Part 15 (2/2)
Everywhere English coenial sunshi+ne of Elizabeth's wise rule, was spreading and taking root; and as Don Guzman talked with his new friends, he soon saw (for he was shrewd enough) that they belonged to a race which must be exterminated if Spain intended to become (as she did intend) the h for Spain to have seized in the Pope's naht to sail the seas of Ah to have degraded the Venetians into her bankers, and the Genoese into her h to have incorporated into herself, with the kingdoal, while these fierce islanders re policy and texts of Scripture, and, if they failed, with sharp shot and cold steel, free seas and free trade for all the nations upon earth He saw it, and his countrymen saw it too: and therefore the Spanish Armada came: but of that hereafter And Don Guzman knew also, by hard experience, that these sa broad Devon through their noses, were no oods: but , and loved ht, upon occasion, after a very dogged and terrible fashi+on, as well as the bluest blood in Spain; and who sent out their merchant shi+ps armed up to the teeth, and filled with men who had been trained from childhood to use those arms, and had orders to use theal, or other created being dared to stop theirhe waxed quite lishht find theain, he was answered by a volley of-- ”We'll see that, sir”
”Depends on who says 'No right'”
”You found ht,” said another, ”when you claiht e try theentlemen, by all means, if it shall so please your worshi+ps; and find the sacred flag of Spain as invincible as ever was the Role”
”We have, sir Did you ever hear of Francis Drake?”
”Or of George Fenner and the Portugals at the Azores, one against seven?”
”Or of John Hawkins, at St Juan d'Ulloa?”
”You are insolent burghers,” said Don Guzo
”Sir,” said old Salterne, ”as you say, we are burghers and plain otten ourselves a little, perhaps; we ive our want of th of my wine; for insolent we never ner”
But the Don would not be pacified; and walked out, calling hi deht it on hireat devil Maain; pro, moreover, that none of those who had been so rude should be henceforth asked to n to honor his house once more And the Don actually was appeased, and went there the very next evening, sneering at hiirl has bewitched me, I believe Go I must, and eat my share of dirt, for her sake”
So he went; and, cunningly enough, hinted to old Salterne that he had taken such a fancy to him, and felt so bound by his courtesy and hospitality, that he s which he would not mention to every one; for that the Spaniards were not jealous of single traders, but of any general attempt to deprive them of their hard-earned wealth: that, however, in the meanwhile, there were plenty of opportunities for one man here and there to enrich himself, etc
Old Salterne, shrewd as he was, had his weak point, and the Spaniard had touched it; and delighted at this opportunity of learning the mysteries of the Spanish monopoly, he often actually set Rose on to draw out the Don, without a fear (so blind does ht be herself drawn in For, first, he held it as i a Popish Spaniard as ofthe man in thea burgher's daughter as of ion of the one, and the fas of two different species And as for love without ht was rendered absurd; on Rose's part by her virtue, on which the old roan (and rightly) would have staked every farthing he had on earth; and on the Don's part, by a certain human fondness for the continuity of the carotid artery and the parts adjoining, for which (and that not altogether justly, seeing that Don Guzhbor's) Mr Salterne gave him credit And so it came to pass, that for weeks and months the merchant's house was the Don's favorite haunt, and he saw the Rose of Torridge daily, and the Rose of Torridge heard him
And as for her, poor child, she had never seen such a race of Frank, and yet he was cast in a h of his nation's proud self-assertion to make a woh to let it very seldoenerate into that boastfulness of which the Spaniards were then so often and so justly accused He had marvels to tell by flood and field as race and an eloquence of whichBesides, he was on the spot, and the Leighs were not, nor indeed were any of her old lovers; and what could she do but amuse herself with the only person who caht, in time, more ladies than she; for the country, the north of it at least, was all but bare just then of young gallants, ith the Netherland wars and the Irish wars; and the Spaniard became soon welcome at every house for many a mile round, and made use of his welcome so freely, and received sodaht have been a little turned, and Rose Salterne have thereby escaped, had not Sir Richard delicately given him to understand that in spite of the free and easy lish ladies, brothers were just as jealous, and ladies' honors at least as inexpugnable, as in the land of deh, and kept on good terhters; and to tell the truth, the cunning soldier of fortune found his account in being intimate with all the ladies he could, in order to prevent old Salterne fro that he had any peculiar predilection for Mistress Rose
Nevertheless, Mr Salterne's parlor being nearest to him, still remained his most common haunt; where, while he discoursed for hours about ”Antres vast and deserts idle, And of the cannibals that each other eat, Of Anthropophagi, and row beneath their shoulders,”
to the boundless satisfaction of poor Rose's fancy, he took care to season his discourse with scraps of mercantile information, which kept the oldfor ain and again
