Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. II (of 2)

Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. II (of 2)
Robert Bird

Robert Montgomery Bird

Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. II (of 2)

BOOK IV (continued)

CONTAINING ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE FOLLY OF BRINGING UP CHILDREN

CHAPTER IV.

THE MISER'S CHILDREN

It will scarcely be supposed that, with the passion of covetousness gnawing at my heart, I had space or convenience for any other feeling. But Abram Skinner had loved his children; and to this passion I was introduced, as well as to the other. At first I was surprised that I should bestow the least regard upon them, seeing that they were no children of mine. I endeavoured to shake off the feeling of attachment, as an absurdity, but could not; in spite of myself, I found my spirit yearning towards them; and by-and-by, having lost my identity entirely, I could scarcely, even when I made the effort, recall the consciousness that I was not their parent in reality.

Indeed, the transformation that had now occurred to my spirit was more thorough than it had been in either previous instance; I could scarce convince myself I had not been born the being I represented; my past existence began to appear to my reflections only as some idle dream, that the fever of sickness had brought upon my mind; and I forgot that I was, or had been, Sheppard Lee.

Yes, reader, I was now Abram Skinner in all respects, and I loved his children, as he had done before me. In entering his body, I became, as I have mentioned repeatedly before, the subject of every peculiarity of being that marked the original possessor: without which, indeed, the great experiment my destiny permitted me to make of the comparative good and evil of different spheres of existence, must have been made in vain. What my prototype hated I was enforced to hate; what he loved I found myself compelled in like manner to love. While moving in the bodies of John H. Higginson and I. D. Dawkins, I do not remember that I experienced any affection for anybody; which happened, doubtless, because these individuals confined their affections to their own persons. Abram Skinner, on the contrary, loved his children; which I suppose was owing to their being the worst children that ever tormented a parent. He loved them, and so did I; he pondered with bitterness over the ingratitude of their tempers, and the profligacy of their lives, and I – despite all my attempts to the contrary – did the same. I forgot, at last, that I was not their parent, and my feelings showed me that I was; and I found in the anguish that attacked my spirit, when I thought of them, one of the modes in which Heaven visits with retribution the worshipper of the false god of the country. When the votary of Mammon has propitiated his deity, let him count the children he has sacrificed upon his altar. Avarice, as well as wrath, sows the storm only to reap the whirlwind.

I am growing serious upon this subject, but I cannot help it. This portion of my history dwells on my remembrance with gloom; it keeps me moralizing over the career of my neighbours. When I see or hear of a man who is bending all his energies to the acquisition of a fortune, and is already the master of his thousands, I ask, "What has become of his sons?" or, "What will become of them?"

With the affection for the children of Abram Skinner that took possession of my mind, came also a persuasion, exceedingly painful, that they were a triad of graceless, ungrateful reprobates; and, what was worse, there was something whispered within me that much, if not all, the evil of their lives and natures, was owing to the neglect in which their parent, while engrossed with the high thought of heaping up money, had allowed them to grow up. The consequences of this neglect I felt as if it had been my own act.

The first pang was inflicted by the girl Alicia, and I felt it keenly – not, indeed, that I had any particular parental affection for her, as doubtless I should have had, had she not run away so opportunely. On the contrary, a vague recollection of my amour, and the inconstancy of her temper, caused my feelings in relation to her to assume a very peculiar hue; so that I regarded her with sentiments due as much to the jilted lover as the injured father. But what chiefly afflicted me was the hint she had given in the postscript of her letter, warning me of the fatal call to be made upon me, within two months' space, to render up an account of my guardianship, and surrender into the hands of that detestable Sammy Wilkins, my late cousin, the rich legacy of her aunt Sally, which, being chiefly in real estate, I – or rather my prototype before me – had, without anticipating such a catastrophe, managed so prudently that it was now worth more than double its original value. The thought filled me with such rage and phrensy, that, had she been twice my daughter, I should have rewarded her with execrations.

My quondam uncle, Mr. Samuel Wilkins of Wilkinsbury Hall, who, it seems, received the girl as well as he afterward did his daughter's husband, thought fit to pay me a visit, a week after my transformation, to confer with me on the subject; and receiving no satisfaction, for I was in a rage and refused to see him, sent me divers notes, proposing a reconciliation betwixt myself and his daughter-in-law; and these being cast into the fire, I received, in course of time, a letter from his lawyer, or his son Sammy's, in which I was politely asked what were my intentions in relation to settlement, and so forth, and so forth.

