Confession
W >>
W. Gilmore Simms >> Confession
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 | 16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
31
I rose from my seat and struggle, with the air of one strengthened
by thoughtful resolution for any act. Prayer could not have
strengthened me more. I felt a singular degree of strength. I can
well understand that of fanaticism from my own feelings. Nothing,
in the shape of danger, could have deterred me from the deed. I
positively had no remaining fear. But, how was it to be done? With
this inquiry in my mind, still unanswered, I took a light, went
into my study, and drew from my escritoir the few small weapons
which I had in possession. These are soon named. One was a neat
little dirk--broad in blade, double-edged, short--sufficient for
all my purposes. I examined my pistols and loaded them--a small,
neat pair, the present of Edgerton himself. This fact determined me
not to use them. I restored them to the escritoir; put the dagger
between the folds of my vest, and prepared to leave the house.
At this moment a heavy knocking was heard at the gate I resumed my
seat in the piazza until the servant should report the nature of
the interruption. He was followed in by my friend Kingsley.
"I am glad to find you home," said he abruptly, grasping my hand;
"home, and not a-bed. The hour is late, I know, but the devil never
keeps ordinary hours, and men, driven by his satanic majesty, have
some excuse for following his example."
This exordium promised something unusual. The manner of Kingsley
betrayed excitement. Nay, it was soon evident he had been taking
a superfluous quantity of wine. His voice was thick, and he spoke
excessively loud in order to be intelligible. There was something
like a defying desperation in his tones, in the dare-devil swagger
of his movement, and the almost iron pressure of his grasp upon my
fingers. I subdued my own passions--nay, they were subdued--singularly
so, by the resolution I had made before his entrance, and was able,
therefore, to appear calm and smooth as summer water in his eyes.
"What's the matter?" I asked. "You seem excited. No evil, I trust?"
"Evil, indeed! Not much; but even if it were, I tell you Ned Clifford,
I am just now in the mood to say, 'Evil be thou my good!' I have
reason to say it; and, by the powers, it will not be said only. I
will make evil my good after a fashion of my own; but how much good
or now little evil, will be yet another question."
I was interested, in spite of myself, by the vehemence and unusual
seriousness of my companion's manner. It somewhat harmonized
with my own temper, and in a measure beguiled me into a momentary
heedlessness of my particular griefs. I urged him to a more frank
statement of the things that troubled him.
"Can I serve you in anything?" was the inquiry which concluded my
assurance that I was sufficiently his friend to sympathize with
him in his afflictions.
"You can serve me, and I need your service. You can serve me in
two respects; nay, if you do not, I know not which side to turn
for service. In the first place, then, I wish a hundred dollars,
and I wish it to-night. In the next place, I wish a companion--a
man not easily scared, who will follow where I lead him, and take
part in a 'knock down and drag out,' if it should become necessary,
without asking the why and the wherefore."
"You shall have the money, Kingsley."
"Stay! Perhaps I may never pay it you again."
"I shall regret that, for I can ill afford to lose any such sum;
but, even to know that would not prevent me from lending you in
your need. It is enough that you are in want. You tell me you are."
"I am; but my wants are not such as a pure moralist, however strong
might be his friendship, would be disposed to gratify. I shall
stake that money on the roll of the dice."
"Impossible! You do not game!"
"True as a gospel! Hark you, Clifford, and save us the homily. I
am a ruined man--ruined by the d---d dice and the deceptive cards.
I shall pay you back the hundred dollars, but I shall have precious
little after that."
"But, surely, I was not misinformed. You were rich a few years
ago."
"A few months! But the case is the same. I am poor now. My riches
had wings. I am reduced to my tail-feathers; but I will flourish
with these to the last. I have fallen among thieves. They have
clipped my plumage--close! close! They have stripped me of everything,
but some small matters which, when sold, will just suffice to get
me horse or halter. Some dirty acres in Alabama, are all I absolutely
have remaining of any real value. But there is one thing that I
may have, if I stake boldly for it."
"You will only lose again. The hope of a gamester rises, in due
degree, with the increasing lightness of his pockets."
"Do not mistake me. I hope nothing from your hundred dollars;
indeed, fifty will answer. I propose to employ it only as a pretext.
