Grif: A Story of Australian Life. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold

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СКАЧАТЬ Brought up to no trade or profession, and naturally idle, I could get nothing to do. Some would have employed me, but they were afraid. I was not rough enough-I was too much of a gentleman. They wanted coarser material than I am composed of, and so, day by day, I have sunk lower and lower. People begin to look on me with suspicion. I am fit for nothing in this colony. I was born a gentleman, and I live the life of a dog; and I have dragged you, who never before knew want, down with me. With no friends, no influence to back me, we might starve and rot. What wonder that I took to drink! The disgust with which I used to contemplate the victims of that vice recoils now upon myself, and I despise and abhor myself for what I am! By what fatality I brought you here, I know not. I suppose it was because we were poor, and I could not afford to buy you better lodging. Now, attend to me-but stay, that boy is listening."

      "He is a friend, Richard," said Alice.

      "Yes," said Grif, "I am a friend that's what I am. Never you mind me I ain't a-goin' to peach. I'd do any thin' to 'elp her, I would-sooner than 'urt her, I'd be chopped up first. You talk better than the preacher cove!"

      "Very well. Now attend. These men want me to join them in their devilish plots. I will not do so, if I can help it. But if I stop here much longer, they will drive me to it. And so I must go away from you and from them. I will go to the gold diggings, and try my luck there-"

      "Leaving me here?"

      "Leaving you here, but not in this house. You have two or three articles of jewellery left. I will sell them-the watch I gave you will fetch ten pounds-and you will be able to live in a more respectable house than this for a few weeks until you hear from me."

      "How will you go?"

      "I shall walk I cannot afford to ride. But I have not concluded yet. I have something to tell you, which may alter our plans, so far as you are concerned. I have a message for you, which I must deliver word for word."

      "A message for me!"

      He paced the room for a few moments in silence. Then, standing before Alice, he looked her in the face, and said: -

      "I saw your father this evening."

      "In town!" she exclaimed.

      "In town. I do not know for what purpose he is here, nor do I care."

      "Oh, Richard," cried the girl; "you did not quarrel with him?"

      "No; I spoke to him respectfully. I told him you were in Melbourne, in want. I begged him to assist us. I said that I was willing to do anything-that I would take any situation, thankfully, in which I could earn bread for you. He turned away impatiently. I followed him, and continued to address him humbly, entreatingly. For your sake, Alice, I did this."

      She took his hand and kissed it, and rested her cheek against it.

      "Hearken to his reply," he said, disengaging his hand, and standing apart from her. "This was it. 'You married my daughter for my money. You are a worthless, idle scoundrel, and I will not help you. If you so much regret the condition to which you have brought my daughter, divorce yourself from her.'"

      "No, no, Richard!"

      "Those were his words. 'Divorce yourself from her, and I will take her back. When you come to me to consent to this, I will give you money. Till then, you may starve. I am a hard man, as you know, obstinate and self-willed; and rather than you should have one shilling of the money you traded for when you married my daughter, I would fling it all in the sea. Tell my daughter this. She knows me well enough to be sure I shall not alter when once I resolve.' Those were his words, word for word. That was the message he bade me give you. What is your answer?"

      "What do you think it is?" she asked, sadly.

      "I cannot tell," he said, doggedly, turning his face from her; "I know what mine would be."

      "What would it be?"

      "I should say this" (he did not look at her while he spoke) – "You, Richard Handfield, Scapegrace, Fortune-hunter, Vagabond (any of these surnames would be sufficiently truthful), came to me, a young simple girl, and played the lover to me, without the knowledge of my father, for the sake of my father's money. You knew that I, a young simple girl, bred upon the plains, and amidst rough men, would be certain to be well affected towards you-would almost be certain to fall in love with you, for the false gloss you parade to the world, and for the refinement of manner which those employed about my father's station did not possess. You played for my heart, and you won it. But you won it without the money you thought you would have gained, for you were disappointed in your calculations. And now that I know you for what you are, and now that I have been sufficiently punished for my folly, in the misery you have brought upon me, I shall go back to the home from which I fled, and endeavour to forget the shame with which you have surrounded me."

      "Do you think that this would be my answer, Richard?"

      He had not once looked at her while he spoke, and now as she addressed him, with an indescribable sadness in her voice, he did not reply. For full five minutes there was silence in the room. Then the grief which filled her heart could no longer be suppressed, and short broken gasps escaped her.

      "Richard!" she exclaimed.

      "Yes, Alice."

      "Have you not more faith in me than this? As I would die to keep you good, so I should die without your love. What matters poverty? We are not the only ones in the world whose lot is hard to bear! Be true to me, Richard, so that I may be true to myself and to you. You do not believe that this would be my answer!"

      There came no word from his lips.

      "When I vowed to be faithful to you, Richard, I was but a girl-indeed, I am no better now, except in experience but I vowed with my whole heart. I had no knowledge then of life's hard trials, but since I have learned them, I seem also to have learned what is my duty, and what was the meaning of the faith I pledged. I never rightly understood it till now, darling! You do not believe that this would be my answer!"

      Still he did not look at her. Although she waited in an anxious agony of expectation, he did not speak. The plain words he had chosen in which to make his confession, had brought to him, for the first time, a true sense of the unworthy part he had played.

      "If in the time that has gone, my dear," she continued, "there is any circumstance, any remembrance, connected with me, that gives you pain, forget it for my sake. If you have believed that any thought that, you have done me wrong exists, or ever existed, in my mind, believe it no longer. Think of me as I am-see me as I am-your wife, who loves you now with a more perfect love than when she was a simple girl, inexperienced in the world's hard ways. Ah! see how I plead to you, and turn to me, my dear!"

      She would have knelt to him, but he turned and clasped her in his arms, and pressed her pure heart to his. Her fervent love had triumphed; and as he kissed away her tears, he felt, indeed, that wifely purity is man's best shield from evil.

      "You shall do what you have said, Richard; but not to-morrow. Wait but one day longer; and if I then say to you-'Go,' you shall go. I have a reason for this, but I must not tell you what it is. Do you consent?"

      "Yes, love."

      "Brighter days will dawn upon us. I am happier now than I have been for a long, long time! And oh, my dear! – bend your head closer, Richard-there may come a little child to need our care-"

      The light had gone out and the room was in darkness. But mean and disreputable as it was, a good woman's unselfish love sanctified it and made it holy!

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