 | The cavaliers of England, or, The times of the revolutions of 1642 and 1688 |  |
1. PART I.
1. CHAPTER I.
THE PERIL.
That way perdition lies, the very path
Of seeming safety leading to the abyss.”
—MS.
It was as fair a morning of July as ever dawned in the blue
summer sky; the sun as yet had risen but a little way above
the waves of fresh green foliage which formed the horizon of
the woodland scenery surrounding Widecomb manor; and his
heat, which promised ere mid-day to become excessive, was
tempered now by the exhalations of the copious night-dews,
and by the cool breath of the western breeze, which came down
through the leafy gorges, in long, soft swells from the open
moorland.
All nature was alive and joyous; the air was vocal with the
piping melody of the blackbirds and thrushes, carolling in every
brake and bosky dingle; the smooth, green lawn, before
the windows of the old hall, was peopled with whole tribes of
fat, lazy hares, limping about among the dewy herbage, fearless,
as it would seem, of man's aggression; and to complete
the picture, above a score of splendid peacocks were strutting
to and fro on the paved terraces, or perched upon the carved
stone balustrades, displaying their gorgeous plumage to the early
sunshine.
The shadowy mists of the first morning twilight had not been
still in the middle air in broad fleecy masses, though melting
rapidly away in the increasing warmth and brightness of the
day.
And still a faint blue line hovered over the bed of the long
rocky gorge, which divided the chase from the open country,
floating about like the steam of a seething caldron, and rising
here and there into tall smoke-like columns, probably where
some steeper cataract of the mountain-stream sent its foam skyward.
So early, indeed, was the hour, that had my tale been recited
of these degenerate days, there would have been no gentle eyes
awake to look upon the loveliness of newly-awakened nature.
In the good days of old, however, when daylight was still
deemed to be the fitting time for labor and for pastime, and
night the appointed time for natural and healthful sleep, the
dawn was wont to brighten beheld by other eyes than those of
clowns and milkmaids, and the gay songs of the matutinal birds
were listened to by ears that could appreciate their untaught
melodies.
And now, just as the stable-clock was striking four, the great
oaken door of the old hall was thrown open with a vigorous
swing that made it rattle on its hinges, and Jasper St. Aubyn
came bounding out into the fresh morning air, with a foot as
elastic as that of the mountain roe, singing a snatch of some
quaint old ballad.
He was dressed simply in a close-fitting jacket and tight hose
of dark-green cloth, without any lace or embroidery, light boots
of untanned leather, and a broad-leafed hat, with a single eagle's
feather thrust carelessly through the band. He wore neither
cloak nor sword, though it was a period at which gentlemen
rarely went abroad without both these, their distinctive attributes;
but in the broad black belt which girt his rounded waist
his shoulder there swung, from a leathern thong, a large wicker
fishing-basket.
Nothing, indeed, could be simpler or less indicative of any
particular rank or station in society than young St. Aubyn's
garb, yet it would have been a very dull and unobservant eye
which should take him for aught less than a high-born and
high-bred gentleman.
His fine intellectual face, his bearing erect before heaven,
the graceful ease of his every motion, as he hurried down the
flagged steps of the terrace, and planted his light foot on the
dewy greensward, all betokened gentle birth and gentle associations.
But he thought nothing of himself, nor cared for his advantages,
acquired or natural. The long and heavy salmon-rod
which he carried in his right hand, in three pieces as yet unconnected,
did not more clearly indicate his purpose than the
quick marking glance which he cast toward the half-veiled sun
and hazy sky, scanning the signs of the weather.
“It will do, it will do,” he said to himself, thinking as it were
aloud, “for three or four hours at least; the sun will not shake
off those vapors before eight o'clock at the earliest, and if he do
come out then hot and strong, I do not know but the water is
dark enough after the late rains to serve my turn awhile longer.
It will blow up, too, I think from the westward, and there will
be a brisk curl on the pools. But come, I must be moving, if I
would reach Darringford to breakfast.
And as he spoke he strode out rapidly across the park toward
the deep chasm of the stream, crushing a thousand aromatic
perfumes from the dewy wild-flowers with his heedless foot,
and thinking little of the beauties of nature, as he hastened to
the scene of his loved exercise.
It was not long, accordingly, before he reached the brink of
fish that morning, and paused to select the best place for descending
to the water's edge.
It was, indeed, a striking and romantic scene as ever met
the eye of painter or of poet. On the farther side of the gorge,
scarcely a hundred yards distant, the dark limestone rocks rose
sheer and precipitous from the very brink of the stream, rifted
and broken into angular blocks and tall columnar masses, from
the clefts of which, wherever they could find soil enough to
support their scanty growth, a few stunted oaks shot out almost
horizontally with their gnarled arms and dark-green foliage, and
here and there the silvery bark and quivering tresses of the
birch relieved the monotony of color by their gay brightness.
Above, the cliffs were crowned with the beautiful purple
heather, now in its very glow of summer bloom, about which
were buzzing myriads of wild bees sipping their nectar from its
cups of amethyst.
The hither side, though rough and steep and broken, was not
in the place where Jasper stood precipitous; indeed, it seemed
as if at some distant period a sort of landslip had occurred, by
which the fall of the rocky wall had been broken into massive
fragments, and hurled down in an inclined plane into the bed
of the stream, on which it had encroached with its shattered
blocks and rounded boulders.
Time, however, had covered all this abrupt and broken slope
with a beautiful growth of oak and hazel coppice, among which,
only at distant intervals, could the dun weather-beaten flanks
of the great stones be discovered.
At the base of this descent, a hundred and fifty feet perhaps
below the stand of the young sportsman, flowed the dark arrowy
stream — a wild and perilous water. As clear as crystal, yet
as dark as the brown cairn-gorm, it came pouring down among
the broken rocks with a rapidity and force which showed what
here breaking into wreaths of rippling foam where some unseen
ledge chafed its current, there roaring and surging white as
December's snow among the great round-headed rocks, and
there again wheeling in sullen eddies, dark and deceitful, round
and round some deep rock-brimmed basin.
Here and there, indeed, it spread into wide shallow rippling
rapids, filling the whole bottom of the ravine from side to side,
but more generally it did not occupy above a fourth part of the
space below, leaving sometimes on this margin, sometimes on
that, broad pebbly banks, or slaty ledges, affording an easy footing,
and a clear path to the angler of its troubled waters.
After a rapid glance over the well-known scene, Jasper
plunged into the coppice, and following a faint track worn by
the feet of the wild-deer in the first instance, and widened by
his own bolder tread, soon reached the bottom of the chasm,
though not until he had flushed from the dense oak covert two
noble black cocks with their superb forked tails, and glossy
purple-lustred plumage, which soared away, crowing their bold
defiance, over the heathery moorlands.
Once at the water's edge, the young man's tackle was speedily
made ready, and in a few minutes his long line went whistling
through the air, as he wielded the powerful two-handed
rod, as easily as if it had been a stripling's reed; and the large
gaudy peacock-fly alighted on the wheeling eddies, at the tail
of a long arrowy shoot, as gently as if it had settled from too
long a flight. Delicately, deftly, it was made to dance and
skim the clear, brown surface, until it had crossed the pool and
neared the hither bank; then again, obedient to the pliant wrist,
it arose on glittering wing, circled half round the angler's head,
and was sent thirty yards aloof, straight as a wild bee's flight,
into a little mimic whirlpool, scarce larger than the hat of the
skilful fisherman, which spun round and round just below a
the water broke all around it, and the gay deceit vanished,
the heavy swirl of the surface, as the break was closing, indicating
the great size of the fish which had risen. Just as the
swirl was subsiding, and the forked tail of the monarch of the
stream was half seen as he descended, that indescribable but
well-known turn of the angler's wrist, fixed the barbed hook,
and taught the scaly victim the nature of the prey he had gorged
so heedlessly.
With a wild bound he threw himself three feet out of the water,
showing his silver sides, with the sea-lice yet clinging to
his scales, a fresh sea-run fish of fifteen, ay, eighteen pounds,
and perhaps over.
On his broad back he strikes the water, but not as he meant
the tightened line; for as he leaped the practised hand had
lowered the rod's tip, that it fell in a loose bight below him.
Again! again! again; and yet a fourth time he bounded into the
air with desperate and vigorous soubresaults, like an unbroken
steed that would dismount his rider, lashing the eddies of the
dark stream into bright bubbling streaks, and making the heart
of his captor beat high with anticipation of the desperate struggle
that should follow, before the monster would lie panting and
exhausted on the yellow sand or moist greensward.
Away! with the rush of an eagle through the air, he is gone
like an arrow down the rapids — how the reel rings, and the
line whistles from the swift-working wheel; he is too swift,
too headstrong to be checked as yet; tenfold the strength of
that slender tackle might not control him in his first fiery
rush.
But Jasper, although young in years, was old in the art, and
skilful as the craftiest of the gentle craftsmen. He gives him
the butt of his rod steadily, trying the strength of his tackle
with a delicate and gentle finger, giving him line at every rush,
his speed even while he yields to his fury.
Meanwhile, with the eye of intuition and the nerve of iron,
he bounds along the difficult shore, he leaps from rock to rock,
alighting on their silvery tops with the firm agility of the rope-dancer,
he splashes knee-deep through the slippery shallows,
keeping his line ever taut, inclining his rod over his shoulder,
bearing on his fish ever with a killing pull, steering him clear
of every rock or stump against which he would fain smash the
tackle, and landing him at length in a fine open roomy pool, at
the foot of a long stretch of white and foamy rapids, down
which he has just piloted him with the eye of faith, and the
foot of instinct.
And now the great salmon has turned sulky; like a piece of
lead he has sunk to the bottom of the deep black pool, and lies
on the gravel bottom in the sullenness of despair.
Jasper stooped, gathered up in his left hand a heavy pebble,
and pitched it into the pool, as nearly as he could guess to the
whereabout of his game — another — and another! Ah! that
last has roused him. Again he throws himself clear out of
water, and again foiled in his attempt to smash the tackle, dashes
away down stream impetuous.
But his strength is departing — the vigor of his rush is broken.
The angler gives him the butt abundantly, strains on him
with a heavier pull, yet ever yields a little as he exerts his failing
powers; see, his broad silver side has thrice turned up,
even turned to the surface, and though each time he was recovered
himself, each time it has been with a heavier and more
sickly motion.
Brave fellow! his last race is run, his last spring sprung —
no more shall he disport himself in the bright reaches of the
Tamar; no more shall the Naiads wreathe his clear silver
scales with river-greens and flowery rushes.
The cruel gaff is in his side — his cold blood stains the eddies
for a moment — he flaps out his death-pang on the hard
limestone.
“Who-whoop! a nineteen-pounder!”
Meantime the morning had worn onward, and ere the great
fish was brought to the basket the sun had soared clear above
the mist-wreaths, and had risen so high into the summer heaven
that his slant rays poured down into the gorge of the stream,
and lighted up the clear depths with a lustre so transparent that
every pebble at the bottom might have been discerned, with the
large fish here and there floating mid depth, with their heads
up stream, their gills working with a quick motion, and their
broad tails vibrating at short intervals slowly but powerfully, as
they lay motionless in opposition to the very strongest of the
swift current.
The breeze had died away, there was no curl upon the water,
and the heat was oppressive.
Under such circumstances, to whip the stream was little better
than mere loss of time, yet, as he hurried with a fleet foot
down the gorge, perhaps with some ulterior object, beyond the
mere love of sport, Jasper at times cast his fly across the stream,
and drew it neatly, and, as he thought, irresistibly right over
the recusant fish; but though once or twice a large lazy salmon
would sail up slowly from the depths, and almost touch the fly
with his nose, he either sunk down slowly in disgust, without
breaking the water, or flapped his broad tail over the shining
fraud as if to mark his contempt.
It had now got to be near noon, for in the ardor of his success
the angler had forgotten all about his intended breakfast;
and, his first fish captured, had contented himself with a slender
meal furnished from out his fishing-basket and his leathern
bottle.
Jasper had traversed by this time some ten miles in length,
pool at the head of a long, straight, narrow trench, cut
by the waters themselves in the course of time, through the
hard schistous rock which walls the torrent on each hand, not
leaving the slightest ledge or margin between the rapids and
the precipice.
Through this wild gorge, of some fifty yards in length, the
river shoots like an arrow over a steep inclined plain of limestone
rock, the surface of which is polished by the action of
the water, till it is as slippery as ice, and at the extremity leaps
down a sheer descent of some twelve feet into a large, wide
basin, surrounded by softly swelling banks of greensward, and
a fair amphitheatre of woodland.
At the upper end this pool is so deep as to be vulgarly deemed
unfathomable; below, however, it expands yet wider into a
shallow rippling ford, where it is crossed by the high-road,
down stream of which again there is another long, sharp-rapid,
and another fall, over the last steps of the hill; after which the
nature of the stream becomes changed, and it murmurs gently
onward through a green pastoral country unrippled and uninterrupted.
Just in the inner angle of the high-road, on the right hand of
the stream, there stood an old-fashioned, low-browed, thatch-covered,
stone cottage, with a rude portico of rustic woodwork
overrun with jasmine and virgin-bower, and a pretty flower-garden
sloping down in successive terraces to the edge of the
basin. Beside this, there was no other house in sight, unless
it were part of the roof of a mill which stood in the low ground
on the brink of the second fall, surrounded with a mass of willows.
But the tall steeple of a country-church raising itself
heavenward above the brow of the hill, seemed to show that,
although concealed by the undulations of the ground, a village
was hard at hand.
The morning had changed a second time, a hazy film had
crept up to the zenith, and the sun was now covered with a
pale golden veil, and a slight current of air down the gorge ruffled
the water.
It was a capital pool, famous for being the temporary haunt
of the very finest fish, which were wont to lay there awhile, as
if to recruit themselves after the exertion of leaping the two
falls and stemming the double rapid, before attempting to ascend
the stream farther.
Few, however, even of the best and boldest fishermen cared
to wet a line in its waters, in consequence of the supposed impossibility
of following a heavy fish through the gorge below or
checking him at the brink of the fall. It is true, that throughout
the length of the pass, the current was broken by bare, slippery
rocks peering above the waters, at intervals, which might be
cleared by an active cragsman; and it had been in fact reconnoitred
by Jasper and others in cool blood, but the result of the
examination was that it was deemed impracticable as a fishing
ground.
Thinking, however, little of striking a large fish, and perhaps
desiring to waste a little time before scaling the banks and
emerging on the high road, Jasper threw a favorite fly of peacock's
harl and gold tinsel lightly across the water; and, almost
before he had time to think, had hooked a monstrous fish, which
at the very first leap, he set down as weighing at least thirty
pounds.
Thereupon followed a splendid display of piscatory skill.
Well known that his fish must be lost if he once should succeed
in getting his head down the rapid, Jasper exerted every nerve,
and exhausted every art to humor, to meet, to restrain, to check
him. Four times the fish rushed for the pass, and four times,
Jasper met him so stoutly with the butt, trying his tackle to the
very utmost, that he succeeded in forcing him from the perilous
taken post at length, hoping that the worst was already over,
close to the opening of the rocky chasm.
And now, perhaps waxing too confident, he checked his fish
too sharply. Stung into fury, the monster sprang five times in
succession into the air, lashing the water with his angry tail,
and then rushed like an arrow down the chasm.
He was gone — but Jasper's blood was up, and thinking of
nothing but his sport, he dashed forward and embarked with a
fearless foot in the terrible descent.
Leap after leap he took with beautiful precision, alighting
firm and erect on the centre of each slippery block, and bounding
thence to the next with unerring instinct, guiding his fish the
while with consummate skill through the intricacies of the pass.
There were now but three more leaps to be taken before he
would reach the flat table-rock above the fall, which once attained,
he would have firm foot-hold and a fair field. Already
he rejoiced, triumphant in the success of his bold attainment,
and confident in victory, when a shrill female shriek reached
his ears, from the pretty flower-garden; caught by the sound
he diverted his eyes, just as he leaped, toward the place whence
it came; his foot slipped, and the next instant he was flat on
his back in the swift stream, where it shot the most furiously
over the glassy rock. He struggled manfully, but in vain.
The smooth, slippery surface afforded no purchase to his griping
fingers, no hold to his laboring feet. One fearful, agonizing
conflict with the wild waters, and he was swept helplessly
over the edge of the fall, his head, as he glanced down foot
foremost, striking the rocky brink not without violence.
He was plunged into the deep pool, and whirled round and
round by the dark eddies long before he rose, but still, though
stunned and half disabled, he strove terribly to support himself,
but it was all in vain.
Again he sunk and rose once more, and as he rose that wild
shriek again reached his ears, and his last glance fell upon a
female form wringing her hands in terror on the bank, and a
young man rushing down in wild haste from the cottage on the
hill-side.
He felt that aid was at hand, and struck out again for life —
for dear life.
But the water seemed to fail beneath him.
A slight flash sprang across his eyes, his brain reeled, and
all was blackness.
He sunk to the bottom, spurned it with his feet, and rose
once more, but not to the surface.
His quivering blue hands emerged alone above the relentless
waters, grasped for a little moment at empty space and then disappeared.
The circling ripples closed over him, and subsided into stillness.
He felt, knew, suffered nothing more.
His young, warm heart was cold and lifeless — his soul had
lost its consciousness — the vital spark had faded into darkness
— perhaps was quenched for ever.
2. CHAPTER II.
THE WAKENING.
She deemed a vision of delight.
Wordsworth.
When Jasper St. Aubyn opened his eyes, dim with the
struggle of returning consciousness and life, they met a pair of
eyes fixed with an expression of the most earnest anxiety on
his own — a pair of eyes, the loveliest into which he ever had yet
gazed, large, dark, unfathomably deep, and soft withal and tender,
as the day-dream of a love-sick poet. He could not mark
their color; he scarce knew whether they were mortal eyes,
whether they were realities at all, so sickly did his brain reel
and so confused and wandering were his fancies.
Then a sweet, low voice fell upon his ear, in tones the gentlest,
yet the gladdest, that ever he had heard, exclaiming:—
“Oh! father, father, he lives — he is saved.”
But he heard, saw no more; for again he relapsed into unconsciousness,
and felt nothing further, until he became sensible
of a balmy coolness on his brow, a pleasant flavor on his
parched lips, and a kindly glow creeping as it were through all
his limbs, and gradually expanding into life.