I expect to lose it, and lose it this very night. But it will give
me an opportunity to ascertain what I have suspected--too late,
indeed, to save myself--that I have been the victim of false dice
and figured cards. You say you will let me have the money--will
you go with me--Will you see me through?"
He extended his hand as he spoke, I grasped it. He shook it with a
hearty feeling, while a bright smile almost, dissipated the cloud
from his face.
"You are a man, Clifford; and now, would you believe it, our
excellent, immaculate young friend, Mr. William Edgerton, refused
me this money."
"Strange! Edgerton is not selfish--he is not mean! From THAT vice
he is certainly free."
"By G-d, I don't know that! He refused me the money; refused to
go with me. I saw him at eight o'clock, at his own room, where he
was rigging himself out for some d---d tea-drinking; told him my
straits, my losses, my object and all; and what was his plea, think
you? Why, he disapproved of gambling; couldn't think of lending
me a sixpence for any such purpose; and, as for going into such a
suspected quarter as a gambling-house--wouldn't do it for the world!
Was there ever such a puritan--such a humbug!"
I did William Edgerton only justice in my reply;--
"I've no doubt, Kingsley, that such are his real principles. He
would have lent you thrice the money, freely, had not your object
been avowed."
"But what a devil sort of despotism is that! Can't a friend get
drunk, or game, or swagger? may he not depart from the highway,
and sidle into an alley, without souring his friend's temper and
making him stingy? I don't understand it at all. I'm glad, at least,
to find you are of another sort of stuff."
"Nay, Kingsley, I will lend you the money--go with you, as you
desire; but, understand me, I do not, no more than Edgerton, approve
of this gambling."
"Tut, tut! I don't want you to preach, though I could hear you with
a devilish sight better temper than him. There's a hundred things
that one's friend don't approve of, but shall he desert him for
all that? Leave him to be plucked, and kicked, and abandoned; and,
moralizing, with a grin over his fain, say, 'I told you. so!' No!
no! Give me the fellow that'll stand by me--keep me out of evil,
if he can, but stand by me, nevertheless, at all events; and not
suffer me to be swallowed up at the last moment, when an outstretched
finger might save!"
"But, am I to think, Kingsley, that my help can do this?"
"No! not exactly--it may--but if it does not, what then? I shall
lose the money, but you shan't. But, truth to speak, Clifford, I do
not propose to myself the recovery of what is lost. I know I have
been the prey of sharpers. That is to say, I have every reason to
believe so, and I have had a hint to that effect. I have a spice
of the devil in me, accordingly--a mocking, mortifying devil, that
jeers me with my d---d simplicity; and I propose to go and let the
swindlers know, in a way as little circuitous as possible, that I
am not blind to the fact that they have made an ass of me. There
will be some satisfaction, in that. I will write myself down an
ass, for their benefit, only to enjoy the satisfaction of kicking
a little like one. I invite you on a kicking expedition."
I felt for my dagger in my bosom, as I answered: "Very good! Have
you weapons?"
"Hickory! You see! a moderate axe-handle, that'll make its sentiments
understood You are warned; you see what you are to expect. I will
not take you in. Are you ready for a scratch ?"
"Allons!" I replied indifferently. The truth is, my bosom was full
of a recklessness of a far more sweeping character than his own.
I was in the mood for strife. It promised only the more thoroughly
to prepare me for the darker trial which was before me, and which
my secret soul was meditating all the while with an intense and
gloomy tenacity of purpose.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MORALS OF ENTERPRISE.
I got him the money he required; and we were about to set forth,
when he exclaimed abruptly:--
"Put money in thy own purse, Clifford. It may be necessary to practise
a little ruse de guerre. In playing my game, it may be important
that you should deem to play one also. You have no scruples to
fling the dice or flirt the cards for the nonce."
"None! But I should like to know your plans. Tell me, in the first
place, your precise object."
"Simply to detect certain knaves, and save certain fools. The
knaves have ruined me, and I make no lamentations; but there are
others in their clutches still, quite as ignorant as myself, who
may be saved before they are stripped entirely. The object is not
a bad one; for the rest, trust to me. I mean no harm; a little
mischief only; and, at most, a tweak of one proboscis or more.
There's risk, of a certainty, as there is in sucking an egg; but
you are a man! Not like that d--d milksop, who gives up his friend
as soon as he gets poor, and proffers him a sermon by way of telling
him--precious information, truly--that he's in a fair way to the
devil. The toss of a copper for such friendship."
