 | CHAPTER XXV. Richard Hurdis, or, The avenger of blood : a tale of Alabama |  |
25. CHAPTER XXV.
A single deviation from the track
Of human duties, leads ever those who claim
The homage of mankind!
Sardanapalus.
“Colonel Grafton.”
“Mr. Clifton,” were the simple forms of address
employed by the two on first encountering.
“You are surprised to see me so soon, Colonel
Grafton,” was the somewhat abrupt speech of Clifton
the next minute.
“Surprised! not a whit, sir,” was the quick reply.
“You were looked for.”
“Looked for, sir! Ah! yes, of course, I was expected
to come, but not yet, sir—not for some hours.
You looked for me, indeed, but you scarcely looked
for the person who now seeks you; and when you
know the business which brings me, Colonel Grafton,
you will not, I am afraid, hold me so welcome
as before.”
“Why should you be afraid, Mr. Clifton? Believe
me you were never more welcome than at this
reply. “You seem surprised, sir, that I should say
so, but wherefore? Are you surprised that I should
promptly welcome the man who seeks to do so much
honor to my family as to become one of it? Why do
you look on me so doubtingly, Mr. Clifton? Is
there anything so strange in what I say?”
“No, sir, nothing, unless it be in the manner of
your saying it. If you speak, Colonel Grafton, in
sincerity, you add to the weight of that humility
which already presses me to the earth—if in derision
—if with a foreknowledge of what I come to say—
then, I must only acknowledge the justice of your
scorn and submit myself to your indignation.”
“Of what you came to say, Mr. Clifton?” slowly
replied the half hesitating listener. “Speak it out
then, sir, I pray you—let me hear what you came
to speak. And in your revelations do not give me
credit for too great a foreknowledge, or you may
make your story too costive for the truth. Proceed,
sir—I listen.”
“You seem already to have heard something to
my disadvantage, Colonel Grafton. It is my misfortune
that you have not heard all that you might have
heard—all that you must hear. It is my misery
that my lips alone must tell it.”
The unfortunate young man paused for an instant,
speech. He then resumed:
“I come, sir, to make a painful confession; to tell
you that I have imposed upon you, Colonel Grafton—dreadfully
imposed upon you—in more respects
than one.”
“Go on, sir.”
“My name, sir, in the first place, is not Clifton
but—”
“No matter, sir, what it is! Enough, on that
point, that it is not what you call it. But the letters,
sir—what of them? How came you by letters of
credit and introduction from my known and tried
friends in Virginia?”
“They were forged, sir.”
“Well, I might have known that without asking.
The one imposition fairly implies the other.”
“But not by me, Colonel Grafton.”
“They were used by you, and you knew them
to be forged, sir. If your new code of morality can
find a difference between the guilt of making the
lie, and that of employing it when made, I shall be
informed, sir, if not pleased. Go on with your story
which seems to concern me; and, considering the
manner of its beginning, the sooner you bring it to
an end the better. What, may I ask, did you propose
to yourself to gain by this imposition?”
“At first, sir, nothing. I was the creature—the
base instrument of the baser malice of another.
Without any object myself, at first, I was weak
enough to labor thus criminally for the unworthy
objects of another.”
“Ha! indeed! For another. This is well—this is
better and better, sir; but go on—go on.”
“But when my imposition, sir, had proved so far
successful as to bring me to the knowledge and the
confidence of your family—when I came to know
the treasure you possessed in the person of your
lovely daughter—”
“Stay, sir—not a word of her. Her name must
not pass your lips in my hearing, unless you would
have me strike you to my feet, for your profanity
and presumption. It is wonderful to me, now, how
I can forbear.”
“Your blow, though it crushed me into the earth,
could not humble me more, Colonel Grafton, than
my own conscience has already done. I am not unwilling
that you should strike. I came here this
day to submit, without complaint or prayer, to any
punishment which you might deem it due to your
injured honour to inflict. But, as a part of the reparation
which I propose to make to you, it is my
earnest desire that you should hear me out.”
“Reparation, sir—reparation! Do you talk to
me of reparation—you that have stolen into my
happiness, and poisoned all the springs of joy which
I had there. Tell your story, sir—say all that you
deem essential to make your villany seem less, but
do not dare to speak of reparation for wrongs that
you cannot repair—wounds that no art of yours, artful
though you have proved yourself, can ever
heal.”
