Loe raamatut: «Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2», lehekülg 10

“But I ‘d not meet him,” whispered he to himself. “One is not bound to meet a man of this sort.”

There is something marvellously accommodating and elastic in the phrase, “One is not bound” to do this, that, and t’ other. As the said bond is a contract between oneself and an imaginary world, its provisions are rarely onerous or exacting. Life is full of things “one is not bound to do.” You are “not bound,” for instance, to pay your father’s debts, though, it might be, they were contracted in your behalf and for your benefit. You are not bound to marry the girl whose affections have been your own for years if you can do better in another quarter, and she has nothing in your handwriting to establish a contract. You are not bound, – good swimmer though you be, – to rescue a man from drowning, lest he should clutch too eagerly and peril your safety. You are not bound to risk the chance of a typhus by visiting a poor friend on his sick-bed. You are not bound to aid charities you but half approve, – to assist people who have been improvident, – to associate with many who are uninteresting to you. But why go on with this expurgatorial catalogue? It is quite clear the only things “one is bound” to do are those the world will enforce at his hands; and let our selfishness be ever so inveterate, and ever so crafty, the majority will beat us, and the Ayes have it at last!

Now, few men had a longer list of the things they were “not bound to do” than Annesley Beecher; in reality, if the balance were to be struck between them and those he acknowledged to be obligatory, it would have been like Falstaff’s sack to the miserable morsel of bread. Men of his stamp fancy themselves very wise in their generation. They are not easy-natured, open, trustful, and free-handed, like that Pharisee! Take my word for it, the system works not so well as it looks, and they pass their existence in a narrow prison-ward of their own selfish instincts, – their fears their fetters, their cowardly natures heavy as any chains!

Beecher reasoned somewhat in this wise. Grog was “not bound” to destroy the acceptances. He might have held them in terrorism over him for a long life, and used them, at last, if occasion served. At all events, they were valuable securities, which it was pure and wanton waste to burn. Still, the act being done, Beecher was “bound” in the heaviest recognizances to his own heart to profit by the motion; and the great question with him was, what was the best and shortest road to that desirable object? Supposing Lackington all right, – no disputed claim to the title, no litigation of the estate, – Beecher’s best course had possibly been to slip his cable, make all sail, and part company with Davis forever. One grave difficulty, however, opposed itself to this scheme. How was it possible for any man walking the earth to get out of reach of Grog Davis? Had there been a planet allotted for the special use of peers, – were there some bright star above to which they could betake themselves and demand admission by showing their patent, and from which all of inferior birth were excluded, Beecher would assuredly have availed himself of his privilege; but, alas! whatever inequalities pervade life, there is but one earth to bear us living, and cover us when dead! Now, the portion of that earth which constitutes the continent of Europe Davis knew like a detective. A more hopeless undertaking could not be imagined than to try to escape him. Great as was his craft, it was nothing to his courage, – a courage that gave him a sort of affinity to a wild animal, so headlong, reckless, and desperate did it seem. Provoke him, he was ever ready for the conflict; outrage him, and only your life’s blood could be the expiation. And what an outrage had it been if Beecher had taken this moment, – the first, perhaps the only one in all his life, in which Davis had accomplished a noble and generous action, – to desert him! How he could picture to his mind Grog, when the tidings were told him! – not overwhelmed by astonishment, not stunned by surprise, not irresolute even for a second, but starting up like a wounded tiger, and eager for pursuit, his fierce eyeballs glaring, and his sinewy hands closed with a convulsive grip. It was clear, therefore, that escape was impossible. What, then, was the alternative that remained? To abide, – sign a lifelong partnership with Grog, and marry Lizzy. “A stiff line of country, – a very stiff line of country, Annesley, my boy,” said he, addressing himself: “many a dangerous rasper, many a smashing fence there, – have you nerve for it?” Now Beecher knew life well enough to see that such an existence was, in reality, little else than a steeple-chase, and he questioned himself gravely whether he possessed head or hand for the effort. Grog, to be sure, was a marvellous trainer, and Lizzy, – what might not Lizzy achieve of success, with her beauty, her gracefulness, and her genius! It was not till after a long course of reflection that her image came up before him; but when once it did come, it was master of the scene. How he recalled all her winning ways, her siren voice, her ready wit, her easy, graceful motion, her playful manner, that gave to her beauty so many new phases of attraction! What a fascination was it that in her company he never remembered a sorrow, – nay, to think of her was the best solace he had ever found against the pain of gloomy reveries. She was never out of humour, never out of spirits, – always brilliant, sparkling, and happy-minded.