The humor of Kingsley tallied somewhat with my own. It had in it
a spice of recklessness which pleased me. Perhaps, too, it tended
somewhat to relieve and qualify the intenseness of that excitement
in my brain, which sometimes rose to such a pitch as led me
to apprehend madness. That I was a monomaniac has been admitted,
perhaps not a moment too soon for the author's candor. The sagacity
of the reader made him independent of the admission.
"Your beggar," said he, somewhat abruptly, "has the only true feeling
of independence. Absolutely, I never knew till now what it was to
be thoroughly indifferent to what might come to-morrow. I positively
care for nothing. I am the first prince Sans Souci. That shall
be my title when I get among the Cumanches. I will have a code of
laws and constitution to suit my particular humor, and my chief
penalties shall be inflicted upon your fellows who grunt. A sigh
shall incur a week's solitary confinement; a sour look, pillory;
and for a groan, the hypochondriac shall lose his head! My prime
minister shall be the fellow who can longest use his tongue without
losing his temper; and the man who can laugh and jest shall always
have his plate at my table. Good-humored people shall have peculiar
privileges. It shall be a certificate in one's favor, entitling
him to so many acres, that he takes the world kindly. Such a man
shall have two wives, provided he can keep them peacefully in the
same house. His daughters shall have dowries from government. The
prince of Sans Souci will himself provide for them."
I made some answer, half jest, half earnest, in a mood of mocking
bitterness, which, perhaps, more truly accorded with the temper of
both of us. He did not perceive the bitterness, however.
"You jest, but mine is not altogether jest. Half-serious glimpses
of what I tell you float certainly before my eyes. Such things
may happen yet, and the southwest is the world in which you are yet
to see many wondrous things. The time must come when Texas shall
stretch to Mexico. These miserable slaves and reptiles--mongrel
Spaniards and mongrel Indians--can not very long bedevil that great
country. It must fall into other hands. It must be ours; and who,
when that time comes, will carry into the field more thorough claims
than mine. Master of myself, fearing nothing, caring for nothing;
with a gallant steed that knows my voice, and answers with whinny
and pricked ears to my encouragement; with a rifle that can clip
a Mexican--dollar or man--at a hundred yards, and a heart that can
defy the devil over his own dish, and with but one spoon between
us--and who so likely to win his principality as myself? Look to
see it, Clifford, I shall be a prince in Mexico; and when you hear
of the prince Sans Souci be assured you know the man. Seek me then,
and ask what you will. You have CARTE BLANCHE from this moment."
"I shall certainly keep it in mind, prince."
"Do so: laugh as you please; it is only becoming that you should
laugh in the presence of Sans Souci; but do not laugh in token
of irreverence. You must not be too skeptical. It does not follow
because I am a dare-devil that I am a thoughtless one. I have been
so, perhaps, but from this moment I go to work! I shall be fettered
by fortune no longer. Thank Heaven, that is now done--gone--lost;
I am free from its incumbrance! I feel myself a prince, indeed; a
man, every inch of me. This night I devote as a fitting finish to
my old lifeless existence.
"Hear me!" he continued; "you laugh again, Clifford--very good!
Laugh on, but hear me. You shall hear more of me in time to come.
I fancy I shall be a fellow of considerable importance, not in Texas
simply, or in Mexico, but here--here in your own self-opinionated
United States. Suppose a few things, and go along with me while I
speak them. That Texas must stretch to Mexico I hold to be certain.
A very few years will do that. It needs only thirty thousand more
men from our southern and southwestern States, and the brave old
English tongue shall arouse the best echoes in the city of Montezuma!
That done, and floods of people pour in from all quarters. It
needs nothing but a feeling of security and peace--a conviction
that property will be tolerably safe, under a tolerably stable
government--in other words, an Anglo-Saxon government--to tempt
millions of discontented emigrants from all quarters of the world.
Will this result have no results of its own, think you? Will the
immense resources of Mexico and Texas, represented, as they then
will be, by a stern, pressing, performing people, have no effect
upon these states of yours? They will have the greatest; nay, they
will become essential to balance your own federal weight, and keep
you all in equilibrio. For look you, the first hubbub with Great
Britain gives you Canada, at the expense of some of your coast-towns,
a few millions of treasure, and the loss of fifty thousand men.
