CHAPTER VI
“In this disposition was I, when looking out of my window one day to take the air, I perceived a kind of peasant who looked at me very attentively.”
—GIL BLAS.
A SUMMER’S evening in a retired country town has something melancholy in it. You have the streets of a metropolis without their animated bustle—you have the stillness of the country without its birds and flowers. The reader will please to bring before him a quiet street in the quiet country town of C———, in a quiet evening in quiet June; the picture is not mirthful—two young dogs are playing in the street, one old dog is watching by a newly-painted door. A few ladies of middle age move noiselessly along the pavement, returning home to tea: they wear white muslin dresses, green spencers a little faded, straw poke bonnets with green or coffee-coloured gauze veils. By twos and threes they have disappeared within the thresholds of small neat houses, with little railings, inclosing little green plots. Threshold, house, railing, and plot, each as like to the other as are those small commodities called “nest-tables,” which, “even as a broken mirror multiplies,” summon to the bewildered eye countless iterations of one four-legged individual. Paradise Place was a set of nest houses.
A cow had passed through the streets with a milkwoman behind; two young and gay shopmen “looking after the gals,” had reconnoitred the street, and vanished in despair. The twilight advanced—but gently; and though a star or two were up, the air was still clear. At the open window of one of the tenements in this street sat Alice Darvil. She had been working (that pretty excuse to women for thinking), and as the thoughts grew upon her, and the evening waned, the work had fallen upon her knee, and her hands dropped mechanically on her lap. Her profile was turned towards the street; but without moving her head or changing her attitude, her eyes glanced from time to time to her little girl, who nestled on the ground beside her, tired with play; and wondering, perhaps, why she was not already in bed, seemed as tranquil as the young mother herself. And sometimes Alice’s eyes filled with tears—and then she sighed, as if to sigh the tears away. But poor Alice, if she grieved, hers was now a silent and a patient grief.
The street was deserted of all other passengers, when a man passed along the pavement on the side opposite to Alice’s house. His garb was rude and homely, between that of a labourer and a farmer; but still there was an affectation of tawdry show about the bright scarlet handkerchief, tied, in a sailor or smuggler fashion, round the sinewy throat; the hat was set jauntily on one side, and, dangling many an inch from the gaily-striped waistcoat, glittered a watch-chain and seals, which appeared suspiciously out of character with the rest of his attire. The passenger was covered with dust; and as the street was in a suburb communicating with the high-road, and formed one of the entrances into the town, he had probably, after long day’s journey, reached his evening’s destination. The looks of this stranger wore anxious, restless, and perturbed. In his gait and swagger there was the recklessness of the professional blackguard; but in his vigilant, prying, suspicious eyes there was a hang-dog expression of apprehension and fear. He seemed a man upon whom Crime had set its significant mark—and who saw a purse with one eye and a gibbet with the other. Alice did not note the stranger, until she herself had attracted and centred all his attention. He halted abruptly as he caught a view of her face—shaded his eyes with his hands as if to gaze more intently—and at length burst into an exclamation of surprise and pleasure. At that instant Alice turned, and her gaze met that of the stranger. The fascination of the basilisk can scarcely more stun and paralyse its victim than the look of this stranger charmed, with the appalling glamoury of horror, the eye and soul of Alice Darvil. Her face became suddenly locked and rigid, her lips as white as marble, her eyes almost started from their sockets—she pressed her hands convulsively together, and shuddered—but still she did not move. The man nodded, and grinned, and then, deliberately crossing the street, gained the door, and knocked loudly. Still Alice did not stir—her senses seemed to have forsaken her. Presently the stranger’s loud, rough voice was heard below, in answer to the accents of the solitary woman-servant whom Alice kept in her employ; and his strong, heavy tread made the slight staircase creak and tremble. Then Alice rose as by an instinct, caught her child in her arms, and stood erect and motionless facing the door. It opened—and the FATHER and DAUGHTER were once more face to face within the same walls.
“Well, Alley, how are you, my blowen?—glad to see your old dad again, I’ll be sworn. No ceremony, sit down. Ha, ha! snug here—very snug—we shall live together charmingly. Trade on your own account—eh? sly!—well, can’t desert your poor old father. Let’s have something to eat and drink.”
So saying, Darvil threw himself at length upon the neat, prim little chintz sofa, with the air of a man resolved to make himself perfectly at home.