What a glorious thing to obtain a share of such a nature, – the very next best thing to having it oneself! “But all this was not Love,” breaks in my impatient reader. Very true; I admit it in all humility. It was not what you, nor perhaps I, would call by that name; but yet it was all that Annesley Beecher had to offer in that regard.

Have you never remarked the strange and curious efforts made by men who have long lived on narrow fortunes to acquit themselves respectably on succeeding to larger means? They know well enough that they need not pinch and screw and squeeze any longer, – that fortune has enlarged her boundaries, and that they can enter into wider, richer, and pleasanter pasturage, – and yet, for the life of them, they cannot make the venture! or if they do, it is with a sort of convulsive, spasmodic effort far more painful than pleasurable. Their old instincts press heavily upon them, and bear down all the promptings of their present prosperity; they really do not want all these bounties of fate, – they are half crashed by the shower of blessings. So is it precisely with your selfish man in his endeavors to expand into affection, and so was it with Beecher when he tried to be a lover.

Some moralists tell us that, even in the best natures, love is essentially a selfish passion. What amount of egotism, then, does it not include in those who are far – very far – from being “the best”? With all this, let us be just to poor Beecher. Whatever there was of heart about him, she had touched; whatever of good or kind or gentle in his neglected being existed, she had found the way to it. If he were capable of being anything better, she alone could have aided the reformation. If he were not to sink still lower and lower, it was to her helping hand his rescue would be owing. And somehow – though I cannot explain how – he felt and knew this to be the case. He could hear generous sentiments from her, and not deem them hypocrisy. He could listen to words of trust and hopefulness, and yet not smile at her credulity. She had gained that amount of ascendancy over his mind which subjugated all his own prejudices to her influence, and, like all weak natures, he was never so happy as in slavery. Last of all, what a prize it would be to be the husband of the most beautiful woman in Europe! There was a notoriety in that, far above the fame of winning “Derbys” or breaking Roulette Banks; and he pictured to himself how they would journey through the Continent, admired, worshipped, and envied, – for already he had invested himself with the qualities of his future wife, and gloried in the triumphs she was so sure to win.

“By Jove! I’ll do it,” cried he, at last, as he slapped his hand on the table. “I don’t care what they’ll say, I will do it; and if there’s any fellow dares to scoff or sneer at it, Grog shall shoot him. I’ll make that bargain with him; and he ‘ll like it, for he loves fighting.” He summed up his resolution by imagining that the judgment of the world would run somehow in this fashion: “Wonderful fellow, that Annesley Beecher! It’s not above a year since his brother lost the title, and there he is now, married to the most splendid woman in all Europe, living like a prince, – denying himself nothing, no matter what it cost, – and all by his own wits! Show me his equal anywhere! Lackington used to call him a ‘flat.’ I wonder what he ‘d say now!”

CHAPTER XIII. A DARK CONFIDENCE

What a wound would it inflict upon our self-love were we occasionally to know that the concessions we have extorted from our own hearts by long effort and persuasion would be deemed matters of very doubtful acceptance by those in whose favor they were made. With what astonishment should we learn that there was nothing so very noble in our forgiveness, nothing so very splendid in our generosity! I have been led to this reflection by thinking over Annesley Beecher’s late resolve, and wondering what effect it might have had on him could he have overheard what passed in the very chamber next his own.

Though Lizzy Davis was dressed and ready to come down to breakfast, she felt so ill and depressed that she lay down again on her bed, telling the maid to close the shutters and leave her to herself.

“What’s this, Lizzy? What’s the matter, girl?” said Davis, entering, and taking a seat at her bedside. “Your hand is on fire.”

“I slept badly, – scarcely at all,” said she, faintly, “and my head feels as if it would split with pain.”

“Poor child!” said he, as he kissed her burning forehead; “I was the cause of all this. Yes, Lizzy, I know it, but I had been staving off this hour for many and many a year. I felt in my heart that you were the only one in all the world who could console or cheer me, and yet I was satisfied to forego it all – to deny myself what I yearned after – just to spare you.”