Again his eyes were unclosed, and again they met the earnest,
hopeful gaze of those other eyes, which he now might perceive
belonging to a face so exquisite, and a form so lovely, as
to be worthy of those great glorious wells of lustrous tenderness.
It was a young girl who bent over him, perhaps a few months
older than himself, so beautiful that had she appeared suddenly
even in her simple garb, which seemed to announce her but one
degree above the peasants of the neighborhood, in the midst of
become on the instant the cynosure of all eyes, and the magnet
of all hearts.
Of that age when the heart, yet unsunned by passion, and
unused to strong emotion, thrills sensibly to every feeling awakened
for the first time within it, and bounds at every appeal to
its sympathies; when the ingenuous countenance, unhardened
by the sad knowledge of the world, and untaught to conceal one
emotion, reflects like a perfect mirror every gleam of sunshine
that illuminates, every passing cloud that overshadows it pure
and spotless surface, the maiden sought not to hide her delight,
as she witnessed the hue of life return to his pale cheeks, and
the spark of intelligence relume his handsome features.
A bright, mirthful glance, which told how radiant they might
be in moments of unmingled bliss, laughed for an instant in
those deep blue eyes, and a soft, sunny smile played over her
warm lips; but the next minute, she dropped the young man's
hand, which she had been chafing between both her own, buried
her face in her palms, and wept those sweet and happy
tears which flow only from innocent hearts, at the call of greatitude
and sympathy.
“Bless God, young sir,” said a deep, solemn voice at the
other side of the bed on which he was lying, “that your life is
spared. May it be unto good ends! Yours was a daring venture,
and for a trivial object against which to stake an immortal
soul. But, thanks to Him! you are preserved, snatched as it
were from the gates of death; and, though you feel faint now,
I doubt not — and your soul trembles as if on the verge of another
world — you will be well anon, and in a little while as strong as
ever in that youthful strength on which you have ta'en such
pride. Drink this, and sleep awhile, and you shall wake refreshed,
and as a new man, from the dreamless slumber which
the draught shall give you. And you, silly child,” he continued,
bed, so that her fair tresses rested on the same pillow which
supported Jasper's head, with the big tears trickling silently
between her slender fingers, “dry up your tears; for the youth
shall live, and not die.”
The boy's eyes had turned immediately to the sound of the
speaker's accents, and in his weak state remained fixed on his
face so long as the sound continued, although his senses followed
the meaning but imperfectly.
It was a tall, venerable-looking old man who spoke, with
long locks, as white as snow, falling down over the straight
cut collar of his plain black doublet, and an expression of the
highest intellect, combined with something which was not melancholy,
much less sadness, but which told volumes of hardships
borne, and sorrows endured, the fruits of which were
piety, and gentleness, and that wisdom which cometh not of
this world.
He smiled thoughtfully, as he saw that his words were hardly
comprehended, and his mild glance wandered from the pale
face of the handsome boy to the fair head of the young girl
bending over him, like a white lily overcharged with rain.
“Poor things,” he whispered softly, as if speaking to himself,
“to both it is the first experience of the mixed pain and pleasure
of this world's daily trials. God save them scatheless to the
end!”
Then recovering himself, as if by a little effort, from his
brief fit of musing, he held forth a large glass goblet which was
in his right hand, full of some bright ruby-colored liquid, to the
lips of Jasper, saying:—
“Drink, youth, it will give thee strength. Drink, and fear
nothing.”
The young man grasped the bright bowl with both hands,
not his host still supported it.
The flavor was agreeable, and the coolness of the draught
was so delicious to the feverish palate and parched tongue of
Jasper, that he drained it to the very bottom, and then, as if exhausted
by the effort, relaxed his hold, and sunk back on his
pillow in a state of conscious languor, exquisitely soft and entracing.
More and more that voluptuous dream-like trance overcame
him, and though his eyes were still open he saw not the things
that were around him, but a multitude of radiant and lovely visions,
which came and went, and returned again, in mystic evolutions.
With a last effort of his failing senses, half conscious of the
interest which she took in him, yet wholly ignorant who or
what was that gentle she, he stretched out his hand and mastered
one of hers with gentle violence, and holding it imprisoned
in his burning fingers, closed his swimming eyes, and sunk
into a deep and dreamless sleep.
The old man, who had watched every symptom that appeared
in succession on his expressive face, saw that the potion had
taken the desired effect, and drawing a short sigh, which
seemed to indicate a sense of relief from apprehension, looked
toward the maiden, and addressed her in a low voice, not so
much from fear of wakening the sleeper, as that the voice of
affection is ever low and gentle.
“He sleeps, Theresa, and will sleep until the sun has sunk
far toward the west, and then he will waken restored to all his
youthful power and spirits. Come, my child, we may leave
him to his slumbers, he shall no longer need a watcher. I will
go to my study and would have you turn to your household duties.
Scenes such as this which you have passed will call up
soft and pitiful fancies in the mind, but it behooves us not over-much
dark reality, that we should give the reins to truant imagination.
Come, Theresa.”
The young girl raised her head from the pillows, and shook
away the long, fair curls from her smooth forehead. Her tears
had ceased to flow, and there was a smile on her lip, as she
replied, pointing to her hand which he held fast grasped, in his
unconscious slumber
“See, father, I am a prisoner. I fear me I can not withdraw
my hand without arousing him.”
“Do not so, then, Theresa; to arouse him now, ere the effects
of the potion have passed away, would be dangerous,
might be fatal, Perchance, however, he will release you when
he sleeps quite soundly. If he do so, I pray you, come to me.
Meantime, I leave you to your own good thoughts, my own little
girl.”
And with these words, he leaned across the narrow bed, over
the form of the sleeping youth, and kissed her fair white brow.
“Bless thee, my gentle child. May God in goodness bless,
and be about thee.”
“Amen! dear father,” said the little girl, as he ended; and
in her turn she pressed her soft and balmy lips to his withered
cheek.
A tear, rare visitant, rose all unbidden to the parent's eye as
he turned to leave her, but ere he reached the door, her low
tones arrested him, and he came back to her.
“Will you not put my books within reach of me, dear father?”
she said. “I can not work, since the poor youth has made my
left hand his sure captive, but I would not be altogether idle,
and I can read while I watch him. Pardon my troubling you,
who should wait on you, not be waited on.”
“And do you not wait on me ever, and most neat-handedly,
dear child?” returned her father, moving toward a small, round
of feminine industry. “Which of these will you have,
Theresa?”
“All of them, if you please, dear father. The table is not
heavy, for I can carry it about where I will, myself, and if you
will lift it to me, I can help myself, and cull the gems of each
in turn. I am a poor student, I fear, and love better, like a little
bee, to flit from flower to flower, drinking from every chalice
its particular honey, than to sit down, like the sloth, and
surfeit me on one tree, how green soever.”
“There is but little industry, I am afraid, Theresa, if there be
little sloth in your mode of reading. Such desultory studies are
wont to leave small traces on the memory. I doubt me much
if you long keep these gems you speak of, which you cull so
lightly.”
“Oh! but you are mistaken, father dear, for all you are so
wise,” she replied, laughing softly. “Everything grand or
noble, of which I read, everything high or holy, finds a sort of
echo in my little heart, and lies there for ever. Your grave,
heavy, moral teachings speak to my reason, it is true, but when
I read of brave deeds done, of noble self-sacrifices made, of
great sufferings endured, in high causes, those things teach my
heart, those things speak to my soul, father. Then I reason no
longer, but feel — feel how much virtue there is, after all, and
generosity, and nobleness, and charity, and love, in poor, frail
human nature. Then I learn not to judge mildly of myself,
nor harshly of my brothers. Then I feel happy, father, yet in
my happiness I wish to weep. For I think, noble sentiments
and generous emotions sooner bring tears to the eye than mere
pity, or mere sorrow.”
And, even as she spoke, her own bright orbs were suffused
with drops, like dew in the violet's cups, and she shook her
head with its profusion of long, fair ringlets archly, as if she
his face with a tearful smile.
“You are a good child, Theresa, and good children are very
dear to the Lord,” said the old man. “But of a truth, I would
I could see you more practically-minded; less given to these
singular romantic dreamings. I say, not that they are hurtful,
or unwise, or untrue, but in a mere child, as you are, Theresa,
they are strange and out of place, if not unnatural. I would I
could see you more merry, my little girl, and more given to the
company of your equals in age, even if I were to be the loser
thereby of something of your gentle company. But you love
not, I think, the young girls of the village.”
“Oh! yes, I love them dearly, father. I would do anything
for any one of them; I would give up anything I have got to
make them happy. Oh, yes, I love Anna Harlande, and Rose
Merrivale, and Mary Mitford, dearly, but — but —”
“But you love not their company, you would say, would you
not, my child?”
“That is not what I was about to say; but I know not how
it is, their merriment is so loud, and their glee so very joyous,
that it seems to me that I can not sympathize with them in
their joy, as I can in their sorrow; and they view things with
eyes so different from mine, and laugh at thoughts that go nigh
to make me weep, and see or feel so little of the loveliness of
nature, and care so little for what I care most of all, soft, sad
poetry, or heart-stirring romance, or inspired music, that when
I am among them, I do almost long to be away from them all,
in the calm of this pleasant chamber, or in the fragrance of my
bower beside the stream. And I do feel my spirit jangled and
perplexed by their light-hearted, thoughtless mirth, as one feels
at hearing a false note struck in the midst of a sweet symphony.
What is this? what means this, my father?”
“It is a gift, Theresa,” replied the old man, half mournfully.
powers the most unusual, the most wondrous, the most beautiful,
most high and godlike of any which are allowed to mortals.
I have seen this long, long ago — I have mused over it; hoped,
prayed, that it might not be so; nay, striven to repress the
germs of it in your young spirit, yet never have I spoken of it
until now; for I knew not that you were conscious, and would
not be he that should awaken you to the consciousness of the
grand but perilous possession which you hold, delegated to you
direct from Omnipotence.”
He paused, and she gazed at him with lips apart, and eyes
wide in wonder. The color died away in a sort of mysterious
awe from her warm cheek. The blood rushed tumultuously to
her heart. She listened, breathless and amazed. Never had
she heard him speak thus, never imagined that he felt thus, before
— yet now that she did hear, she felt as though she were
but listening again to that which she had heard many times
already; and though she understood not his words altogether,
they had struck a kindred chord in her inmost soul, and while
its vibration was almost too much for her powers of endurance,
it yet told her that his words were true.
She could not, for her life, have bid him go on, but for worlds
she would not have failed to hear him out.
He watched the changed expression of her features, and
half struck with a feeling of self-reproach that he should have
created doubts, perhaps fears, in that ingenuous soul, smiled on
her kindly, and asked in a confident tone:—
“You have felt this already, have you not, my dear child?”
“Not as you put it to me, father; no, I have never dreamed
or hoped that I had any such particular gift of God, such glorious
and pre-eminent possession as this of which you speak.
I may, indeed, have fancied at times that there was something
within me, in which I differed from others around me — something
soul-fraught joy, than they feel; and sorrow, softer, and moved
more easily, if not more piercing or more permanent — which
made me love the world, and its inhabitants, and above all its
Maker, with a far different love from theirs — something which
evermore seems struggling within me, as if it would forth and
find tongue, but can not. But now, that you have spoken, I
know that it indeed must be as you say, and that this unknown
something is a gift, is a possession from on high. What is this
thing, my father?”
“My child, this thing is genius,” replied the old man solemnly.
The bright blood rushed back to her cheek in a flood of crimson
glory; a strange, clear light, which never had enkindled
them before, sprang from her soft, dark eyes; she leaned forward
eagerly. “Genius!” she cried. “Genius and I! Father,
you dream, dear father.”
“Would that I did; but I do not, Theresa.”
“And wherefore, if it be so, indeed, that I am so gifted,
wherefore would you alter it, my father?”
“I would not alter it,” he replied, “my little girl. Far be it
from my thoughts, weak worm that I am, to alter, even if I
could alter, the least of the gifts of the great Giver. And this,
whether it be for good, or unto evil, is one of the greatest and
most glorious. I would not alter it, Theresa. But I would
guide, would direct, would moderate it. I would accustom you
to know and comprehend the vast power of which you, all unconsciously,
are the possessor. For, as I said, it is a fearful
and a perilous power. God forbid that I should pronounce the
most marvellous and godlike of the gifts which he vouchsafes
to man, a curse and not a blessing; God forbid that, even while
I see how oft it is turned into bitterness and blight by the coldness
of the world, and the check of its heaven-soaring aspirations,
against its own diseases, a rapture mightier than any of its
woes, an inborn and eternal consciousness which bears it up as
on immortal pinions, above the cares of the world, and the poor
realities of life. Nevertheless, it is a perilous gift, and too
often, to your sex, a fatal one. Yet I would not alarm you, my
own child, for you have gentleness of soul, such as may well
temper the coruscations of a spirit which waxes oftentimes too
strong to be womanly, and piety, which shall, I trust, preserve
you, should any aspiration of your heart wax over-vigorous and
daring to be contented with the limitations of humanity. In
the meantime, my child, fear nothing, follow the dictates of
your own pure heart, and pray for his aid, who neither giveth
aught, nor taketh away, without reason. Hark!” he interrupted
himself, starting slightly, “there is a sound of horses' hoofs
without; your brother has returned, and it may be Sir Miles is
with him. We will speak more of this hereafter.”
And with the word he turned and left the room.
When he was gone she raised her eyes to heaven, and with
a strange rapt expression on her fair features rose to her feet,
exclaiming:—
“Genius! Genius! Great God, great God, I thank thee.”
Then, in the fervor of the moment, which led her naturally
to clasp her hands together, she made a movement to withdraw
her fingers from Jasper's death-like grasp, unconscious, for the
time, of everything around her.
But, as she did so, a tightened pressure of his hand, and
some inarticulate sounds which proceeded from his lips, recalled
her with a start to herself.
She dropped into her seat, as if conscience-stricken, gazed
fixedly in his face, then stooped and pressed her lips on his inanimate
brow; started again, looked about the room with a half
guilty glance, bowed her head on his pillow, and wept bitterly.
3. CHAPTER III.
THE RECOGNITION.
“They had been friends in youth.”
—Byron.
The evening had advanced far into night before the effects
of the potion he had swallowed passed away, and left the mind
of Jasper clear, and his pulse regular and steady. When he
awoke from his long stupor, and turned his eyes around him, it
seemed as if he had dreamed of what he saw before him; for
the inanimate objects of the room, nay, the very faces which
met his eye, had something in them that was not altogether unfamiliar,
yet for his life he could not have recalled when, or if
ever he had seen them before.
The old dark-wainscoted walls of the irregular, many-recessed
apartment, adorned with a few water-color drawings,
and specimens of needlework, the huge black and gold Indian
cabinet in one corner, the tall clock-stand of some foreign wood
in another, the slab above the yawning hearth covered with
tropical shells and rare foreign curiosities, the quaint and grotesque
chairs and tables, with strangely-contorted legs and
arms, and wild satyr-like faces grinning from their bosses, the
very bed on which he lay, with its carved headboard, and
groined canopy of oak, and dark-green damask curtains, were
all things which he felt he must have seen, though where and
how he knew not.
So was the face of the slight fair-haired girl who sat a little
way removed from his bed's head, by a small round work-table,
on which stood a waxen taper, bending over some one of those
light tasks of embroidery or knitting which women love, and
are wont to dignify by the name of work.
On her he fixed his eyes long and wistfully, gazing at her, as
he would have done at a fair picture, without any desire to address
her, or to do aught that should induce her to move from
the graceful attitude in which she sat, giving no sign of life
save in the twinkling of her long, downcast eyelashes, in the
calm rise and fall of her gentle bosom, and the quick motion of
her busy fingers.
Jasper St. Aubyn was still weak, but he was unconscious of
any pain or ailment, though he now began gradually to remember
all that had passed before he lost his consciousness in the
deep pool above the fords of Widecomb.
So weak was he, indeed, that it was almost too great an effort
for him to consider where he was, or how he had been saved,
much more to move his body, or ask any question of that fair
watcher. He felt indeed that he should be perfectly contented
to lie there all his life, in that painless, tranquil mood, gazing
upon that fair picture.
But while he lay there, with his large eyes wide open and
fixed upon her, as if by their influence he would have charmed
her soul out of its graceful habitation, a word or two spoken in
a louder voice than had yet struck his ear, for persons had been
speaking in the room all the time, although he had not observed
them, attracted his notice to the other side of his bed.
It was not so much the words, for he scarce heard, and did
not heed their import, as the tone of voice which struck him;
for though well-known and most familiar, he could in no wise
connect it with the other things around him.
With the desire to ascertain what this might mean, there
came into his mind, he knew not wherefore, a wish to do so
unobserved; and he proceeded forthwith to turn himself over
on his pillow so noiselessly as to excite no attention in the
watchers, whoever they might be.
He had not made two efforts, however, to do this, before he
that several of his limbs had received severe contusions, and
could not as yet be moved with impunity.
He was a singular youth, however, and an almost Spartan
endurance of physical pain, with a strange persistency in whatever
he undertook, had been from very early boyhood two of
his strongest characteristics.
In spite, therefore, of his weakness, in spite of the pain every
motion gave him, he persevered, and turning himself inch by
inch, at length gained a position which enabled him clearly to
discern the speakers.
They were two in number, the one facing him, the other
having his back turned so completely that all he could see was
a head covered with long-curled locks of snow-white hair, a
dark-velvet cloak, and the velvet scabbard of a long rapier protruding
far beyond the legs of the oak-chair on which he sat.
The lower limbs of this person were almost lost in darkness as
they lay carelessly crossed under the table, so that he divined
rather than saw that they were cased in heavy riding-boots, on
the heels of which a faint golden glimmer gave token of the
wearer's rank in the knightly spurs he wore.
The lamp which stood upon the table by which they were
conversing was set between the two, so that it was quite invisible
to Jasper, and its light, which to his eyes barely touched
the edges of the figure he had first observed, fell full upon the
pale high brow and serene lineaments of the other person, who
was in fact no other than the old man who had spoken to the
youth in the intervals of his trance, and administered the potion
from the effects of which he was but now recovering.
Of this, however, Jasper had no recollection, although he
wondered, as he had done concerning the girl, where he had
before seen that fine countenance and benevolent expression,
and how once seen he ever should have forgotten it.
There was yet a third person in the group, though he took
no part in the conversation, and appeared to be, like Jasper,
rather an interested and observant witness of what was going
on, than an actor in the scene.