Alice gazed, and trembled violently, but still said nothing—the power of voice had indeed left her.
“Come, why don’t you stir your stumps? I suppose I must wait on myself—fine manners!—But, ho, ho—a bell, by gosh—mighty grand—never mind—I am used to call for my own wants.”
A hearty tug at the frail bell-rope sent a shrill alarum half-way through the long lath-and-plaster row of Paradise Place, and left the instrument of the sound in the hand of its creator.
Up came the maid-servant, a formal old woman, most respectable.
“Hark ye, old girl!” said Darvil; “bring up the best you have to eat—not particular—let there be plenty. And I say—a bottle of brandy. Come, don’t stand there staring like a stuck pig. Budge! Hell and furies! don’t you hear me?”
The servant retreated, as if a pistol had been put to her head, and Darvil, laughing loud, threw himself again upon the sofa. Alice looked at him, and, still without saying a word, glided from the room—her child in her arms. She hurried down-stairs, and in the hall met her servant. The latter, who was much attached to her mistress, was alarmed to see her about to leave the house.
“Why, marm, where be you going? Dear heart, you have no bonnet on! What is the matter? Who is this?”
“Oh!” cried Alice, in agony; “what shall I do?—where shall I fly?” The door above opened. Alice heard, started, and the next moment was in the street. She ran on breathlessly, and like one insane. Her mind was, indeed, for the time, gone; and had a river flowed before her way, she would have plunged into an escape from a world that seemed too narrow to hold a father and his child.
But just as she turned the corner of a street that led into the more public thoroughfares, she felt her arm grasped, and a voice called out her name in surprised and startled accents.
“Heavens, Mrs. Butler! Alice! What do I see? What is the matter?”
“Oh, sir, save me!—you are a good man—a great man—save me—he is returned!”
“He! who? Mr. Butler?” said the banker (for that gentleman it was) in a changed and trembling voice.
“No, no—ah, not he!—I did not say he—I said my father—my, my—ah—look behind—look behind—is he coming?”
“Calm yourself, my dear young friend—no one is near. I will go and reason with your father. No one shall harm you—I will protect you. Go back—go back, I will follow—we must not be seen together.” And the tall banker seemed trying to shrink into a nutshell.
“No, no,” said Alice, growing yet paler, “I cannot go back.”
“Well, then, just follow me to the door—your servant shall get you your bonnet, and accompany you to my house, where you can wait till I return. Meanwhile I will see your father, and rid you, I trust, of his presence.”
The banker, who spoke in a very hurried and even impatient voice, waited for no reply, but took his way to Alice’s house. Alice herself did not follow, but remained in the very place where she was left, till joined by her servant, who then conducted her to the rich man’s residence... But Alice’s mind had not recovered its shock, and her thoughts wandered alarmingly.
CHAPTER VII
“Miramont.—Do they chafe roundly?
Andrew.—As they were rubbed with soap, sir,
And now they swear aloud, now calm again
Like a ring of bells, whose sound the wind still utters,
And then they sit in council what to do,
And then they jar again what shall be done?”
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
OH! what a picture of human nature it was when the banker and the vagabond sat together in that little drawing-room, facing each other,—one in the armchair, one on the sofa! Darvil was still employed on some cold meat, and was making wry faces at the very indifferent brandy which he had frightened the formal old servant into buying at the nearest public-house; and opposite sat the respectable—highly respectable man of forms and ceremonies, of decencies and quackeries, gazing gravely upon this low, daredevil ruffian:—the well-to-do hypocrite—the penniless villain;—the man who had everything to lose—the man who had nothing in the wide world but his own mischievous, rascally life, a gold watch, chain and seals, which he had stolen the day before, and thirteen shillings and threepence halfpenny in his left breeches pocket!
The man of wealth was by no means well acquainted with the nature of the beast before him. He had heard from Mrs. Leslie (as we remember) the outline of Alice’s history, and ascertained that their joint protegee’s father was a great blackguard; but he expected to find Mr. Darvil a mere dull, brutish villain—a peasant-ruffian—a blunt serf, without brains, or their substitute, effrontery. But Luke Darvil was a clever, half-educated fellow: he did not sin from ignorance, but had wit enough to have bad principles, and he was as impudent as if he had lived all his life in the best society. He was not frightened at the banker’s drab breeches and imposing air—not he! The Duke of Wellington would not have frightened Luke Darvil, unless his grace had had the constables for his aides-de-camp.
