What Will He Do with It? Part 87

The rider, gaining the bridge, was there detained at the toll-bar by some carts and waggons, and the two gentlemen pa.s.sed him on the bridge, looking with some attention at his gloomy, un.o.bservant countenance, and the powerful fraune, in which, despite coa.r.s.e garments and the change wrought by years of intemperate excess, was still visible the trace of that felicitous symmetry once so admirably combining herculean strength with elastic elegance. Entering the town, the rider turned into the yard of the near est inn. George Morley and Hartopp, followed at a little distance by Morley's travelling companion, Merle, pa.s.sed on towards the other extremity of the town, and, after one or two inquiries for "Widow Halse, Prospect Row," they came to a few detached cottages, very prettily situated on a gentle hill, commanding in front the roofs of the city and the gleaming windows of the great cathedral, with somewhat large gardens in the rear. Mrs. Halse's dwelling was at the extreme end of this Row. The house, however, was shut up; and a woman, who was standing at the door of the neighbouring cottage, plaiting straw, informed the visitors that Mrs. Halse was gone out "charing" for the day, and that her lodger, who had his own key, seldom returned before dark, but that at that hour he was pretty sure to be found in the Cornmarket or the streets in its vicinity, and offered to send her little boy to discover and "fetch" him.

George consulted apart with Merle, and decided on despatching the cobbler, with the boy for his guide, in quest of the pedlar, Merle being of course instructed not to let out by whom he was accompanied, lest Waife, in his obstinacy, should rather abscond than encounter the friends from whom he had fled. Merle, and a curly-headed urchin, who seemed delighted at the idea of hunting up Sir Isaac and Sir Isaac's master, set forth, and were soon out of sight. Hartopp and George opened the little garden-gate, and strolled into the garden at the back of the cottage, to seat themselves patiently on a bench beneath an old appletree. Here they waited and conversed some minutes, till George observed that one of the cas.e.m.e.nts on that side of the cottage was left open, and, involuntarily rising, he looked in; surveying with interest the room, which he felt sure, at the first glance, must be that occupied by his self-exiled friend; a neat pleasant little room-a bullfinch in a wicker cage on a ledge within the cas.e.m.e.nt-a flower-pot beside it.

Doubtless the window, which faced the southern sun, had been left open by the kind old man in order to cheer the bird and to gladden the plant.

Waife's well-known pipe, and a tobacco-pouch worked for him by Sophys fairy fingers, lay on a table near the fireplace, between cas.e.m.e.nt and door; and George saw with emotion the Bible which he himself had given to the wanderer lying also on the table, with the magnifying-gla.s.s which Waife had of late been obliged to employ in reading. Waife's habitual neatness was visible in the aspect of the room. To George it was evident that the very chairs had been arranged by his hand; that his hand had courteously given that fresh coat of varnish to the wretched portrait of a man in blue coat and buff waistcoat, representing, no doubt, the lamented spouse of the hospitable widow. George beckoned to Hartopp to come also and look within; and as the worthy trader peeped over his shoulder, the clergyman said, whisperingly, "Is there not something about a man's home which attests his character?--No 'pleading guilty'

here."

Hartopp was about to answer, when they heard the key turn sharply in the outer door, and had scarcely time to draw somewhat back from the cas.e.m.e.nt when Waife came hurriedly into the room, followed, not by Merle, but by the tall rough-looking horseman whom they had encountered on the road. "Thank Heaven," cried Waife, sinking on a chair, "out of sight, out of hearing now! Now you may speak; now I can listen! O wretched son of my lost angel, whom I so vainly sought to save by the sacrifice of all my claims to the respect of men, for what purpose do you seek me? I have nothing left that you can take away! Is it the child again? See--see--look round-search the house if you will--she is not here."

"Bear with me, if you can, sir," said Jasper, in tones that were almost meek; "you, at least, can say nothing that I will not bear. But I am in my right when I ask you to tell me, without equivocation or reserve, if Sophy, though not actually within these walls, be near you, in this town or its neighbourhood?--in short, still under your protection?"

"Not in this town--not near it--not under my protection; I swear."

