“Only to make me love you the more, girl,—to make me know you for my own child in heart and soul,” cried he, pressing her warmly to him.
“But I would not have cost you this emotion, dearest pa—”
“It's over now; I am as cool as yourself. There 's my hand,—there 's not much show of nervousness there. 'Who are we?'” exclaimed he, fiercely, echoing her question. “I 'd like to know how many of that eight-and-twenty millions they say we are in England could answer such a question? There's a short thick book or two tells about the peerage and baronetage, and says who are they; but as for the rest of us—” A wave of the hand finished the sentence. “My own answer would be that of many another: I 'm the son of a man who bore the same name, and who, if alive, would tell the same story. As to what we are, that's another question,” added he, shrewdly; “though, to be sure, English life and habits have established a very easy way of treating the matter. Everybody with no visible means of support, and who does nothing for his own subsistence, is either a gentleman or a vagrant. If he be positively and utterly unable to do anything for himself, he 's a gentleman; if he can do a stroke of work in some line or other, he 's only a vagrant.”
“And you, papa?” asked she, with an accent as calm and unconcerned as might be.
“I?—I am a little of both, perhaps,” said he, after a pause.
A silence ensued, long enough to be painful to each; Lizzy did not dare to repeat her question, although it still remained unanswered, and Davis knew well that he had not met it frankly, as he promised. What a severe struggle was that his mind now endured! The hoarded secret of his whole life,—the great mystery to which he had sacrificed all the happiness of a home, for which he had consented to estrange himself from his child, training her up amidst associations and habits every one of which increased the distance between them,—there it was now on his lip; a word might reveal it, and by its utterance might be blasted all the fondest hopes his heart had ever cherished. To make Lizzy a lady, to surround her not only with all the wants and requirements of station, but to imbue her mind with sentiments and modes of thought such as befit that condition, had been the devoted labor of his life. For this he had toiled and struggled, contrived, plotted, and schemed for years long. What terrible scenes had he not encountered, with what desperate characters not associated! In the fearful commerce of the play-table there was not a dark passion of the human heart he had not explored,—to know men in their worst aspects, in their insolence of triumph, the meanness of their defeat, in their moments of avarice, in their waste; to read their natures so that every start or sigh, a motion of the finger, a quivering of the lip should have its significance; to perceive, as by an instinct, wherein the craft or subtlety of each lay, and by the same rapid intuition to know his weak point also! Men have won high collegiate honors with less intensity of study than he gave to this dark pursuit; men have come out of battle with less peril to life than he faced every day of his existence, and all for one object,—all that his daughter might breathe an atmosphere from which he must live excluded, and know a world whose threshold he should never pass. Such was the terrible conflict that now raged within him as he reviewed the past, and saw to what a narrow issue he had reduced his one chance of happiness. “There she stands now,” thought he, “all that my fondest hopes had ever fashioned her; and who is to say what one word—one single word uttered by my lips—may not make of that noble nature, pure and spotless as it is? How will she bear to hear that her station is a deception, her whole life a lie,—that she is the daughter of Grog Davis, the leg?” Heaven knows with what dexterous artifices he had often met this difficulty as it used to present itself to his mind, how he had seen in what way he could extricate himself, how reconcile his own shortcomings with her high-soaring tastes and habits! Whatever such devices he had ever conceived, none came to his aid now; not one offered him the slightest assistance.
Then came another thought,—“How long is this deception to be carried on? Am I to wait?” said he, “and if so, for what? Ay, there's the question, for what? Is it that some other may break the news to her, and tell her whose daughter she is?” In that world he knew best he could well imagine with what especial malice such a tale would be revealed. Not that slander need call imagination to its aid. Alas! his life had incidents enough for malignity to gloat over!
His stout arm shook, and his strong frame trembled with a sort of convulsive shudder as these thoughts flashed across his mind.
“Are you cold, dearest pa? Are you ill?” asked she, eagerly.
“No. Why do you ask?” said he, sternly.