The words came with a slow and faltering utterance from him, and his lips quivered when he had done speaking.

“I ‘m not quite sure the plan was a good one,” said she, in a low voice.

“Nor am I now,” said he, sternly; “but I did it for the best.”

She heaved a heavy sigh, and was silent.

“Mayhap I thought, too,” said he, after a pause, “that when you looked back at all the sacrifices I had made for you, how I toiled and labored, – not as other men toil and labor, for my handicraft was always exercised with a convict ship in the offing – There, you needn’t shudder now; I ‘m here beside you safe. Well, I thought you ‘d say, ‘After all, he gave me every advantage in his power. If he could n’t bestow on me station and riches, he made me equal to their enjoyment if they ever befell me. He didn’t bring me down to his own level, nor to feel the heartburnings of his own daily life, but he made me, in thought and feeling, as good as any lady in the land.’”

“And for what – to what end?” said she, wildly.

“That you might be such, one day, girl,” said he, passionately. “Do you think I have not known every hour, for the last thirty-odd years, what I might have been, had I been trained, and schooled, and taught the things that others know? Have I not felt that I had pluck, daring, energy, and persistence that only wanted knowledge to beat them all, and leave them nowhere? Have I not said to myself, ‘She has every one of these, and she has good looks to boot; and why shouldn’t she go in and carry away the cup?’ And do you think, when I said that, that I was n’t striking a docket of bankruptcy against my own heart forever? for to make you great was to make me childless!”

Lizzy covered her face with her hands, but never uttered a word.

“I did n’t need any one to tell me,” resumed he, fiercely, “that training you up in luxury and refinement was n’t the way to make you satisfied with poverty, or proud of such a father as myself. I knew deuced well what I was preparing for myself there. ‘But no matter,’ I said, ‘come what will, she shall have a fair start of it. Show me the fellow will try a balk, – show me the man will cross the course while she’s running.’”

Startled by the thick and guttural utterance of his words, Lizzy removed her hands from her face, and stared eagerly at him. Strongly shaken by passion as he was, every line and lineament tense with emotion, there was a marvellous resemblance between her beautiful features and the almost demoniac savagery of his. Had he not been at her side, the expression was only that of intense pain on a face of surpassing beauty, but, seen through the baneful interpretation of his look, she seemed the type of a haughty nature spirited by the very wildest ambition.

“Ay, girl,” said he, with a sigh, “you ‘ve cost me more than money or money’s worth; and if I ever come to have what they call a ‘conscience,’ I ‘ll have an ugly score to settle on your account.”

“Oh, dearest father!” cried she, bitterly, “do not wring my heart by such words as these.”

“There, you shall hear no more of it,” said he, withdrawing his hand from her grasp and crossing his arm on his breast.

“Nay,” said she, fondly, “you shall tell me all and everything. It has cost you heavily to make this confidence to me. Let us try if it cannot requite us both. I know the worst. No?” cried she, in terror, as he shook his head; “why, what is there remains behind?”

“How shall I tell you what remains behind?” broke he in, sternly; “how shall I teach you to know the world as I know it, – to feel that every look bent on me is insult, – every word uttered as I pass a sarcasm, – that fellows rise from the table when I sit down at it? and though, now and then, I ‘m lucky enough to catch one who goes too far, and make him a warning to others, they can do enough to spite me, and yet never come within twelve paces of me. I went over to Neuwied yesterday to fetch my letters from the post. You ‘d fancy that in a little village on this untravelled bank of the Rhine I might have rested an hour to bait my horse and eat my breakfast unmolested and without insult. You ‘d say that in a secluded spot like that I would be safe. Not a bit of it. Scandal has its hue and cry, and every man that walks the earth is its agent. Two young fellows fresh from England – by their dress, their manner, and their bad French, I judged them to be young students from Oxford or Cambridge – breakfasted in the same room with me, and deeming me a foreigner, and therefore – for it is a right English conclusion – unable to understand them, talked most freely of events and people before me. I paid little attention to their vapid talk till my ear caught the name of Beecher. They were discussing him and a lady who had been seen in his company at Aix-la-Chapelle. Yes, they had seen her repeatedly in her rides and drives, followed her to the Cursaal, and stared at her at the opera. They were quite enthusiastic about her beauty, and only puzzled to know who this mysterious creature might be that looked like a queen and dressed like a queen. One averred she was not Beecher’s sister, – the peerage told them that; as little was she his wife. Then came the other and last alternative. And I had to sit still and listen to every pro and con of this stupid converse, – their miserable efforts to reason, or their still more contemptible attempts to jest, and dare not stand up before them and say, ‘Hold your slanderous tongues, for she is my daughter,’ because, to the first question they would put to me, I must say, ‘My name is Davis – Christopher Davis’ – ay, ‘Grog Davis,’ if they would have it so. No, no, girl, all your beauty, all your grace, all your fascinations would not support such a name, – the best horse that ever won the Derby will break down if you overweight him; and so I had to leave my breakfast uneaten and come away how I could. For one brief moment I was irresolute. I felt that if I let them off so easily I ‘d pine and fret over it after, and maybe give way to passion some other time with less excuse; but my thoughts came back to you, Lizzy, and I said, ‘What signifies about me? I have no object, no goal in life, but her. She must not be talked of, nor made matter for newspaper gossip. She will one day or other hold a place at which slander and malevolence only talk in whispers, and even these must be uttered with secrecy!’ I could n’t help laughing as I left the room. One of them declined to eat salad because it was unwholesome. Little he knew on what a tiny chance it depended whether that was to be his last breakfast. The devilish pleasure of turning back and telling him so almost overcame my resolution.”