A bad exchange for the south; for Canada will make six ponderous
states, the policy and character of which will be New England
all over. To balance this you will have your Florida territory,
[Footnote: Florida, since admittied, but unhappily, as a single
state.] of which two feeble states may be made. Not enough for your
purposes. But the same war with England will render it necessary
that your fleet should take possession of Cuba; which, after a civil
apology to Spain for taking such a liberty with her possessions,
and, perhaps, a few million by way of hush money, you carve into two
more states, and, in this manner, try to bolster up your federal
relations. How many of her West India islands Great Britain will
be able to keep after such a war, is another problem, the solution
of which will depend upon the relative strength of fleets and
success of seamanship. These islands, which should of right be
ours, and without which we can never be sure against any maritime
power so great and so arrogant as England, once conquered by
our arms, find their natural, moral, and social affinities in the
southern states entirely; and, so far, contribute to strengthen
you in your congressional conflicts. But these are not enough, for
the simple reason that the population of states, purely agricultural,
never makes that progress which is made in this respect by a
commercial and manufacturing people. With the command of the gulf,
the possession of an independent fleet by the Texans, the political
characteristics of the states of Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, must undergo certain marked
changes, which can only be neutralized by the adoption, on the part
of these states, of a new policy corresponding with their change
of interests. How far the cultivation of cotton by Texas will lead
to its abandonment in Carolina and Georgia, is a question which the
next ten years must solve. That they will be compelled to abandon
it is inevitable, unless they can succeed in raising the article
at six cents; a probability which no cotton-planter in either of
these states will be willing to contemplate now for an instant.
Meanwhile, Texas is spreading herself right and left. She conquers
the Cumanches, subdues the native mongrel Mexicans. Her Hoestons and
Lamars are succeeded by other and abler men, under whose control
the evils of government, which followed the sway of such small
animals as the Guerreros, and the Bolivars, the Bustamentes,
and Sant' Annas, are very soon eradicated; and the country, the
noblest that God ever gave to man in the hands of men, becomes a
country!--a great and glorious country--stretching from the gulf
to the Pacific, and providing the natural balance, which, in a few
years, the southern state of this Union will inevitably need, by
which alone your great confederacy will be kept together. You see,
therefore, why I speed to Texas. Should I not, with my philosophy,
my horse and my rifle--not to speak of stout heart and hand--reasonably
aspire to the principality of Sans Souci? Laugh, if you please, but
be not irreverent. You shall have carte blanche then if you will
have a becoming faith now, on the word of a prince. I say it, It
is written--Sans Souci." [Footnote: All these speculations were
written in 1840-'41. I need not remark upon those which have since
been verified.]
"Altissimo, excellentissimo, serenissimo!"
"Bravissimo, you improve; you will make a courtier--but mum now
about my projects. We must suppress our dignities here. We are at
the entrance of our hell!"
We had reached the door of a low habitation in a secluded street.
The house was of wood--an ordinary hovel of two stories. A cluster
of similar fabrics surrounded it, most of which I afterward
discovered--though this fact could not be conjectured by an observer
from the street--were connected by blind alleys, inner courts, and
chambers and passages running along the ground floors. We stopped
an instant, Kingsley having his hand upon the little iron knocker,
a single black ring, that worked against an ordinary iron knob.
"Before I knock," said he, in a whisper, "before I knock, Clifford,
let me say that if you have any reluctance--"
"None! none! knock!"
"You will meet with some dirty rascals, and you must not only
meet them with seeming civility, but as if you shared in their
tastes--sought the same objects only--the getting of money--the only
object which alone is clearly comprehensible by their understanding."
"Go ahead! I will see you through."
"A word more! Get yourself in play at a different table from me.
You will find rogues enough around, ready to relieve you of your
Mexicans. Leave me to my particular enemy; you will soon see whose
shield I touch--but keep an occasional eye upon us; and all that
I ask farther at your hands, should you see us by the ears, is to
keep other fingers from taking hold of mine."
