Ernest Maltravers Part 24

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 s.h.i.+llings 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 subst.i.tute, 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 gla.s.s 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 moons.h.i.+ne. 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 t.i.t 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 circ.u.mstances 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, b.u.t.toning up his breeches pockets with a determined air.

"Well, out with the s.h.i.+ners."

"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 circ.u.mstances," 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; d.a.m.n 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.