And a spectacle it was! Mrs. Clifford, about to become Mrs. Delaney, was determined that the change in her situation should be distinguished by becoming eclat. Always a silly woman, fond of extravagance and show, she prepared to celebrate an occasion of the greatest folly in a style of greater extravagance than ever. She accordingly collected as many of her former numerous acquaintances as were still willing to appear within a circle in which wealth was no longer to be found. Her house was small, but, as has been elsewhere stated in this narrative, she had made it smaller by stuffing it with the massive and costly furniture which had been less out of place in her former splendid mansion, and had there much better accorded with her fortunes. She now still further stuffed it with her guests. Of course, many of those present, came only to make merry at her expense. Her husband was almost entirely unknown to any of them; and it was enough to settle his pretensions in every mind, that, in the vigor of his youth, a really fine-looking, well-made person of twenty-five, he was about to connect himself, in marriage, with a haggard old woman of fifty, whose personal charms, never very great, were nearly all gone; and whose mind and manners, the grace of youth being no more, were so very deficient in all those qualities which might commend one to a husband. So far as externals went, Mr. Delaney was a very proper man. He behaved with sufficient decorum, and unexpected modesty; and went through the ordeal as composedly as if the occurrence had been frequently before familiar; as indeed we shall discover in the sequel, was certainly the case. But this does not concern us now.
Three rooms were thrown open to the company. We had refreshments in abundance and great variety, and at a certain hour, we were astounded by the clamor of tamborine and fiddle giving due notice to the dancers. Among my few social accomplishments, this of dancing had never been included. Naturally, I should, perhaps, be considered an awkward man. I was conscious of this awkwardness at all times when not excited by action or some earnest motive. I was incapable of that graceful loitering, that flexibleness of mind and body, which excludes the idea of intensity, of every sort, and which constitutes one of the great essentials for success in a ball-room. It was in this very respect that my FRIEND, William Edgerton, may be said to have excelled most young men of our acquaintance. He was what, in common speech, is called an accomplished man. Of very graceful person, without much earnestness of character, he had acquired a certain fastidiousness of taste on the subjects of costume and manners, which, without Brummellizing, he yet carried to an extent which betrayed a considerable degree of mental feebleness. This somewhat assimilated him to the fashionable dandy. He walked with an air equally graceful, noble, and unaffected. He was never on stilts, yet he was always EN REGLE. He had as little maurias, honte as maurais ton. In short, whatever might have been his deficiencies, he was confessedly a very neat specimen of the fine gentleman in its most commendable social sense.
William Edgerton was among the guests of Mrs. Clifford. There had been no previous intimacy between the Edgerton and Clifford families, yet he had been specially invited. Mrs. C. could have had but a single motive for inviting him—so I thought—that of making her evening a jam. She had just that ambition of the lady of small fashion, who regards the number rather than the quality of her guests, and would prefer a saloon full of Esquimaux or Kanzas, and would partake of their sea-blubber, rather than lose the triumph of making more noise than her rival neighbors, the Sprigginses or Wigginses.
William Edgerton did not seek me; but, when I left the side of my wife to pay my respects to some ladies at the opposite end of the room, he approached her. A keen pang that rendered me unconscious of everything I was saying—nay, even of the persons to whom I was addressing myself—shot through my heart, as I beheld him crossing the floor to the place that I had left. Involuntarily, the gracefulness of his person and carriage provoked in my mind a contrast most unfavorable to me, between him and myself. It was no satisfaction to me at that time to reflect that I was less graceful only because I was more earnest, more sincere. This is usually the case, and is reasonably accounted for. Intensity and great earnestness of character, are wholly inconsistent with a nice attention to forms, carriage, demeanor. But what does a lady care for such distinction? Does she even suspect it? Not often. If she could only fancy for a moment that the well-made but awkward man who traverses the room before her, carried in his breast a soul of such ardency and volume that it subjected his very motion arbitrarily to its own excitements, its own convulsions; that the very awkwardness which offended her was the result of the most deep and passionate feelings—feelings which, like the buried flame in the mountain, are continually boiling up for utterance—convulsing the prison-house which retained them—shaking the solid earth with their pent throes, that will not always be pent! Ah! these things do not move ladies' fancies. There are very few endowed with that thoughtful pride which disdains surfaces. Julia Clifford was one of these few! But I little knew it then.