The banker, to use a homely phrase, was “taken aback.”
“Look you here, Mr. What’s-your-name!” said Darvil, swallowing a glass of the raw alcohol as if it had been water—“look you now—you can’t humbug me. What the devil do you care about my daughter’s respectability or comfort, or anything else, grave old dog as you are! It is my daughter herself you are licking your brown old chaps at!—and, ‘faith, my Alley is a very pretty girl—very—but queer as moonshine. You’ll drive a much better bargain with me than with her.”
The banker coloured scarlet—he bit his lips and measured his companion from head to foot (while the latter lolled on the sofa), as if he were meditating the possibility of kicking him down-stairs. But Luke Darvil would have thrashed the banker and all his clerks into the bargain. His frame was like a trunk of thews and muscles, packed up by that careful dame, Nature, as tightly as possible; and a prizefighter would have thought twice before he had entered the ring against so awkward a customer. The banker was a man prudent to a fault, and he pushed his chair six inches back, as he concluded his survey.
“Sir,” then said he, very quietly, “do not let us misunderstand each other. Your daughter is safe from your control—if you molest her, the law will protect—”
“She is not of age,” said Darvil. “Your health, old boy.”
“Whether she is of age or not,” returned the banker, unheeding the courtesy conveyed in the last sentence, “I do not care three straws—I know enough of the law to know that if she have rich friends in this town, and you have none, she will be protected and you will go to the treadmill.”
“That is spoken like a sensible man,” said Darvil, for the first time with a show of respect in his manner; “you now take a practical view of matters, as we used to say at the spouting-club.”
“If I were in your situation, Mr. Darvil, I tell you what I would do. I would leave my daughter and this town to-morrow morning, and I would promise never to return, and never to molest her, on condition she allowed me a certain sum from her earnings, paid quarterly.”
“And if I preferred living with her?”
“In that case, I, as a magistrate of this town, would have you sent away as a vagrant, or apprehended—”
“Ha!”
“Apprehended on suspicion of stealing that gold chain and seals which you wear so ostentatiously.”
“By goles, but you’re a clever fellow,” said Darvil, involuntarily; “you know human natur.”
The banker smiled: strange to say, he was pleased with the compliment.
“But,” resumed Darvil, helping himself to another slice of beef, “you are in the wrong box—planted in Queer Street, as we say in London; for if you care a d—n about my daughter’s respectability, you will never muzzle her father on suspicion of theft—and so there’s tit for tat, my old gentleman!”
“I shall deny that you are her father, Mr. Darvil; and I think you will find it hard to prove the fact in any town where I am a magistrate.”
“By goles, what a good prig you would have made! You are as sharp as a gimlet. Surely you were brought up at the Old Bailey!”
“Mr. Darvil, be ruled. You seem a man not deaf to reason, and I ask you whether, in any town in this country, a poor man in suspicious circumstances can do anything against a rich man whose character is established? Perhaps you are right in the main: I have nothing to do with that. But I tell you that you shall quit this house in half an hour—that you shall never enter it again but at your peril; and if you do—within ten minutes from that time you shall be in the town gaol. It is no longer a contest between you and your defenceless daughter; it is a contest between—”
“A tramper in fustian, and a gemman as drives a coach,” interrupted Darvil, laughing bitterly, yet heartily. “Good—good!”
The banker rose. “I think you have made a very clever definition,” said he. “Half an hour—you recollect—good evening.”
“Stay,” said Darvil; “you are the first man I have seen for many a year that I can take a fancy to. Sit down—sit down, I say, and talk a bit, and we shall come to terms soon, I dare say;—that’s right. Lord! how I should like to have you on the roadside instead of within these four gimcrack walls. Ha! ha! the argufying would be all in my favour then.”
The banker was not a brave man, and his colour changed slightly at the intimation of this obliging wish. Darvil eyed him grimly and chucklingly.
The rich man resumed: “That may or may not be, Mr. Darvil, according as I might happen or not to have pistols about me. But to the point. Quit this house without further debate, without noise, without mentioning to any one else your claim upon its owner—”
“Well, and the return?”
