Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (book club reads txt) 📖
- Author: Charles Kingsley
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Five minutes have the two had instant death a short six inches off from those wild sinful hearts of theirs, and not a scratch has been given. Yes! the Spaniard’s rapier passes under Cary’s left arm; he bleeds.
“A hit! a hit! Strike up, Atty!” and the swords are struck up instantly.
Cary, nettled by the smart, tries to close with his foe, but the seconds cross their swords before him.
“It is enough, gentlemen. Don Guzman’s honor is satisfied!”
“But not my revenge, senor,” says the Spaniard, with a frown. “This duel is a l’outrance, on my part; and, I believe, on Mr. Cary’s also.”
“By heaven, it is!” says Will, trying to push past. “Let me go, Arthur St. Leger; one of us must down. Let me go, I say!”
“If you stir, Mr. Cary, you have to do with Richard Grenville!” thunders the lion voice. “I am angry enough with you for having brought on this duel at all. Don’t provoke me still further, young hot-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?”
“Come away, for God’s sake!” says poor Arthur, dragging Cary’s sword from him; “Sir Richard must know best!”
So Cary is led off sulking, and Sir Richard turns to the Spaniard,
“And now, Don Guzman, allow me, though much against my will, to speak to you as a friend to a friend. You will pardon me if I say that I cannot but have seen last night’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 seeming forwardness, that the quest on which you seem to be is one on which you will not be allowed to proceed.”
“And who will 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 mixed marriages with full as much dislike as your own ecclesiastics.”
“Marriage, 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 Guzman, that I am to have the shame of mentioning a baser word?”
“Mention what you will, sir. All words are the same to me; for, just or unjust, I shall answer them alike only by my sword.”
“You will do no such thing, sir. You forget that I am your host.”
“And do you suppose that you have therefore a right to insult me? Stand on your guard, sir!”
Grenville answered by slapping his own rapier home into the sheath with a quiet smile.
“Senor Don Guzman must be well enough aware of who Richard Grenville is, to know that he may claim the right of refusing duel 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 am unworthy of your sword? Know, insolent Englishman, I am not merely a De Soto, though that, by St. James, were enough for you or any man. I am a Sotomayor, a Mendoza, a Bovadilla, a Losada, a—sir! I have blood royal in my veins, and you dare to refuse my challenge?”
“Richard Grenville can show quarterings, probably, against even Don Guzman Maria Magdalena Sotomayor de Soto, or against (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 mails to be sent, and I shall, with unfeigned sorrow, obey your commands concerning 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 knew whither. A very courteous note to Lady Grenville, enclosing the jewel which 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 knew what had happened, and a great deal more; and what was even worse, Rose, in an agony 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 came old Salterne, with his stick in his hand, and after rating her soundly for far worse than a flirt, gave her (I am sorry to have to say it, but such was the mild fashion of paternal rule in those times, even over such daughters as Lady Jane Grey, if Roger Ascham is to be believed) such a beating that her poor sides were black and blue for many a day; and then putting her on a pillion behind him, carried her off twenty miles to her old prison at Stow mill, commanding her aunt to tame down her saucy blood with bread of affliction and water of affliction. Which commands were willingly enough fulfilled by the old dame, who had always borne a grudge against Rose for being 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 or more, stretching out 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.
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 fame, And ocean was their grave.”
CAMPBELL.
So you see, my dear Mrs. Hawkins, having the silver, as your own eyes show you, beside the ores of lead, manganese, and copper, and above all this gossan (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 transmute the remaining ores into sol, gold. Whereupon Peru and Mexico become superfluities, and England the mistress of the globe. Strange, no doubt; distant, no doubt: but possible, my dear madam, possible!”
“And what good 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 seems ofttimes over long in coming.” And Mrs. Hawkins sighed.
“But indeed, my dear madam, conceive now.—The Comb Martin mine thus becomes a gold mine, perhaps inexhaustible; yields me wherewithal to carry out my NorthWest patent; meanwhile my brother Humphrey holds Newfoundland, and builds me fresh ships year by year (for the forests of pine are boundless) for my China voyage.”
“Sir Humphrey has better thoughts 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 my mind’s eye than gold? Or, indeed, what better could I have? Is not gold the Spaniard’s strength—the very mainspring of Antichrist? By gold only, therefore, can we out-wrestle him. You shake your head, but say, dear madam (for gold England must have), which is better, to make gold bloodlessly at home, or take it bloodily abroad?”
“Oh, Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Gilbert! is it not written, that those who make haste to be rich, pierce themselves through with many sorrows? Oh, Mr. Gilbert! God’s blessing is 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 him.—Born under stormy planets, truly, but under right royal and fortunate ones.”
“Ah, Mr. Adrian! I am a simple body, and you a great philosopher, but I hold there is no star for the seaman like the Star of Bethlehem; and that goes 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 emblazoned the fatal crest which Clarencieux Hervey had granted 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 chambers by wrong. 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 judgment and justice? Then it was well with him,’ I thought of good old Captain Will; and—I tell you, Mr. Gilbert, those negroes are on my soul from morning until night! We are all mighty grand 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 matter of those negroes (which I do not deny,) was he not punished at once when he lost ships, 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 not mended him. He is growing fast like the rest now, Mr. Gilbert, greedy to win, and niggardly to spend (God forgive him!) and always fretting and plotting for some new gain,
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