And his stories, certainly, orth hearing He see: born in Peru, and sent hoht up in Italy; a soldier in the Levant; an adventurer to the East Indies; again in Aain to Spain, and thence to Ro savages; looking down the craters of volcanoes; hanging about all the courts of Europe; fighting Turks, Indians, lions, elephants, alligators, and what not? At five-and-thirty he had seen enough for three lives, and kne to make the best of what he had seen
He had shared, as a lad, in the horrors of the usta, and had escaped, he hardly knew himself how, from the hands of the victorious Turks, and fro flayed alive or i his life as a Janissary at the Sultan's court He had been at the Battle of the Three Kings; had seen Stukely borne down by a hundred lances, unconquered even in death; and had held upon his knee the head of the dying King of Portugal
And now, as he said to Rose one evening, what had he left on earth, but a heart trampled as hard as the pave for which to live but fan land
Had he no kindred, then? asked pitying Rose
”My two sisters are in a convent;--they had neither money nor beauty; so they are dead to me My brother is a Jesuit, so he is dead to me My father fell by the hands of Indians in Mexico; my mother, a penniless , is companion, duenna--whatsoever they s for some princess or other there in Seville, of no better blood than herself; and I-- devil! I have lost even my sword--and so fares the house of De Soto”
Don Guzman, of course, intended to be pitied, and pitied he was accordingly And then he would turn the conversation, and begin telling Italian stories, after the Italian fashi+on, according to his auditory: the pathetic ones when Rose was present, the racy ones when she was absent; so that Rose had wept over the sorrows of Juliet and Desde before they were ever enacted on an English stage, and the ribs of the Bideford worthies had shaken to hosts ain if they wish them to be remembered, for I shall lend them no shove toward immortality
And so on, and so on What need of more words? Before a year was out, Rose Salterne was far more in love with Don Guzman than he with her; and both suspected each other's h neither hinted at the truth; she from fear, and he, to tell the truth, froan to find out that he her's daughter, or all his labor would be throay
He had seen with much astonishraceful old English fashi+on of saluting every lady on the cheek atladies out to feasts without their ive such cause of brutal calumny and scandal to the coarse minds of Ro with jealous rage, her, redolent of onions, profane in that way the velvet cheek of Rose Salterne
So, one day, he offered his salute in like wise; but be did it when she was alone; for souilty conscience) whispered that it ht be hardly politic to make the proffer in her father's presence: however, to his astonishh quiet rebuff
”No, sir; you should know thathis anger, ”it seeh to every counter-jumper in the town!”
Was it love, or sietically?
”True, Don Guzman; but they are my equals”
”And I?”
”You are a nobleman, sir; and should recollect that you are one”
”Well,” said he, forcing a sneer, ”it is a strange taste to prefer the shopkeeper!”
”Prefer?” said she, forcing a laugh in her turn; ”it is ato ?”
Rose turned very red; but she had nerve to answer-- ”And why should you be anything to iving usYouyourself, sir, and me too No, sir; not a step nearer!--I will not! A salute between equals : but between you and me--I vow, sir, if you do not leave me this moment, I will complain to my father”
”Do so, er, as you forfro himself at her feet ”I adore you! Never otten theht, my lodestar, one; reh one who ! ay, and a prince now, a very Lucifer of pride to all except to you; to you a wretch who grovels at your feet, and cries, 'Have mercy on me, on my loneliness, my homelessness, ive the madness of my passion), you know not the heart which you break Cold Northerns, you little dream how a Spaniard can love Love? Worshi+p, rather; as I worshi+p you, ht of you, and the ruin which first in! do my own tears deceive my eyes, or are there tears, too, in those radiant orbs?”
”Go, sir! ” cried poor Rose, recovering herself suddenly; ”and let me never see you more” And, as a last chance for life, she darted out of the room
”Your slave obeys you, madam, and kisses your hands and feet forever and a day,” said the cunning Spaniard, and drawing himself up, walked serenely out of the house; while she, poor fool, peeped after him out of herupstairs, and her heart sank within her as she watched his jaunty and careless air
How much of that rhapsody of his was honest, how an to fancy that it was all a set speech, when she found that he had really taken her at her word, and set foot no more within her father's house So she reproached herself for the cruelest of women; settled, that if he died, she should be his murderess; watched for hiht look up, and then hid herself in terror the moment he appeared round the corner; and so forth, and so forth:--one love- is very like another, and has been so, I suppose, since that first blessed e in Paradise, when Adam and Eve made no love at all, but found it ready- while Roes over the sorrows of poor little Rose Salterne, while the destinies of Europe are hanging on the e between Elizabeth and Anjou: and Sir Hu heaven and earth, and Devonshi+re, of course, as the most important portion of the said earth, to carry out his dorland in due ti nofoundland, Nova Scotia, and Canada, and the Northern States; and to Hu better than a neorld, nalory therein which never fades away
CHAPTER XI
HOW EUSTACE LEIGH MET THE POPE'S LEGATE
”Misguided, rash, intruding fool, farewell! Thou see'st to be too busy is soer”