I received letters from the damsel also, but they went into the fire like the others; and my rage waxing higher and higher as the time of settlement drew nigh, I set myself to work to frame such a guardian's account as would materially lessen the amount of my losses.

But all was in vain; the married Alicia was at last of age, and all I could do was to fling the matter into the lawyers' hands, so as to keep the money, the dear money, in my own as long as possible.

My reader may think this was not a very handsome or reputable way of treating a daughter; but he must recollect I was in Abram Skinner's body. The matter was still in suit when I departed from my borrowed flesh; but I have no doubt the execrable Samuel Wilkins, Jr. got possession of the legacy, as well as ten times as much to the back of it.

But this, great as was the anguish the evil inflicted, was nothing to the pangs I suffered on account of the two boys, Ralph and Abbot. On these I showered – not openly, indeed, for I was crabbed enough of temper, but in my secret heart – all the affection such a parent could feel. But I showered it in vain; the seeds of evil example and neglect had taken root; the prospect of wealth had long since turned brains untempered by education and moral culture, and the parsimony of their parent only drove them into profligacy of a more demoralizing species; they were ruined in morals, in prospects, and in reputation; and while yet upon the threshold of manhood, they presented upon their brows the stamp of degradation and the warrant of untimely graves.

The younger, Abbot, had evidently been a favourite from his childhood up, his temper being fierce and imperious, yet with an occasional dash of amiableness, that showed what his disposition might have been, if regulated by a careful and conscientious parent. He possessed a fine figure, of which he was vain; and being of a gay and convivial turn, there was the stronger propensity to dissipation, and greater fear of the consequences. These were now lamentable enough; he was already beyond redemption – a sot, and almost a madman.

The elder brother was a young man, to all appearance, of a saturnine mood and staid habits; but this was in appearance only. He was the associate of the junior in all his scenes of frolic, and an actor in others of which, perhaps, Abbot never dreamed. A strong head and a spirit of craft enabled him to conceal the effect of excesses which sent his brother home reeling and raging with drunkenness. I knew his habits well; and I knew that, besides being in a fairer way to the grave – if not to the gallows – he was a hypocrite of the worst order; his gravity being put on to cover a temper both fiery and malicious, and his apparent correctness of habits being the mere cover to the most scandalous irregularities. He was a creature all of duplicity, and wo to the father who made him such!

The scene in the dying chamber of their father they never forgot, though, perhaps, I might have done so. It drove the younger from all attempts at pretended regard or concealment of his profligacy, and was, I believe, the cause of his final ruin. He absconded, out of mere shame, for a week, and then returned to put a bold or indifferent face upon the matter, and to show himself as regardless of respect as restraint.

The other, after concealing himself in like manner for a few days, came to me, apparently in great contrition of spirit, and almost persuaded me that his brutal conduct on that eventful evening arose rather from grief than joy. He had been so much affected by my death, he assured me, as scarce to know what he did when swallowing a glass of brandy his brother gave him; that, he declared with half a dozen tears, had set him crazy, and he knew not what he had done – only he recollected something about going to the chamber, where, he believed, he had behaved very badly; for which he begged my forgiveness, and hoped I would not think his conduct was owing to any want of affection.

I had proof enough that the villain was telling me falsehoods, and I knew that if either should, in a moment of soberness and compunction, breathe a single sigh over my death-bed, he was not the one. In truth, they were both bad; both, perhaps, irreclaimable; but while the conduct of Abbot gave me most pain, that of Ralph filled me with constant terror. Nothing but the daily excitement of speculation and gain could have made tolerable an existence cursed by incessant griefs and forebodings. It may be supposed that I frequently took the young men to task for their excesses. I might as well have scolded the winds for blowing, or the waters for running. It is true that Ralph heard me commonly with great patience, and sometimes with apparent contrition; but at times a scowl came over his dark features that frightened me into silence; and once, giving way to his fierce temper, he told me that if there was any thing amiss or disreputable in his conduct, it was the consequence of mine; that I, instead of granting him the means for reasonable indulgence, and elevating him to the station among honourable and worthy men to which my wealth gave him a claim, and which he had a right to expect of me, had kept him in a state of need and vassalage intolerable to any one of his age and spirit.