"Do not swear, father; I have no belief in other men's oaths. I believe your simple word. Now comes my second question--remember I am still strictly in my right--where is she?--and under whose care?"

"I will not say. One reason why I have abandoned the very air she breathes was, that you might not trace her in tracing me. But she is out of your power again to kidnap and to sell. You might molest, hara.s.s, shame her, by proclaiming yourself her father; but regain her into your keeping, cast her to infamy and vice--never, never! She is now with no powerless, miserable convict, for whom Law has no respect. She is now no helpless infant without a choice, without a will. She is safe from all, save the wanton, unprofitable effort to disgrace her. O Jasper, Jasper, be human--she is so delicate of frame--she is so sensitive to reproach, so tremulously alive to honour--I am not fit to be near her now. I have been a tricksome, s.h.i.+fty vagrant, and, innocent though I be, the felon's brand is on me! But you, you too, who never loved her, who cannot miss her, whose heart is not breaking at her loss as mine is now--you, you--to rise up from the reeking pesthouse in which you have dwelt by choice, and say, 'Descend from G.o.d's day with me'--Jasper, Jasper, you will not--you cannot; it would be the malignity of a devil!"

"Father, hold!" cried Jasper, writhing and livid; "I owe to you more than I do to that thing of pink and white. I know better than you the trumpery of all those waxen dolls of whom dupes make idols. At each turn of the street you may find them in basketfuls--blue-eyed or black-eyed, just the same worthless frippery or senseless toys; but every man dandling his own doll, whether he call it sweetheart or daughter, makes the same puling boast that he has an angel of purity in his puppet of wax. Nay, hear me! to that girl I owe nothing. You know what I owe to you. You bid me not seek her, and say, 'I am your father.' Do you think it does not misbecome me more, and can it wound you less, when I come to you, and remind you that I am your son!"

"Jasper!" faltered the old man, turning his face aside, for the touch of feeling towards himself, contrasting the cynicism with which Jasper spoke of other ties not less sacred, took the father by surprise.

"And," continued Jasper, "remembering how you once loved me--with what self-sacrifice you proved that love--it is with a bitter grudge against that girl that I see her thus take that place in your affection which was mine,--and you so indignant against me if I even presume to approach her. What! I have the malignity of a devil because I would not quietly lie down in yonder kennels to starve, or sink into the grade of those whom your daintier thief disclaims; spies into unguarded areas, or cowardly skulkers by blind walls; while in the paltry girl, who you say is so well provided for, I see the last and sole resource which may prevent you from being still more degraded, still more afflicted by your son."

"What is it you want? Even if Sophy were in your power, Darrell would not be more disposed to enrich or relieve you. He will never believe your tale, nor deign even to look into its proofs."

"He might at last," said Jasper, evasively. "Surely with all that wealth, no nearer heir than a remote kinsman in the son of a beggared spendthrift by a linendraper's daughter--he should need a grandchild more than you do; yet the proofs you speak of convinced yourself; you believe my tale."

"Believe--yes, for that belief was everything in the world, to me! Ah, remember how joyously, when my term of sentence expired, I hastened to seek you at Paris, deceived by the rare letters with which you had deigned to cheer me--fondly dreaming that, in expiating your crime, I should have my reward in your redemption--should live to see you honoured, honest, good--live to think your mother watched us from heaven with a smile on both--and that we should both join her at last--you purified by my atonement! Oh, and when I saw you so sunken, so hardened, exulting in vice as in a glory--bravo and partner in a gambler's h.e.l.l--or, worse still, living on the plunder of miserable women, even the almsman of that vile Desmarets--my son, my son, my lost Lizzy's son blotted out of my world for ever!--then, then I should have died if you had not said, boasting of the lie which had wrung the gold from Darrell, 'But the child lives still.' Believe you--oh, yes, yes--for in that belief something was still left to me to cherish, to love, to live for!"