The approach of William Edgerton to my wife was a signal for my torture all that evening. From that moment my mind was wandering. I knew little what I said, or looked, or did. My chat with those around me became, on a sudden, bald and disjointed; and when I beheld the pair, both nobly formed—he tall, graceful, manly—she, beautiful and bending as a lily—a purity beaming, amid all their brightness, from her eyes—a purity which, I had taught myself to believe, was no longer in her heart—when I beheld them advance into the floor, conspicuous over all the rest, in most eyes, as they certainly were in mine—I can not describe—you may conjecture—the cold, fainting sickness which overcame my soul. I could have lain myself down upon the lone, midnight rocks, and surrendered myself to solitude and storm for ever.
They entered the stately measures of the Spanish dance But the grace of movement which won the murmuring applause of all around me, only increased the agony of my afflictions. I saw their linked arms—the compliant, willing movements of their mutual forms—and dark were the images of guilt and hateful suspicion which entered my brain and grew to vivid forms, in action before me. I fancied the fierce, passionate yearnings in the heart of Edgerton; I trembled when I conjectured what fancies filled the heart of Julia. I can not linger over the torturing influence of those moments—moments which seemed ages! Enough that I was maddened with the delirium, now almost as its height, which had been for months preying upon my brain like some corroding serpent.
The dance closed. Edgerton conducted her to a seat and placed himself beside her. I kept aloof. I watched them from a distance; and in sustaining this watch, I was compelled to recall my senses with a stern degree of resolution which should save my feelings from the detection of those inquisitive glances which I fancied were all around me. If I was weakest among men, in the disease which destroyed my peace, Heaven knows I was among the strongest of men in concealing its expression at the very moment when every pulsation of my heart was an especial agony. I affected indifference, threw myself into the midst of a group of such people as talk of their neighbor's bonnets or breeches, the rise of stocks, or the fall of rain; and how Mrs. Jenkins has set up her carriage, and Mr. Higgins has been compelled to set down, and to sell out his. Interesting details, perhaps, without which the nine in ten might as well be tongueless or tongue-tied for ever. This stuff I had to hear, and requite in like currency, while my brain was boiling, and dim, but terrible images of strife, and storm, and agony, were rushing through it with howling and hisses. There I sat, thus seemingly engaged, but with an eye ever glancing covertly to the two, who, at that moment, absorbed every thought of my mind, every feeling of my heart, and filled them both with the bitterest commotion. The glances of their mutual eyes, the expression of lip and check, I watched with the keenest analysis of suspicion. In Julia, I saw sweetness mixed with a delicate reserve. She seemed to speak but little. Her eyes wandered from her companion—frequently to where I sat—-but I gave myself due credit, at such moments, for the ability with which I conducted my own espionage. My inference—equally unjust and unnatural—that her timid glances to my-self denoted in her bosom a consciousness of wrong—seemed to me the most natural and inevitable inference. And when I noted the ardency of Edgerton's gaze, his close, unrelaxing attentions, the seeming forgetfulness of all around which he manifested, I hurried to the conclusion that his words were of a character to suit his looks, and betray in more emphatic utterance, the passion which they also betrayed.
The signal, after a short respite, devoted to fruits, ices, &c., was made for the dancers, and William Edgerton rose. I noted his bow to my wife, saw that he spoke, and necessarily concluded, that he again solicited her to dance. Her lips moved—she bowed slightly—and he again took his seat beside her. I inferred from this that she declined to dance a second time. She was certainly more prudent than himself. I assigned to prudence—to policy—on her part, what might well have been placed to a nobler motive. I went further.
“She will not dance with him,” said the busy fiend at my shoulder, “for the very reason that she prefers a quiet seat beside him. In the dance they mingle with others; they can not speak with so much ease and safety. Now she has him all to herself.”
