineas for his good-will of a bit of stony land that wouldn't feed a goat; here was a slated house no one would look at, there was a mud hovel a Lord and two Members of Parliament were outbidding each other over these three weeks. Could anything be more arbitrary or inexplicable than this? In fact, it almost seemed as if the old, the ruinous, the neglected, and the unprofitable had now usurped the place of all that was neat, orderly, or beneficial.
If we have suffered ourselves to be led into these remarks, they are not altogether digressionary. The Hermitage, we have said, was doomed. Common report alleged that the Queen had selected the spot for her future residence, and of a truth it was even worthy of such a destiny. Whether in reality royalty had made the choice, or that merely it was yet a speculation in hope of such an event, we cannot say, but an accomplished architect had already begun the work of reconstruction, and more than two-thirds of the former building were now demolished. The fragment that still remained was about the oldest part of the cottage, and not the least picturesque. It was a little wing with three gables to the front, the ancient framework, of black oak, quaintly ornamented with many a tasteful device and grim decoration. A little portico, whose columns were entirely concealed by the rich foliage of a rhododendron, stood before the windows, whose diamond panes told of an era when glass bore a very different value; a gorgeous flower-plat, one rich expanse of rare tulips and ranunculi, sloped from the portico to the river, over which a single plank formed a bridge. The stream, which was here deep and rock-bottomed, could be barely seen between the deep hanging branches of the weeping-ash; but its presence might be recognized by the occasional plash of a leaping trout, or the still louder stroke of a swan's wing as he sailed in solemn majesty over his silent domain. So straggling and wide-spreading had been the ancient building, that, although a part of the condemned structure, the clank of the mason's trowel and the turmoil of the falling materials could scarcely be heard in this quiet, sequestered spot. Here Sybella Kellett still lived,—left behind by her great protectors,—half in forgetfulness. Soon after the triumph of the Ossory Bank they had removed to Dublin, thence to London, where they now awaited the passage of a special bill to make the Glen-gariff allotment scheme a chartered company. Although the great turn in the fortunes of Glengariff had transmitted to other hands the direction and guidance of events there, her zeal, energy, and, above all, her knowledge of the people, especially marked her out as one whose services were most valuable. English officials, new to Ireland and its ways, quickly discovered the vast superiority she possessed over them in all dealings with the peasantry, whose prejudices she understood, and whose modes of thought were familiar to her. By none were her qualities more appreciated than by Mr. Hankes. There was a promptitude and decision in all she did, a ready-witted intelligence to encounter whatever difficulty arose, and a bold, purpose-like activity of character about her that amazed and delighted that astute gentleman.
“She 's worth us all, sir,” he would say to Sir Elkanah Paston, the great English engineer,—“worth us all. Her suggestions are priceless; see how she detected the cause of those shifting sands in the harbor, and supplied the remedy at once; mark how she struck out that line of road from the quarries; think of her transplanting those pinasters five-and-thirty feet high, and not a failure,—not one failure amongst them; and there's the promontory, now the most picturesque feature of the bay: and as to those terraced gardens that she laid out last week, I vow and declare Sir Joseph himself couldn't have done it better. And then, after a day of labor—riding, perhaps, five-and-twenty or thirty miles—she 'll sit down to her desk and write away half the night.”
If it had not been for one trait, Mr. Hankes would have pronounced her perfection; there was, however, a flaw, which the more he thought over the more did it puzzle him. She was eminently quick-sighted, keen to read motives and appreciate character, and yet with all this she invariably spoiled every bargain made with the people. Instead of taking advantage of their ignorance and inexperience, she was continually on the watch over their interests; instead of endeavoring to overreach them, she was mindful of their advantage, cautiously abstaining from everything that might affect their rights.
“We might have bought up half the county for a song, sir, if it were not for that girl,” Mr. Hankes would say; “she has risen the market on us everywhere. 'Let us be just,' she says. I want to be just, Miss Kellett, but just to ourselves.”
A pleasant phrase is that same one “just to ourselves;” but Mr. Hankes employed it like many other people, and never saw its absurdity.
Now, Sybella Kellett fancied that justice had a twofold obligation, and found herself very often the advocate of the poor man, patiently sustaining his rights, and demanding their recognition. Confidence, we are told by a great authority, is a plant of slow growth, and yet she acquired it in the end. The peasantry submitted to her claims the most complex and involved; they brought their quaint old contracts, half illegible by time and neglect; they recited, and confirmed by oral testimony, the strangest possible of tenures; they recounted long narratives of how they succeeded to this holding, and what claims they could prefer to that; histories that would have worn out almost any human patience to hear, and especially trying to one whose apprehension was of the quickest. And yet she would listen to the very end, make herself master of the case, and give it a deep and full consideration. This done, she decided; and to that decision none ever objected. Whatever her decree, it was accepted as just and fair, and even if a single disappointed or discontented suitor could have been found, he would have shrunk from avowing himself the opponent of public opinion.
It was, however, by the magic of her sympathy, by the secret charm of understanding their natures, and participating in every joy and sorrow of their hearts, that she gained her true ascendancy over them. There was nothing feigned or factitious in her feeling for them; it was not begotten of that courtly tact which knows names by heart, remembers little family traits, and treasures up an anecdote; it was true, heart-felt, honest interest in their welfare. She had watched them long and closely; she knew that the least amiable trait in their natures was also that which oftenest marred their fortunes,—distrust; and she set herself vigorously to work to uproot this vile, pernicious weed, the most noxious that ever poisoned the soil of a human heart. By her own truthful dealings with them she inspired truth, by her fairness she exacted fairness, and by the straightforward honesty of her words and actions they grew to learn how far easier and pleasanter could be the business of life where none sought to overreach his neighbor.