Here the old man's hurried voice died away in a pa.s.sionate sob; and the direful son, all reprobate though he was, slid from his chair, and bowed himself at his father's knee, covering his face with fell hands that trembled. "Sir, sir," he said, in broken reverential accents, "do not let me see you weep. You cannot believe me, but I say solemnly that, if there be in me a single remnant of affection for any human being, it is for you. When I consented to leave you to bear the sentence which should have fallen on myself, sure I am that I was less basely selfish than absurdly vain. I fancied myself so born to good fortune!--so formed to captivate some rich girl!--and that you would return to share wealth with me; that the evening of your days would be happy; that you would be repaid by my splendour for your own disgrace! And when I did marry, and did ultimately get from the father-in-law who spurned me the capital of his daughter's fortune, pitifully small though it was compared to my expectations, my first idea was to send half of that sum to you.

But--but--I was living with those who thought nothing so silly as a good intention--nothing so bad as a good action. That mocking she-devil, Gabrielle, too! Then the witch's spell of that d----d green-table! Luck against one-wait! double the capital ere you send the half. Luck with one--how balk the tide? how fritter the capital just at the turn of doubling? Soon it grew irksome even to think of you; yet still when I did, I said, 'Life is long, I shall win riches; he shall share them some day or other!'--_Basta, basta_!--what idle twaddle or hollow brag all this must seem to you!"

"No," said Wife, feebly, and his hand drooped till it touched Jasper's bended shoulder, but at the touch recoiled as with an electric spasm.

"So, as you say, you found me at Paris. I told you where I had placed the child, not conceiving that Arabella would part with her, or you desire to hamper yourself with an enc.u.mbrance-nay, I took for granted that you would find a home as before with some old friend or country cousin:--but fancying that your occasional visits to her might comfort you, since it seemed to please you so much when I said she lived. Thus we parted,--you, it seems, only anxious to save that child from ever falling into my hands, or those of Gabrielle Desmarets; I hastening to forget all but the riotous life around me till--"

"Till you came back to England to rob from me the smile of the only face that I knew would never wear contempt, and to tell the good man with whom I thought she had so safe a shelter that I was a convicted robber, by whose very love her infancy was sullied. O Jasper! Jasper!"

"I never said that--never thought of saying it. Arabella Crane did so, with the reckless woman-will to gain her object. But I did take the child from you. Why? Partly because I needed money so much that I would have sold a hecatomb of children for half what I was offered to bind the girl to a service that could not be very dreadful, since yourself had first placed here there;--and partly because you had shrunk, it seems, from appealing to old friends: you were living, like myself, from hand to mouth; what could that child be to you but a drag and a bother?"

"And you will tell me, I suppose," said Waife, with an incredulous, bitter irony, that seemed to wither himself in venting it, so did his whole frame recoil and shrink--"you will tell me that it was from the same considerate tenderness that you would have again filched her from me some months later, to place her with that 'she-devil'

who was once more by your side; to be reared and sold to--O horror!--horror!--unimaginable horror!--that pure helpless infant!--you, armed with the name of father!--you, strong in that mighty form of man!"

"What do you mean? Oh, I remember now! When Gabrielle was in London, and I had seen you on the bridge? Who could have told you that I meant to get the child from you at that time?"

Waife was silent. He could not betray Arabella Crane; and Jasper looked perplexed and thoughtful. Then gradually the dreadful nature of his father's accusing words seemed to become more clear to him; and he cried, with a fierce start and a swarthy flush: "But whoever told you that I harboured the design that it whitens your lip to hint at, lied, and foully. Harkye, sir, many years ago Gabrielle had made acquaintance with Darrell, under another name, as Matilda's friend (long story now--not worth telling); he had never, I believe, discovered the imposture. Just at the time you refer to, I heard that Darrell had been to France, inquiring himself into facts connected with my former story, that Matilda's child was dead. That very inquiry seemed to show that he had not been so incredulous of my a.s.sertions of Sophy's claims on him as he had affected to be when I urged them. He then went on into Italy.

