The Dynamiter

R >> Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson >> The Dynamiter

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And the shopman raised a curtain, opened a door, and passed into a
small pavilion which had been added to the back of the house. On
the roof, the rain resounded musically. The walls were lined with
maps and prints and a few works of reference. Upon a table was a
large-scale map of Egypt and the Soudan, and another of Tonkin, on
which, by the aid of coloured pins, the progress of the different
wars was being followed day by day. A light, refreshing odour of
the most delicate tobacco hung upon the air; and a fire, not of
foul coal, but of clear-flaming resinous billets, chattered upon
silver dogs. In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr. Godall sat
in a morning muse, placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening to
the rain upon the roof.

'Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,' said he, 'and have you since last night
adopted any fresh political principle?'

'The lady, sir,' said Somerset, with another blush.

'You have seen her, I believe?' returned Mr. Godall; and on
Somerset's replying in the affirmative, 'You will excuse me, my
dear sir,' he resumed, 'if I offer you a hint. I think it not
improbable this lady may desire entirely to forget the past. From
one gentleman to another, no more words are necessary.'

A moment after, he had received Mrs. Desborough with that grave and
touching urbanity that so well became him.

'I am pleased, madam, to welcome you to my poor house,' he said;
'and shall be still more so, if what were else a barren courtesy
and a pleasure personal to myself, shall prove to be of serious
benefit to you and Mr. Desborough.'

'Your Highness,' replied Clara, 'I must begin with thanks; it is
like what I have heard of you, that you should thus take up the
case of the unfortunate; and as for my Harry, he is worthy of all
that you can do.' She paused.

'But for yourself?' suggested Mr. Godall--'it was thus you were
about to continue, I believe.'

'You take the words out of my mouth,' she said. 'For myself, it is
different.'

'I am not here to be a judge of men,' replied the Prince; 'still
less of women. I am now a private person like yourself and many
million others; but I am one who still fights upon the side of
quiet. Now, madam, you know better than I, and God better than
you, what you have done to mankind in the past; I pause not to
inquire; it is with the future I concern myself, it is for the
future I demand security. I would not willingly put arms into the
hands of a disloyal combatant; and I dare not restore to wealth one
of the levyers of a private and a barbarous war. I speak with some
severity, and yet I pick my terms. I tell myself continually that
you are a woman; and a voice continually reminds me of the children
whose lives and limbs you have endangered. A woman,' he repeated
solemnly--'and children. Possibly, madam, when you are yourself a
mother, you will feel the bite of that antithesis: possibly when
you kneel at night beside a cradle, a fear will fall upon you,
heavier than any shame; and when your child lies in the pain and
danger of disease, you shall hesitate to kneel before your Maker.'

'You look at the fault,' she said, 'and not at the excuse. Has
your own heart never leaped within you at some story of oppression?
But, alas, no! for you were born upon a throne.'

'I was born of woman,' said the Prince; 'I came forth from my
mother's agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings. This,
which you forgot, I have still faithfully remembered. Is it not
one of your English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth and
saw vast circumvallations, innumerable troops manoeuvring, warships
at sea and a great dust of battles on shore; and casting anxiously
about for what should be the cause of so many and painful
preparations, spied at last, in the centre of all, a mother and her
babe? These, madam, are my politics; and the verses, which are by
Mr. Coventry Patmore, I have caused to be translated into the
Bohemian tongue. Yes, these are my politics: to change what we
can, to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is
but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and
impositions, and for no word however nobly sounding, and no cause
however just and pious, to relax the stricture of these bonds.'

There was a silence of a moment.

'I fear, madam,' resumed the Prince, 'that I but weary you. My
views are formal like myself; and like myself, they also begin to
grow old. But I must still trouble you for some reply.'

'I can say but one thing,' said Mrs. Desborough: 'I love my
husband.'

'It is a good answer,' returned the Prince; 'and you name a good
influence, but one that need not be conterminous with life.'

'I will not play at pride with such a man as you,' she answered.
'What do you ask of me? not protestations, I am sure. What shall I
say? I have done much that I cannot defend and that I would not do
again. Can I say more? Yes: I can say this: I never abused
myself with the muddle-headed fairy tales of politics. I was at
least prepared to meet reprisals. While I was levying war myself--
or levying murder, if you choose the plainer term--I never accused
my adversaries of assassination. I never felt or feigned a
righteous horror, when a price was put upon my life by those whom I
attacked. I never called the policeman a hireling. I may have
been a criminal, in short; but I never was a fool.'

'Enough, madam,' returned the Prince: 'more than enough! Your
words are most reviving to my spirits; for in this age, when even
the assassin is a sentimentalist, there is no virtue greater in my
eyes than intellectual clarity. Suffer me, then, to ask you to
retire; for by the signal of that bell, I perceive my old friend,
your mother, to be close at hand. With her I promise you to do my
utmost.'

And as Mrs. Desborough returned to the Divan, the Prince, opening a
door upon the other side, admitted Mrs. Luxmore.

'Madam and my very good friend,' said he, 'is my face so much
changed that you no longer recognise Prince Florizel in Mr.
Godall?'

