“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 encumbrance-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 assertions 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 title 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 hitherto, 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 passed 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 fashioned. 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 vanishing 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!”