I dashed away, forgetful, gloomily, from the knot by which I had been encompassed. I passed into the adjoining room, which was connected by folding doors, with that I left. The crowd necessarily grouped itself around the dancers, and (sic) a window-jamb, I stood absolutely forgetting where I was alone among the many—with my eye stretching over the heads of the flying masses, to the remote spot where my wife still sat with Edgerton. I was aroused from my hateful dream by a slight touch upon my arm. I started with a painful sense of my own weakness—with a natural dread that the secret misery under which I labored was no longer a secret. I writhed under the conviction that the cold, the sneering, and the worthless, were making merry with my afflictions. I met the gaze of the bride—the mistress of ceremonies—my wife's mother Mrs. Delaney, late Clifford. I shuddered as I beheld her glance. I could not mistake the volume of meaning in her smile—that wretched smile of her thin, withered lips, brimful of malignant cunning, which said emphatically as such smile could say:—
“I see you on the rack; I know that you are writhing; and I enjoy your tortures.”
I started, as if to leave her, with a look of fell defiance, roused, ready to burst forth into utterance, upon my own face. But she gently detained my arm.
“You are troubled.”
“No.”
“Ah! but you are. Stop awhile. You will feel better.”
“Thank you; but I feel very well.”
“No, no, you do not. You can not deceive me. I know where the shoe pinches; but what did you expect? Were you simple enough to imagine that a woman would be true to her husband, who was false to her own mother?”
“Fiend!” I muttered in her ear.
“Ha! ha! ha!” was the unmeasured response of the bel dame, loud enough for the whole house to hear. I darted from her grasp, which would have detained me still, made my way—how I know not—out of the house, and found myself almost gasping for breath, in the open air of the street.
She, at least, had been sagacious enough to find out my secret
THE fiendish suggestion of the mother, against the purity of her own child, almost divested me, for the moment, of my own rancor—almost deprived me of my suspicions! Could anything have been more thoroughly horrible and atrocious! It certainly betrayed how deep was the malignant hatred which she had ever borne to myself, and of which her daughter was now required to bear a portion. What a volume of human depravity was opened on my sight, by that single utterance of this wretched mother. Guilt and sin! ye are, indeed, the masters everywhere! How universal is your dominion! How ye rage—how ye riot among souls, and minds, and fancies—never utterly overthrown anywhere—busy always—everywhere—sovereign in how many hapless regions of the heart! Who is pure among men? Who can be sure of himself for a day—an hour? Precious few! None, certainly, who do not distrust their own strength with a humility only to be won from prayer—prayer coupled with moderate desires, and the presence of a constant thought, which teaches that time is a mere agent of eternity, and he who works for the one only, will not even be secure of peace during the period for which he works. Truly, he who lives not for the future is the very last who may reasonably hope to enjoy the blessings of the present.
But this was not the season, nor was mine the mood, for moral reflections of any sort. My secret was known! That was everything. When the conduct of William Edgerton had become such, as to awaken the notice of third persons, I was justified in exacting from him the heavy responsibility he had incurred. The vague, indistinct conviction had long floated before my mind, that I would be required to take his life. The period which was to render this task necessary, was that which had now arrived—when it had been seen by others—not interested like myself—that he had passed the bounds of propriety. Of course, I was arguing in a circle, from which I should have found it impossible to extricate myself. Thousands might have seen that I was jealous, without being able to see any just cause for my jealousy. It was, however, quite enough for a proud spirit like my own, that its secret fear should be revealed. It did not much matter, after this, whether my suspicions were, or were not causeless. It was enough that they were known—that busy, meddling women, and men about town, should distinguish me with a finger—should say: “His wife is very pretty and—very charitable!”
“Ha! ha! ha!”
I, too, could laugh, under such musings, and in the spirit of Mrs. Delaney—late Clifford.
“Ha! ha! ha!” The street echoed, beneath the windows of that reputable lady, with my involuntary, fiendish laughter. I stood there—and the music rang through my senses like the cries of exulting demons. She was there—of my wife the thoughts ran thus, she was there, whirling, perchance, in the mazes of that voluptuous dance, then recently become fashionable among us; his arm about her waist—her form inclining to his, as if seeking support and succor—and both of them forgetting all things but the mutual intoxication which swallowed up all things and thoughts in the absorbing sensuality of one! Or, perhaps, still apart, they sat to themselves—her ear fastened upon his lips—her consciousness given wholly to his discourse; and that discourse!—“Ha! ha! ha!”—I laughed again, as I hurried away from the spot, with gigantic strides, taking the direction which led to my own lonely dwelling.