He was a tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed man, in the first
years of manhood, not perhaps above five or six years Jasper's
senior; but his bronzed and sunburnt cheeks curiously contrasted
with the fairness of his forehead, where it had not been exposed
to the sun, and an indescribable blending of boldness —
it might have almost been called audacity — with calm self-confidence
and cold composure, which made up the expression
of his face, seemed to indicate that he had seen much of the
world, and learned many of its secrets, perhaps by the stern
lessoning of the great teachers, suffering and sorrow.
The fignre of this young man was but imperfectly visible, as
he stood behind the high-backed chair, on which the old man,
from whom the similarity in their features, if not in their expression,
Jasper took to be his father, was seated. But his
face, his muscular neck, his well-developed chest and broad
shoulders, displayed by a close-fitting jerkin of some dark stuff,
were all in strong light; and as the features and expression of
the countenance gave token of a powerful character and energetic
will, so did the frame give promise of ability to carry out
the workings of the mind.
The dialogue, which had been interrupted by a silence of
some seconds following on the words that had attracted Jasper's
notice, was now continued by the old man who sat facing
him.
“That question,” he said, in a firm yet somewhat mournful
tone, “is not an easy one to answer. The difficulty of subduing
prejudices on my own part, the fear of wounding pride on
yours — these might have had their share in influencing my
conduct. Beside, you must remember that years have elapsed
we parted; that they have elapsed under circumstances the
most widely different for you and for me; that we are not, in
short, in anything the same men we then were — that the
gnarled, weather-beaten, earth-fast oak of centuries differs not
so much from the green pliant sapling of half a dozen summers,
as the old man, with his heart chilled and hardened into living
steel by contact with the world, from the youth full of generous
impulses and lofty aspirations, loving all men, and doubting
naught either in heaven above, or in the earth beneath. You
must remember, moreover, that although, as you have truly
said, we were friends in youth, our swords, our purses, and
our hearts in common, we had even then many points of serious
difference; and lastly, and most of all, you must remember
that if we had been friends, we were not friends when we
last parted —”
“What! what!” exclaimed a voice, which Jasper instantly
recognised for his father's, though for years he had not heard
him speak in tones of the like animation. “What, William
Allan, do you mean to say that you imagined that any enmity
could have dwelt in my mind, for so slight a cause —”
“Slight a cause!” interrupted the other. “Do you call that
slight which made my heart drop blood, and my brain boil with
agony for years — which changed my course of life, altered my
fortunes, character, heart, soul, for ever; which made me, in a
word, what I now am? Do you call that a slight cause, Miles
St. Aubyn? Show me, then, what you call a grave one.”
“I had forgotten, William, I had forgotten,” replied, Sir
Miles, gently, and perhaps self-reproachfully. “I mean, I
had forgotten that the rivaling in a strife which to the winner
seems a little thing, may to the loser be death, or worse than
death! Forgive me, William Allan, I had forgotten in my selfish
thoughtlessness, and galled you unawares. But let us say
if wrongs were done, be buried in her grave, who was the most
innocent cause of them; and let us now remember only that we
were friends in youth, and that after long years of separation,
we are thus wonderfully brought together in old age; let me
hope to be friends henceforth unto the grave.”
“Amen, I say to that. Miles St. Aubyn, amen!”
And the two old men clasped their withered hands across the
table, and Jasper might see the big drops tricking slowly down
the face of him who was called William Allan, while from the
agitation of his father's frame he judged that he was not free
from the like agitation.
There was a little pause, during which, as he fancied, the
young man looked somewhat frowningly on the scene of reconciliation;
but the frown, it frown it were, passed speedily away,
and left the bold, dark face as calm and impassive as the surface
of a deep unruffled water.
A moment or two afterward, Sir Miles raised his head, which
he had bowed a little, perhaps to conceal the feelings which
might have agitated it, and again clasping the hand of the other,
said eagerly,—
“It is you, William, who have saved my boy, my Jasper;
and this is not the first time that a scion of your house has preserved
one of mine from death, or yet worse, ruin!”
Wilham Allan started, as if a sharp weapon had pierced him.
“And how,” he cried, “Miles St. Aubyn, how was the debt
repaid? I tell you it is written in the books that can not err.
that our houses were ordained for mutual destruction!”
“What, man,” exclaimed Sir Miles, half-jestingly, “do you
still cling to the black art? Do you still read the dark book of
fate? Methought that fancy would have taken wing with other
youthful follies.”
The old man shook his head sadly, but made no reply.
“And what has it taught thee, William, unless it be that this
life is short, and this world's treasures worthless; and that I
have learned from a better book, a book of wider margin.
What, I say, has it taught thee, William Allan?”
“All things,” replied the old man, sorrowfully. “Even unto
this meeting — every action, every event of my own life, past
or to come, happy or miserable, virtuous or evil, it has taught
me.”
“But has it taught thee, William, whereby to win the good
and eschew the evil; whereby to hold fast to the virtuous, and
say unto the evil, `Get behind me.' Has it taught thee, I say
not to be wiser, but to be happier or better?”
“What is, is! What shall be, shall be! What is written,
shall be done! We may flap, or flutter, or even fight, like fish
or birds, or, if you will, like lions in the toil; but we are nettled,
and may not escape, from the beginning! The man may
learn the workings of the God, but how shall he control them?”
“And this is thy philosophy — this all that thine art teaches?”
“It is. No more.”
“A sad philosophy — a vain art,” replied the other. “I 'll
none of them.”
“I tell thee, Miles St. Aubyn, that years ago, years ere I had
heard of Widecomb or its water, I saw you deep, red-whirling
pool; I saw that drowning youth; I saw the ready rescue, and
the gentle nursing; and now,” he cried, stretching his hands
out widely, and gazing into vacancy, “I see a wilder and a sadder
sight — a deeper pool, a stronger cataract, a fierce storm
bellowing among the hills, and torrents thundering down every
gorge and gully to swell the flooded rivers. A young man and
a maiden — yet no! no! not a maiden! mounted on gallant
horses, are struggling in the whelming eddies. Great God!
avert — hold! hold! He lifts his arm, he smites her with his
loaded whip — smites her between the eyes that smiles upon
rider and horse swept over the mad cataract; but who — who?
— ha!” and with a wild shriek he started to his feet, and fell
back into the arms of the young man, who from the beginning
of the paroxysm evidently had expected its catastrophe, and
who, with the assistance of the girl, supported him, now quite
inanimate and powerless, from the room, merely saying to Sir
Miles, “Be not alarmed, I will return forthwith.”
“My father!” exclaimed Jasper, in a faint voice, as the door
closed upon them.
The old man turned hastily to the well-known accents, and
hurried to the bedside. “My boy, my own boy, Jasper. Now,
may God's name be praised for ever!”
And falling into a chair by his pillow, the same chair on
which that sweet girl had sat a few hours before, he bent over
him, and asked him a thousand questions, waiting for no reply,
but bathing his face with his tears, and covering his brow with
kisses.
When he had at length satisfied the old man that he was well
and free from pain, except a few slight bruises, he asked his
father eagerly where he was, and who was that strange, old man.
“You are in the cottage, my dear boy,” replied the old knight,
“above Widecomb pool, tended by those who, by the grace of
God and his exceeding mercy, saved you from the consequences
of the frantic act which so nearly left me childless. Oh!
Jasper, Jasper, 't was a fearful risk, and it had well nigh been
fatal.”
“It was but one mis-step, father,” replied the youth, who, as
he rapidly recovered his strength, recovered also his bold
speech and daring courage. “Had there been but foothold at
the tunnel's end, I had landed my fish bravely; and, on my
honor, I believe, had I such another on my line's end, I should
risk it again. Why, father, he was at least a thirty-pounder.”
“Never do so — never do so again, Jasper. Remember that
to risk life heedlessly, and for no purpose save an empty gratification,
a mere momentary pleasure, is a great crime toward
God, and a gross act of selfishness toward men, as much so as
to peril or to lose it in a high cause, or for a noble object, is
great, and good, and self-devoted. Think! had you perished
here, all for a paltry fish, which you might purchase for a silver
crown, you had left to me years — nay, a life of misery.”
“Nay, father, I never thought of that,” answered the young
man, not unmoved by the remonstrance of his father, “but it
was not the value of the fish. I should have given him away,
ten to one, had I taken him. It was that I do not like to be
beaten.”
“A good feeling, Jasper; and one that leads to many good
things, and without which nothing great can be attained; but
to do good, like all other feelings, it must be moderated and
controlled by reason. But you must learn to think ever before
acting, Jasper.”
“I will — I will, indeed, sir; but you have not told me who
is this strange, old man.”
“An old friend of mine, Jasper—an old friend whom I have
not seen for years, and who is now doubly a friend, since he
has saved your life.”
At this moment the door opened, and the young man entered
bearing a candle.
“He is at ease now,” he said. “It is a painful and a searching
malady to which at seasons he is subject. We know well
how to treat him; when he awakes to-morrow, he will remember
nothing of what passed to-day, though at the next attack he
will remember every circumstance of this. I pray you, therefore,
Sir Miles, take no note in the morning, nor appear to observe
it, if he be somewhat silent and reserved. Ha! young
sir,” he continued, seeing that Jasper was awake, and taking
“And I am glad to have an opportunity to thank you, that
you have saved my life, which I know you must have done right
gallantly, seeing the peril of the deed.”
“About as gallantly as you did, when you came so near losing
it,” he answered. “But come, Sir Miles, night wears
apace, and if you will allow me to show you to your humble
chamber the best our lowly house can offer, I will wish you
good repose, and return to watch over my young friend here.”
“My age must excuse me, that I accept your offer, whose
place it should be to watch over him myself.”
“I need no watcher, sir,” replied Jasper, boldly. “I am
quite well now, and shall sleep, I warrant you, unto cock-crow
without awakening.”
“Good-night, then, boy!” cried Sir Miles, stooping over him
and again kissing his brow, “and God send thee better in
health and wiser in condition.”
“Good-night, sir; and God send me stronger and braver, and
more like my father,” said the youth, with a light laugh.
“I will return anon, young friend — for friends I hope, we
shall be,” said the other, as he left the room, lighting Sir Miles
respectfully across the threshold.
“I hope we shall — and I thank you. But I shall be fast
asleep ere then.”
And so he was; but not the less for that did the stalwart
young man watch over him, sitting erect in one of the high-backed
chairs, until the first pale light of dawn came stealing
in through the latticed casement, and the shrill cry of the early
cock announced the morning of another day.
4. CHAPTER IV.
THE BASEBORN.
For trusting heart to find;
That vows believed, were vows conceived,
As light as summer wind.”
—Motherwell.
The earliest cock had barely crowed his first salutations to
the awakening day, and the first warblers had not yet begun
to make their morning music in the thick shrubberies around
the cottage, when aroused betimes, by his anxiety for Jasper,
Sir Miles made his appearance, already full dressed, at the
door of the room in which his son was sleeping.
For he was yet asleep, with that hardy young man still
watching over him, apparently unmoved by the loss of his own
rest, and wholly indifferent to what are usually deemed the indispensable
requirements of nature.
“You are aloof betimes, sir,” said the youth, rising from his
seat as the old cavalier entered the room; “pity that you should
have arisen so early, for I could have watched him twice as
long, had it been needful, but in truth it was not so. Your son
has scarce moved, Sir Miles, since you left the chamber last
night. You see how pleasantly and soundly he is sleeping.”
“It was not that, young sir,” replied the old man cordially.
“It was not that I doubted your good will, or your good watching
either; but he is my son, my only son, and how should I
but be anxious. But as you say, he sleeps pleasantly and well.
God be thanked, therefore. He will be none the worse for
this.”
“Better, perhaps, Sir Miles,” replied the other, with a slight
truth, it was a very boyish, and a very foolish risk to run.”
The old man, for the first time, looked at the speaker steadfastly,
and was struck by the singular expression of his countenance
— that strange mixture of impassive, self-confident composure,
and half-scornful audacity, which I have mentioned as
being his most striking characteristics. On the preceding
evening, Sir Miles had been so much engrossed by the anxiety
he felt about his son, and subsequently by the feelings called
forth in his inmost heart by the discovery of an old comrade in
the person of William Allan, that in fact he had paid little attention
to either of the other personages present.
He had observed, indeed, that there were a fair, young girl
and a powerfully-framed youth present; he had even addressed
a few words casually to both of them, but they had left no impression
on his mind, and he had not even considered who or
what they were likely to be.
Now, however, when he was composed and relieved of fear
for his son's life, he was struck, as I have said, by the expression
and features of the young man, and began to consider who
he could be; for there was no such similarity, whether of feature,
expression, voice, air, or gesture, between him and William
Allan, as is wont to exist between son and sire.
After a moment's pause, however, the old cavalier replied,
not altogether pleased apparently by the tone of the last remark.
“It was a very bold and manly risk, it appears to me,” he
said, “and if rash, can hardly be called boyish; and you, I
should think,” he added, “would be the last to blame bold actions.
You look like anything but one who should recommend
cold counsels, or be slack either to dare or do. I fancy you
have seen stirring times somewhere, and been among daring
deeds yourself.”
“So many times, Sir Miles,” replied the young man, modestly,
without cause. There be necessary risks enough in life, and
man has calls enough, and those unavoidable, on his courage,
without going out of his way to seek them, or throwing any
energy or boldness unprofitably to the winds. At least so I
have found it in the little I have seen of human life and
action.”
“Ha! you speak well,” said Sir Miles, looking even more
thoughtfully than before at the marked and somewhat weather-beaten
features of the young man. “And where have you met
with perils so rife, and learned so truly the need of disciplining
natural energies and valor?”
“On the high seas, Sir Miles, of which I have been a follower
from a boy.”
“Indeed! are you such a voyager! and where, I pray you,
have you served?”
“I can not say that I have exactly served. But I have visited
both the Indias, East and West; and have seen some
smart fighting — where they say peace never comes — beyond
the line, I mean with the Dons, both in Darien and Peru.”
“Ha! but you have indeed seen the world, for one so young
as you; and yet I think you have not sailed in the king's ships,
nor held rank in the service.”
“No, Sir Miles, I am but a poor free-trader; and yet sometimes
I think that we have carried the English flag farther, and
made the English name both better known and more widely
feared, than the cruisers of any king who has sat on our throne,
since the good old days of Queen Bess.”
“His present majesty did good service against the Dutch,
young man. And what do you say to Blake? Who ever did
more gloriously at sea, than rough old Blake?”
“Ay, sir, but that was in Noll's days, and we may not call
him a king of England, though of a certainty he was her wise
that Opdam business was when he was the duke of York; and
he has forgotten all his glory, I think, now that he has become
king, and lets the Frenchman and the Don do as they please
with our colonists and traders, and the Dutchman, too, for that
matter.”
The old man paused, and shook his head gravely for a moment,
but then resumed with a smile:—
“So so, my young friend, you are one of those bold spirits
who claim to judge for yourselves, and make peace or war as
you think well, without waiting the slow action of senate or
kings, who hold that hemispheres, not treaties, are the measure
of hostility or amity:—
“Not so, exactly, noble sir. But where we find peace or
war, there we take them; and if the Dons won't be quiet, on
the other side the line, and our good king won't keep them
quiet, why we must either take them as we find them, or give
up the great field to them altogether.”
“Which you hold to be un-English and unmanly?”
“Even so, sir.”
“Well, I, for one, will not gainsay you. But do not you
fear, sometimes that while you are thus stretching a commission
— that is the term, I believe, among you liberal gentlemen —
you may chance to get your own neck stretched some sultry
morning in the Floridas or in Darien?”
“One of the very risks I spoke of but now, Sir Miles,” replied
the young man, laughing. “My life were not worth five
minutes' purchase if the governor of St. Augustine or of Panama
either, for that matter, could once lay hold on me.”
“I marvel,” said the old cavalier, again shaking his head solemnly,
“I marvel much —” and then interrupting himself suddenly
in the middle of his sentence he lapsed into a fit of meditative
silence.
“At what, if I may be so bold — at what do you so much
marvel?”
“That William Allan should consent,” replied the cavalier,
“that son of his should embark in so wild and stormy a career —
in a career which, I should have judged, with his strict principles
and somewhat puritanical feeling, he would deem the reverse
of gracious or godfearing.”
“He knows not what career I follow,” answered the young
man, bluntly. “But you are in error altogether, sir. I am no
son of William Allan.”
“No son of William Allan! Ha! now that I think of it,
your features are not his, nor your voice either.”
“Nor my body, nor my soul!” replied the other, hastily and
hotly, “no more than the free falcon's are those of the caged
linnet! Sometimes I even marvel how it can be that any drop
of mutual or common blood should run in our veins; and yet it
is so — and I — I — yet no — I do not repent it!”
“And wherefore should you? there is no worthier or better
man, I do believe, than William Allan living; and, in his
younger days at least, I know there was no braver.”
“No braver? — indeed! indeed!” exclaimed the young man,
eagerly — “was he, indeed, brave?”
“Ay, was he, youth! brave both to do and to suffer. Brave,
both with the quick and dauntless courage to act, and with the
rarer and more elevated courage to resolve and hold fast to resolution.
But who are you, who, living with him, know both so
little and so much of William Allan? If you be not his son,
who are you?”
“His sister's son, Sir Miles — his only sister's son, to whom,
since that sister's death, he has been — God forgive me for that
I said but now — more than a father; for surely I have tried
him more than ever son tried a father, and he has borne with
me still with a most absolute indulgence and unwearied love.”
“What — what!” exclaimed Sir Miles, much moved and
even agitated by what he heard, “are you the child of that innocent
and beautiful Alicia Allan, whom — whom —” The old
man faltered and stopped short, for he was in fact on the point
of bursting into tears.
But the youth finished the sentence, which he had left unconcluded,
in a stern, slow voice, and with a lowering brow.
“Whom your friend, Denzil Olifaunt, betrayed by a mock
marriage, and afterward deserted with her infants. Yes, Sir
Miles, I am one of those infants, the son of Alicia Allan's
shame! And my uncle did not slay him — therefore it is I
asked you, was he brave.”
“And yet he was slain — and for that very deed!” replied the
old man, gloomily, with his eyes fixed upon the ground.
“He was slain,” repeated the young sailor, whose curiosity
and interest were now greatly excited. “But how can you
tell wherefore? No one has ever known who slew him — how
then can you name the cause of his slaying?”
“There is One who knows all things!”