As for Abbot, this kind of recrimination was a daily thing with him. I scarce ever saw him except when inflamed with drink; and on such occasions he was wont to demand money, which being denied, he would give way to passion, and load me with reproaches still more bitter of spirit and violent of expression than those uttered by Ralph. Nay, upon my charging him with being an abandoned profligate and ruined man, he admitted the fact, and swore that I was the author of his destruction; that my niggardliness had deprived him of the opportunities that gave other young men professions and independence; that I had brought him up in idleness and ignorance, and, by still refusing him his rights, was consigning him to infamy and an early grave.

Such controversies between us were common, and perhaps expedited the fate that was in store for him, as well as his brother. I thought in my folly to punish, and at the same time check his excesses, by denying him all supplies of money, and by refusing to pay a single debt he contracted. A deep gloom suddenly invested him; he ceased to return home intoxicated, but stalked into and out of the house like a spectre, without bestowing any notice upon me. The change frighted me; and, in alarm lest the difficulties under which he might be placed were driving him to desperation, I followed him to his chamber, with almost the resolution to relieve his wants, let them be what they might.

The absence of intoxication for several days in succession had induced me to hope he had broken through the accursed bondage of drink, were it only from rage and shame. But I was fatally mistaken. As I entered the apartment I saw him place upon the table a large case-bottle of brandy, which he had just taken from a buffet. He looked over his shoulder as I stepped in, and, without regarding me, proceeded to pour a large draught into a tumbler. His hand was tremulous, and, indeed, shook so much, that the liquor was spilt in the operation.

I was shocked at the sight, and struck dumb; seeing which he laughed, with what seemed to me as much triumph as derision, and said, "You see! This is the way we go it. Your health, father. Come, help yourself; don't stand on ceremony."

"I, Abbot!" said I, as he swallowed the vile potion; "have you neither respect nor shame? I never drank such poison in my life!"

"The more is the pity," muttered the young man, but rather as if speaking to himself than me; "I should have had the sooner and freer swing of it."

"You mean if it had killed me, as it is killing you," said I, pierced by the heartlessness of his expression. "Oh, Abbot! a judgment will come upon you yet!"

He stared me in the face, but without making a reply. Then pushing a chair towards me, he sat down himself, and deliberately filled his glass a second time.

"Abbot! for Heaven's sake," said I, wringing my very hands in despair, "what will tempt you to quit this horrid practice?"

"Nothing," said he; "you have asked the question a month too late. Look," he continued, pointing my attention again to his hand, shaking, as it held the bottle, as if under the palsy of age; "do you know what that means?"

"What does it mean?" said I, so confounded by the sight and his stolid merriment (for he laughed again while exposing the fruit of his degrading habit) that I scarce knew what I said.

"It means," said he, "that death is coming, to make equitable division betwixt Ralph and Alicia – unless the devil, after all, should carry them off before me; in which case you can build an hospital with your money."

He swallowed the draught, and then, leaning on the table, buried his face between his hands.

The sarcasm was not lost upon me, and the idea that he was about to become the victim of a passion from which he might be wrested by a sacrifice on my part, greatly excited my feelings.

"I will do any thing," said I; "what shall I do to save you? Oh, Abbot! can you not refrain from this dreadful indulgence? What shall I do?"

He leaped upon his feet, and eyed me with a look full of wildness.

"Pay my debts," he cried; "pay my debts, and make me independent; and I —I'll try."

"And what," said I, trembling with fear, "what sum will pay your debts?"

"Twenty thousand —perhaps," said he.

"Twenty thousand! what! twenty thousand dollars!" cried I, lost in confusion.

"You won't, then?" said the reprobate.

"Not a cent!" cried I, in a fury. "How came you to owe such a sum? Do you think I will believe you? How could you incur such a debt? What have you been doing?"

"Gambling, drinking, and so forth, and so forth, twenty times over."

He snatched up the bottle, and, locking it in the buffet, deposited the key in his pocket. Then seizing upon his hat, and stepping to where I stood, transfixed with grief and indignation, he said, – "You won't take the bargain, then?"

"Not a dollar, not a dime, not a cent!" said I.

"Not even to save my life, father?"

"Not a dollar, not a dime, not a cent!" I reiterated, incapable of saying another word.