All was stillness there, but there was no peace. I entered the piazza, threw myself into a chair, and gazed out upon the leaves and waters, trying to collect my scattered thoughts—trying to subdue my blood, that my thoughts might meet in deliberation upon the desolating prospect which was then spread before me. But I struggled for this in vain. But one thought was mine at that hour. But one fearful image gathered in completeness and strength before my mind; and that was one calculated to banish all others and baffle all their deliberations.
“The blood of William Edgerton must be shed, and by these hands! My disgrace is known! There is no help for it!”
I had repeatedly resolved this gloomy conviction in my mind. It was now to receive shape and substance. It was a thing no longer to be thought upon. It was a thing to be done! This necessity staggered me. The kindness of the father, the kindness and long true friendship of the son himself, how could I requite this after such a fashion? How penetrate the peaceful home of that fond family with an arm of such violence, as to tend their proudest offspring from the parental tree, and, perhaps, in destroying it, blight for ever the venerable trunk upon which it was borne? Let it not be fancied that these feelings were without effect. Let it not be supposed that I weakly, willingly, yielded to the conviction of this cruel necessity—that I determined, without a struggle, upon this seemingly necessary measure! Verily, I then, in that dreary house and hour, wrestled like a strong man with the unbidden prompter, who counselled me to the deed of blood. I wrestled with him as the desperate man, knowing the supernatural strength of his enemy, wrestles with a demon. The strife was a fearful one. I could not suppress my groans of agony; and the cold sweat gathered and stood upon my forehead in thick, clammy drops.
But the struggle was vain to effect my resolution. It had been too long present as a distinct image before my imagination. I had already become too familiar with its aspects. It had the look of a fate to my mind. I fancied myself—as probably most men will do, whose self-esteem is very active—the victim of a fate. My whole life tended to confirm this notion. I was chosen out from the beginning for a certain work, in which, my-self a victim, I was to carry out the designs of destiny in the ease of other victims. I had struggled long not to believe this—not to do this work. But the struggle was at last at an end. I was convinced, finally. I was ready for the work. I was resigned to my fate. But oh! how grateful once had one of these victims seemed in my eyes! How beautiful, and still how dear was the other!
I rose from my seat and struggle, with the air of one strengthened by thoughtful resolution for any act. Prayer could not have strengthened me more. I felt a singular degree of strength. I can well understand that of fanaticism from my own feelings. Nothing, in the shape of danger, could have deterred me from the deed. I positively had no remaining fear. But, how was it to be done? With this inquiry in my mind, still unanswered, I took a light, went into my study, and drew from my escritoir the few small weapons which I had in possession. These are soon named. One was a neat little dirk—broad in blade, double-edged, short—sufficient for all my purposes. I examined my pistols and loaded them—a small, neat pair, the present of Edgerton himself. This fact determined me not to use them. I restored them to the escritoir; put the dagger between the folds of my vest, and prepared to leave the house.
At this moment a heavy knocking was heard at the gate I resumed my seat in the piazza until the servant should report the nature of the interruption. He was followed in by my friend Kingsley.
“I am glad to find you home,” said he abruptly, grasping my hand; “home, and not a-bed. The hour is late, I know, but the devil never keeps ordinary hours, and men, driven by his satanic majesty, have some excuse for following his example.”
This exordium promised something unusual. The manner of Kingsley betrayed excitement. Nay, it was soon evident he had been taking a superfluous quantity of wine. His voice was thick, and he spoke excessively loud in order to be intelligible. There was something like a defying desperation in his tones, in the dare-devil swagger of his movement, and the almost iron pressure of his grasp upon my fingers. I subdued my own passions—nay, they were subdued—singularly so, by the resolution I had made before his entrance, and was able, therefore, to appear calm and smooth as summer water in his eyes.
“What's the matter?” I asked. “You seem excited. No evil, I trust?”
“Evil, indeed! Not much; but even if it were, I tell you Ned Clifford, I am just now in the mood to say, 'Evil be thou my good!' I have reason to say it; and, by the powers, it will not be said only. I will make evil my good after a fashion of my own; but how much good or now little evil, will be yet another question.”
I was interested, in spite of myself, by the vehemence and unusual seriousness of my companion's manner. It somewhat harmonized with my own temper, and in a measure beguiled me into a momentary heedlessness of my particular griefs. I urged him to a more frank statement of the things that troubled him.