“But He imparts not his knowledge,” answered the other,
not irreverently. “And unless you slew him, I see not how
you can know this. Yet, hold, hold!” he continued, impetuously,
as he saw that Sir Miles was about to speak, “if you did
slay him, tell it not; for if he did betray my mother, if he did
abandon me to disgrace and ruin — still, still he was my
father.”
“I slew him not, young man,” replied the cavalier, gravely,
“but he was slain for the cause that I have named, and I saw
him die — repentant.”
“Repentant!” exclaimed the youth, grasping the withered
hand of the old knight, in the intensity of his emotions, “did he
repent the wrong he had done my mother?”
“As surely as he died.”
“May God forgive him, then,” said the seaman, clasping his
hands together and bursting into tears, “as I forgive him.”
“Amen! amen!” cried the knight, “for he was mine ancient
friend, the comrade of my boyhood, before he did that thing;
and I, too, have something to forgive to him.”
“You, Sir Miles, you! — what can you have to forgive?”
“Tell me first, tell me — how are you named?”
“Denzil,” answered the youth, “Denzil, Nothing!” he added,
very bitterly, “my country, and my country's law give me no
other name, but only Denzil — its enemies have named me
Bras-de-fer!”
“Then mark me, Denzil; as he of whom you are sprung, of
whom you are named, was my first friend, so was your mother
my first love; and she returned my love, till he, my sometime
confidant, did steal her from me, and made his paramour, whom
I would have made my wife.”
“Great God!” exclaimed the young man, struck with consternation;
“then it must, it must have been so — it was you
who slew my — my father!”
“Young man, I never lied.”
“Pardon me, Sir Miles. Pardon me, I am half distraught.
And you loved my mother, and — and — he repented. Why
was not I told of this before? And yet,” he added, again
pausing, as if some fresh suspicion struck him, “and yet how
is this? I heard you speak yester even to my uncle, of wrongs
done — done by yourself to him, and of a woman's death — that
woman, therefore, was not, could not have been my mother.
Who, then, was she?”
“His mother,” replied Sir Miles St. Aubyn, calmly, but sadly,
pointing to the bed on which Jasper lay sleeping tranquilly,
and all unconsciously of the strange revelations which were
going on around him. “If my friend robbed me of William
Allan's sister, so I won from William Allan, in after-days, her
won never returned your uncle's love from the beginning, and
that I never betrayed his confidence. If I were the winner,
it was in fair and loyal strife, and though it has been, as I
learned for the first time last night, a sore burden on your uncle's
heart, it has been none on my conscience; my withers
are unwrung.”
“I believe it, sir; from my soul I believe it,” cried the young
man, enthusiastically, “for, on my life, I think you are all honor
and nobility. But tell me, tell me now, if you love, if you pity
me — as you should do for my mother's sake — who slew my
father?”
“I have sworn,” answered the cavalier, “I have sworn never
to reveal that to mortal man; and if I had not sworn, to you I
could not reveal it; for, if I judge aright, you would hold yourself
bound to —”
“Avenge it!” exclaimed the youth, fiercely, interrupting
him; “ay, were it at my soul's purchase — since he repented.”
“He did repent, Denzil; nay, more, he died, desiring only
that he could repair the wrong he had done you, regretting
only that he could not give you his name, and his inheritance,
as he did give you his dying blessing, and your mother his last
thought, his last word in this world.”
“Did she know this?”
“Denzil, I can not answer you; for within a few days after
your father's death, I left England for the Low Countries, and
returned not until many a year had passed into the bygone eternity.
When I did return, the sorrows of Alicia Allan were at
an end for ever; and though I then made all inquiries in all
quarters, I could learn nothing of your uncle or yourself, nor
ever have heard of you any more until last night, when we
were all so singularly brought together.”
“I ought to have known this; I would, I would to God that
less stormy. My spirit had not then burned with so rash
a recklessness. It was the sense of wrong, of bitter and unmerited
wrong done in past times, of cold and undeserved scorn
heaped on me in the present, as the bastard — the child of infamy
and shame! that goaded me into so hot action. But it is
done now, it is done, and can not be amended. The world it is
which has made me what I am — let the world look to it — let
the world enjoy the work of its hands.”
“There is nothing, Denzil,” said the old man, solemnly,
“nothing but death that can not be amended. Undone things
may not be, but all things may be amended by God's good
grace to aid us.”
“Hast thou not seen a sapling in the forest, which, overcrowded
by trees of stronger growth, or warped from its true
direction by some unnoted accident, hath grown up vigorous
indeed and strong, but deformed amd distorted in its yearly progress,
until arrived at its full maturity? Not all the art or all
the strength of man or man's machinery can force it from its
bias, or make it straight and comely. So is it with the mind
of man, Sir Miles. While it is young and plastic, you shall
direct it as you will — once ripened, hardened in its growth,
whether that growth be tortuous or true, as soon shall you remodel
the stature of the earth-fast oak, as change its intellectual
bias. But I am wearying you, I fancy, and wasting words
in unavailing disquisition. I hear my uncle's step without,
moreover; permit me, I will join him.”
“Hold yet a moment,” replied the old man, kindly, “and let
me say this to you now, while we are alone, which I may perchance
lack opportunity to say hereafter. Your mother's son,
Denzil Olifaunt — for so I shall ever call you, and so by his last
words you are entitled to be called — can never weary me.
Your welfare will concern me ever — what interests you, will
nearest and dearest to this old heart at all times. Now leave
me if you will — yet hold! tell me before you go, what I am
fain to learn concerning your good uncle — the knowledge shall
perchance save painful explanation, perhaps grave misunderstanding.”
“All that I know is at your service,” answered the young
man, in a calmer and milder tone than he had used heretofore
— for he was, in truth, much moved and softened by the evident
feeling of the old cavalier; “but let me thank you first for
your kindly offers, which, should occasion offer, believe me, I
will test as frankly as you have made them nobly.”
To his latter words Miles St. Aubyn made no answer, except
a grave inclination of his head, for his mind was pre-occupied
now by thoughts of very different import — was fixed, indeed,
on days long passed, and on old, painful memories.”
“This girl,” he said at length, “this fair young girl whom I
saw here last night, is she — is she your sister? I think you
had a sister — yet this fair child hath not Alicia's hair, nor her
eyes — who is she?”
“God was most good in that,” answered the seaman, with
much feeling, “he took my sister to himself, even before my
mother pined away. A man's lot is hard enough who is the
son of shame — a woman's is intolerable anguish. Theresa is
my uncle's child — his only child. His love for her is almost
idolatry, and were it altogether so, she deserves it all. Lo!
there she passes by the casement — was ever fairer face or
lovelier figure? and yet her soul, her innocent and artless soul,
has beauties that as far surpass those personal charms, as they
exceed all other earthly loveliness.”
“You love her,” said the cavalier, looking quickly upward,
for he had been musing with downcast eyes, while Denzil
spoke, and had not even raised his lids to gaze upon Theresa
and gentle child.”
The young man's cheek burned crimson, ashamed that he
should have revealed himself so completely to one who was
almost a stranger. But he was not one to deny or disguise a
single feeling of his heart, whether for good or for evil, and he
replied, after a moment's pause, with an unfaltering and steady
voice, “I do love her, more than my own soul!”
“And she,” asked the old knight, “does she know, does she
return your affection?”
Again the sailor hesitated; “Women, they say,” he replied,
at length, “know always by a natural instinct when they are
beloved, and therefore I believe she knows it. For the rest,
she is always most affectionate, most gentle, nay, even tender.
Further than this, I may not judge.”
“Father,” exclaimed a faint voice from the bed, at this moment.
“Is that you, father?” and Jasper St. Aubyn opened
his eyes, languid yet from the heavy slumber into which the
opiate had cast him, and raised himself up a little on his pillow,
though with a slow and painful motion.
“My son,” cried the old man, hurrying to the side of the bed,
“my own boy, Japser, how fare you now? You have slept
well.”
“So well,” answered the bold boy, “that I feel strong
enough, and clear enough in the head, to be up and about; but
that whenever I would move a limb, there comes an accursed
twinge to put me in mind that limestone rock is harder than
bone and muscle.”
Meanwhile, as soon as the old cavalier's attention was diverted
by the awakening of his own son from his trance-like
slumber, Denzil Bras-de-fer, as he called himself, and as I
shall therefore call him, left the room quietly, and a few minutes
afterward might have been seen, had not the eyes of those
following the same path which had been taken by Theresa
Allan a little while before.
5. CHAPTER V.
THE LOVESUIT.
Or his deserts are small,
Who would not put it to the touch,
To win, or lose it all.
—Montrose.
The morning was still very young, and the sun which was
but just beginning to rise above the brow of the eastern hill,
poured his long, yellow rays, full of a million dusty motes, in
almost level lines down the soft, green slopes, diversified by
hundreds of cool purple shadows, projected far and wide over
the laughing landscape, from every tree and bush that intercepted
the mild light.
The dews of the preceding night still clustered unexhaled,
sparkling like diamonds to the morning beams, on every leaf
and flower; a soft west wind was playing gently with the thousands
of bright buds and blossoms which decked the pleasant
gardens; and the whole air was perfumed with the delicate fragrance
of the mignionette and roses, which filled the luxuriant
parterres. The hum of the revelling bees came to the ear
with a sweet, domestic sound, and the rich carol of the black-bird
and the thrush came swelling from the tangled shrubberies,
full fraught with gratitude and glee.
It was into such a scene, and among such sights and sounds,
that the young free-trader wandered forth from the tranquillity
and gloom of the sick chamber in which he had spent a sleepless
with Sir Miles St. Aubyn, and chords of too powerful
feeling had been thrilled into sudden and painful life, to allow
him to be penetrated, as he might have been in a less agitated
hour, by the sweet influences of the time and season.
Still, though he was unconscious of the pleasant sights and
sounds and smells which surrounded him, as he strolled slowly
through the bowery walks of the old garden, they had more or
less effect upon his perturbed and bitter spirit; and his mood
became gradually softer, as he mused upon what had passed
within the last hour, alone in that bright solitude.
Wild and impetuous and almost fierce by nature, he had
brooded from his very boyhood upward over his real and imaginary
wrongs, until the iron had so deeply pierced his soul,
that he could see nothing but coldness, and hostility, and persecution,
in the conduct of all around him, with the exception
of his old student uncle and his sweet Theresa. Ever suspecting,
ever anticipating injury and insult, or at least coldness and
repulsion from all with whom he was brought into contact, he
actually generated in the breasts of others the feelings, which
he imputed to them all unjustly. Accusing the world of injustice
or ere it was unjust, in the end he made it to be so indeed;
and then hated it, and railed against it, for that which it had
never dreamed of, but for his own fantastic waywardness.
It was unfortunate for Denzil, that the good man, into whose
care he had fallen, ever of a philosophical and studious, nay,
even mystic disposition, had become, since the sad fate of his
beloved sister, and the early death of a yet dearer wife, so
wholly visionary, so entirely given up to the wildest theorizing,
the most abstruse and abstract metaphysical inquiries, that no
one could have been devised less fitting for the guardian and
instructor of a high-spirited, hot-headed, fiery boy than he was.
The consequence of this was, as it might have been expected,
the old man persisted in forcing into him against the grain, and
discontented with the stillness and deathlike tranquility of all
around him, the boy ran away from his distasteful home, and
shipped for the India voyage in a free-trader, half merchantman,
half-picaroon, before he had yet attained his thirteenth
year. In that wild and turbulent career, well suited to his
daring and contemptuous spirit, he had, as he himself expressed
it, become hardened and inured, not to toils and sufferings
only, but to thoughts and feelings, habits and opinions,
which perhaps now could never be eradicated from his nature,
of which they had become, as it were, part and parcel.
When he returned, well nigh a man of years, quite a man in
stature, and perhaps more than most men in courage, resource,
coolness, and audacity, old Allan, to whom he had written once
or twice, apprizing him that he had adopted the sea as his
home and his profession, received him with a hearty welcome,
and with few or no inquiries as to the period during which he
had been absent.
Thereafter, he came and went as he would, unasked and unheeded.
When he was ashore, the cottage by the fords of
Widecomb was his home; and his increasing wealth — for he
had prospered greatly in his adventurous career — added materially
to the comforts of old Allan's housekeeping. His life
was, therefore, spent in strange alternations; now amid the
wildest excitement — the storm, the chase, the fierce and frantic
speculation, the perilous and desperate fight, the revelry, the
triumph, and the booty; and now, in the calmest and most
peaceful solitude, amid the sweetest pastoral scenery, and with
the loveliest and most innocent companion that ever soothed the
hot and eager spirit of erring and impetuous man, into almost
woman's softness.
And hence it was, perhaps, that Denzil Bras-de-fer had, as
heedless of human praise or human censure, pitiless to human
sorrow, reckless of human life, merciless, almost cruel—
the other generous, and soft, and sympathetic, and full of every
good and gentle impulse.
And it was in the latter of these only, that Theresa Allan
knew him.
It must not be supposed, from what I have written, that Denzil
was a pirate, or a buccanceer — far from it. For though, at
times, he and his comrades assumed the initiative in warfare,
and smote the Spaniards, and the Dutchmen, and the French,
unsparingly, beyond the line, and made but small distinction
between the meum and the tuum, especially if the tuum pertained
to the stranger and the papist, still neither public opinion,
nor their own consciences condemned them — they were
regarded, as Cavendish, and Raleigh, and Drake, and Frobisher,
and Hawkins, had been, a reign or two before, as bold,
headlong adventurers; perhaps a little lawless, but on the whole,
noble and daring men, and were esteemed in general rather an
ornament than a disgrace to their native land.
As men are esteemed of men, such they are very apt to be
or to become; and, having the repute of chivalrous spirit, of
generosity and worth, no less than of dauntless courage, and
rare seamanship, the adventurous free-traders of that day held
themselves to be, in all respects, gentlemen, and men of honor;
and holding themselves so, for the most part they became so.
It was, therefore, by no means either wonderful or an exception
to a rule, that Denzil Bras-de-fer should have been such as
I have described him, awake to gentle impulses, alive to good
impressions, easily subject to the influences of the finest female
society, and in no respect a person from either his habits, his
tastes, or his profession, to be rejected by men of honor, or eschewed
by women of refinement.
And now, as he followed slowly on the steps of his beautiful
cousin, the young man was more alive than usual to the higher
and nobler sensibilities of his mind. The information which
he had gained concerning his own father's feelings, at the moment
of his death, had greatly softened him, and it began to
occur to him — which was, indeed true — that, he might have
been during his whole life conjuring up phantoms against which
to do battle, and attributing thoughts and actions to the world at
large, of which the world might well be wholly innocent.
Up to this moment, although he had long been aware of his
constantly increasing passion for his fair cousin, he had rested
content with the mild and sisterlike affection which she had
ever manifested toward him; and, having been ever her sole
companion, ever treated with most perfect confidence and sympathy,
having found her at all times charmed to greet his return,
and grieved at his departure; knowing, above all things,
that at the worst he had no rival, and that her heart had never
been touched by any warmer passion than she felt toward himself,
he had scarcely paused to inquire even of himself, whether
he was beloved in turn, much less had he endeavored to penetrate
the secrets of her heart, or to disturb the calm tenor of
her way by words or thoughts of passion.
Now, however, the words, the questions of the old cavalier
had awakened many a doubt in his soul; and with the doubt
came the desire irrepressible to envisage his fate, to learn and
ascertain, once and for all, whether his lot was to be cast henceforth
in joy or in sorrow; whether, in a word, he was to be a
wanderer and an outcast, by sea and land, unto his dying day,
or whether this very hour was to be to him the commencement
of a new era, a new life.
Now, as he walked forth in the beautiful calm morning, in
that old, pleasant garden, which had been the scene of so
much peaceable and innocent enjoyment, he felt himself at once
while determined to delay no longer, but to try his gentle cousin's
heart, he was supported by no high and fiery hope. He
seemed to have lost, he knew not how or wherefore, that proud,
heaven-reaching confidence, which was wont to count all things
won while they were yet to win; still less did his heart kindle
and blaze out with that preconceived indignation at the idea of
being unappreciated or neglected, which would a few hours before
have goaded him almost to frenzy.
I have written much of his character to little purpose, if it
be not plain that humility was the frame of mind least usual to
the youthful seaman, yet now, for once, he was humble. He
had discovered, for the first time in his life, that he had erred
grossly in his estimate of others, and was beginning to suspect
that that false estimate had led him far away from true principles,
true conceptions; he was beginning, in a word, to suspect
that he was himself less sinned against than sinning; and that
his was, in fact, a very much misguided and distempered spirit.
He clasped his brow closely with a feverish and trembling
hand, as he walked onward slowly, pondering, with his whole
soul intent upon the future and the past. He was inquiring of
himself, “Does she, can she love me?” and he could make no
answer to his own passionate questioning. While he was in
this mood, bending his steps toward the favorite bower wherein
he half hoped half feared to find Theresa, a soft voice fell upon
his ear, and a light hand was laid upon his arm, as he passed
the intersection of another shady walk with that through which
he was strolling.
“Good-morrow, Denzil,” said the young girl merrily. “I
never thought to see you out so early in the garden; but I am
glad that you are here, for I want you. So come along with
me at once, and tell me if it be not a nest of young nightingales
which I have found in the thick syringa-bush beside my arbor.
you look so sad, and move so heavily this glorious summer
morning? You are not ill, are you, dear Denzil?”
“Dear Denzil,” he repeated, in a low, subdued tone. “Dear
Denzil! I would to God that I were dear to you, Theresa —
that I were dear to any one.”
So singular was the desponding tone in which he spoke, so
strange and unwonted was the cloud of deep depression which
sat on his bold, intelligent brow, that the young girl stared at
him in amazement, almost in alarm.
“You are ill,” she cried, in tones of affectionate anxiety;
“you must be ill, or you would never speak so strangely, so
unkindly; or is it only that you are overdone with watching by
that poor youth's sick bed? Yet no, no, that can never be, you
who are so strong and so hardy. What is it, dearest cousin?
Tell me, what is it makes you speak so wildly? — would that
you were dear to me! why, if not you, you and my good, kind
father, who on the face of the wide earth is dear to poor Theresa!
That you were dear to any one! You, whom my father
looks upon and loves as his own son; you, whose companions
hold as almost more than mortal — for have I not
marked the inscriptions on your sabre's guard, and on the telescope
they gave you? You, who have saved the lives of so
many fellow-mortals; you, to whom those ladies, rescued at
Darien from the bloodthirsty Spaniards, addressed such glowing
words of gratitude and love; you, Cousin Denzil, you, who
are so great, so brave, so wise, so skilful, and above all, so generous
and kind; you talk of wishing you were dear to any one!