“I do not hope to repair—I feel that it is beyond
my power to heal them. I do not come for that. I
come simply to declare the truth—to acknowledge
the falsehood—and, in forbearing to continue a course
of evil, and in professing amendment for the future,
to do what I can for the atonement of what is evil in
the past. To repair my wrongs to you and yours,
Colonel Grafton, is not within my hope. If it were,
sir, my humility would be less than it is, and, perhaps,
your indulgence greater.”
“Do not trust to that, sir—do not trust to that.
But we will spare unnecessary words. Your professions
for the future are wise and well enough; it is
to be hoped that you will be suffered to perform them.
At present, however, our business is with what is
past, of evil, not with what is to come, of good. You
say that you were set on by another to seek my
confidence—that another prepared the lies by which
you effected your object. Who was that other?
Who was that master spirit to which your own
and all honesty? Answer me that, if you would
prove your contrition.”
“Pardon me, sir, but I may not tell you that. I
may not betray the confidence of another, even
though I secured your pardon by it.”
“Indeed! But your principles are late and reluctant.
This is what is called `honour amongst
thieves.' You could betray my honour, and the
confidence of a man of honour, but you cannot
betray the confidence of a brother rogue.”
“My wrong to you, Colonel Grafton, I repent too
deeply to suffer myself to commit a like wrong
against another, however unworthy he may be.
Let me accuse myself, sir; let me, I pray you, declare
all my own offences, and yield myself up to
your justice, but do not require me to betray the secrets
of another.”
“What! though that other be a criminal—though
that other be the outlaw from morals, which you
should be from society, and trains his vipers up to
sting the hands that take them into the habitations
of the unwary and the confiding! Your sense of
moral justice seems to be strangely confounded, sir.”
“It may be—I feel it is, Colonel Grafton, but I am
bound to keep this secret, and will not reveal it. It
is enough that I am ready to suffer for the offence to
be instigated.”
“You shall suffer, sir; by the God of Heaven you
shall suffer, if it be left in this old arm to inflict due
punishment for your treachery. You shall not escape
me. The sufferings of my child shall determine
yours. Every pang which she endures shall
drive the steel deeper into your vitals! But proceed,
sir, you have more to say. You have other offences
to narrate—I will hear you.”
“I feel that you will not heed my repentance. I
know, too, why your indulgence should be beyond
my hope. I do not ask for forgiveness, which I
know it to be impossible that you should grant; I
only pray that you will now believe me, Colonel
Grafton, for before Heaven I will tell you nothing
but the truth.”
“Go on, sir, tell your story; your exhortation is
of little use, for the truth needs no prayer for its prop.
It must stand without one or it is not truth. As for
my belief, that cannot affect it. Truth is as certainly
secure from my doubts, as I am sorry to think she has
been foreign to your heart for a long season. If you
have got her back there, you are fortunate, thrice
fortunate. You will do well if you can persuade
her to remain. Go on, go on, sir.”
“Your unmeasured scorn, Colonel Grafton, helps
offence to you and yours, but it is no small part of
the penalty which should follow them; and holding
it such, my punishments grow lighter with every
moment which I endure them.”
“Trust not that. I tell you, William Clifton, or
whatever else may be your true name—for which I
care not—that I have that tooth of fire gnawing in
my heart, which nothing, perhaps, short of all the
blood which is in yours can quench or satisfy.
Think not that I give up my hope of revenge as I
consent to hear you. The delay but whets the appetite.
I but seek in thought for the sort of punishment
which would seem most fitting to your offence.”
“I will say nothing, Colonel Grafton, to arrest or
qualify it—let your revenge be full. The blood will
not flow more freely from my heart, when your
hand shall knock for it, than does my present will,
in resignation, to your demand for vengeance. Let
me only, I pray you, say a few words, which it
seems to me will do you no offence to hear, and
which I feel certain it will be a great relief to me to
speak. Will you hear me, sir?”
The humility of the guilty youth seemed not without
its effect on the heated, but noble old man, who
replied promptly:
“Surely, sir—God forbid that I should refuse to
hear the criminal. Go on—speak.”
“I am come of good family, Colonel Grafton—”
began the youth.