Talking this over with Gabrielle, she suggested that, if the child could be got into her possession, she would go with her in search of Darrell, resuming the name in which she had before known him--resuming the t.i.tle and privilege of Matilda's friend. In that character he might listen to her, when he would not to me. She might confirm my statement--melt his heart--coax him into terms. She was the cleverest creature! I should have sold Sophy, it is true. For what? A provision to place me above want and crime. Sold her to whom? To the man who would see in her his daughter's child, rear her to inherit his wealth--guard her as his own honour. What! was this the design that so shocks you? _Basta, Basta!_ Again, I say, Enough. I never thought I should be so soft as to mutter excuses for what I have done. And if I do so now, the words seem forced from me against my will-forced from me, as if in seeing you I was again but a wild, lawless, wilful boy, who grieved to see you saddened by his faults, though he forgot his grief the moment you were out of sight."

"Oh, Jasper," cried Waife, now fairly placing his hand on Jasper's guilty head, and fixing his bright soft eye, swimming in tears, on that downcast gloomy face. "You repent!--you repent! Yes; call back your BOYHOOD--call it back! Let it stand before you, now, visible, palpable!

Lo! I see it! Do not you? Fearless, joyous Image! Wild, lawless, wilful, as you say. Wild from exuberant life; lawless as a bird is free, because air is boundless to untried exulting wings; wilful from the ease with which the bravery and beauty of Nature's radiant Darling forced way for each jocund whim through our yielding hearts! Silence! It is there! I see it, as I saw it rise in the empty air when guilt and ignominy first darkened round you; and my heart cried aloud, 'Not on him, not on him, not on that glorious shape of hope and promise--on me, whose life, useless. .h.i.therto, has lost all promise now--on me let fall the shame.'

And my lips obeyed my heart, and I said--'Let the Laws' will be done--I am the guilty man.' Cruel, cruel one! Was that sunny Boyhood then so long departed from you? On the verge of youth, and such maturity in craft and fraud--that when you stole into my room that dark winter eve, threw yourself at my feet, spoke but of thoughtless debts, and the fear that you should be thrust from an industrious honest calling, and I--I said, 'No, no; fear not; the head of your firm likes you; he has written to me; I am trying already to raise the money you need; it shall be raised, no matter what it cost me; you shall be saved; my Lizzie's son shall never know the soil of a prison; shun temptation henceforth: be but honest, and I shall be repaid!'--what, even then, you were coldly meditating the crime that will make my very grave dishonoured!"

"Meditating--not so! How could I be? Not till after what had thus pa.s.sed between us, when you spoke with such indulgent kindness, did I even know that I might more than save myself--by monies--not raised at risk and loss to you! Remember, you had left me in the inner room, while you went forth to speak with Gunston. There I overheard him talk of notes he had never counted, and might never miss; describe the very place where they were kept; and then the idea came to me irresistibly, 'better rob him than despoil my own generous father.' Sir, I am not pretending to be better than I was. I was not quite the novice you supposed. Coveting pleasures or shows not within my reach, I had shrunk from draining you to supply the means; I had not had the same forbearance for the superfluous wealth of others. I had learned with what simple tools old locks may fly open; and none had ever suspected me, so I had no fear of danger, small need of premeditation: a nail on your mantelpiece, the cloven end of the hammer lying beside, to crook it when hot from the fire that blazed before me! I say this to show you that I did not come provided; nothing was planned beforehand; all was the project and work of the moment. Such was my haste, I burnt myself to the bone with the red iron--feeling no pain, or rather, at that age, bearing all pain without wincing. Before Gunston left you, my whole plan was then arranged--my sole instrument fas.h.i.+oned. You groan. But how could I fancy that there would be detection? How imagine that even if monies, never counted, were missed, suspicion could fall on you--better gentleman than he whom you served? And had it not been for that accursed cloak which you so fondly wrapped round me when I set off to catch the night train back to--; if it had not been, I say, for that cloak, there could have been no evidence to criminate either you or me-except that unlucky L5 note, which I pressed on you when we met at ----, where I was to hide till you had settled with my duns. And why did I press it on you?--because you had asked me if I had wherewithal about me on which to live meanwhile; and I, to save you from emptying your own purse, said, 'Yes'; showed you some gold, and pressed on you the bank-note, which I said I could not want--to go, in small part, towards my debts; it was a childish, inconsistent wish to please you: and you seemed so pleased to take it as a proof that I cared for you."