Good sooth! you must be dreaming, or you are bewitched, gentle
Denzil.”
“If I be,” he replied with a smile, for her high spirits and
gay enthusiasm aroused him from his gloomier thoughts, and
Theresa, art the enchantress who has done it.”
“Ay! now you are more like yourself; but tell me,” she
said, caressingly, “what was it made you sad and dark but
now?”
“Only this, dear Theresa, that I am again about to leave
you.”
“To leave us — to leave us so soon and so suddenly. Why
you have been here but three little weeks, which have passed
like so many days, and when you came you said that you would
stay with us till autumn. Oh, dear! my father will be so
grieved at your going. You do not know, you do not dream
how much he loves you, Denzil. He is a different person altogether
when you are at home — so much gayer, and more sociable!
Oh! wherefore must you leave us so quickly, and after
so long an absence, too, as your last? Oh, truly, it is unkind,
Denzil.”
“And you, Theresa, shall you be sorry?”
“I will not answer you,” she replied, half-petulantly, half-tearfully.
“It is unkind of you to go, and doubly unkind to
speak to me thus. What have I done to you now, what have I
ever done to you, that you should doubt my being sorry? Are
not you the only friend, the only companion I have got in the
wide world? Are you not as near and dear to me, as if you
were my own brother? Do not I love you as my brother, even
as my father loves you as his son? Ah, Denzil! if you are
never less loved than you are by poor Theresa Allan, you will
ne'er need to complain for lack of loving.”
And she burst into tears as she ended her rapid speech; for
she did not comprehend in the least at what he was aiming, and
her innocent and artless heart was wounded by what she fancied
to be a doubt of her affection.
“And if you feel so deeply the mere temporary absence
should you feel were that absence to be eternal?”
“Eternal!” she exclaimed, turning very pale. “Eternal!
What do you mean by eternal?”
“It may well be so, Theresa; and yet it rests with yourself,
after all, whether I go or not — and yet be sure of this, if I do
go, I go for ever.”
“With me — does it rest with me?” she cried, joyously.
“Oh! if it rests with me, you will not go at all — you will
never go any more. I am always in terror while you are absent;
and the west wind never blows, howling as it does over
these desolate, bare hills, with its mournful, moaning voice,
which they say is the very sound of a spirit's cry, but it conjures
up to my mind all dread ideas of the tremendous rush
and roar of the mountain billows upon some rock-bound, leeward
coast, as I have heard you tell by the cheerful hearth;
and of stranded vessels, creaking and groaning as their huge
ribs break asunder, and of corpses weltering on the ruthless
waves; oh! such dread day-dreams! If it rest with me, go
you shall not, Denzil, ever again to sea. And why should you?
You have won fame enough, and glory and wealth more than
enough to supply your wants as long as you live. Why should
you go to sea again, dear Denzil?”
“I will not go again, Theresa, if such seriously be your deliberate
desire.”
“If such seriously be my deliberate desire!” the fair girl repeated
the words after him with a sort of half-solemn drollery.
Was it the native instinct of the female heart, betraying itself
in that innocent and artless creature, scarcely in years more
than a child — the inborn, irrepressible coquetry of the sex, foreseeing
what was about to follow from the young man's lips, yet
seeking all unconsciously to delay the avowal, to protract the
uncertainty, the excitement, or was it genuine, unsuspecting innocence?
“this fine morning, Denzil, wondrously serious and deliberate;
and so, as you are so precise, I must, I suppose, answer you
likewise, in due set form. Of course, it is my desire to have
the company of one whom I esteem and love, of one to whom
I look up for countenance and protection, of my only relative
on earth, except my dear old father, as much as I can have it,
with due regard to his interests and well-being. My father is
getting very old, too, and infirm; and at times I fancy that his
mind wanders. I can not fail, therefore, to perceive that he
needs a more able and energetic person near him than I am.
I can, moreover, see no good cause why you should persist in
following so perilous and stormy a profession, unless it be that
you love it. Therefore, as I have said, of course, if it rest with
me to detain you, I would do so — but always under this proviso,
that it were with your own good will; for I confess, dear
Denzil, that I fear, if you were detained against your wish, if
you still pant for the strong excitement, the stormy rapture, as
I have heard you call it, of the chase, the battle, and the tempest,
you never could be happy here, whatever we might do to
please you. Now, Denzil, seriously and deliberately, you are
answered.”
“I could be happy here. I am weary of agitation and excitement.
I feel that I have erred — that the path I have taken
leads not to happiness. I want tranquillity, repose of the heart,
above all things — love!”
“Then do not go — then I say positively, Denzil, dear Denzil,
stay with us — you can find all these here.”
“Are you sure — all of them?”
“Sure? Why, if not here in this delicious, pastoral, simple
country, in this dear cottage, with its lovely garden and calm
waters, where in the world should you find tranquillity? If
your own family, where should you look for love?”
“Theresa, there be more kinds of love than one — and that
I crave is not cold, duteous, family affection.”
Now, for the first time, it seemed that the young man's meaning
broke clearly upon her mind; now a sudden and bright illumination
burst upon all that seemed strange, and wild, and
inconsistent in his conduct, in his speech, in his very silence.
Unsuspected before, it was now evident to her at once that
deep, overmastering passion was the cause to which she must
refer all that had been, for some time past, to her an incomprehensible
enigma in her cousin's demeanor.
And now that she was assured, for the first time in her life,
that she was really, deeply, ardently beloved — not as a pretty,
childish playmate, not as an amiable and dear relative, but as
herself, for herself, a loveable and lovely woman, how did the
maiden's heart respond to the great revelation?
Elevated on the instant from the girl to the woman, a strange
and thrilling sense, a sort of moral shock affected her whole
system — was it of pleasure or of pain?
It has been often said, and I presume said truly, that no woman
— no, not the best and purest, the most modest and considerate
of their sex — ever received a declaration of love from any
man, even if the man himself be distasteful to her, even if the
love he proffer be illicit and dishonest, without a secret and instinctive
sense of high gratification, a consciousness of power,
of triumph, a pride in the homage paid to her charms, a sort of
gratitude for the tribute rendered to her sex's loveliness. She
may, and will, repulse the dishonorable love with scorn and
loathing, yet still, though she may spurn the worthless offering,
and heap reproach upon the daring offerer, still she will be half
pleased by the offer — if it be only that she has had the power,
the pleasure — for all power is pleasure — of rejecting it. She
the honest offers of a pure love which she can not reciprocate
or value as it should be valued; but even if he who made the
tender be repulsive, almost odious, still she must be gratified,
perhaps almost grateful for that which he has done.
To a young girl more especially, just bursting from the bud
into the bloom of young womanhood, scarce conscious yet that
she is a woman, scarcely awake to the sense of her own powers,
her own passions — a creature full of vague, shadowy, mysterious
fancies, strange, uncomprehended thoughts, and half-perceived
desires, there is — there must be — something of wondrous
influence, of indescribable excitement, in the receiving a
first declaration.
And so it was with Theresa Allan. She was, in truth, no
angel — for angels are not to be met with in the daily walks of
this world — she was, indeed, neither more nor less than a mere
mortal woman, mortal in all the imperfection, and narrowness,
and feebleness, and inability to rise even to the height of its
own best aspirations, which are peculiar to mortality — woman
in all the frailty, and vanity, and variety, no less than in all the
tenderness, the truth, the constancy, the loveliness, the sweetness
of true womanhood. She was, in a word, just what a
great modern poet has described in those sweet lines: —
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”
of woman's nature, will regret that she was such; for he must be
a poor judge indeed, he must know little of the real character
of womanhood, who does not feel that one half of her best influences,
one half of her sweetest power of charming, soothing,
controlling, winding herself about the very heart-strings, arises
she might then be we know not, but she would not be woman, and
until the world has seen something better and more endearing,
until a wiser artificer can be found than He who made her,
even as she is, a help meet for man — away with your abstractions!
give her to us as she is, at least, if not perfect, the best
and brightest of created things — a very, very woman.
She heard his words, she felt his meaning, yet the sense of
the words seemed to be lost, the very sounds rang in her ears
dizzily, her breath came so painfully that she almost fancied
she was choking, the earth appeared to shake under her feet,
and everything around her to wheel drunkenly to and fro.
She pressed one hand upon her heart, aud caught her cousin's
arm with the other to support herself. Her whole face,
which a moment before had been alive and radiant with the
warm hues of happiness and youth, became as white as marble.
Her very lips were bloodless; her whole frame trembled as if
she had an ague-fit.
He gazed on her in wonder, almost in terror. For a moment
he thought she was about to faint, almost to die; and so
violent, in truth, was the affection of her nerves, that, had she
not been relieved by a sudden passion of tears, it is doubtful
what might have been the result.
They were standing, when Denzil Bras-de-fer uttered the
words which had wrought so singular a change in Theresa's
manner, within a pace or two of the sylvan bower of which she
had spoken, and without a moment's pause, or a syllable uttered,
he hurried her into its quiet recess, and placing her gently on
the mossy seat within, knelt down at her feet, holding her left
hand in his own, and gazing up anxiously in her face.
He was amazed — he was alarmed. Not for himself alone,
not from the selfish fear of losing what he most prized on earth
— but for her.
He knew not, indeed, whether that strange and almost terrible
revulsion arose from pleasure or from pain. He knew not, could
not even conjecture whether it boded good or evil to his hopes,
to his happiness. But the scales had fallen from his eyes in an
instant. He had discovered now, what her old father, recognizing
genius with the intuitive second-sight of kindred genius,
had perceived long before, that this young, artless, inexperienced,
childlike girl, was, indeed, a creature wonderfully and
fearfully made.
He had never before suspected that beneath that calm, gentle,
tranquil, unexcitable exterior there beat a heart, there
thrilled a soul, full of the strongest capabilities, the most earnest
aspirations, the most intense imaginings, that ever were awakened
by the magic touch of love, into those overwhelming
passions, which can tend to no middle state, but must lead to
the perfect happiness or utter misery of their possessor.
But he saw it, he knew it now; and he felt that so soon as
the present paroxysm should pass over, she too, would feel and
know all this likewise. Whether for good or for evil, for weal
or for wo, he perceived that he had unlocked for her whom he
truly and singly loved, the hitherto sealed fountain of knowledge.
And he almost shuddered at the thought of what he had done
— he almost wished that he had stifled his own wishes, sacrificed
his own hopes.
For though impetuous and impulsive, though in some degree
warped and perverted, he was not selfish. And when he observed
the terrible power which his words had produced upon
her, and judged thence of the character and temper of her mind
and intellect, a sad suspicion fell upon him that hers was one
of those over-delicate temperaments, one of those spirits too
rarely endowed, too sensitively constituted, ever to know again,
when once awakened to self-consciousness, that quietude, in
which alone lies true happiness.
Several minutes passed before a word was spoken by either.
But gradually the color returned to her lips, to her cheeks, and
the light relumed her beautiful blue eyes, and the tremor passed
away from her slight frame; but her face continued motionless,
and so calm that its gravity almost amounted to severity. It
was not altogether melancholy, it was not at all anger, but it was,
what in a harder and less youthful face would have been sternness.
Never before had he seen such an expression on any
human face — never, assuredly, had hers worn it before. It
was the awakening of a new spirit — the consciousness of a
new power — the first struggling into life of a great purpose.
Her hand lay passive in his grasp, yet he could feel the
pulses throbbing to the very tips of those small, rosy fingers, so
strongly and tumultuously, that he could not reconcile such evidence
of her quick and lively feeling with the fixed tranquillity
of the eye which was bent upon his own, with the rigidity
of the marble brow.
At length, and contrary to what is wont to happen, it was he
who first broke silence.
“Theresa,” he said, “I have grieved — I have pained — perhaps
offended you.”
And then she started, as his voice smote her ears, so complete
had been the abstraction of her mind, and recovering all
her faculties and readiness of mind on the instant.
“Yes, Denzil,” she said, very sweetly, but very sorrowfully,
“you have grieved me, you have pained me, very, very deeply;
but oh, do not imagine that you have offended me — that you could
offend me. No; you have torn away too suddenly, too roughly,
the veil that covered my eyes and my heart. You have
awakened thoughts, and feelings, and perceptions, in my soul,
of whose existence I never dreamed before. You have made
me know myself, as it were, better within the last few minutes
than I ever knew myself before. It seems to me, that I have
in all the years I can count before. And, oh, my heart! my
heart! I am most unhappy!
“You can not love me, then, Theresa,” he said, tranquilly;
for he had vast self-control, and he was too much of a man to
suffer his own agitation or distress to agitate or distress her
further. “You can not love me as I would be loved by you
— you can not be mine.”
“Denzil,” she said, in tones full of the deepest emotion,
“until the moment in which you spoke to me, I never thought
of love; I never dreamed or imagined to myself what it should
be, other than the love I bear to my father, to you, to all that is
kind, and good, and beautiful, in humanity or in nature. But
your words, I know not how or wherefore, have awakened me,
as it were, into a strange sort of knowledge. I do not love, I
almost hope that I never may love, as you would wish me to
love you; but I do feel now that I know what such love should
be; and I tremble at the knowledge. I feel that it would be
too strong, too full of fear, of anxiety, of agony, to allow of happiness.
Oh, no, no! Denzil, do not ask me, do not wish me
to love you so; pray rather, pray for me to God rather, that I may
never love at all — for so surely as I do love, I know that I shall
be a wretched, wretched woman!”
That was a strange scene, and it passed between a strange
pair. Great influences had been at work in the minds of both
within the last few hours, and it would have been very difficult
to say in which the greatest change had been wrought.
In her, the tranquil, innocent, unconscious girl had been
aroused into the powerful, passionate, thoughtful woman. A
knowledge of that whereof she had been most ignorant before,
“her glassy essence,” had awakened her, as the breeze awakens
the lake, from repose into power.
In him, the violent, hot-headed, stubborn, and impetuous man
and convincing into the slow, self-controlled, self-denying
man of counsel. As the discovery of power had aroused her
into life, so had the discovery of long-cherished, long-injurious
error, tamed him into tranquility.
One day ago he would have raved furiously, or brooded sullenly
and darkly over her words. Now, even with the fit of
passion all-puissant over him, with the wild heat of love burning
within his breast, with the keen sense of disappointment
wringing him, he had yet force of temper to control himself,
nay, more, he had force of mind enough to see and apprehend,
that this Theresa, was no longer the Theresa whom he loved;
and that, although he still adored her, it was impossible either
for him to meet the aspirations of her glowing and inspired
genius, or for her to be to him what he had dreamed of, the
tranquillizing, soothing spirit which should pour balm upon his
wounded, restless, irritable feelings — the wife, whose first, best
gift to him should be repose and tranquility of soul.
He pressed her hand tenderly, and said, as he might have
done to a dear sister.
“I have been to blame, Theresa. I have given you pain,
rashly, but not wantonly. Forgive me, for you are the last person
in the world to whom I would give even a moment's uneasiness.
I did not suspect this, dear, little girl. I did not dream
that you were so nervous, or moved so easily; but you must
not yield to such feelings — such impulses — for it is only by
yielding to them that they will gain power over you, and make
you, indeed, an unhappy woman. You shall see, Theresa, how
patiently I will bear my disappointment — for that it is a disappointment,
and a very bitter one, I shall not deny — and how I
will be happy in spite of it, and all for love of you. And in
return, Theresa, if you love poor Denzil, as you say you do, as
your true friend and your brother, you will control these foolish
your heart, and I shall one day, I doubt not, have the pleasure
of seeing you not only a very happy woman, but a very happy
wife.”
“Oh, you are good, Denzil,” she said, tearfully and gently.
“Oh, you are very good and noble. Why — why can not I —”
and she interrupted herself suddenly, and covering her eyes
with both her hands, wept silently and softly for several minutes.
And he spoke not to her the while, nor even sought to
soothe, for he well knew that tears were the best solace to an
over-wrought, over-excited spirit.
After a little while, as he expected, she recovered herself
altogether, and looking up in his face with a wan and watery
smile —
“You are not hurt, you are not wounded by what I have
done,” she said, “dear Denzil. You do not fancy that I do not
perceive, do not feel, and esteem, and love all your great, and
good, and generous, and noble qualities. I am a foolish, weak,
little girl — I am not worthy of you; I could not, I know I
could not make you happy, even if I could — if I could — if —
you know what I would say, Denzil.”
“If you could be happy with me yourself,” he answered,
smiling in his turn, and without an effort, although his smile
was pensive and sad likewise. “No, my Theresa, I am not
hurt or wounded. I am grieved, it is true, I can not but be
grieved at the dissipating of a pleasant dream, at the vanishing
of a hope long-indulged, long-cherished — a hope which has
been a solace to me in many a moment of pain and trial, a
sweet companion in many a midnight watch. But I am neither
hurt nor wounded; for your have never given me any reason to
form so bold, so unwarranted a hope, and you have given me
now all that you can give me, sympathy and kindness. Our
hearts our affections, I well know, let men say what they will,
you have done. Moreover, even with the sorrow and regret
which I feel at this moment, there is mingled a conviction that
you are doing what is both wise and right; for although you
have all within yourself, though you are all that would make
me, or a far better man than I — ay, the best man who ever
breathed the breath of life — supremely happy; still, if you
could not be happy with me, and in me yourself — how could I
be so?”
She looked up at him again, and now, with an altered expression,
for there was less of sadness and more of surprise,
more of respect for the man who spoke so composedly, so well,
in a moment of such trial, on her fair features. Perhaps, too,
there might have been a shadow of regret — could it be of regret
that he did not feel more acutely the loss which he had
undergone? If there were such a feeling in her mind — for
she was woman — it was transient as the lightning of a summer's
night — it was gone before she had time even to reproach
herself for its momentary existence.
“You are astonished,” he said, interpreting her glance, almost
before she knew that he had observed it, “you are astonished
that I should be so calm, who am by nature so quick and
headlong. But I, too, have learned much to-day — have learned
much of my own nature, of my own infirmities, of my own errors
— and with me to learn that these exist, is to resolve to
conquer them. I have learned first, Theresa, that my father,
whom I have ever been forced to regard as my worst enemy,
died conscious of the wrong he had done me — done my mother
— and penitent, and full of love and of sorrow for us both.
