University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
THE BASEBORN.

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

smile. “Wiser, at least, I doubt not he will be; for in good
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,

that I have learned how absurd it is to seek such occasions
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

and valiant ruler. And for his present majesty, God bless him!
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

who owned his affection; but with this difference, that she I
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

I had known it. My life had been less wild, then, less turbulent,
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

interest me always, and next to my own son I shall hold you
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

as she passed through the garden. “You love this innocent
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

within the chamber been otherwise directed, to pass the casement,
following the same path which had been taken by Theresa
Allan a little while before.