“Can I serve you in anything?” was the inquiry which concluded my assurance that I was sufficiently his friend to sympathize with him in his afflictions.
“You can serve me, and I need your service. You can serve me in two respects; nay, if you do not, I know not which side to turn for service. In the first place, then, I wish a hundred dollars, and I wish it to-night. In the next place, I wish a companion—a man not easily scared, who will follow where I lead him, and take part in a 'knock down and drag out,' if it should become necessary, without asking the why and the wherefore.”
“You shall have the money, Kingsley.”
“Stay! Perhaps I may never pay it you again.”
“I shall regret that, for I can ill afford to lose any such sum; but, even to know that would not prevent me from lending you in your need. It is enough that you are in want. You tell me you are.”
“I am; but my wants are not such as a pure moralist, however strong might be his friendship, would be disposed to gratify. I shall stake that money on the roll of the dice.”
“Impossible! You do not game!”
“True as a gospel! Hark you, Clifford, and save us the homily. I am a ruined man—ruined by the d—-d dice and the deceptive cards. I shall pay you back the hundred dollars, but I shall have precious little after that.”
“But, surely, I was not misinformed. You were rich a few years ago.”
“A few months! But the case is the same. I am poor now. My riches had wings. I am reduced to my tail-feathers; but I will flourish with these to the last. I have fallen among thieves. They have clipped my plumage—close! close! They have stripped me of everything, but some small matters which, when sold, will just suffice to get me horse or halter. Some dirty acres in Alabama, are all I absolutely have remaining of any real value. But there is one thing that I may have, if I stake boldly for it.”
“You will only lose again. The hope of a gamester rises, in due degree, with the increasing lightness of his pockets.”
“Do not mistake me. I hope nothing from your hundred dollars; indeed, fifty will answer. I propose to employ it only as a pretext. I expect to lose it, and lose it this very night. But it will give me an opportunity to ascertain what I have suspected—too late, indeed, to save myself—that I have been the victim of false dice and figured cards. You say you will let me have the money—will you go with me—Will you see me through?”
He extended his hand as he spoke, I grasped it. He shook it with a hearty feeling, while a bright smile almost, dissipated the cloud from his face.
“You are a man, Clifford; and now, would you believe it, our excellent, immaculate young friend, Mr. William Edgerton, refused me this money.”
“Strange! Edgerton is not selfish—he is not mean! From THAT vice he is certainly free.”
“By G-d, I don't know that! He refused me the money; refused to go with me. I saw him at eight o'clock, at his own room, where he was rigging himself out for some d—-d tea-drinking; told him my straits, my losses, my object and all; and what was his plea, think you? Why, he disapproved of gambling; couldn't think of lending me a sixpence for any such purpose; and, as for going into such a suspected quarter as a gambling-house—wouldn't do it for the world! Was there ever such a puritan—such a humbug!”
I did William Edgerton only justice in my reply;—
“I've no doubt, Kingsley, that such are his real principles. He would have lent you thrice the money, freely, had not your object been avowed.”
“But what a devil sort of despotism is that! Can't a friend get drunk, or game, or swagger? may he not depart from the highway, and sidle into an alley, without souring his friend's temper and making him stingy? I don't understand it at all. I'm glad, at least, to find you are of another sort of stuff.”
“Nay, Kingsley, I will lend you the money—go with you, as you desire; but, understand me, I do not, no more than Edgerton, approve of this gambling.”
“Tut, tut! I don't want you to preach, though I could hear you with a devilish sight better temper than him. There's a hundred things that one's friend don't approve of, but shall he desert him for all that? Leave him to be plucked, and kicked, and abandoned; and, moralizing, with a grin over his fain, say, 'I told you so!' No! no! Give me the fellow that'll stand by me—keep me out of evil, if he can, but stand by me, nevertheless, at all events; and not suffer me to be swallowed up at the last moment, when an outstretched finger might save!”
“But, am I to think, Kingsley, that my help can do this?”
“No! not exactly—it may—but if it does not, what then? I shall lose the money, but you shan't. But, truth to speak, Clifford, I do not propose to myself the recovery of what is lost. I know I have been the prey of sharpers. That is to say, I have every reason to believe so, and I have had a hint to that effect. I have a spice of the devil in me, accordingly—a mocking, mortifying devil, that jeers me with my d—-d simplicity; and I propose to go and let the swindlers know, in a way as little circuitous as possible, that I am not blind to the fact that they have made an ass of me. There will be some satisfaction, in that. I will write myself down an ass, for their benefit, only to enjoy the satisfaction of kicking a little like one. I invite you on a kicking expedition.”