A heavy stroke of the knocker, followed by three light ones and a
second heavy stroke, produced us an answer from within. The door
unclosed, and by the light of a dim lamp, I discovered before me,
as a sort of warden, a little yellow, weather-beaten, skin-dried
Frenchman, whom I had frequently before seen at a fruit-shop in
another part of the city. He looked at me, however, without any
sign of recognition--with a blank, dull, indifferent countenance;
motioned us forward in silence, and reclosing the door, sunk into
a chair immediately behind it. I followed my companion through a
passage which was unfathomably dark, up a flight of stairs, which
led us into a sort of refreshment room. Tables were spread, with
decanters, glasses, and tumblers upon them, that appeared to be in
continual use. In a recess, stood that evil convenience of most
American establishments, whether on land or sea, a liquor bar;
its shelves crowded with bottles, all of which seemed amply full,
and ready to complete the overthrow of the victim, which the other
appliances of such a dwelling must already have actively begun.
"Here you may take in the Dutch courage, Clifford, should you lack
the native. This, I know, is not the case with you, and yet the
novelty of one's situation frequently overcomes a sensitive mind
like fear. Perhaps a julep may be of use."
"None for me. I need no farther stimulant than the mere sense of
mouvement. I take fire, like a wheel, by my own progress."
"Pretty much the same case with myself. But I have been in the
habit of drinking here, of late, and too deeply. To-night, however,
as I said before, ends all these habits. If there is honey in the
carcass, and strength from the sleep, there is wisdom from the folly,
and virtue from the vice. There is a moral as well as a physical
recoil, that most certainly follows the overcharge; and really,
speaking according to my sincere conviction I never felt myself
to be a better man, than just at this moment when I am about to do
that which my own sense of morality fails altogether to justify.
I do not know that I make you understand my feelings; I scarcely
understand them myself; but of this sort they are, and I am really
persuaded that I never felt in a better disposition to be a good
man and a working man than just at the close of a career which has
been equally profligate and idle."
I think my companion can be understood. There seems, in fact very
little mystery in his moral progress. I understood him, but did
not answer. I was not anxious to keep up the ball of conversation
which he had begun with a spirit so mixed up of contradictions--so
earnest yet so playful. A deep sense of shame unquestionably lurked
beneath his levity; and yet I make no question that he felt in
truth, and for the first time, that degree of mental hardihood of
which he boasted.
He advanced through the refreshment-room, to a door which led to an
apartment in an adjoining tenement. It was closed, but unfastened.
The sound of voices, an occasional buzz, or a slight murmur, came
to our ears from within; that of rattling dice and rolling balls
was more regular and more intelligible. Kingsley laid his hand
upon the latch, and looked round to me. His eye was kindled with
a playful sort of malicious light. A smile of pleasant bitterness
was on his lips. He said to me in a whisper:--
"Stake your money slowly. A Mexican is the lowest stake. Keep to that,
and lose as little as possible. You will soon see me sufficiently
busy, and I will endeavor to urge my labors forward, so as to make
your purgatory a short one. I shall only wait till I feel myself
cheated in the game, to begin that which I came for. See that I
have fair play in THAT, MON AMI, and I care very little about the
other."
He lifted the latch as he concluded, and I followed him into the
apartment.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE HELL.
The scene that opened upon us was, to me, a painfully interesting
one. It was a mere hell, without any of those attractive adjuncts
which, in a diseased state of popular refinement, such as exists in
the fashionable atmospheres of London and Paris, provides it with
decorations, and conceals its more discouraging and offensive
externals. The charms of music, lovely women, gay lights, and superb
drapery and furniture, were here entirely wanting. No other arts
beyond the single passion for hazard, which exists, I am inclined
to think, in a greater or less degree in every human breast, were
here employed to beguile the young and unsuspecting mind into
indulgence. The establishment into which I had fallen, seemed to
presuppose an acquaintance, already formed, of the gamester with his
fascinating vice. It was evidently no place to seduce the uninitiate.
The passion must have been already awakened--the guardianship
of the good angel lulled into indifference or slumber--before the
young mind could be soon reconciled to the moral atmosphere of such
a scene.
The apartment was low and dimly lighted. Groups of small tables
intended for two persons were all around. In the centre of the floor
were tables of larger size, which were surrounded by the followers
of Pharo. Unoccupied tables, here and there, were sprinkled with
cards and domino; while, as if to render the characteristics of
the place complete, a vapor of smoke and a smell of beer assailed
our senses as we entered.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 | 16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
31