"For me!--no, no; for honour--for honour--for honour! I thought you cared for honour; and the proof of that care was, thrusting into these credulous hands the share of your midnight plunder!"

"Sir," resumed Jasper, persisting in the same startling combination of feeling, gentler and more reverential than could have been supposed to linger in his breast, and of the moral obtuseness that could not, save by vanis.h.i.+ng glimpses, distinguish between crime and its consequences--between dishonour and detection--"Sir, I declare that I never conceived that I was exposing you to danger; nay, I meant, out of the money I had taken, to replace to you what you were about to raise, as soon as I could invent some plausible story of having earned it honestly. Stupid notions and clumsy schemes, as I now look back on them; but, as you say, I had not long left boyhood, and, fancying myself deep and knowing, was raw in the craft I had practised. _Basta, basta, basta!_"

Jasper, who had risen from his knees while speaking, here stamped heavily on the floor, as if with anger at the heart-stricken aspect of his silenced father; and continued with a voice that seemed struggling to regain its old imperious, rollicking, burly swell.

"What is done cannot be undone. Fling it aside, sir--look to the future; you with your pedlar's pack, I with my empty pockets! What can save you from the workhouse--me from the hulks or gibbet? I know not, unless the persons sheltering that girl will buy me off by some provision which may be shared between us. Tell me, then, where she is; leave me to deal in the business as I best may. Pooh! why so scared? I will neither terrify nor kidnap her. I will shuffle off the crust of blackguard that has hardened round me. I will be sleek and smooth, as if I were still the exquisite Lothario--copied by would-be rufflers, and spoiled by willing beauties. Oh, I can still play the gentleman, at least for an hour or two, if it be worth my while. Come, sir, come; trust me; out with the secret of this hidden maiden, whose interests should surely weigh not more with you than those of a starving son. What, you will not? Be it so. I suspect that I know where to look for her--on what n.o.ble thresholds to set my daring foot; what fair lady, mindful of former days--of girlish friends.h.i.+p--of virgin love--wraps in compa.s.sionate luxury Guy Darrell's rejected heiress? Ah, your looks tell me that I am hot on the scent. That fair lady I knew of old; she is rich--I helped to make her so. She owes me something. I will call and remind her of it. And--tut, sir, tut--you shall not go to the workhouse, nor I to the hulks."

Here the old man, hitherto seated, rose-slowly, with feebleness and effort, till he gained his full height; then age, infirmity, and weakness seemed to vanish. In the erect head, the broad ma.s.sive chest, in the whole presence, there was dignity--there was power.

"Hark to me, unhappy reprobate, and heed me well! To save that child from the breath of disgrace--to place her in what you yourself a.s.sured me where her rights amidst those in whose dwellings I lost the privilege to dwell when I took to myself your awful burthen--I thought to resign her charge for ever in this world. Think not that I will fly her now, when you invade. No--since my prayers will not move you--since my sacrifice to you has been so fruitless--since my absence from herself does not attain its end there, where you find her, shall you again meet me! And if there we meet, and you come with the intent to destroy her peace and blast her fortune, then I, William Losely, am no more the felon. In the face of day I will proclaim the truth, and say, 'Robber, change place in earth's scorn with me; stand in the dock, where thy father stood in vain to save thee!"'

"Bah, sir--too late now; who would listen to you?"

"All who have once known me--all will listen. Friends of power and station will take up my cause. There will be fresh inquiry into facts that I held back--evidence that, in pleading guilty, I suppressed--ungrateful one--to ward away suspicion from you."

"Say what you will," said Jasper swaying his ma.s.sive form to and fro, with a rolling gesture which spoke of cold defiance, "I am no hypocrite in fair repute whom such threats would frighten. If you choose to thwart me in what I always held my last resource for meat and drink, I must stand in the dock even, perhaps, on a heavier charge than one so stale.

Each for himself; do your worst--what does it matter?"