And therein have I convicted myself of one great error, committed,
indeed, through ignorance, which has, however, been the
cause, the source of many other errors — which has led me to
charge the world with injustice, when I was myself unjust
offence, the great crime of hating my brother-men, when I
I should have pitied them, and loved them. Therefore I will
be wayward no more, nor rash, nor reckless. I will make one
conquest at least — that of myself and of my own passions.”
“I know — I know,” said the girl, suddenly blushing very
deeply, “that you are everything that is good and great; everything
that men ought to admire and women to love, and yet —”
“And yet you can not love me. Well, think no more of
that, Theresa. Forget —”
“Never! never!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands eagerly
together. “I never can forget what you have made me feel,
what I must have made you suffer this day.”
“Well, if it be so, remember it, Theresa; but remember it
only thus. That if you have quenched my love, if you destroyed
my hope, you have but added to my regard, to my affection.
Promise me that wherever you may be, however, or
with whomsoever your lot shall be cast, you will always remember
me as your friend, your brother; you will always call
on me at your slightest need, as on one who would shed his
heart's blood to win you a moment's happiness.”
“I will — I will,” she cried affectionately, fervently. “On
whom else should I call? And God only knows,” she added
mournfully, “how soon I shall need a protector. But will you,”
she continued, catching both his hands in her own, “will you
be happy, Denzil?”
“I will,” he replied, firmly, returning the gentle pressure;
“I will, at least in so far as it rests with man to be so, in despite
of fortune. But mark me, dear Theresa, if you would
have me be so, you can even yet do much toward rendering me
so.”
“Can I? — then tell me, tell me how, and it is done already.”
“By letting me see that you are happy.”
“Alas!” and she clasped her hand hard over her heart, as if
to still its violent beating. “Alas! Denzil.”
“And why, alas! Theresa?”
“Can we be happy at our own will?”
“Independently of great woes, great calamities, which we
may not control, which are sent to us for wise ends from above
— surely, I say, surely we can.”
“And can you, Denzil?”
“Theresa, this is to me a great wo — yea, a great calamity;
and yet I reply, ay! after a time, after the bitterness shall be
overpast, I can, and more, I will. Much more, then, can you,
who have never felt, who I trust and believe will never meet
any such wo or grief — much more can you be happy. Wherefore
should you not, foolish child? — have you not been happy
hitherto? What have you, that you should not be happy now?”
“Nothing,” she replied, faintly. “I have nothing why I
should be unhappy, unless it be, that if I have made you so.”
“Theresa, you have not — you shall see that you have not
— made me unhappy.”
“And yet, Denzil, yet I feel a foreboding that I shall be,
that I must be unhappy. A want — I feel a want of something
here.”
“You are excited, agitated now; all this has been too much
for your spirits, for your nerves; and I think, Theresa, I am
sure that you are too much alone — you think, or rather you
muse and dream, which are not healthy modes of thinking —
too much in solitude. I will speak to my uncle about that before
I go —”
“Before you go!” she interrupted him, quickly. “Go
whither?”
“To sea. To my ship, Theresa.”
“Then you are hurt, then you are angry with me. Then I
have no influence over you.”
“Cease, cease, Theresa. It is better, it is necessary — I
must go for a while, until I have weaned myself from this desperate
feeling, until I shall have accustomed myself to think of
you, to regard you as a sister only; until I shall have schooled
myself so far as to be able to contemplate you without agony
as not only not being mine — but being another's.”
“Would it — would it be agony to you, Denzil? Then mark
me, I never, never will be another's.
“Madness!” he answered, firmly; “madness and wickedness,
too, Theresa. Neither men nor women were intended by
the great Maker to be solitary beings. God forbid, if you can
not be mine, that I should be so selfish as to wish your life barren,
and your heart loveless. No; love, Theresa, when you
can — only love wisely. Then the day shall come when it will
add to my happiness to see and know you happy in the love of
one whom you can love, and who shall love you as you should
be loved. Never speak again as you did but now, Theresa.
And now, dearest girl, I will leave you. Rest yourself awhile,
and compose yourself, and then go if you will to your good
father.”
“Shall I — shall I tell him,” she faltered, “what has passed
between us?”
“As you will, as you judge best, Theresa. I am no advocate
for concealment, still less for deceit — but here there is
none of the latter, and to tell him this might grieve his kind
spirit.”
“You are wise — you are good. God bless you.”
“And you, Theresa,” and he passed his arm calmly across
her shoulder, and bending over, pressed his lips, calmly as a
brother's kiss, on her pure brow. “Fare you well.”
“You are not going — going to leave us, now?”
“Not to-day — not to-day, Theresa.”
“Nor to-morrow?” she said, beseechingly.
“Nor to-morrow,” he replied, after a moment's hesitation,
“but soon. Now compose yourself, my dear little girl. Farewell,
and God bless you.”
6. CHAPTER VI.
THE ROVER.
“The sea, the sea is England's, and England's shall remain.”
Nell Gwynne's Song.
After scenes of great excitement there ever follows a sort of
listless languor; and, as in natural commotions the fiercest elemental
strife is oftentimes succeeded by the stillest calms, so
in the agitations of the human breast, the most tumultuous passions
are followed frequently, if not invariably, by a sort of
quiet which resembles, though it is not, indifference.
Thus it was, that day, in the household of William Allan.
Tranquil and peaceful at all times, in consequence of the reserved
and studious habits of the master of the house, and the
deep sympathy with his feelings and wishes which ruled the
conduct of his children — for Denzil was, in all respects save
birth, the old man's son — that house was not usually without
its own peculiar cheerfulness, and its subdued hilarity, arising
from the gentle yet mirthful disposition of the young girl, and
the high spirits of Denzil, attuned to the sobriety of the place.
But during the whole of that day its quietude was so very
still as to be almost oppressive, and to be felt so by its inmates.
Allan himself was still enveloped in one of those mysterious
moods of darkness, which at times clouded his strong and powerful
intellect, as marsh exhalations will obscure the sunshine
of an autumn day. Denzil was silent, reserved, thoughtful, not
disposed to muse and ponder, rather than to converse or to act.
Theresa was evidently agitated and perturbed; and although
she compelled herself to be busy about her domestic duties, to
attend to the comforts of the strange guests whom accident had
thrown upon their hospitality, though she strove to be cheerful,
and to assume a lightness of heart which she was far from feeling,
she was too poor a dissembler to succeed in imposing
either on herself or on those about her, and there was no one
person in the cottage, from the old cavalier down to the single
femaleservant, with the exception of her father, who did not
perceive that something had occurred to throw an unwonted
shadow over her mind.
Jasper, alone perhaps of all the persons so singularly thrown
together, was himself. His age, his character, his temperament,
all combined to render him the last to be affected seriously
by anything which did not touch himself very nearly.
And yet he was not altogether what is called selfish; though
recklessness, and natural audacity, and undue indulgence, and,
above all, the evil habits which had grown out of his being too
soon his own master, and the master of others, had rendered
him thoughtless, if not regardless, of the feelings of those around
him.
All the consequences of his accident, except the stiffness and
pain remaining from his contusions, had passed away; and
though he was confined to his bed, and unable to move a limb
without a pang, his mind was as clear, and his spirit as untamed
as ever.
His father, who had been aroused from the state of indolence
and sedentary torpor, which was habitual rather than natural
to him, by the accident which had startled him into excitement
and activity, had not yet subsided into his careless self-indulgence;
for the subsequent events of the past evening, and his
him deeply — had set him to thinking much about the
past, and thence to ruminating on the future, if perchance he
could read it.
He by no means lacked clear-sightedness, or that sort of
wordly wisdom, which arises from much intercourse with the
world in all its various phases. He was far from deficient in
energy when aught occurred to stimulate him into action, whether
bodily or mental. And now he was interested enough to induce
him so far to exert himself, as to think about what was
passing, and to endeavor to discover its causes.
It was not, therefore, long before he satisfied himself, and
that without asking a question, or giving utterance to a surmise,
that an explanation had taken place between the young seaman
and Theresa, and that the explanation had terminated in the
disappointment of Denzil's hopes. Still he was puzzled, for
there was an air of tranquil satisfaction — it could not be called
resignation, for it had no particle of humility in its constituents
— about the young man, and an affectionate attention to his
pretty cousin, which did not comport with what he supposed to
be his character, under such circumstances as those in which
he believed him to stand toward her.
He would have looked for irritability, perhaps for impetuosity
bordering on violence, perhaps for sullen moodiness — the present
disposition of the man was to him incomprehensible. And
if so, not less was he unable to understand the depression of
the young girl, who was frequently, in the course of the day, so
much agitated, as to be on the point of bursting into tears, and
avoided it only by making her escape suddenly from the room.
Once or twice, indeed, he caught her eyes, when she did not
know that she was observed, fixed with an expression, to which
he could affix no meaning, upon the varying and intelligent
countenance of his son — an expression half-melancholy, half-wistful,
existence in hers of either love or liking, but rather of some
sort of hidden interest, some earnest curiosity coupled almost
with fear — something, in a word, if such things can be, that
resembled painful fascination. Once, too, he noticed, that not
he only, but Denzil Bras-de-fer likewise, perceived the glance,
and was struck by its peculiarity. And then the old cavalier
was alarmed; for a spirit, that was positively fearful, inflamed
the dark face and gleaming eyes of the free-trader — a spirit of
malevolence and hate, mingled with iron resolve and animal
fierceness, which rendered the handsome features, while it
lasted, perfectly revolting.
That aspect was transient, however, as the short-lived illumination
of a lightning flash, when it reveals the terrors of a
midnight ocean. It was there; it was gone — and, almost before
you could read it, the face was again inscrutable as blank
darkness.
The thought arose, several times that day, in the mind of
Miles St. Aubyn, that he would give much that neither he nor
his son had never crossed the threshold of that house; or that
now, being within it, it were within his power to depart. But
carriages, in those days, were luxuries of comparatively rare
occurrence even in the streets of the metropolis; and in the remote
rural counties, the state of society, the character of the
roads, and the limited means of the resident landed proprietors
rendered them almost unknown.
There were not probably, within fifty miles of Widecomb,
two vehicles of higher pretension than the rough carts of the
peasantry and farmers; all journeys being still performed on
horseback, if necessary by relays; even the fair sex travelling,
according to their nerves and capability to endure fatigue, either
on the side-saddle, or on pillions behind a relative or a trusty
servant.
Until Jasper should be sufficiently recovered either to set foot
in stirrup, or to walk the distance between the fords of Widecomb
and the House in the Woods, there was therefore no alternative
but to make the best of it, and to remain where they
were, relying on the hospitality of their entertainers.
Denzil's manner, it is true, partook in no degree of the coloring
which that transient expression seemed to imply in his
feelings; for, though unwontedly silent, when he did speak he
spoke frankly and friendly to the young invalid; and more than
once, warming to his subject, as field-sports, or bold adventures,
of this kind or that, came into mention, he displayed interest
and animation; and even related some personal experiences,
and striking anecdotes, of the Spanish Main and of the Indian
islands, with so much spirit and liveliness, as to show that he
not only wished to amuse, but was amused himself.
While he was in this mood, he suffered it to escape him, or
to be elicited from him by some indistinct question of the old
cavalier, that he intended ere long to set forth again on another
voyage of adventure to those far climes which were still invested
with something of the romance of earlier ages.
It was at this hint, especially, that Sir Miles St. Aubyn observed
Theresa's beautiful blue eyes fill with unbidden tears,
and her bosom throb with agitation so tumultuous, that she had
no choice but to retire from the company, in order to conceal
her emotion.
And at this, likewise, for the first time did William Allan
manifest any interest in the conversation.
“What,” he said, “what is that thou sayest, Denzil, that thou
art again about to leave us? Methought it was thy resolve to
tarry with us until after the autumnal solstice.”
“It was my resolve, uncle,” replied the young man quietly;
“but something has occurred since, which has caused me to
alter any determination. My mates, moreover, are very anxious
I can ship a cargo, and get some brisk bold hands, I shall set
sail.”
“I like not such quick and sudden changes,” replied the old
man; “nor admire the mind which can not hold to a steady
purpose.”
The dark complexion of Denzil fired for a moment at the rebuke,
and his nether lip quivered, as though he had difficulty in
repressing a retort. He did repress it, however, and answered,
apparently without emotion:—
“You are a wise man, uncle, and must know that circumstances
will arise which must needs alter all plans that are
merely human. L'homme propose, as the Frenchman has it,
mais Dieu dispose. So it is with me, just now. The changed
determination which I have just announced does not arise from
any change in my desires, but from a contingency on which I
did not calculate.”
“It were better not to determine until one had made sure of
all contingencies,” said William Allan, sententiously.
“Then I think, one would never determine at all. For, if I
have learned aright, mutability is a condition unavoidable in human
affairs. But be this as it may, the only change, I can imagine,
which will hinder me from sailing on the Virginia voyage,
so soon as I can ship a crew and stow a cargo, will be a change
of the wind. It blows fair now, if it will only hold a week. One
other change there is,” he added, as his fair cousin entered the
room with a basket of fresh-gathered roses, “which might detain,
but that change will not come to pass; do you think it will,
Theresa?”
“I think not, Cousin Denzil,” she replied with a slight blush,
“if you allude to that concerning which we spoke this morning.”
The old knight looked from one to the other of the young
people in bewilderment. Their perfect understanding and extreme
and yet he could not believe that he had mistaken.
“What, are you too against me, girl?” said her father quickly.
“Have you given your consent to his going?”
“My consent!” she replied; “I do not imagine that my consent
is very necessary, or that Denzil would wait long for it.
But I do think it is quite as well he should go now, if he must
go at all, particularly as he intends, if I understand rightly, that
it should be his last voyage.”
“I did not promise that, Theresa,” said the sailor, with a
faint smile — “although” —
“Did you not?” — she interrupted him quickly — “I thought
you had; but it must be as you will, and certainly it does not
much concern me.”
And with the words she left the room hastily, and not as it
appeared very well pleased.
“There! seest thou that?” cried her father — “seest thou
that, Denzil?”
“Ay! do I,” replied the young man with a good deal of
bitterness. “But I do not need to see that, to teach me that
women are capricious and selfish in their exigency of services.”
There was a dead pause. A silence, which in itself was
painful, and which seemed like to give birth to words more painful
yet, for William Allan knit his brow darkly, and compressed his
lower lip, and fixed his eye upon vacancy.
But at this moment Jasper, whose natural recklessness had
rendered him unobservant of the feelings which had been displayed
during that short conversation, raised himself on his
elbow, and looking eagerly at Denzil exclaimed:—
“Oh, the Virginia voyage! To the New World! My God!
how I should love to go with you. Do you carry guns? How
many do you muster of your crew?”
The interruption, although the speaker had no such intention,
present into a new channel. The two old men looked into each
other's face, and smiled as their eyes met, and Allan whispered,
though quite loud enough to be audible to all present:—
“The same spirit, Miles, the same spirit. As crows the old
game-cock, so crows the young game-chicken!”
“And why not?” answered Denzil, with a ready smile, for
there was something that whispered at his heart, though indeed
he knew not wherefore, that it were not so ill done to remove
Jasper from that neighborhood for a while. “If Sir Miles judge
it well that you should see something of the world, in these
piping times of peace, it is never too soon to begin. You shall
have a berth in my own cabin, and I will put you in the way of
seeing swords flash, and smelling villanous saltpetre, in a right
good cause, I'll warrant you.”
“A right good cause, Denzil? and what cause may that be?”
asked his uncle in a caustic tone.
“The cause of England's maritime supremacy,” answered
the young man proudly. “That is cause good enough for
me. For what saith Bully Blake in the old song —
`The sea, the sea is England's, and England's shall remain.' ”
air, and then added — “That, sir, is the cause we fight for, on
the line and beyond it — and that we will fight for, here and
everywhere, when it shall be needful to fight for it. And now,
young friend, to answer your question. I do carry guns, eighteen
as lively brass twelve-pounders as ever spoke good English
to a Don or a Monsieur, or a Mynheer either, for that matter;
and then for crew, men and officers, I generally contrive to
pack on board eighty or ninety as brisk boys as ever pulled upon a
brace, or handled a cutlass.”
“Why you must reckon on high profits to venture such an
in the cruise.
“Ay!” answered Denzil, “if no gold is to be had for picking
up in Eldorado, there is some to be gained there yet by free-trading
— and once in a while one may have the luck to pick
up a handful on the sea.”
“On the sea, ay! how so?”
“Once I was going quietly along before the trades, with my
goods under hatches as peaceable and lawful a trader, as need
be, when we fell in with a tall galleon laveering. Having no
cause to shun or fear her, I lay my own course with English
colors flying, when what does she but up helm and after us.
In half an hour she was within range and opened with her bow
guns, in ten minutes more she was alongside, and —”
“Alongside, in ten minutes, from long cannon range!” exclaimed
Miles St. Aubyn — “what were you doing then, that
she overhauled you so fast?”
“Running down to meet her, Sir Miles, with every stitch of
canvass set that would draw, when I saw that she was bent on
having it; and — as I was about to say when you interrupted
me — in twenty more she had changed owners.”
“Indeed! indeed! that was a daring blow,” said the old soldier,
rousing at the tale, like a superannuated war-horse to the
trumpet, “and what was she?”
“A treasure-galleon, sir; a Spaniard homeward bound, with
twenty-six guns, and two hundred men.”
“And what did you do with your prize, in peace time? You
hardly brought her into Plymouth, I should fancy.”
“Nor into Cadiz, either,” he replied with a smile. “Her
crew or what was left of them, were put on board a coaster
bound for St. Salvador, her bars and ingots on board the good
ship `Royal Oak,' of Bristol, and she — oh! she, I think, was
sent to the bottom!”
“A daring deed!” said Sir Miles, shaking his head gravely
— “a daring deed, truly, which might well cost you all your
lives, were it complained of by the most Christian king!”
“And yet his supreme Christianity fired on us the first!”
“And yet, that plea, I fear, would hardly save you in these
days, but you would hang for it.”
“Amen!” replied the young man. “Better be hanged, `his
country crying he hath played an English part,' than creep to
a quiet grave a coward from his cradle. And now, what say
you, young sir, would you still wish to adventure it with us,
knowing what risks we run?”
“Ay, by my soul!” answered the brave boy, with a flashing
eye, and quivering lip, “and the rather, that I do know it.
What do you say, father? May I go with him? In God's
name, will you not let me go with him?”
