Part 19 (1/2)
”By heaven, it is!” says Will, trying to push past ”Let o, I say!”
”If you stir, Mr Cary, you have to do with Richard Grenville!” thunders the lion voice ”I aht on this duel at all Don't provokehot-head!”
Cary stops sulkily
”You do not know all, Sir Richard, or you would not speak in this way”
”I do, sir, all; and I shall have the honor of talking it over with Don Guzman myself”
”Hey!” said the Spaniard ”You came here as my second, Sir Richard, as I understood, but not as my counsellor”
”Arthur, take your man away! Cary! obey me as you would your father, sir! Can you not trust Richard Grenville?”
”Co Cary's sword from him; ”Sir Richard , and Sir Richard turns to the Spaniard, ”And now, Don Guzainst my will, to speak to you as a friend to a friend You will pardon ht's devotion to--”
”You will be pleased, senor, not to mention the name of any lady to whom I may have shown devotion I am not accustomed to have my little affairs talked over by any unbidden counsellors”
”Well, senor, if you take offence, you take that which is not given Only I warn you, with all apologies for any see forwardness, that the quest on which you seem to be is one on which you will not be allowed to proceed”
”And ill stop me?” asked the Spaniard, with a fierce oath
”You are not aware, illustrious senor,” said Sir Richard, parrying the question, ”that our English laity look upon es with full as e, sir? Who gave you leave to mention that word to me?”
Sir Richard's brow darkened; the Spaniard, in his insane pride, had forced upon the good knight a suspicion which was not really just
”Is it possible, then, Senor Don Guz a baser word?”
”Mention what you will, sir All words are the same to me; for, just or unjust, I shall answer the, sir You forget that I am your host”
”And do you suppose that you have therefore a right to insult uard, sir!”
Grenville answered by slapping his own rapier home into the sheath with a quiet sh aware of who Richard Grenville is, to know that heduel to any man, if he shall so think fit”
”Sir!” cried the Spaniard, with an oath, ”this is too much! Do you dare to hint that I alishh that, by St Jah for you or any man I am a Sotomayor, a Mendoza, a Bovadilla, a Losada, a--sir! I have blood royal in e?”
”Richard Grenville can show quarterings, probably, against even Don Guzainst (with no offence to the unquestioned nobility of your pedigree) the bluest blood of Spain But he can show, moreover, thank God, a reputation which raises him as much above the imputation of cowardice, as it does above that of discourtesy If you think fit, senor, to forget what you have just, in very excusable anger, vented, and to return with me, you will find me still, as ever, your most faithful servant and host If otherwise, you have only to name whither you wish your ned sorrow, obey your co them”
The Spaniard bowed stiffly, answered, ”To the nearest tavern, senor,” and then strode away His baggage was sent thither He took a boat down to Appledore that very afternoon, and vanished, none knehither A very courteous note to Lady Grenville, enclosing the jehich he had been used to wear round his neck, was the only memorial he left behind him: except, indeed, the scar on Cary's arm, and poor Rose's broken heart
Now county towns are scandalous places at best; and though all parties tried to keep the duel secret, yet, of course, before noon all Bideford knehat had happened, and a great deal ony of terror, had seen Sir Richard Grenville enter her father's private room, and sit there closeted with him for an hour and more; and when he went, upstairs ca her soundly for far worse than a flirt, gave her (I am sorry to have to say it, but such was the mild fashi+on of paternal rule in those tier Ascha that her poor sides were black and blue forher on a pillion behind him, carried her off twentyher aunt to tame down her saucy blood with bread of affliction and water of affliction Which coh fulfilled by the old da rich while she was poor, and pretty while her daughter was plain; so that between flouts, and sneers, and watchings, and pretty open hints that she was a disgrace to her family, and no better than she should be, the poor innocent child watered her couch with her tears for a fortnight orout her hands to the wide Atlantic, and calling wildly to Don Guzman to return and take her where he would, and she would live for him and die for him; and perhaps she did not call in vain
CHAPTER XIII
HOW THE GOLDEN HIND CAME HOME AGAIN
”The spirits of your fathers Shall start from every wave; For the deck it was their field of farave”
CAMPBELL
So you see,the silver, as your own eyes show you, beside the ores of lead, ossan (as the Cornish call it), which I suspect to be not merely the matrix of the ore, but also the very crude form and materia prima of all metals--you mark me?--If my recipes, which I had from Doctor Dee, succeed only half so well as I expect, then I refine out the luna, the silver, lay it by, and transold Whereupon Peru and Mexico becolobe Strange, no doubt; distant, no doubt: but possible, ood to you if it be, Mr Gilbert? If you could find a philosopher's stone to turn sinners into saints, now--but naught save God's grace can do that; and that last seehed
”But indeed, my dear old mine, perhaps inexhaustible; yields me ithal to carry out my North-West patent; meanwhile my brother Humphrey holds Newfoundland, and builds me fresh shi+ps year by year (for the forests of pine are boundless) for hts in his dear heart than gold, Mr Adrian; a very close and gracious walker he has been this seven year I wish my Captain John were so too”
”And how do you know I have naught better in old? Or, indeed, what better could I have? Is not gold the Spaniard's strength--the very old only, therefore, can we out-wrestle hiland old bloodlessly at home, or take it bloodily abroad?”