“Certainly—I doubt not that. Never rogue yet
that did not.”
A pause ensued. The voice of the youth was
half stifled, as with conflicting emotions, when he endeavoured
to speak again. But he succeeded.
“I am an only son—a mother—a feeble, infirm
mother—looked to me for assistance and support. A
moment of dreadful necessity pressed upon us, and
in the despair and apprehension which the emergency
brought with it to my mind, I committed an
error—a crime, Colonel Grafton—I appropriated the
money of another!”
“A fit beginning to so active a life—but go on.”
“Not to my use, Colonel Grafton—not to my use,
nor for any pleasure or appetite of my own, did I
apply that ill got spoil.—It was to save from suffering
and a worse evil, the mother which had borne
me.”
“I believe, Mr. Clifton, in no such necessity,”
was the stern reply. “In a country like ours, no
man need steal, nor lie, nor cheat. The bread of
life is procured with no difficulty by any man having
his proportion of limbs and sinews, and not too
surely have relieved your parent without a resort to
the offence you speak of.”
“True, sir—I might. But I did not know it then
—I was a youth without knowledge of the world or
its resources. Brought up in seclusion, and overcome
by the sudden terror of debt, and the law
—”
“Which, it seems, has kept you in no such wholesome
fear to the end of the chapter. Pity for both
our sakes that it had not. But to make a long story
short, Mr. Clifton, and to relieve you from the pleasure
or the pain of telling it, know, sir, that I am
acquainted with all, and, perhaps, much more than
you are willing to relate.”
“Indeed, sir—but how—how came you by this
knowledge?”
“That is of no importance, or but little. Not an
hour before you made your appearance, I received
an account of your true character and associates—
thank Heaven! in sufficient time to be saved from
the fatal connection into which my child had so
nearly fallen.”
“She should not have fallen, Colonel Grafton,”
said Clifton solemnly. “I came on purpose to declare
the truth, sir.”
“So I believe, Mr. Clifton; and it is well for you,
to declare the truth when you made your appearance.
Had you but paused for five minutes—had
you lingered in your self exposure—I had put a bullet
through your head with as little remorse, as I
should have shot the wolf which aimed to prey upon
my little ones. I had put my pistols in readiness
for that purpose. They are this instant beneath my
hands. Nothing but your timely development could
have saved you from death, and even that would not
have availed, but that you have shown a degree of
contrition during your confession, to which I could
not shut my eyes. Know, sir, that I not only knew
of the deception practised upon me, but of your connection
with the daring outlaws who overrun the
country; and from whom, by the way, you have
much more at this moment to fear, than you can
ever have reason to fear from me. Their emissaries
are even now in pursuit of you, thirsting for your
blood.”
“Colonel Grafton, tell me—I pray you tell me—
how know you all this.”
“Is it not true?”
“Ay!—ay! true as Gospel, though my lips, though
I perished for denying, should never have revealed
it.”
“What! you would still have kept bond with these
outlaws?”
“No, sir; but I would not have revealed their secrets.”
“But you shall sir—you shall do more. You
shall guide me and others to the place where they
keep. You shall help to deliver them into the hands
of justice.”
“Never, sir! never!” was the quick reply.
“Then you perish by the common hangman, Mr.
Clifton,” said Colonel Grafton. “Either you deliver
them up to punishment, or you die for your share
in their past offences.”
“Be it so—I can perish, you will find, without
fear, though I may have lived without honour. Let
me leave you now, Colonel Grafton—let me pass.”
“You pass not here, while I have strength to keep
you, sir,” said Grafton; and as these words reached
my ears, I heard a rushing sound, and then a struggle.
With this movement, I opened the door, and
entered the apartment. They were closely grappled
as they met my sight, and though it was evident
enough that Eberly studiously avoided the application
of his whole force in violence to Grafton, it was
not the less obvious that he was using it all in the
endeavor to elude him, and break away. I did not
pause a moment to behold the strife, but making forward,
I grasped the fugitive around the body, and
lifting him from the floor, laid him, in another instant,
knee upon his breast, and presenting my dirk knife
to his throat I exacted from him a constrained and
sullen submission.
| CHAPTER XXV. Richard Hurdis, or, The avenger of blood : a tale of Alabama | |