I felt for my dagger in my bosom, as I answered: “Very good! Have you weapons?”
“Hickory! You see! a moderate axe-handle, that'll make its sentiments understood You are warned; you see what you are to expect. I will not take you in. Are you ready for a scratch?”
“Allons!” I replied indifferently. The truth is, my bosom was full of a recklessness of a far more sweeping character than his own. I was in the mood for strife. It promised only the more thoroughly to prepare me for the darker trial which was before me, and which my secret soul was meditating all the while with an intense and gloomy tenacity of purpose.
I got him the money he required; and we were about to set forth, when he exclaimed abruptly:—
“Put money in thy own purse, Clifford. It may be necessary to practise a little ruse de guerre. In playing my game, it may be important that you should deem to play one also. You have no scruples to fling the dice or flirt the cards for the nonce.”
“None! But I should like to know your plans. Tell me, in the first place, your precise object.”
“Simply to detect certain knaves, and save certain fools. The knaves have ruined me, and I make no lamentations; but there are others in their clutches still, quite as ignorant as myself, who may be saved before they are stripped entirely. The object is not a bad one; for the rest, trust to me. I mean no harm; a little mischief only; and, at most, a tweak of one proboscis or more. There's risk, of a certainty, as there is in sucking an egg; but you are a man! Not like that d—d milksop, who gives up his friend as soon as he gets poor, and proffers him a sermon by way of telling him—precious information, truly—that he's in a fair way to the devil. The toss of a copper for such friendship.”
The humor of Kingsley tallied somewhat with my own. It had in it a spice of recklessness which pleased me. Perhaps, too, it tended somewhat to relieve and qualify the intenseness of that excitement in my brain, which sometimes rose to such a pitch as led me to apprehend madness. That I was a monomaniac has been admitted, perhaps not a moment too soon for the author's candor. The sagacity of the reader made him independent of the admission.
“Your beggar,” said he, somewhat abruptly, “has the only true feeling of independence. Absolutely, I never knew till now what it was to be thoroughly indifferent to what might come to-morrow. I positively care for nothing. I am the first prince Sans Souci. That shall be my title when I get among the Cumanches. I will have a code of laws and constitution to suit my particular humor, and my chief penalties shall be inflicted upon your fellows who grunt. A sigh shall incur a week's solitary confinement; a sour look, pillory; and for a groan, the hypochondriac shall lose his head! My prime minister shall be the fellow who can longest use his tongue without losing his temper; and the man who can laugh and jest shall always have his plate at my table. Good-humored people shall have peculiar privileges. It shall be a certificate in one's favor, entitling him to so many acres, that he takes the world kindly. Such a man shall have two wives, provided he can keep them peacefully in the same house. His daughters shall have dowries from government. The prince of Sans Souci will himself provide for them.”
I made some answer, half jest, half earnest, in a mood of mocking bitterness, which, perhaps, more truly accorded with the temper of both of us. He did not perceive the bitterness, however.
“You jest, but mine is not altogether jest. Half-serious glimpses of what I tell you float certainly before my eyes. Such things may happen yet, and the southwest is the world in which you are yet to see many wondrous things. The time must come when Texas shall stretch to Mexico. These miserable slaves and reptiles—mongrel Spaniards and mongrel Indians—can not very long bedevil that great country. It must fall into other hands. It must be ours; and who, when that time comes, will carry into the field more thorough claims than mine. Master of myself, fearing nothing, caring for nothing; with a gallant steed that knows my voice, and answers with whinny and pricked ears to my encouragement; with a rifle that can clip a Mexican—dollar or man—at a hundred yards, and a heart that can defy the devil over his own dish, and with but one spoon between us—and who so likely to win his principality as myself? Look to see it, Clifford, I shall be a prince in Mexico; and when you hear of the prince Sans Souci be assured you know the man. Seek me then, and ask what you will. You have CARTE BLANCHE from this moment.”
“I shall certainly keep it in mind, prince.”