"What does it matter that a father should accuse his son! No, no--son, son, son--this must not be;--let it not be!--let me complete my martyrdom! I ask no reversal of man's decree, except before the Divine Tribunal. Jasper, Jasper--child of my love, spare the sole thing left to fill up the chasms in the heart that you laid waste. Speak not of starving, or of fresh crime. Stay--share this refuge! I WILL WORK FOR BOTH!"

Once more, and this time thoroughly, Jasper's hideous levity and coa.r.s.e bravado gave way before the lingering human sentiment knitting him back to childhood, which the sight and voice of his injured father had called forth with spasms and throes, as a seer calls the long-buried from a grave. And as the old man extended his arms pleadingly towards him, Jasper, with a gasping sound-half groan, half sob-sprang forward, caught both the hands in his own strong grasp, lifted them to his lips, kissed them, and then, gaining the door with a rapid stride, said, in hoa.r.s.e broken tones: "Share your refuge! no--no--I should break your heart downright did you see me daily--hourly as I am! You work for both!--you--you!" His voice stopped, choked for a brief moment, and then hurried on: "As for that girl--you--you--you are--but no matter, I will try to obey you--will try to wrestle against hunger, despair, and thoughts that whisper sinking men with devils' tongues. I will try--I will try; if I succeed not, keep your threat--accuse me--give me up to justice--clear yourself; but if you would crush me more than by the heaviest curse, never again speak to me with such dreadful tenderness!

Cling not to me, old man; release me, I say;--there--there; off. Ah! I did not hurt you? Brute that I am--you bless me--you--you! And I dare not bless again! Let me go--let me go--let me go!" He wrenched himself away from his father's clasp--drowning with loud tone his father's pathetic soothings--out of the house-down the hill--lost to sight in the shades of the falling eve.

CHAPTER VI.

GENTLEMAN WAIFE DOES NOT FORGET AN OLD FRIEND. THE OLD FRIEND RECONCILES ASTROLOGY TO PRUDENCE, AND IS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF BENEFICE. MR. HARTOPP HAT IN HAND TO GENTLEMAN WAIFE.

Waife fell on the floor of his threshold, exclaiming, sobbing, moaning, as voice itself gradually died away. The dog, who had been shut out from the house, and remained, ears erect, head drooping, close at the door, rushed in as Jasper burst forth. The two listeners at the open cas.e.m.e.nt now stole round; there was the dog, its paw on the old man's shoulder, trying to attract his notice, and whining low.

Tenderly--reverentially, they lift the poor martyr--evermore cleared in their eyes from stain, from question; the dishonouring brand trans.m.u.ted into the hallowing cross! And when the old man at length recovered consciousness, his head was pillowed on the breast of the spotless, n.o.ble Preacher; and the decorous English Trader, with instinctive deference for repute and respect for law, was kneeling by his side, clasping his hand; and as Wife glanced down, confusedly wondering, Hartopp exclaimed, half sobbing: "Forgive me; you said I should repent, if I knew all! I do repent! I do! Forgive me--I shall never forgive myself."

"Have I been dreaming? What is all this? You here, too, Mr. George!

But--but there was ANOTHER. Gone! ah--gone--gone! lost, lost! Ha! Did you overhear us?"

"We overheard you-at that window! See, spite of yourself, Heaven lets your innocence be known, and, in that innocence, your sublime self-sacrifice."

"Hus.h.!.+ you will never betray me, either of you--never. A father turn against his son!--horrible!"

Again he seemed on the point of swooning. In a few moments more, his mind began evidently to wander somewhat; and just as Merle (who, with his urchin-guide, had wandered vainly over the old town in search of the pedlar, until told that he had been seen in a by-street, stopped and accosted by a tall man in a rough great-coat, and then hurrying off, followed by the stranger) came back to report his ill-success, Hartopp and George had led Waife up-stairs into his sleeping-room, laid him down on his bed, and were standing beside him watching his troubled face, and whispering to each other in alarm.

Waife overheard Hartopp proposing to go in search of medical a.s.sistance, and exclaimed piteously: "No, that would scare me to death. No doctors--no eavesdroppers. Leave me to myself--quiet and darkness; I shall be well tomorrow."