"No."
"And you said not a word to me!"
"I was afraid of agitating you, my dear."
"And therefore you have secured for me unending self-reproach."
"Why so? Surely you are blaming yourself without a shadow of a cause."
"I will tell you why. I dare say I feel unnecessarily on the subject, but I can not help it. It is a fact that Brandon was always impulsive and culpably careless about himself. It is to this quality, strangely enough, that I owe my father"s life, and my own comfort for many years.
Paolo also owes as much as I. Mr. Brandon, with a friend of his, was sailing through the Mediterranean in his own yacht, making occasional tours into the country at every place where they happened to land, and at last they came to Girgenti, with the intention of examining the ruins of Agrigentum. This was in 1818, four years before I was born. My father was stopping at Girgenti, with his wife and Paolo, who was then six years old. My father had been very active under the reign of Murat, and had held a high post in his government. This made him suspected after Murat"s overthrow.
"On the day that these Englishmen visited Girgenti, a woman in deep distress came to see them, along with a little boy. It was my mother and Paolo. She flung herself on the floor at their feet, and prayed them to try and help her husband, who had been arrested on a charge of treason and was now in prison. He was suspected of belonging to the Carbonari, who were just beginning to resume their secret plots, and were showing great activity. My father belonged to the innermost degree, and had been betrayed by a villain named Cigole. My mother did not tell them all this, but merely informed them of his danger.
"At first they did not know what to do, but the prayers of my mother moved their hearts. They went to see the captain of the guard, and tried to bribe him, but without effect. They found out, however, where my father was confined, and resolved upon a desperate plan. They put my mother and Paolo on board of the yacht, and by paying a heavy bribe obtained permission to visit my father in prison. Brandon"s friend was about the same height as my father. When they reached his cell they urged my father to exchange clothes with him and escape. At first he positively refused, but when a.s.sured that Brandon"s friend, being an Englishman, would be set free in a few days, he consented. Brandon then took him away unnoticed, put him on board of the yacht, and sailed to Ma.r.s.eilles, where he gave him money enough to get to England, and told him to stop at Brandon Hall till he himself arrived. He then sailed back to see about his friend.
"He found out nothing about him for some time. At last he induced the British emba.s.sador to take the matter in hand, and he did so with such effect that the prisoner was liberated. He had been treated with some severity at first, but he was young, and the government was persuaded to look upon it as a youthful freak. Brandon"s powerful influence with the British emba.s.sador obtained his unconditional release.
"My father afterward obtained a situation here at Holby, where he was organist till he died. Through all his life he never ceased to receive kindness and delicate acts of attention from Brandon. When in his last sickness Brandon came and staid with him till the end. He then wished to do something for Paolo, but Paolo preferred seeking his own fortune in his own way."
Mrs. Thornton ended her little narrative, to which Despard had listened with the deepest attention.
"Who was Brandon"s friend?" asked Despard.
"He was a British officer," said Mrs. Thornton. "For fear of dragging in his government, and perhaps incurring dismissal from the army, he gave an a.s.sumed name--Mountjoy. This was the reason why Brandon was so long in finding him."
"Did your father not know it?"
"On the pa.s.sage Brandon kept it secret, and after his friend"s deliverance he came to see my father under his a.s.sumed name. My father always spoke of him as Mountjoy. After a time he heard that he was dead."
"I can tell you his true name," said Mr. Thornton. "There is no reason why you should not know it."
"What?"
"Lionel Despard--your father, and Ralph Brandon"s bosom friend."
Despard looked transfixed. Mrs. Thornton gazed at her husband, and gave an unutterable look at Despard, then, covering her face with her hands, she burst into an agony of tears.
"My G.o.d," cried Despard, pa.s.sing his hand over his forehead, "my father died when I was a child, and n.o.body was ever able to tell me any thing about him. And Brandon was his friend. He died thus, and his family have perished thus, while I have known nothing and done nothing."
"You at least are not to blame," said Thornton, calmly, "for you had scarcely heard of Brandon"s name. You were in the north of England when this happened, and knew nothing whatever about it."
That evening Despard went home with a deeper trouble in his heart.
He was not seen at the Grange for a month. At the end of that time he returned. He had been away to London during the whole interval.
As Mrs. Thornton entered to greet him her whole face was overspread with an expression of radiant joy. He took both her hands in his and pressed them without a word. "Welcome back," she murmured--"you have been gone a long time."
"Nothing but an overpowering sense of duty could have kept me away so long," said he, in a deep, low voice.
A few similar commonplaces followed; but with these two the tone of the voice invested the feeblest commonplaces with some hidden meaning.
