Great as all these advantages were, they were aided, and not inconsiderably, by other and adventitious ones. She was reputed to be a great heiress. How and when and why this credit attached to her, it were hard to say; assuredly she had never given it any impulse. She spoke, indeed, constantly of her father—her only living relation—as of one who never grudged her any indulgence, and she showed her schoolfellows the handsome presents which from time to time he sent her; these in their costliness—so unlike the gifts common to her age—may possibly have assisted the belief in her great wealth. But however founded, the impression prevailed that she was to be the possessor of millions, and in the course of destiny, to be what her companions called her in jest—a Princess.
Nor did the designation seem ill applied. Of all the traits her nature exhibited, none seemed so conspicuous as that of “birth.” The admixture of timidity and haughtiness, that blended gentleness with an air of command, a certain instinctive acceptance of whatever deference was shown her as a matter of right and due, all spoke of “blood;” and her walk, her voice, her slightest gesture, were in keeping with this impression. Even they who liked her least, and were most jealous of her fascination, never called her Princess in any mockery. No, strange enough, the title was employed with all the significance of respect, and as such did she receive it.
If it were not that, in her capricious moods, Nature has moulded stranger counterfeits than this, we might incur some risk of incredulity from our reader when we say that the Princess was no other than Grog Davis's daughter!
Davis had been a man of stratagems from his very beginning in life. All his gains had been acquired by dexterity and trick. Whatever he had accomplished was won as at a game where some other paid the loss. His mind, consequently, fashioned itself to the condition in which he lived, and sharpness and shrewdness and over-reaching seemed to him not alone the only elements of success, but the only qualities worth honoring. He had seen honesty and imbecility so often in company that he thought them convertible terms; and yet this man—“leg,” outcast, knave that he was—rose above all the realities of a life of roguery in one aspiration,—to educate his child in purity, to screen her from the contamination of his own set, to bring her up amongst all the refining influences of care and culture, and make her, as he said to himself, “the equal of the best lady in the land!” To place her amongst the well-born and wealthy, to have her where her origin could not be traced, where no clew would connect her with himself, had cost him a greater exercise of ingenuity than the deepest scheme he had ever plotted on the turf. That exchange of references on which Madame Godarde's exclusiveness so peremptorily insisted was only to be met at heavy cost. The distinguished baronet who stood sponsor to Grog Davis's respectability received cash for the least promising of promissory notes in return, and the lady who waited on Madame Godarde in her brougham “to make acquaintance with the person who was to have charge of her young relative,” was the distracted mother of a foolish young man who had given bills to Davis for several thousands, and who by this special mission obtained possession of the documents. In addition to these direct, there were many other indirect sacrifices. Grog was obliged for a season to forego all the habits and profits of his daily life, to live in a sort of respectable seclusion, his servants in mourning, and himself in the deepest sable for the loss of a wife who had died twelve years before. In fact, he had to take out a species of moral naturalization, the details of which seemed interminable, and served to convince him that respectability was not the easy, indolent thing he had hitherto imagined it.
If Davis had been called on to furnish a debtor and creditor account of the transaction, the sum spent in the accomplishment of this feat would have astonished his assignee. As he said himself, “Fifteen hundred would n't see him through it.” It is but fair to say that the amount so represented comprised the very worst of bad debts, but Grog cared little for that; his theory was that there was n't the difference between a guinea and a pound in the best bill from Baring's and the worst paper in Holywell Street. “You can always get either your money or your money's worth,” said he, “and very frequently the last is the better of the two.”
If it was a proud day for the father as he consigned his daughter to Madame Godarde's care, it was no less a happy one for Lizzy Davis, as she found herself in the midst of companions of her own age, and surrounded with all the occupations and appliances of a life of elegance. Brought up from infancy in a small school in a retired part of Cornwall, she had only known her father during the two or three off months of that probationary course of respectability we have alluded to. With all his affection for his child, and every desire to give it utterance, Davis was so conscious of his own defects in education, and the blemishes which his tone of mind and thought would inevitably exhibit, that he had to preserve a sort of estrangement towards her, and guard himself against whatever might prejudice him in her esteem. If, then, by a thousand acts of kindness and liberality he gained on her affection, there was that in his cold and distant manner that as totally repelled all confidence. To escape from the dull uniformity of that dreary home, where a visitor never entered, nor any intercourse with the world was maintained, to a scene redolent of life, with gay light-hearted associates, all pursuing the same sunny paths, to engage her brilliant faculties in a variety of congenial pursuits, wherein there was only so much of difficulty as inspired zeal, to enter on an existence wherein each day imparted the sense of new acquirement, was a happiness that verged on ecstasy. It needed not all the flatteries that surrounded her to make this seem a paradise; but she had these, too, and in so many ways. Some loved her light-heartedness, and that gay spirit that floated like an atmosphere about her; others praised her gracefulness and her beauty; some preferred to these, those versatile gifts of mind that gave her the mastery over whatever she desired to learn; and there were those who dwelt on the great fortune she was to have, and the great destiny that awaited her.
How often in the sportive levity of happy girlhood had they asked her what life she should choose for herself,—what station, and what land to live in! They questioned her in all sincerity, believing she had but to wish, to have the existence that pleased her. Then what tender caresses followed,—what flattering entreaties that the dear Princess would not forget Josephine or Gertrude or Julia, in the days of her greatness, but would recognize those who had been her loved schoolfellows years before!
“What a touchstone of your tact will it be, Lizzy, when you 're a duchess,” said one, “to meet one of us in a watering-place or on a steamboat, and to explain, delicately enough, not to hurt us, to his Grace the Duke that you knew us as girls, and how provoking if you should call me Jane or Clara!”
“And then the charming condescension of your inquiry if we were married, though a half-bashful and an awkward-looking man should be standing by at our interview, waiting to be presented, and afraid to be spoken to. Or worse than that, the long, terrible pauses in conversation, which show how afraid you are lest we should tumble into reminiscences.”
“Oh, Lizzy darling,” cried another, “do be a duchess for a moment, and show how you would treat us all. It would be charming.”