“Indeed, will I not, Jasper,” said Sir Miles, with an accent
of resolve so steady, that the boy saw at once it was useless to
waste another word on it. “Besides, he is only laughing at
you. Why! what in Heaven's name should he make with such
a cockerel as thou, crowing or ere thy spurs have sprouted!”
“Laughing at me, is he!” exclaimed the boy, raising himself
up in his bed, actively, without exhibiting the least sign of the
pain, which racked him, as he moved. “If I thought he were,
he 'd scarce sail so quickly as he counts on doing.”
Here Denzil would have spoken, but the old cavalier cut in
before him, saying with a sneer:—
“It is like thou couldst hinder him, my boy, at any time;
most of all when thou art lying there bedridden.”
“The very reason wherefore I could hinder him the easier,”
replied Jasper, who saw by Denzil's grave and calm expression
that the meaning his father had attached to his speech, was not
his meaning.
“And how so, I prithee?”
“Had he, as you say he did, intended to mock me, or insult
me otherwise, I would have prayed him courteously to delay
his sailing until such time as my hurts would permit me to
draw triggers, or cross swords with him; and he would have
delayed at my request, being a gentleman of courage and of
honor.”
“Assuredly I should,” replied Denzil Bras-de-fer, “and you
would have done very rightly to call on me in that case. But
let me assure you, nothing was further from my intention than
to laugh at you. I sailed myself, and smelt gunpowder in earnest,
before I was so old as you are by several years; and I
was perfectly in earnest when I spoke, although I can now
well see that my offer, though assuredly well intended, could
not be accepted.”
Before Jasper had time to reply to these words, his father
said to him with a look of approbation:—
“You have answered very well, my son; and I am glad that
you have reflected, and seen so well what becomes a gentleman
to ask, and to grant in such cases. For the rest, you ought to
see that Master Denzil Olifaunt is perfectly in the right; and,
that having offered you courteously what you asked rashly, he
now perceives clearly the impossibility of your accepting his
offer.”
“I do not, however, see that at all,” answered the boy moodily.
“You carried a stand of colors, I have heard you say,
before you were fifteen, and you deny me the only chance of
winning honor that ever may be offered to me, in these degenerate
times, and under this peaceful king.”
“I do not think that it would minister very much to your
honor, or add to the renown of our name, that you should get
yourself hanged on some sand-key in the Caribbean sea, or
knocked on the head in some scuffle with the Spanish guarda
costas — no imputation, I pray you believe me, Master Olifaunt,
will not dispute, though I may not wish my son to adopt it.”
“I know not what you would have me do,” said the boy,
“unless you intend to keep me here all my life, fishing for salmon
and shooting black-cock for an occupation, and making
love to country-girls for an amusement.”
“I was not aware, Jasper,” answered his father more seriously
than he had ever before heard him speak, “that this latter
was one of your amusements. If it be so, I shall certainly
take the earliest means of bringing it to a conclusion, for while
it is not very creditable to yourself, it is ruinous to those with
whom you think fit to amuse yourself as you call it.”
“I did not say that I ever had amused myself so,” replied
Jasper, somewhat crest-fallen by the rebuke of his father —
“though if I am kept moping here much longer, Heaven only
knows what I may do.”
“Well, sir, no more of this!” said the old man sharply.
“You are not yet a man, whatever you may think of yourself;
neither, I believe, are you at all profligate or vicious. Although
as boys at your age are apt enough to do, you may think it
manly to affect vices of which you are ignorant. But to quit
this subject, when do you think you shall sail, Master Olifaunt?”
“I can not answer you that, Sir Miles, certainly. I purpose
to set off hence for Plymouth to-morrow afternoon, and, as I
shall ride post, it will not take me long ere I am on board.
When I arrive, I shall be able to fix upon a day for sailing.”
“But you will return hither, will you not, before you go to
sea?”
“Assuredly I will, Sir Miles, to say farewell to my kind
uncle here, who has been as a father to me, and to my little
Theresa.”
“And you will pass one day I trust, if you may not give us
or two on the moor, and let you see how our long-winged falcons
fly, if you are fond of hawking. It shall be my fault, if
hereafter, after so long an interruption, I suffer old friendship,
and recent kindness also, to pass away and be forgotten.”
“I will come gladly to see my young friend here, who will
ere then be quite recovered from this misadventure; and who,
if he rides as venturesomely as he fishes, will surely leave me
far behind in the hot hawking gallop; for though I can ride, I
am, sailor-like, not over excellent at horsemanship.”
7. CHAPTER VII.
THE EIDOLON.
And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special reason.”
—Macbeth.
Thus passed the afternoon, until the evening meal was announced,
and Jasper was left alone, with nothing but his own
wild and whirling thoughts to entertain him. He was ill at
ease in his own mind, ill at ease with himself and with all
around him. Vexed with Denzil Bras-de-fer, for offering in
the first instance to take him as a partner in his adventure, and
then for failing at the pinch to back his offer by his stout opinion;
vexed with his father for thwarting his will, and yet more
for rebuking him publicly, and in the presence of Theresa, too,
before whom, boylike, he would fain have figured as a hero;
and lastly, vexed with Theresa herself, because, though kind
and gentle, she had not sat by his bedside all day, as she did
yesterday, or devoted all her attention to himself alone, he was
extent of his powers.
Then, as his thoughts wandered from one to another of those
whom he thought fit to look upon as having wronged him, they
settled on the most innocent of all, Theresa; and, at the same
moment, the wild words, which he had uttered without any ulterior
meaning at the time, and with no other intent than that
of annoying his father, recurred to his mind, concerning village-maidens.
He started, as the idea occurred to him, and at first he wondered
what train of thought could have brought back those
words in connection with Theresa's image. But, as he grew
accustomed to his own thought, it became, as it were, the father
to the wish; and he began to consider how pretty and gentle
she was, and how delicate her slight, rounded figure, and
how soft and low her voice. Then he remembered that she
had looked at him twice or thrice during the day, with an expression
which he had never seen in a woman's eyes before,
and which, though he understood it not, did not bode ill to his
success; and lastly, the worst, bitterest thought of all arose in
his mind, and retained possession of it. “I will spite them
all,” he thought, “that proud, insolent, young sailor, who, because
he is a few years older than I, and has seen swords
drawn once or twice — for all, I doubt if he can fence or shoot
any better than I, or if he be a whit more active — affects to
look down upon me as a stripling. His `young friend,' truly!
let him look out, whether he have not cause to term me something
else ere he die. By God! I believe he loves the girl, too!
he looked black as a thunder-cloud over Dartmoor, when she
smiled on me! And my father — by my soul! I think he 's
doting; and her dainty ladyship, too! I 'll see if I can not have
her more eager to hear me, than she has shown herself to-day.
spite them!”
Then he laid his head down on the pillow, and began to reflect
how he should act, and what were his chances of success
in the villany which he meditated; and he even asked himself,
with something of the boy's diffidence in his first encounter
with woman, “But can I, can I win her affection?” and vanity
and the peculiar audacity of his race, of his own character,
made answer instantly, “Ay, can I. Am I not handsomer,
and cleverer, and more courtly? am I not higher born, and
higher bred, and higher mannered, not only than that seafaring
lout, but than any one she has ever met withal? Ay, can I,
and ay, will I!”
And in obedience to this last and base resolve, the worst and
basest that ever had crossed the boy's mind, no sooner had they
returned from the adjoining room, after the conclusion of the
evening meal, than he contrived entirely to monopolize Theresa.
First, he asked her to play at chess with him; and then, after
spending a couple of hours, under the pretence of playing,
but in reality gazing into her blue eyes, and talking all sorts of
wild, enthusiastical, poetical romance, half-earnest and half-affected,
he declared that his head ached, and asked her to read
aloud to him; and when she did so, sitting without a thought
of ill beside his pillow, while their fathers were conversing in
a low tone over the hearth, and Denzil was absent making his
preparations for the next day's journey, he let his hand fall, as
if unconsciously, on hers, and after a little while, emboldened
by her unsuspicious calmness, imprisoned it between his fingers.
It might have been that she was so much engrossed in reading,
for it was Shakspere's sweet Rosalind that the boy had
chosen for her subject, that she was not aware that her hand
was clasped in his. It might have been, that, accustomed to its
pressure, from his involuntary retention of it during his lethargic
no consequence. It might have been, that almost unsuspected
by herself, a feeling of interest and affection, which might easily
be ripened into love, was already awakened in her bosom,
for the high-spirited, handsome, fearless boy, who, in some
measure, owed his life to her assistance.
At all events, she made no effort to withdraw it, but let it lie
in his, passive, indeed, and motionless, save for its quivering pulse,
but warm, and soft, and sensitive. And the boy waxing bolder,
and moved into earnestness by the charms of the position,
ventured to press it once or twice, as she read some moving
line, and murmured praises of the author's beauties, and of the
sweet, low voice that lent to those beauties a more thrilling
loveliness, and still the fairy fingers were not withdrawn from
his hold, though her eye met not his, nor any word of hers answered
his whispered praises.
At length a quick, strong step came suddenly to the door of
the room, and almost before there was time for thought, the
door was thrown open, and Denzil Olifaunt entered.
Instantly Theresa started at the sound, and strove to withdraw
her hand, while a deep blush of shame and agitation crimsoned
her cheeks and brow, and even overspread her snowy
neck and bosom.
It was not, as that bold boy fancied at the time, in the vanity
and insolence of his uncorrected heart, that she knew all the
time, that she was allowing what it was wrong, and immodest,
and unmaidenly, to endure, and that now she was afraid and
ashamed, not of the error, but of the detection.
No. In the purity of her heart, in the half-pitiful, half-protecting
spirit which she felt toward Jasper, first as an invalid,
and then as a mere boy — for although he was, perhaps, a year
her senior, who does not know that boys in their eighteenth
year are a full lustre younger than girls of the same age — she
her hand to the boy's affectionate grasp, until the step of
the man, whose proffered love she had that very day declined,
led her to think intuitively what would be his feelings, and
thence what must be Jasper's, concerning that permitted license.
But the wily boy, for, so young as he was, he lacked neither
sagacity to perceive, nor audacity to profit by occasion, saw
his advantage, and holding his prize with a gentle yet firm
pressure, without so much as turning his eyes to Denzil, or
letting it be known that he was aware of his presence, raised it
to his lips, and kissed it, saying, in a low, earnest tone: —
“I thank you, from my very soul, for your gentleness and
kind attention, dearest lady; your sweet voice has soothed me
more than words can express; there must be a magic in it, for
it has charmed my headache quite away, and divested me,
moreover, from the least desire to seek glory, or the gallows,
with your bold cousin.”
The eyes of Denzil Bras-de-fer flashed fire, as he saw, as he
heard what was passing; and he made two or three strides forward,
with a good deal of his old impetuosity, of both look and
gesture. His brow was knitted, his hands clinched, and his
lip compressed over his teeth, so closely that it was white and
bloodless.
But happily — or perhaps, unhappily — before he had time to
commit himself, he saw Theresa withdraw her hand so decidedly,
and with so perfect a majesty of gentle yet indignant
womanhood, gazing upon the audacious offender, as she did so,
with eyes so full of wonder and rebuke, that he could not doubt
the sincerity or genuineness of her anger.
Acquitting her, therefore, of all blame or coquetry, and looking
upon Jasper as a mere boy, and worthy to be treated as
such only, reflecting, moreover, that he was, for the time being,
shielded by his infirmity, he controlled himself, though not
eye rather contemptuous than angry, advanced to the fireside,
and took his seat beside his uncle and Sir Miles, without taking
the slightest notice of the others.
In the meantime, Theresa, after she had disengaged her
hand from Jasper, and cast upon him that one look of serene indignation,
turned her back on him quietly, in spite of some attempt
at apology or explanation which he began to utter.
Walking slowly and composedly to the table, she laid down on
it the volume of Shakspere which she had been reading to
him, and selecting some implements of feminine industry,
moved over to the group assembled round the hearth, and sat
down on a low footstool, between Denzil and her father.
No one but the two young men and herself were aware what
had passed; and she, though annoyed by Jasper's forwardness,
having, as she thought, effectually repelled it, had already dismissed
it from her mind as a thing worth no further consideration.
Denzil, on the other hand, though attaching far more
importance to his action, saw plainly that this was not the time
or the place for making any comment on it, even if he had been
capable of adding to Theresa's embarrassment; while Jasper,
mortified and frustrated by the lady's scornful self-possession,
and the free-trader's manifest self-contempt, had no better mode
of concealing his disappointment, than by sinking back upon
his pillow, as if fatigued or in pain, and feigning to fall gradually
asleep — a feint which, as is oftentimes the case, terminated
at last in reality.
Meanwhile, the two old men continued to talk quietly, in
rather a subdued tone, of old times and the events of their
youth, and thence of the varied incidents which had checkered
their lives, during the long space of time since they had been
friends and comrades, with many a light and shadow. And as
they, garrulous, as is the wont of the aged and infirm, and
on things which in their day were painful, the young man
sat beside them silent, oppressed with the burden of present
pain, and yet more by the anticipation of worse suffering to be
endured thereafter.
Nearly an hour passed thus, without a single word being exchanged
between Denzil and Theresa; he musing deeply, with
his head buried in his hands, as he bent over the embers of the
wood fire, which the vicinity of the cottage to the water's edge
rendered agreeable even on summer evenings, and she plying
her needle as assiduously as if she were dependent on its exercise
for her support.
Several times, indeed, she looked up at him with her candid,
innocent face, and her beautiful blue eye clear and unclouded,
as if she wished to catch his attention. But he was all unconscious
of her movement, and continued to ponder gloomily on
many things that had, and yet more that had not, any existence
beyond the limits of his own fitful fancy.
At length tired of waiting for his notice, the rather that the
night was wearing onward, she arose from her seat, folding up
her work as she did so, and laid her hand lightly on her cousin's
shoulder —
“And are you really going to leave us to-morrow, Denzil?”
she said, softly.
“For a few days only,” he answered, raising his head, and
meeting her earnest eye with a cold, sad smile. “I am going
to ride down to-morrow afternoon as far as Hexworthy, where I
will sleep, and so get into Plymouth betimes the following day.”
“And when shall you come back to us?”
“I shall not stay an hour longer than I can avoid, Theresa;
and I think that in three days I may be able to arrange all that
I have to do; if so, you may look for me within the week — at
furthest, I shall be here in ten days.”
“And how long may we count on keeping you here, then?
It will be long, I fear, before we shall meet again.”
“The ship can not be fit for sea within three weeks, Theresa,
or it may be a month; and I shall stay here, be sure, until
the last moment. But as all mortal matters are uncertain to a
proverb, and as none of us can say when, or if ever, we shall
meet again, and as I have much to say to you before I go to sea
this time, will you not walk in the garden with me for an hour
before breakfast to-morrow?”
“Surely I will. How can you doubt it, Denzil?”
“I do not doubt it. And then I can give you my opinion about
the young nightingales, which we forgot, after all, this morning.
I dare say they will turn out to be hedge-sparrows.”
“I will be there soon after the sun is up, Denzil, and that I
may be so, good night, all,” and with the word, kissing her
father's brow, and giving her hand affectionately to Denzil, she
courtesied to the old cavalier, and left the room without so much
as looking toward Jasper, who was, however, already fast
asleep, and unconscious of all sublunary matters.
Her rising, though she had not joined in the conversation for
the last hour or more, broke up the company, and in a few minutes
they had all withdrawn, each to his own apartment; and
Jasper was left alone, with the brands dying out one by one on
the hearth-stone, and an old tabby cat dozing near the andirons;
this night he had no other watchers, and none were there
to hear or see what befell him during the hours of darkness.
But had there been any one present in that old apartment, he
would have seen that the sleep of the young man was strangely
restless and perturbed, that the sweat-drops stood in large cold
beads upon his brow, that his features were from time to time
fearfully distorted, as if by pain and horror, and that he tossed
his arms to and fro, as if he were wrestling with some powerful
but intangible oppressor.
From time to time, moreover, he uttered groans and strangely
murmured sounds, and a few articulate words; but these so unconnected,
and at so long intervals asunder, that no human
skill could have combined them into anything like intelligible
sentences. At length with a wild, shrill cry, he started up
erect in his bed, his hair bristling with terror, and the cold
sweat flowing off his face like rain-drops.
“O, God!” he cried, “avert — defend! Horror! horror!”
Then raising his hands slowly to his brow, he felt himself,
grasped his arm, and sought for the pulsations of his heart, as
if he were laboring to satisfy himself that he was awake.
At length, he murmured, “It was a dream! The Lord be
praised! it was but a dream! and yet, how terrible, how vivid!
Even now I can scarce believe that I was not awake and saw it.”
But as his eye ran over the objects to which it had become
accustomed during the last days, and which were now indistinctly
visible in the glimmering darkness of a fine summer
night, he became fully satisfied that he had been indeed asleep;
and with a muttered prayer, he settled himself down again on
the pillow, and composed himself to sleep once more.
He had not slept, however, above half an hour before the
same painful symptoms recurred; and after even a longer and
more agonizing struggle than the first, he again woke, panting,
horror-stricken, pale and almost paralyzed with superstitious
terror.
“It was!” he gasped, “it was — it must have been in reality.
I saw her, as I did last night, tangible, face to face; but, O
God! what a glare of horror in those beautiful blue eyes — what
a gory spot on that smooth, white brow — what agony — what
supplication in every lovely feature. And he, he who dealt
the blow — I could not see the face, but the dress, the figure,
nay, the seat on horseback — great God! they were all mine
own!”
He paused for a long time, meditating deeply, and casting
furtive glances around the large old-fashioned room, as though
he expected to see some of the great heavy shadows which
brooded in the dim angles and irregular recesses of the walls,
detach themselves from their lurking-places, in the guise of
human forms disembodied, and come forth to confront him.
After a while, however, his naturally strong intellect and
characteristic audacity led him to discard the idea of supernatural
influence in the appalling vision, which had now twice so
cruelly disturbed him. Still, so great had been the suffering
and torture of his mind during the conflict of the sleeping body
and the sleepless intellect, that he actually dreaded the return
of slumber, lest that dread phantom should return with it; and
he therefore exerted himself to keep awake, and to arm his
mind against the insidious stealing on of sleep, from very fear
of what should follow.
But the very efforts which he made to banish the inclination,
wearied the mind, and induced what he would most avoid; and
within an hour he was again unconscious of all external sights
and sounds, again terribly alive to those inward sensations
which had already terrified him almost beyond endurance.