“Do so: laugh as you please; it is only becoming that you should laugh in the presence of Sans Souci; but do not laugh in token of irreverence. You must not be too skeptical. It does not follow because I am a dare-devil that I am a thoughtless one. I have been so, perhaps, but from this moment I go to work! I shall be fettered by fortune no longer. Thank Heaven, that is now done—gone—lost; I am free from its incumbrance! I feel myself a prince, indeed; a man, every inch of me. This night I devote as a fitting finish to my old lifeless existence.
“Hear me!” he continued; “you laugh again, Clifford—very good! Laugh on, but hear me. You shall hear more of me in time to come. I fancy I shall be a fellow of considerable importance, not in Texas simply, or in Mexico, but here—here in your own self-opinionated United States. Suppose a few things, and go along with me while I speak them. That Texas must stretch to Mexico I hold to be certain. A very few years will do that. It needs only thirty thousand more men from our southern and southwestern States, and the brave old English tongue shall arouse the best echoes in the city of Montezuma! That done, and floods of people pour in from all quarters. It needs nothing but a feeling of security and peace—a conviction that property will be tolerably safe, under a tolerably stable government—in other words, an Anglo-Saxon government—to tempt millions of discontented emigrants from all quarters of the world. Will this result have no results of its own, think you? Will the immense resources of Mexico and Texas, represented, as they then will be, by a stern, pressing, performing people, have no effect upon these states of yours? They will have the greatest; nay, they will become essential to balance your own federal weight, and keep you all in equilibrio. For look you, the first hubbub with Great Britain gives you Canada, at the expense of some of your coast-towns, a few millions of treasure, and the loss of fifty thousand men. A bad exchange for the south; for Canada will make six ponderous states, the policy and character of which will be New England all over. To balance this you will have your Florida territory, {Footnote: Florida, since admitted, but unhappily, as a single state.} of which two feeble states may be made. Not enough for your purposes. But the same war with England will render it necessary that your fleet should take possession of Cuba; which, after a civil apology to Spain for taking such a liberty with her possessions, and, perhaps, a few million by way of hush money, you carve into two more states, and, in this manner, try to bolster up your federal relations. How many of her West India islands Great Britain will be able to keep after such a war, is another problem, the solution of which will depend upon the relative strength of fleets and success of seamanship. These islands, which should of right be ours, and without which we can never be sure against any maritime power so great and so arrogant as England, once conquered by our arms, find their natural, moral, and social affinities in the southern states entirely; and, so far, contribute to strengthen you in your congressional conflicts. But these are not enough, for the simple reason that the population of states, purely agricultural, never makes that progress which is made in this respect by a commercial and manufacturing people. With the command of the gulf, the possession of an independent fleet by the Texans, the political characteristics of the states of Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, must undergo certain marked changes, which can only be neutralized by the adoption, on the part of these states, of a new policy corresponding with their change of interests. How far the cultivation of cotton by Texas will lead to its abandonment in Carolina and Georgia, is a question which the next ten years must solve. That they will be compelled to abandon it is inevitable, unless they can succeed in raising the article at six cents; a probability which no cotton-planter in either of these states will be willing to contemplate now for an instant. Meanwhile, Texas is spreading herself right and left. She conquers the Cumanches, subdues the native mongrel Mexicans. Her Hoestons and Lamars are succeeded by other and abler men, under whose control the evils of government, which followed the sway of such small animals as the Guerreros, and the Bolivars, the Bustamentes, and Sant' Annas, are very soon eradicated; and the country, the noblest that God ever gave to man in the hands of men, becomes a country!—a great and glorious country—stretching from the gulf to the Pacific, and providing the natural balance, which, in a few years, the southern state of this Union will inevitably need, by which alone your great confederacy will be kept together. You see, therefore, why I speed to Texas. Should I not, with my philosophy, my horse and my rifle—not to speak of stout heart and hand—reasonably aspire to the principality of Sans Souci? Laugh, if you please, but be not irreverent. You shall have carte blanche then if you will have a becoming faith now, on the word of a prince. I say it, It is written—Sans Souci.” {Footnote: All these speculations were written in 1840-'41. I need not remark upon those which have since been verified.}
“Altissimo, excellentissimo, serenissimo!”