“There was, then, an impropriety in my living at Aix as I did?” asked Lizzy, calmly.

“The impropriety, as you call it, need not have been notorious,” said he, in angry confusion. “If people will attract notice by an ostentatious display, – horses, equipage, costly dressing, and so on, – the world will talk of them. You could n’t know this, but Beecher did. It was his unthinking folly drew these bad tongues on you. It is a score he ‘ll have to settle with me yet.”

“But, dearest papa, let me bear the blame that is my due. It was I – I myself – who encouraged, suggested these extravagances. I fancied myself possessed of boundless wealth; he never undeceived me; nay, he would not even answer my importunate questions as to my family, my connections, whence we came, and of what county.”

“If he had,” muttered Grog, “I ‘d be curious to have heard his narrative.”

“I saw, at last, that there was a secret, and then I pressed him no more.”

“And you did well. Had you importuned, and had he yielded, it had been worse for him.”

“Just as little did I suspect,” continued she, rapidly, “that any reproach could attach to my living in his society; he was your friend; it was at your desire he accepted this brief guardianship; he never, by a word, a look, transgressed the bounds of respectful courtesy; and I felt all the unconstrained freedom of old friendship in our intercourse.”

“All his reserve and all your delicacy won’t silence evil tongues, girl. I intended you to have stayed a day or two, at most, at Aix. You passed weeks there. Whose fault that, you say? Mine, – of course, mine, and no one else’s. But what but my fault every step in your whole life? Why was n’t I satisfied to bring you up in my own station, with rogues and swindlers for daily associates? Then I might have had a daughter who would not be ashamed to own me.”

“Oh, that I am not; that I will never be,” cried she, throwing her arm around his neck. “What has your whole life been but a sacrifice to me? It may be that you rate too highly these great prizes of life; that you attach to the station you covet for me a value I cannot concur in. Still, I feel that it was your love for me prompted this hope, and that while you trod the world darkly and painfully, you purchased a path of light and pleasantness for me.”

“You have paid me for it all by these words,” said he, drawing his hand across his eyes. “I ‘d work as a daily laborer on the road, I’d be a sailor before the mast, I’d take my turn with the chain-gang and eat Norfolk Island biscuit, if it could help to place you where I seek to see you.”

“And what is this rank to which you aspire so eagerly?”

“I want you to be a peeress, girl. I want you to be one of the proudest guild the world ever yet saw or heard of; to have a station so accredited that every word you speak, every act you do, goes forth with its own authority.”

“But stay!” broke she in, “men’s memories will surely carry them back to who I was.”

“Let them, girl. Are you the stuff to be chilled by that? Have I made you what you are, that you cannot play their equal? There are not many of them better looking; are there any cleverer or better informed? Even those Oxford boys said you looked like an empress. If insult will crush you, girl, you ‘ve got little of my blood in you.”