This time the trance was shorter, but from the symptoms
which appeared on his features, fiercer and stronger than before;
nor, as before, when he awoke, did the impression pass
away which had been made on him before his eyes were
opened. No; as he started up erect, and gazed wildly, scarce
as yet half awake, around him, the first thing that met, or
seemed to meet his staring eyes, was a gray, misty shadow,
standing relieved by a dark mass of gloom in the farthest angle
of the chamber. Gradually, as he stared at it with a fascinated
gaze, which, had it been to save his life, he could not have
withdrawn, the shape, if shape it were, drew nearer, nearer,
with a slow, gliding, ghastly motion.
The moon had by this time arisen, and cast a feeble, ineffectual
light through the mass of tangled foliage which curtained
the large diamond-paned casements of the cottage, streaming
in a dim, misty ray across the centre of the chamber. Directly
in the middle of this pallid halo, as if it had been a silver
glory, paused, or appeared to pause, that thin, transparent form
— so bodiless, indeed, it seemed, that the outlines of the things
which stood beyond it, were visible, as if seen through a gauzy
curtain. A cloud passed over the moon's face, and all was
gloom; yet still the boy's eyes felt the presence of that disembodied
visitant, which they could now no longer distinguish in
the darkness.
At this moment, as if to add a real terror to that which, even
if unreal, needed no addition, the cat, which hitherto had been
sleeping undisturbedly by the warm ashes on the earth, uttered
an unusual plaintive cry, most unlike to the natural note of her
species, whether of pleasure or of anger, and rushed at two or
three long bounds, to the bed on which the boy was sitting up
in voiceless horror. Her eyes glared in the darkness, like coals
of livid fire, her bristles were set up like the quills of the porcupine,
her tail was outspread, till it almost resembled a fox's
brush.
The cloud drifted onward, and the moon shone out brighter
than before; and there he still saw that tall, white shape, clearer,
distincter, stronger, than when he first beheld it. The cat
cowered down upon the pillow by his side, with a low, wailing
cry of terror, her back, bristling in wrath but now, was humbly
lowered, dread of something unnatural had quelled all her savage
instincts.
Clearer and clearer waxed the vision, and now he might mark
the delicate symmetrical proportions of the figure, and now the
pale, white outlines of the lovely face. It was Theresa Allan.
Yet the fair features were set in a sort of rigid cataleptic horror,
eyes glared, fixed and glassy, without speculation; and right
in the centre of the brow there glowed, like a sanguine star, a
great spot of gore.
The thing seemed to raise its arm, and point with a gesture
of majestic menace, right toward the terrified beholder. Then
the white lips were parted with a slow, circular distortion, showing
the pearly teeth within, and — if a voice came forth from
those ghastly lips, Jasper St. Aubyn knew it not, for he had sunk
back on his pillow — if, indeed, he had ever, as he believed to
the day of his death, raised himself up from it — in a deep
trance, from which he passed into a dead, heavy, dreamless stupor,
which continued undisturbed until the sun was high in the
heavens, and the whole household were afoot, and busied about
their usual avocations.
In the meantime, she whose image, whether in truth it was
an eidolon, or merely the idea of a diseased mind and preoccupied
spirit had been so busy during the hours of darkness, had
awakened all refreshed by light and innocent slumbers, with
the first peep of day, and arising from her couch had descended
into the garden, still half enveloped in the dewy vapors of the
summer night, half-glimmering in the slant radiance of the new-risen
sun.
She was the first at her appointment, for Denzil had not yet
made his appearance, and she walked to and fro awaiting him,
among the flowery thickets and sweet-scented shrubberies, all
bathed in the copious night-dews, half-wondering, half-guessing,
what it could be that he should so earnestly desire to communicate.
And as she walked, she considered with herself all
that had occurred during the last three days, and the more she
considered, the less was she able to comprehend the workings
of her own mind, or to explain to herself wherefore it was that
life, the fate of her heart was at hand.
That she had rejected Denzil's proffered love, his honest,
manly love, she knew that she ought not to regret, for she felt
surely that she could not love him in return as he ought, as he
deserved to be loved; and yet she did almost regret it. Then
she began to ask herself why she did not, why she could not
love him, endowed eminently as he was with many high and
noble qualities; and she was soon answered, when she considered
how far he fell short of her standard, in mental and intellectual
culture, in all that pertained to the secret sympathies of
the heart, to the kindred tastes and sentiments, to that community
of hopes and wishes, which, under the head of eadem velle
atque nolle, the Roman philosophical historian had declared to
be the sole base of true friendship — might he not better have
said of true love?
Thence by an easy and natural transition the girl's thoughts
turned to the young stranger — to his magnificent person and
striking intellectual beauty — to his singular and original character,
so audacious, so full of fiery and rebellious self-will, so
confident in his own powers, so daring, almost insolent toward
man, and yet, at the same time, so fraught with gentle and sensitive
fancies, so rapt by romance or poetry, so liable to all
swift impressions of the senses, so humble, yet with so proud
and self-arrogating a humility, toward woman.
She thought of the tones of his beautifully-modulated voice,
of the expression of his deep, clear, gray eye; she remembered
how the one had melted, as it were, almost timorously in
her ear, how the other had dwelt almost boldly on her face, yet
with a boldness which seemed meant almost as homage.
She mused on these things; and then paused to reflect how
helplessly and deathfully he had lain at her feet, when he was
drawn forth from that deep, red whirlpool; and how sickly
a thing would have extinguished, and for ever, the faint spark
of life which then feebly fluttered in his bosom; how childlike
he had yielded himself to her ministration, and with how piteous
yet grateful an expression he had acknowledged, when he
awoke from his first trance-like stupor, midway as it were between
life and death, the gentleness of her protection.
Most true it is, that pity is akin to love; where pity, as is
seldom the case from woman toward man, can exist apart from
something approaching to contempt; where it is called forth by
the consequences of neither physical nor mental weakness.
Still more is it the province and the part of woman to love
whom she has protected.
With both sexes, I believe that to have conferred, rather than
to have received kindness — to be owed rather than to owe gratitude
— is conductive to the growth of kindly feeling, of friendship,
of affection, love! But with a true woman, to have been
dependent on her for support, to have looked up into her eyes
for aid on the sick bed, for sympathy in mortal sorrow, to have
revived by her nursing, to have been consoled by her comforting
— these are the truest and most direct key to her affection.
Theresa thought of all these things, and as she did so, her
bosom heaved almost unconsciously with a sigh, and a tear rose
unbidden to her eye. She almost loved Jasper St. Aubyn.
Again, to the recollection of his boldness on the previous
evening, of his half-forcible seizure of her hand, of the kiss
he had so daringly imprinted on her soft fingers, of the too-meaning
words which he had addressed to her, and of the tone,
which conveyed even more of consciousness and confidence
than the words themselves, all rushed at once upon her mind;
and, though she was alone, she started, and her face crimsoned
at the mere memory of what she half felt as an indignity.
“And could he think me,” she murmured to herself, “so
almost a first interview? or was it but the rashness, the imprudence,
the buoyancy of extreme youth, inspired by sudden love,
and encouraged by his own headstrong character?” She
paused a moment, and then said almost aloud, “Oh, no, no, I
will not believe it.”
“And what will you not believe, Theresa?” said a clear, firm
voice, close behind her; “what is it that you are so energetically
determined not to believe, my pretty cousin?”
She started, not well pleased that even Denzil should have
thus, as it were, stolen upon her privacy, and overheard what
was intended for no mortal ear. Theresa was as guileless as
any being of mortal mould may be; but even the most artless
woman can not be altogether free from some touch of instinctive
artifice — that innocent and gentle guile is to woman what
nature has bestowed on all, even the humblest of its creatures,
her true weapon of defence, her shield against the brute tyranny
of man. And Theresa was a woman. She replied, therefore,
without an instant's hesitation, although her voice did falter
somewhat, and her cheeks burn, as she spoke: —
“That you are angry with me, Cousin Denzil.” But then,
as she felt his cold, clear, dark eye — how piercingly it dwelt upon
her features — reading, or striving to read, her very soul, she
continued, seeing at once the necessity of placing him on the
defensive, so as to turn the tide of aggressive warfare, “but I
am angry with you, I assure you; nor do I think it at all like
you, Denzil, or at all like a true cavalier, as you pretend to be,
first, to keep a lady waiting for you, I don't know how long,
here alone, and then to creep upon her, like an Indian or a spy,
and surprise what little secrets she might be turning over in
her own mind. You must have trodden lightly on purpose, or
I should have heard your step. I did not look for this at your
hand, Cousin Denzil.”
He still gazed at her with the same dark, fixed, piercing
glance, without answering her a word! and, although conscious
of no wrong, she met his gaze with her calm, candid, truthful
eye, she could not endure his suspicious look, but was fluttered,
and blushed deeply, and was so much embarrassed, that had
not pride and anger come to her aid, she would have burst into
tears. But they did come to her aid, and she cried with a quivering
voice and a flashing eye: —
“For what do you look at me so, Denzil? I do not like it
— I will not bear it! You have no right to treat me thus! it is
not kind, nor courteous, nor even manly! If it be to browbeat
me, and tyrannize over me, that you asked me to meet you
here, I could have thanked you to spare me the request. But
I shall leave you to yourself, and return home; and so, good-morrow
to you, and better breeding, and a better heart, too,
Cousin Denzil!”
But though she said she was going, she made no movement
to do so, but hesitated, waiting for his answer.
“You must be greatly changed, Theresa,” he said bitterly,
“to take offence at so slight a cause, or to speak to me in such
a tone. But you are greatly changed, and there 's an end of it.”
“I am not changed at all,” replied the girl, still chafing at the
recollection of that scrutinizing eye, which she perhaps felt the
more, because conscious that her own reply had not been perfectly
sincere. “But I do not allow your right to pry meanly
into my secret thoughts, or to catechize me concerning my words,
or to accuse me of falsehood, when I answer you.”
“Accuse you of falsehood, Theresa! who ever dreamed of
doing so?”
“Your eye did so, sir,” she replied. “When I told you that
I was determined `not to believe that you were angry with me,'
you fixed your glance upon me with the expression of a pedagogue,
who, having caught a child lying, would terrify it into
master. Think as you may about it.”
It was now Denzil's turn to be confused, for he could not deny
that she had construed the meaning of his look aright; and
would not, so proud was he and so resolute, either deny or
apologize for what was certainly an act of rudeness.
After a moment's pause, however, he looked up at her from
under downcast eyelids, with a look of defiance mingled with
distrust, and answered bluntly:—
“I do not believe that was your meaning, or that you were
thinking about me at all.”
“And what if it were not? Am I bound, I pray you, to be
thinking of nothing but you? I must have little enough to
think of, if it were so.”
“You might at least have told me so much, frankly.”
“I thank you, Cousin Denzil,” she made answer, more
proudly, more firmly than ever he had heard her speak before.
“I thank you, for teaching me a lesson, though neither very
kindly, nor exactly as a generous gentleman should teach a
lady. But you are perfectly correct in your surmises, sir. I
was not thinking of you at all; no more, sir, than if you were
not in existence, and if I answered you, as I did, sir, falsely —
yes! falsely is the word! — it is because, in the first place, you
had no right to ask me the question you did, and, in the second,
because I did not choose to answer it! Now, cousin, allow me
to teach you something — for you have something yet to learn,
wise as you are, about us women. If you ask a lady unmannerly
questions, hereafter, and she turn them off by a flippant
joke, or an unmeaning falsehood, understand that you have been
very rude, and that she does not wish to be so likewise, by rebuking
your impertinence. Now, do you comprehend me?”
“Perfectly, madam, perfectly. You have made marvellous
strides of late, upon my honor! Yesterday morning an unsophisticated
manœuvring, fine lady! God send you, much good of
the change, though I doubt it. I can see all, read all, plainly
enough now — poor Denzil Bras-de-fer is not high enough, I
trow, for my dainty lady! Perchance, when he is farther off,
he may be better liked, and more needed. At all events, I did
not look for this at your hands, Theresa, on the last morning,
too, that we shall spend together for so long a time.”
Angry as she was, and indignant at the dictatorial manner he
had assumed toward her, these last words disarmed her in a
moment. A tear rose to her eyes, and she held out her hand
to him kindly.
“You are right, Denzil,” she said, “and I was wrong to be
so angry. But you vexed me, and wounded me by your manner.
I am sorry; I ought to have remembered that you were
going to leave us, and that you have some cause to be grieved
and irritable. Pardon me, Denzil, and forget what I said hastily.
We must not quarrel, for we have no friends save one another,
and my dear old father.”
But Denzil's was no placable mind, nor one that could divest
itself readily of a preconceived idea. “Oh!” he replied, “for
that, fair young ladies never lack friends. For every old one
they cast off they win two new ones. See, if it be not so,
Theresa. Is it not so with you?”
She looked at him reproachfully, but softly, and then burst
into tears. “You are ungenerous,” she said, “ungenerous.
But all men, I suppose, are alike in this — that they can feel no
friendship for a woman. So long as they hope for her love, all
is submission on their part, and humility, and gentleness, and
lip-service — once they can not win that, all is bitterness and
persecution. I did not look for this at your hand! But I will
not quarrel with you, Denzil. I dealt frankly with you yester
morning; I have dealt affectionately with you ever; I will deal
had not sought this interview with me, the only object of which
appears to have been the embittering the last hours of our intercourse,
and the endeavoring to wring and wound my heart.
But I —”
“If you had dealt frankly with me,” he interrupted her, very
angrily, “you would have told me honestly that you loved another.”
“Loved another! What do you mean? What other?”
So evident was the truth, the sincerity of her astonishment,
that jealousy itself was rebuked and put to silence in the young
man's bosom; and he endeavored to avoid or change the subject.
But the womanly indignation of the fair girl was now
awakened; her pride had been touched; her delicacy wounded;
her sensibilities assailed in the tenderest point.
“Leave me!” she said, after a little pause, during which she,
in her turn gazing upon him, now bewildered and abashed, with
eyes of serene wonder, not all unmingled with contempt —
“Nay! not another word — leave me — begone! You are not
worthy of a woman's love — you are not worthy to be treated or
regarded as a man. Leave me, I say, and trouble me no more.
Poor, weak, mean-spirited, vain, jealous, and ungenerous, begone!
You know — no man knows better — the falsehood of
the last words you have spoken. No man knows better their
unfeelingness, their ungenerous cruelty. But if I had — if I
had loved another — in what does that concern you? in what
am I responsible to you for my likings or dislikings? Once
and for all be it said, I love you not — should not love you,
were you the only one of your sex on the face of God's earth
— and I pray God to help and protect the woman who shall
love you — if ever you be loved of woman, which I for one believe
not — for she shall love the veriest tyrant that ever tortured
a fond heart, under the plea of loving.”
“I go,” he replied. “I am answered, once and for all. I
go, and may you never need my aid, my forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness!” she exclaimed, with a contemptuous glance.
“Forgiveness! I know not what you have to forgive! But
you should rather pray that I may have need of them; then
may you have the pleasure of refusing me at my need.”
“Ah! it is thus you think of me. It is time, then, that I
should leave you, Fare you well, Theresa.”
“There is no need for farewells at present. The day is
early yet; and I trust still to see your temper changed before
you set forth on your journey. It would grieve my father
sorely that you should leave us thus.”
“He will not know how I leave you. He will see me no
more for years — perhaps never!”
“What do you mean?”
“That I shall mount my horse within this half hour, and return
no more until I shall have twice crossed the Atlantic. So
fare you well, Theresa.”
“Fare you well, Denzil, if it must be so. And God bless
you, and send you a better mind. You will be sorry for this
one day. There is my hand, fare you well; and rest assured
of this, return when you may, you will find me the same
Theresa.”
He took her hand, and wrung it hard. “Farewell,” he said.
“Farewell; and God grant that when I do return, I find you
the wife, and not the mistress, of Jasper St. Aubyn.”
Ungenerous and bitter at the last, he winged the shaft at
random, which he hoped would pierce the deepest, which he
trusted would prevent the consummation he most dreaded —
that she should be the wife of the boy whom he had saved,
whom he had now hated.
The other contingency, at which he had hinted basely, unmanly,
brutally, he knew to be impossible — but he knew also,
was the cruel, the unworthy object of the last words Denzil
Bras-de-fer ever exchanged in this world with Theresa
Allan.
He turned on his heel, and, without looking back once, strode
through the garden, with all his better feelings lost and swallowed
up in bitterness and hatred — entered his own apartment,
and there wrote a few lines to his uncle, to the effect that in
order to avoid the pain of a parting, and the sorrows of a last
adieu, he had judged it for the wisest to depart suddenly and
unawares, and that he should not return to Widecomb until his
voyage should be ended.
Then, leaving the house, where he had passed so many a
happy hour, in hot and passionate resentment, he mounted his
horse and rode away at a hard gallop across the hills toward
Hexworthy and Plymouth.
The last words he uttered had gone to Theresa's heart like a
death-shot. She did not speak, or even sigh, as she heard
them, but pressed her hand hard on her breast, and fell speechless
and motionless on the dewy greensward.
He, engrossed by his selfish rage, and deafened to the sound
of her fall by the beatings of his own hard heart, stalked off
unconscious what had befallen her; and she lay there, insensible,
until the servant-girl, missing her at the breakfast hour,
found her there cold, and, as at first she believed, lifeless.
She soon revived, indeed, from the swoon; but the excitement
and agitation of that scene brought on a slow, lingering
fever; and weeks elapsed ere she again left her chamber. When
she did quit it, the fresh green leaves of summer had put on
their sere and yellow hue, the autumn flowers were fast losing
their last brilliancy, the hoar-frosts lay white, in the early
mornings, over the turf-walks of her garden, ice had been seen
already on the great pool above the fords of Widecomb, and
and even now at hand.
The northwest winds howled long and hollow over the open
hills and heathery wolds around Widecomb manor, and ever as
their wild melancholy wail fell on the ears of Theresa, as she
sat by her now lonely hearth, they awoke a thought of him, the
playmate of her happy childhood, from whom she had parted,
not as friends and playmates should part, and who was now
ploughing the fair Atlantic, perhaps never to return.
A shadow had fallen upon her brow; a gloom upon her
young and happy life.
And where was he who, unconsciously, though not perhaps
unintentionally, had been the cause of the cloud which had arisen,
and whence that shadow, that gloom? Where was Jasper St.
Aubyn?
| The cavaliers of England, or, The times of the revolutions of 1642 and 1688 | |