“Bravissimo, you improve; you will make a courtier—but mum now about my projects. We must suppress our dignities here. We are at the entrance of our hell!”
We had reached the door of a low habitation in a secluded street. The house was of wood—an ordinary hovel of two stories. A cluster of similar fabrics surrounded it, most of which I afterward discovered—though this fact could not be conjectured by an observer from the street—were connected by blind alleys, inner courts, and chambers and passages running along the ground floors. We stopped an instant, Kingsley having his hand upon the little iron knocker, a single black ring, that worked against an ordinary iron knob.
“Before I knock,” said he, in a whisper, “before I knock, Clifford, let me say that if you have any reluctance—”
“None! none! knock!”
“You will meet with some dirty rascals, and you must not only meet them with seeming civility, but as if you shared in their tastes—sought the same objects only—the getting of money—the only object which alone is clearly comprehensible by their understanding.”
“Go ahead! I will see you through.”
“A word more! Get yourself in play at a different table from me. You will find rogues enough around, ready to relieve you of your Mexicans. Leave me to my particular enemy; you will soon see whose shield I touch—but keep an occasional eye upon us; and all that I ask farther at your hands, should you see us by the ears, is to keep other fingers from taking hold of mine.”
A heavy stroke of the knocker, followed by three light ones and a second heavy stroke, produced us an answer from within. The door unclosed, and by the light of a dim lamp, I discovered before me, as a sort of warden, a little yellow, weather-beaten, skin-dried Frenchman, whom I had frequently before seen at a fruit-shop in another part of the city. He looked at me, however, without any sign of recognition—with a blank, dull, indifferent countenance; motioned us forward in silence, and reclosing the door, sunk into a chair immediately behind it. I followed my companion through a passage which was unfathomably dark, up a flight of stairs, which led us into a sort of refreshment room. Tables were spread, with decanters, glasses, and tumblers upon them, that appeared to be in continual use. In a recess, stood that evil convenience of most American establishments, whether on land or sea, a liquor bar; its shelves crowded with bottles, all of which seemed amply full, and ready to complete the overthrow of the victim, which the other appliances of such a dwelling must already have actively begun.
“Here you may take in the Dutch courage, Clifford, should you lack the native. This, I know, is not the case with you, and yet the novelty of one's situation frequently overcomes a sensitive mind like fear. Perhaps a julep may be of use.”
“None for me. I need no farther stimulant than the mere sense of movement. I take fire, like a wheel, by my own progress.”
“Pretty much the same case with myself. But I have been in the habit of drinking here, of late, and too deeply. To-night, however, as I said before, ends all these habits. If there is honey in the carcass, and strength from the sleep, there is wisdom from the folly, and virtue from the vice. There is a moral as well as a physical recoil, that most certainly follows the overcharge; and really, speaking according to my sincere conviction I never felt myself to be a better man, than just at this moment when I am about to do that which my own sense of morality fails altogether to justify. I do not know that I make you understand my feelings; I scarcely understand them myself; but of this sort they are, and I am really persuaded that I never felt in a better disposition to be a good man and a working man than just at the close of a career which has been equally profligate and idle.”
I think my companion can be understood. There seems, in fact very little mystery in his moral progress. I understood him, but did not answer. I was not anxious to keep up the ball of conversation which he had begun with a spirit so mixed up of contradictions—so earnest yet so playful. A deep sense of shame unquestionably lurked beneath his levity; and yet I make no question that he felt in truth, and for the first time, that degree of mental hardihood of which he boasted.
He advanced through the refreshment-room, to a door which led to an apartment in an adjoining tenement. It was closed, but unfastened. The sound of voices, an occasional buzz, or a slight murmur, came to our ears from within; that of rattling dice and rolling balls was more regular and more intelligible. Kingsley laid his hand upon the latch, and looked round to me. His eye was kindled with a playful sort of malicious light. A smile of pleasant bitterness was on his lips. He said to me in a whisper:—
“Stake your money slowly. A Mexican is the lowest stake. Keep to that, and lose as little as possible. You will soon see me sufficiently busy, and I will endeavor to urge my labors forward, so as to make your purgatory a short one. I shall only wait till I feel myself cheated in the game, to begin that which I came for. See that I have fair play in THAT, MON AMI, and I care very little about the other.”
He lifted the latch as he concluded, and I followed him into the apartment.