Lizzy’s face flushed scarlet, and her eyes glittered wildly, as they seemed to say, “Have no fears on that score.” Then, suddenly changing to an ashy pallor, and in a voice trembling with intense feeling, she said: “But why seek out an existence of struggle and conflict? It is for me and my welfare that all your anxieties are exercised. Is it not possible that these can be promoted without the dangerous risk of this ambition? You know life well; tell me, then, are there not some paths a woman may tread for independence, and yet cause no blush to those who love her best? Of the acquirements you have bestowed upon me, are there not some which could be turned to this account? I could be a governess.”

“Do you know what a governess is, girl? – a servant in the garb of a lady; one whose mind has been cultivated, not to form resources for herself, but to be drained and drawn on by others. They used to kill a serf, in the middle ages, that a noble might warm his feet in the hot entrails; our modern civilization is satisfied by driving many a poor girl crazy, to cram some stupid numbskull with a semblance of knowledge. You shall not be a governess.”

“There is the stage, then,” cried she. “I’m vain enough to imagine I should succeed there.”

“I’ll not hear of it,” broke in Davis, passionately. “If I was certain you could act like Siddons herself, you should not walk the boards. I know what a theatre is. I know the life of coarse familiarity it leads to. The corps is a family gathered together like what jockeys call ‘a scratch team,’ – a wheeler here, and a leader there, with just smartness enough to soar above the level of a dull audience, crammed with the light jest of low comedy, and steered by no higher ambition than a crowded benefit, or a junketing at Greenwich. How would you consort with these people?”

“Still, if I achieved success – ”

“I won’t have it, – that’s enough. I tell you, girl, that there is but one course for you. You must be declared winner at the stand-house before you have been seen on the ground. If you have to run the gauntlet through all the slanders and stories they will rake up of me, – if, before you reach the goal, you have to fight all the lost battles of my life over again, – you ‘ll never see the winning-post.”

“And is it not better to confront the storm, and risk one’s chances with the elements, than suffer shipwreck at once? I tell you, father,” cried she, eagerly, “I ‘ll face all the perils you speak of, boldly; I’ll brave insolence, neglect, sarcasm, – what they will, – only let me feel one honest spot in my heart, and be able to say to myself, ‘You have toiled lowly, and fared ill; you have dared a conflict and been worsted; but you have not made traffic of your affections, nor bought success by that which makes it valueless.’”

“These are the wild romances of a girl’s fancy,” said Davis. “Before a twelvemonth was over, you could n’t say, on your oath, whether you had married for love or interest, except that poverty might remind you of the one, and affluence suggest the other. Do you imagine that the years stop short with spring, and that one is always in the season of expectancy? No, no; months roll along, and after summer comes autumn, and then winter, and the light dress you fancied that you never need change would make but scanty clothing.”

“But if I am not able to bring myself to this?”

“Are you certain you will be able to bring me to worse?” said he, solemnly. “Do you feel, Lizzy, as if you could repay my long life of sacrifice and struggle by what would undo them all? Do you feel strong enough to say, ‘My old father was a fool to want to make me better than himself; I can descend to the set he is ashamed of; and, more still, I can summon courage to meet taunts and insults on him, which, had I station to repel them from, had never been uttered’?”

“Oh, do not tempt me this way!” cried she, bitterly.

“But I will, girl; I will leave nothing unsaid that may induce you to save yourself from misery, and me from disgrace. I tell you, girl, if I face the world again, it must be with such security as only you can give me, – you, a lady high in rank and position, can then save me. My enemies will know that their best game will not be to ruin me.”

“And are you sure it would save you?” said she, sternly and coldly.

“I am,” said he, in a voice like her own.

“Will you take a solemn oath to me that you see no other road out of these difficulties, whatever they are, than by my doing this?”

“I will swear it as solemnly as ever words were sworn. I believe – before Heaven I say it – that there’s not another chance in life by which your future lot can be secured.”

“Do not speak of mine; think solely of your fortunes, and say if this alone can save them.”

“Just as firmly do I say, then, that once in the position I mean, you can rescue me out of every peril. You will be rich enough to pay some, powerful enough to promote others, great enough to sway and influence all.”

“Good God! what have you done, then, that it is only by sacrificing all my hopes of happiness that you can be ransomed?” cried she, with a burst of irrepressible passion.

“You want a confession, then,” said Davis, in a tone of most savage energy; “you ‘d like to hear my own indictment of myself. Well, there are plenty of counts in it.”

