‘This is the secret of the friendship between me and Mr Courtney. I owe him more than my life. We were boys at school together, Liz, and chums at college, and always the best of friends. But he was rich—the only son of a wealthy planter—and I was very poor, and had nothing to depend on but my wits. He led me into extravagances which I was too ready to follow, but whilst he had the means to defray his debts, I had no power to do the same by mine. At last, in an evil moment, to prevent a bill coming upon my old father which would have broken up his humble home and sent him to the workhouse, I forged my friend Edward Courtney’s name, as a temporary relief. Before I could make up the money, the paper fell into his hands, and he might have ruined me; instead of which, Liz, he forgave me freely; but the rumour had got abroad, and I was a ruined man. I was married, and set up in a small practice. I lost it all, and it preyed so on your poor mother’s mind that when you were born, she faded out of life, and left me alone with my disgrace. I took you away from the place, and tried to establish a practice in various parts of England without success—the whispered scandal followed me everywhere—until Mr Courtney came into his father’s property, and settled out in San Diego; then he wrote and begged me for the sake of our old friendship, to let the past be forgotten between us, and to come out here and hold an appointment on Beauregard as medical overseer to the plantation. As soon as I could bring down my pride to accept a benefit from the man I had so deeply wronged, I brought you over here, and we have been dependants on Edward Courtney’s bounty ever since. Lizzie, what do we owe the man who has placed us under such an obligation?’
‘Our lives, should he require them,’ she answered, in a low voice.
She was deeply humiliated by what she had heard. She had never dreamt that the evident trouble under which her father laboured could be the brand of shame. Her proud independent spirit writhed under the knowledge that she had been reared on the bread of charity,—that the very name she passed by was not her own, and that the best spirit which she and her father could claim from their benefactor, was one of tolerance only. She could have cried out to Dr Fellows then and there, to take her away from the surroundings which had become hateful to her, because they must evermore be associated with the bitter story of his guilt. But she only hung her head, and spoke in a whisper. Her father had been sufficiently degraded by having to tell her such a story, and he had been very good to her, and it was not his daughter’s part to add to his suffering. But she threw the full depth of its meaning into the answer she returned him, and he caught at it eagerly.
‘You are right, Liz. Our lives, and all we have, should be at his disposal, in return for all his goodness to us. You cannot feel that more deeply than I do. And now I want to hear you take a solemn oath to that effect.’
‘An oath!’ cried Lizzie, startled at the idea.
‘Yes! an oath before Almighty God. Nothing short of it will satisfy me, and set my mind at rest.’
‘Ah, father!’ she exclaimed, remembering another oath which she had heard that evening, ‘will not my promise do as well? You know that I would not dare to break it. It would be as sacred to me as any oath.’
‘No, Lizzie—no! I am not asking this for myself, but for another—for my friend Edward Courtney, to whom we owe so much, and nothing short of an oath will do. Say, “I swear before Almighty God, and by all my hopes of salvation, that I will never repeat what I may see, or hear, or suspect this night.”’
‘Oh, father! you frighten me! What terrible thing is going to happen?’
‘Are you a child, to be scared by a few words? If you will not swear it, Lizzie, I will send you out of the bungalow this minute, to the house of our next neighbours, and you shall not return until I fetch you. But I want your assistance, and if you will do as I require you, you can stay and help me.’