Chapter IV

The Lovesuit.

He either fears too much,

Or his deserts are small,

Who would not put it to the touch,

To win or lose it all.

Montrose.

The earliest cock had barely crowed his first salutation 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 still 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 afoot 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 any thing 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 weatherbeaten 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 cannot 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 say you 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 senates 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 wont be quiet on the other side the Line, and our good king wont 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 unEnglish 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, Durzil 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?”

“Durzil,” answered the youth, “Durzil, Nothing!” he added, very bitterly, “my country, and my country’s law give me no other name, but only Durzil—its enemies have named me Bras-de-fer!”

“Then mark me, Durzil; 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 had 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 burthen 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, Durzil; 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?”

“Durzil, I cannot 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 forever; 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 cannot 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, Durzil,” said the old man, solemnly, “nothing but death that cannot be amended. Undone things may not be, but all 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 and 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, Durzil 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, perchance 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 preoccupied 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 Durzil 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, Jasper, 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, Durzil 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.

[To be continued.