At last she asked: "Tell me what success you had?" He made no reply; but taking a paper from his pocket opened it, and pointed to a marked paragraph. This was the month of March. The paper was dated January 14, 1847. The paragraph was as follows:
"DISTRESSING CASUALTY.--The ship _Java_, which left Sydney on the 5th of August last, reports a stormy pa.s.sage. On the 12th of September a distressing casualty occurred. They were in S. lat. 11 1" 22", E. long.
105 6" 36", when a squall suddenly struck the ship. A pa.s.senger, Louis Brandon, Esq., of the firm of Compton & Brandon, Sydney, was standing by the lee-quarter as the squall struck, and, distressing to narrate, he was hurled violently overboard. It was impossible to do any thing, as a monsoon was beginning, which raged for twenty-four hours. Mr. Brandon was coming to England on business.
"The captain reports a sand-bank in the lat.i.tude and longitude indicated above, which he names "Coffin Island," from a rock of peculiar shape at the eastern extremity. Ships will do well in future to give this place a wide berth."
Deep despondency came over Mrs. Thornton"s face as she read this. "We can do nothing," said she, mournfully. "He is gone. It is better for him. We must now wait till we hear more from Paolo. I will write to him at once."
"And I will write to my uncle."
There was a long silence. "Do you know," said Despard, finally, "that I have been thinking much about my father of late. It seems very strange to me that my uncle never told me about that Sicilian affair before.
Perhaps he did not wish me to know it, for fear that through all my life I should brood over thoughts of that n.o.ble heart lost to me forever.
But I intend to write to him, and obtain afresh the particulars of his death. I wish to know more about my mother. No one was ever in such ignorance of his parents as I have been. They merely told me that my father and mother died suddenly in India, and left me an orphan at the age of seven under the care of Mr. Henry Thornton. They never told me that Brandon was a very dear friend of his. I have thought also of the circ.u.mstances of his death, and they all seem confused. Some say he died in Calcutta, others say in China, and Mr. Thornton once said in Manilla.
There is some mystery about it."
"When Brandon was visiting my father," said Mrs. Thornton, "you were at school, and he never saw you. I think he thought you were Henry Despard"s son."
"There"s some mystery about it," said Despard, thoughtfully.
When Mr. Thornton came in that night he read a few extracts from the London paper which he had just received. One was as follows:
"FOUNDERED AT SEA.--The ship _H. B. Smith_, from Calcutta, which arrived yesterday, reports that on the 28th January they picked up a ship"s long-boat near the Cape Verd Islands. It was floating bottom upward. On the stern was painted the word _Falcon_. The ship _Falcon_ has now been expected for two months, and it is feared from this that she may have foundered at sea. The _Falcon_ was on her way from Sydney to London, and belonged to Messrs. Kingwood, Flaxman, & Co."
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SHADOW OF THE AFRICAN FOREST.
Let us return to the castaways.
It was morning on the coast of Africa--Africa the mysterious, the inhospitable Africa, _leonum arida nutrix_.
There was a little harbor into which flowed a shallow, sluggish river, while on each side rose high hills. In front of the harbor was an island which concealed and protected it.
Here the palm-trees grew. The sides rose steeply, the summit was lofty, and the towering palms afforded a deep, dense shade. The gra.s.s was fine and short, and being protected from the withering heat was as fine as that of an English lawn. Up the palm-trees there climbed a thousand parasitic plants, covered with blossoms--gorgeous, golden, rich beyond all description. Birds of starry plumage flitted through the air, as they leaped from tree to tree, uttering a short, wild note; through the spreading branches sighed the murmuring breeze that came from off the ocean; round the sh.o.r.e the low tones of the gently-washing surf were borne as it came in in faint undulations from the outer sea.
Underneath the deepest shadow of the palms lay Brandon. He had lost consciousness when he fell from the boat; and now for the first time he opened his eyes and looked around upon the scene, seeing these sights and hearing the murmuring sounds.
In front of him stood Beatrice, looking with dropped eyelids at the gra.s.s, her arms half folded before her, her head uncovered, her hair bound by a sort of fillet around the crown, and then gathered in great black curling ma.s.ses behind. Her face was pale as usual, and had the same marble whiteness which always marked it. That face was now pensive and sad; but there was no weakness there. Its whole expression showed manifestly the self-contained soul, the strong spirit evenly-poised, willing and able to endure.
Brandon raised himself on one arm and looked wonderingly around. She started. A vivid flash of joy spread over her face in one bright smile.
She hurried up and knelt down by him.
"Do not move--you are weak," she said, as tenderly as a mother to a sick child.