“Stand forward, Kit Davis. You are charged with various acts of swindling and cheating, – light offences, all of them, – committed in the best of company, and in concert with honorable and even noble colleagues. By the virtue of your oath, Captain Davis, how many horses have you poisoned, how many jockeys have you drugged, what number of men have you hocussed at play, what sums have you won from others in a state of utter insensibility? Can you state any case where you enforced a false demand by intimidation? Can you charge your memory with any instance of shooting a man who accused you of foul play? What names besides your own have you been in the habit of signing to bills? Have you any revelations to make about stock transferred under forgery? Will you kiss the book, and say that nineteen out of twenty at the hulks have not done a fiftieth part of what you have done? Will you solemnly take oath that there are not ten, fifteen, twenty charges, which might be prosecuted against you, to transportation for life? and are there not two – or, certainly, is there not one – with a heavier forfeiture on it? Are there not descriptions of you in almost every police bureau in Europe, and photographic likenesses, too, on frontier passport-offices of little German States, that Hesse and Cassel and Coburgh should not be ravaged by the wolf called Grog Davis?”

“And if this be so, to what end do I sacrifice myself?” cried she, in bitter anguish. “Were it not better to seek out some far-away land where we cannot be traced? Let us go to America, to Australia, – I don’t care how remote it be, – the country that will shelter us – ”

“Not a step. I’ll not budge out of Europe; win or lose, here I stay! Do as I tell you, girl, and the game is our own. It has been my safety this many a year that I could compromise so many in my own fall. Well, time has thinned the number marvellously. Many have died. The Cholera, the Crimea, the Marshalsea, broken hearts, and what not, have done their work; and of the few remaining, some have grown indifferent to exposure, others have dropped out of view, and now it would be as much as I could do to place four or five men of good names in the dock beside me. That ain’t enough. I must have connections.

“I want those relations that can’t afford disgrace. Let me only have them, they ‘ll take care of their own reputations. You don’t know, but I know, what great folk can do in England. There ‘s not a line in the Ten Commandments they could n’t legalize with an Act of Parliament. They can marry and unmarry, bind and loosen, legitimize or illegitimize, by a vote ‘of the House;’ and by a vote of society they can do just as much: make a swindling railroad contractor the first man in London, and, if they liked it, and saw it suited their book, they could make Kit Davis a member of White’s, or the Carlton; and once they did it, girl, they ‘d think twice before they ‘d try to undo it again. All I say is, give me a Viscount for a son-in-law, and see if I don’t ‘work the oracle.’ Let me have just so much backing as secures a fair fight, and my head be on’t if they don’t give in before I do! They ‘re very plucky with one another, girl, because they keep within the law; but mark how they tremble before the fellow that does n’t mind the law, – that goes through it, at one side of it, or clean over it. That’s the pull I have over them. The man that don’t mind a wetting can always drag another into the water; do you see that?”

Davis had now so worked upon himself that he walked the room with hasty steps, his cheeks burning, and his eyes wildly, fiercely glaring. Amongst the traits which characterize men of lawless and depraved lives, none is more remarkable than the boastful hardihood with which they will at times deploy all the resources of their iniquity, even exaggerating the amount of the wrongs they have inflicted on society. There is something actually satanic in their exultation over a world they have cheated, bullied, injured, and insulted, so that, in their infernal code, honesty and trustfulness seem only worthy of contempt, and he alone possessed of true courage who dares and defies the laws that bind his fellow-men.

Davis was not prone to impulsiveness; very few men were less the slaves of rash or intemperate humors. He had been reared in too stern a school to let mere temper master him; but his long practised self-restraint deserted him here. In his eagerness to carry his point, he was borne away beyond all his prudence, and once launched into the sea of his confessions, he wandered without chart or compass. Besides this, there was that strange, morbid sense of vanity which is experienced in giving a shock to the fears and sensibilities of another. The deeper the tints of his own criminality, the more terrible the course he had run in life, so much the more was he to be feared and dreaded. If he should fail to work upon her affections, he might still hope to extract something from her terror; for who could say of what a man like him was not capable? And last of all, he had thrown off the mask, and he did not care to retain a single rag of the disguise he so long had worn; thus was it, then, that he stood before her in all the strong light of his iniquities, – a criminal, whose forfeitures would have furnished Guilt for fifty.