”Oh, Mr Gilbert, Mr Gilbert! is it not written, that those who h withis not on it all”
”Not on you, madam? Be sure that brave Captain John Hawkins's star told me a different tale, when I cast his nativity for hiht royal and fortunate ones”
”Ah, Mr Adrian! I areat philosopher, but I hold there is no star for the seaoes with 'peace on earth and good will to men,' and not with such arms as that, Mr Adrian I can't abide to look upon them”
And she pointed up to one of the bosses of the ribbed oak-roof, on which was eranted years before to her husband, the ”Demi-Moor proper, bound”
”Ah, Mr Gilbert! since first he went to Guinea after those poor negroes, little lightness has my heart known; and the very day that that crest was put up in our grand new house, as the parson read the first lesson, there was this text in it, Mr Gilbert, 'Woe to him that buildeth his house by iniquity, and his cha Shalt thou live because thou closest thyself in cedar?' And it went into my ears like fire, Mr Gilbert, and into my heart like lead; and when the parson went on, 'Did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgood old Captain Will; and--I tell you, Mr Gilbert, those negroes are on rand now, and money comes in fast, but the Lord will require the blood of them at our hands yet, He will!”
”My dearest madam, who can prosper more than you? If your husband copied the Dons too closely once or twice in the roes (which I do not deny,) was he not punished at once when he lost shi+ps, men, all but life, at St Juan d'Ulloa?”
”Ay, yes,” she said; ”and that did give me a bit of comfort, especially when the queen--God save her tender heart!--was so sharp with him for pity of the poor wretches, but it has notfast like the rest now, Mr Gilbert, greedy to win, and niggardly to spend (God forgive hiain, and envying and grudging at Drake, and all who are deeper in the snare of prosperity than he is Gold, gold, nothing but gold in every mouth--there it is! Ah! Iplace as God could smile upon: but ever since my John, and Sir Francis, and poor Mr Oxenham found out the way to the Indies, it's been a sad place Not a sailor's wife but is crying 'Give, give,' like the daughters of the horse-leech; and every wo her ho with outstretched necks and wanton eyes; and they will soon learn to do worse than that, for the sake of gain But the Lord's hand will be against their tires and crisping-pins, their ainst the Jews of old Ah, dearin a low oak- panelled rooh furnished, adorned with carving and gilding and coats of arold and silver vessels on the sideboard; strange birds and skins, and charts and rough drawings of coast which hung about the room; while over the fireplace, above the portrait of old Captain Will Hawkins, pet of Henry the Eighth, hung the Spanish ensign which Captain John had taken in fair fight at Rio de la Hacha fifteen years before, when, with two hundred men, he seized the town in despite of ten hundred Spanish soldiers, and watered his shi+p triuentleman was a tall fair man, with a broad and lofty forehead, wrinkled with study, and eyes weakened by long poring over the crucible and the furnace
The lady had once been coed and worn, as sailors' wives are apt to be, by h John Hawkins, port-admiral of Plymouth, and patriarch of British shi+pbuilders, was a faithful husband enough, and as ready to forgive as he was to quarrel, yet he was obstinate and ruthless, and in spite of his religiosity (for all ious then) was by no means a ”consistent walker”
And sadder days were in store for her, poor soul Nine years hence she would be asked to name her son's brave new shi+p, and would christen it The Repentance, giving no reason in her quiet steadfast way (so says her son Sir Richard) but that ”Repentance was the best shi+p in which we could sail to the harbor of heaven;” and she would hear that Queen Elizabeth, co of the name for an unlucky one, had re-christened her The Dainty, not without some by-quip, perhaps, at the character of her most dainty captain, Richard Hawkins, the complete seaman and Euphuist afloat, of whom, perhaps, more hereafter
With sad eyes Mrs (then Lady) Hawkins would see that gallant bark sail Westward-ho, to go the world around, as many another shi+p sailed; and then wait, as many a mother beside had waited, for the sail which never returned; till, di for four days three great Armadas (for the coxcomb had his father's heart in hi for weary years in Spanish prisons And a sadder day than that was in store, when a gallant fleet should round the Rauns, and all flags half-h, to tell her that her terrible husband's as done, his terrible heart broken by failure and fatigue, and his body laid by Drake's beneath the far- off tropic seas
And if, at the close of her eventful life, one gleam of sunshi+ne opened for a while, when her boy Richard returned to her bosohted for his valor, and made a privy councillor for his wisdoain above her, until her weary eyes should open in the light of Paradise For that son dropped dead, soht but broken fortunes, and huge purposes which never were fulfilled; and the stormy star of that bold race was set forever, and Lady Hawkins bowed her weary head and died, the groan of those stolen negroes ringing in her ears, having lived long enough to see her husband's youthful sin becoenerations yet unborn
I know not why she opened her heart that night to Adrian Gilbert, with a frankness which she would hardly have dared to use to her own fareat brothers, Huh, was a man full of all lofty and delicate enthusias to when their hearts are lonely; but so it was; and Adrian, half asha at her a while in silence; and then-- ”The Lord be with you, dearest lady Strange, how you women sit at home to love and suffer, while we ainst rocks of our own seeking! Ah well! were it not for Scripture, I should have thought that Adam, rather than Eve, had been the one who plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree”
”We women, I fear; did the deed nevertheless; for we bear the doo”