'To be sure!' she cried, looking at him through her glasses. 'I
have always regarded your Highness as a perfect man; and in your
altered circumstances, of which I have already heard with deep
regret, I will beg you to consider my respect increased instead of
lessened.'

'I have found it so,' returned the Prince, 'with every class of my
acquaintance. But, madam, I pray you to be seated. My business is
of a delicate order, and regards your daughter.'

'In that case,' said Mrs. Luxmore, 'you may save yourself the
trouble of speaking, for I have fully made up my mind to have
nothing to do with her. I will not hear one word in her defence;
but as I value nothing so particularly as the virtue of justice, I
think it my duty to explain to you the grounds of my complaint.
She deserted me, her natural protector; for years, she has
consorted with the most disreputable persons; and to fill the cup
of her offence, she has recently married. I refuse to see her, or
the being to whom she has linked herself. One hundred and twenty
pounds a year, I have always offered her: I offer it again. It is
what I had myself when I was her age.'

'Very well, madam,' said the Prince; 'and be that so! But to touch
upon another matter: what was the income of the Reverend Bernard
Fanshawe?'

'My father?' asked the spirited old lady. 'I believe he had seven
hundred pounds in the year.'

'You were one, I think, of several?' pursued the Prince.

'Of four,' was the reply. 'We were four daughters; and painful as
the admission is to make, a more detestable family could scarce be
found in England.'

'Dear me!' said the Prince. 'And you, madam, have an income of
eight thousand?'

'Not more than five,' returned the old lady; 'but where on earth
are you conducting me?'

'To an allowance of one thousand pounds a year,' replied Florizel,
smiling. 'For I must not suffer you to take your father for a
rule. He was poor, you are rich. He had many calls upon his
poverty: there are none upon your wealth. And indeed, madam, if
you will let me touch this matter with a needle, there is but one
point in common to your two positions: that each had a daughter
more remarkable for liveliness than duty.'

'I have been entrapped into this house,' said the old lady, getting
to her feet. 'But it shall not avail. Not all the tobacconists in
Europe . . .'

'Ah, madam,' interrupted Florizel, 'before what is referred to as
my fall, you had not used such language! And since you so much
object to the simple industry by which I live, let me give you a
friendly hint. If you will not consent to support your daughter, I
shall be constrained to place that lady behind my counter, where I
doubt not she would prove a great attraction; and your son-in-law
shall have a livery and run the errands. With such young blood my
business might be doubled, and I might be bound in common gratitude
to place the name of Luxmore beside that of Godall.'

'Your Highness,' said the old lady, 'I have been very rude, and you
are very cunning. I suppose the minx is on the premises. Produce
her.'

'Let us rather observe them unperceived,' said the Prince; and so
saying he rose and quietly drew back the curtain.

Mrs. Desborough sat with her back to them on a chair; Somerset and
Harry were hanging on her words with extraordinary interest;
Challoner, alleging some affair, had long ago withdrawn from the
detested neighbourhood of the enchantress.

'At that moment,' Mrs. Desborough was saying, 'Mr Gladstone
detected the features of his cowardly assailant. A cry rose to his
lips: a cry of mingled triumph . . .'

'That is Mr. Somerset!' interrupted the spirited old lady, in the
highest note of her register. 'Mr. Somerset, what have you done
with my house-property?'

'Madam,' said the Prince, 'let it be mine to give the explanation;
and in the meanwhile, welcome your daughter.'

'Well, Clara, how do you do?' said Mrs. Luxmore. 'It appears I am
to give you an allowance. So much the better for you. As for Mr.
Somerset, I am very ready to have an explanation; for the whole
affair, though costly, was eminently humorous. And at any rate,'
she added, nodding to Paul, 'he is a young gentleman for whom I
have a great affection, and his pictures were the funniest I ever
saw.'

'I have ordered a collation,' said the Prince. 'Mr. Somerset, as
these are all your friends, I propose, if you please, that you
should join them at table. I will take the shop.'

Footnotes:

{1} Hereupon the Arabian author enters on one of his digressions.
Fearing, apparently, that the somewhat eccentric views of Mr.
Somerset should throw discredit on a part of truth, he calls upon
the English people to remember with more gratitude the services of
the police; to what unobserved and solitary acts of heroism they
are called; against what odds of numbers and of arms, and for how
small a reward, either in fame or money: matter, it has appeared
to the translators, too serious for this place.

{2} In this name the accent falls upon the E; the S is sibilant.

{3} The Arabian author of the original has here a long passage
conceived in a style too oriental for the English reader. We
subjoin a specimen, and it seems doubtful whether it should be
printed as prose or verse: 'Any writard who writes dynamitard
shall find in me a never-resting fightard;' and he goes on (if we
correctly gather his meaning) to object to such elegant and
obviously correct spellings as lamp-lightard, corn-dealard, apple-
filchard (clearly justified by the parallel--pilchard) and opera
dancard. 'Dynamitist,' he adds, 'I could understand.'

{4} The Arabian author, with that quaint particularity of touch
which our translation usually praetermits, here registers a
somewhat interesting detail. Zero pronounced the word 'boom;' and
the reader, if but for the nonce, will possibly consent to follow
him.

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