“Ten guineas now, and the same sum quarterly, as long as the young lady lives in this town, and you never persecute her by word or letter.”
“That is forty guineas a year. I can’t live upon it.”
“You will cost less in the House of Correction, Mr. Darvil.”
“Come, make it a hundred: Alley is cheap at that.”
“Not a farthing more,” said the banker, buttoning up his breeches pockets with a determined air.
“Well, out with the shiners.”
“Do you promise or not?”
“I promise.”
“There are your ten guineas. If in half an hour you are not gone—why, then—”
“Then?”
“Why, then you have robbed me of ten guineas, and must take the usual consequences of robbery.”
Darvil started to his feet—his eyes glared—he grasped the carving-knife before him.
“You are a bold fellow,” said the banker, quietly; “but it won’t do. It is not worth your while to murder me; and I am a man sure to be missed.”
Darvil sank down, sullen and foiled. The respectable man was more than a match for the villain.
“Had you been as poor as I,—Gad! what a rogue you would have been!”
“I think not,” said the banker; “I believe roguery to be a very bad policy. Perhaps once I was almost as poor as you are, but I never turned rogue.”
“You never were in my circumstances,” returned Darvil, gloomily. “I was a gentleman’s son. Come, you shall hear my story. My father was well-born, but married a maid-servant when he was at college; his family disowned him, and left him to starve. He died in the struggle against a poverty he was not brought up to, and my dam went into service again; became housekeeper to an old bachelor—sent me to school—but mother had a family by the old bachelor, and I was taken from school and put to trade. All hated me—for I was ugly; damn them! Mother cut me—I wanted money—robbed the old bachelor—was sent to gaol, and learned there a lesson or two how to rob better in future. Mother died,—I was adrift on the world. The world was my foe—could not make it up with the world, so we went to war;—you understand, old boy? Married a poor woman and pretty;—wife made me jealous—had learned to suspect every one. Alice born—did not believe her mine: not like me—perhaps a gentleman’s child. I hate—I loathe gentlemen. Got drunk one night—kicked my wife in the stomach three weeks after her confinement. Wife died—tried for my life—got off. Went to another county—having had a sort of education, and being sharp eno’, got work as a mechanic. Hated work just as I hated gentlemen—for was I not by blood a gentleman? There was the curse. Alice grew up; never looked on her as my flesh and blood. Her mother was a w——! Why should not she be one? There, that’s enough. Plenty of excuse, I think, for all I have ever done. Curse the world—curse the rich—curse the handsome—curse—curse all!”
“You have been a very foolish man,” said the banker; “and seem to me to have had very good cards, if you had known how to play them. However, that is your lookout. It is not yet too late to repent; age is creeping on you.—Man, there is another world.”
The banker said the last words with a tone of solemn and even dignified adjuration.
“You think so—do you?” said Darvil, staring at him.
“From my soul I do.”
“Then you are not the sensible man I took you for,” replied Darvil, drily; “and I should like to talk to you on that subject.”
But our Dives, however sincere a believer, was by no means one
“At whose control
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul.”
He had words of comfort for the pious, but he had none for the sceptic—he could soothe, but he could not convert. It was not in his way; besides, he saw no credit in making a convert of Luke Darvil. Accordingly, he again rose with some quickness, and said:
“No, sir; that is useless, I fear, and I have no time to spare; and so once more good night to you.”
“But you have not arranged where my allowance is to be sent.”
“Ah! true; I will guarantee it. You will find my name sufficient security.”
“At least, it is the best I can get,” returned Darvil, carelessly; “and after all, it is not a bad chance day’s work. But I’m sure I can’t say where the money shall be sent. I don’t know a man who would not grab it.”
“Very well, then—the best thing (I speak as a man of business) will be to draw on me for ten guineas quarterly. Wherever you are staying, any banker can effect this for you. But mind, if ever you overdraw the account stops.”
“I understand,” said Darvil; “and when I have finished the bottle I shall be off.”
“You had better,” replied the banker, as he opened the door.
The rich man returned home hurriedly. “So Alice, after all, has some gentle blood in her veins,” thought he. “But that father—no, it will never do. I wish he were hanged and nobody the wiser. I should very much like to arrange the matter without marrying; but then—scandal—scandal—scandal. After all, I had better give up all thoughts of her. She is monstrous handsome, and so—humph:—I shall never grow an old man.”