TURTLE ISLAND.
"He didn't like seeing the guns cast loose, and the powder and small
arms brought on deck, this precious first mate of ours," said Joe
Grummet one day to Derval, when they were up aloft; "cos why? he is a
coward, and cowards are always cruel. He was once a captain, but his
certificate is suspended--though I don't know for how long, but
suspended it is--cos why? He caught a poor stowaway lad on board,
half dead with confinement and want of food, and how do you think he
treated him? He lashed a ring-bolt with spunyarn athwart his open
jaws to prevent his shrieks being heard when he ropes-ended him, and
trained a dog to bite him; he headed him up in a cask and rolled him
round the deck; and this work went on for days. He made a timber
hitch on a line, and hoisted him by the neck three feet from the deck
at a time, till his eyes started from their sockets, and blood and
froth oozed from his mouth, flogging him day after day, till one
came, when the poor boy was found dead under the lee of the
long-boat; and then his body, without service or prayer, was chucked
overboard.* Now he sails as chief mate, but I wonder our owners took
him aboard at all."
* A fact.
This anecdote served to increase Derval's disgust for Rudderhead, who
seemed almost to divine that he was the subject of conversation, as
he stood on the quarter-deck, with his eyes steadily regarding them
in the foretop.
Amid fine weather, and accompanied by steady and pleasant breezes,
the _Amethyst_ made the Island of Desolation, or Kerguelen's Land,
the abode alone of petrels, albatrosses, gulls, and sea-swallows, on
the rifted rocks of which, washed by incessant rains, nothing grows
but saxifrage--a lonely and most melancholy place.
After passing it, the ship's log shows that she encountered a gale,
and that the watch had to take in the main topgallant-sail and
mainsail, with the fourth reef of the topsails; and set the
mainstay-sail. In the evening she was under close-reefed topsails, a
reefed foresail, and was shipping heavy seas.
Fine weather came again, and one fine forenoon, a week or so after,
when Derval had the watch, the cry "Land ahead!" from the look-out
men caused every glass to be levelled at a dark-blue streak, that
rose like a cloud from the shining sea, upon the lee bow; and a
reference to the chart showed that it was one of those sequestered
and seldom visited isles in the South Sea, in latitude 60 south, and
110 west longitude, and is known as Turtle Island.
It was rocky, hilly, and seemed to rise fast from the sea, and to
loom large, through a kind of white haze, exhaled from the latter by
the heat of the sun; thus, by the bearings given, the reader will see
that it was a considerable distance south of the regular line from
Britain to Australia.
As Captain Talbot was anxious to procure some turtle, he gave orders
to stand towards it, and about nightfall came to anchor in seven
fathoms water, in a fine sandy bay where the waves rippled on the
beach as quietly as those of an island lake, and where groves of
trees grow close to the water's edge.
The volcanic rocks at the mouth of the bay were literally covered
with sea-hens, gigantic albatrosses, and other feathered tribes; wild
boars and wild goats could be seen by the glass ere the sun set, but
luckily no sign of inhabitants, on which Talbot rather congratulated
himself, as he knew well the isle possessed them, and that, like all
other South Sea savages, they were vindictive, cruel, and hostile to
all strangers.
By daybreak next morning two boats' crews, under Rudderhead and
Derval, taking with them handspikes or capstan bars, pulled in shore
to search for turtle. They beached the boats at a place where a
number of large turtle were seen, well up on the shore, near some
dense brushwood, out of which black cocks flew from time to time, and
near which some great seals lay basking in the sun.
In high spirits the boats' crews sprang ashore, and intercepting the
retreat of the turtle, some of which were of such a size as to be two
or three hundred-weight, they proceeded with the handspikes to turn
them on their backs and leave them thus till several were captured,
and then tumbled into the boats.
Full of natural interest at treading on new soil, and looking on that
which he had never seen before, Derval, penetrating through the
brushwood, advanced some hundred yards upward and inshore, and heard
with pleasure the tender rustling of the leaves in the morning
sea-breeze, while inhaling the perfume of the aromatic plants and
myrtle-trees. The brilliant green of the woods that crept up the
sides of the hills, which in one place were so lofty that the haze
shrouded their summits, were all novel and delightful, after the
monotony of the sea and sky during a long voyage.
While observing the brilliant tints and peculiar shadows given by the
morning sun to some volcanic rocks rising from the nearest grove of
trees, he became suddenly aware that they were swarming with black
savages, whose weapons, whatever they were, glittered in the sun, and
who from their eyrie were evidently watching the ship in the bay, if
not the party in quest of turtle on the beach.
He had scarcely made this discovery, when he became aware that Reeve
Rudderhead was by his side, with what intent he could not divine.
Curiosity had no doubt prompted him to follow Derval, simply to see
what was to be seen, and opportunity made him suddenly avail himself
of the time to do the fell crime he subsequently committed.
Enemies though they were, who never spoke but on inevitable matters
connected with ship duty, Derval could not refrain from drawing his
ungracious messmate's attention to the watching savages and their
hostile aspect, adding:
"Don't you think, sir, that we had better retire?"
They were already in motion and leaping down the rocks, with yells,
brandishing their spears and clubs.
"Retire?" growled Rudderhead with an oath, "I think so, unless we
mean to share the fate of Captain Cook; so here goes for one. As for
you," he added, with one of his ferocious maledictions, "they may
pick your bones, and welcome!" Then whirling the heavy hand-spike he
carried, circularly in the air, he struck Derval a blow on the back
of the head that felled him bleeding, stunned, and senseless, among
the brushwood!
The moment he had accomplished this terrible and atrocious act, he
went plunging down to the beach, shouting--
"The savages--the natives are upon us; into the boats with you for
your lives, and shove off to the ship!"
Alarmed by this cry, and being unarmed, the party were forced to be
content with what turtle they had got--some seven or eight--and
leaping into their two boats, pushed off at once from the shore, and
shipping their oars pulled away with a will, just as a naked horde of
dark-skinned savages, perfectly nude, save in the matter of the bead
ornaments that hung about their persons, shrieking, whooping,
yelling, and dancing like mad things, came rushing with war-clubs,
spears, powerful bows and arrows, close to the edge of the water, and
even rushing into it up to their waists.
The boats' crews could see their dark, copper-coloured skins, their
hair which was longer and straighter than the wool of the negro,
their gleaming eyes and white glistening teeth. An arrow or two
whistled past, but wide of the mark, and with laughing shouts of
defiance the party brought their boats sheering alongside the ship,
when the turtles had ropes hitched round them, and were quickly
conveyed on board.
"Hoist in the boats," was now the order of Rudderhead, in his guilty
haste anticipating the authority of the captain for doing so.
In the haste and confusion with which they had embarked, the crew of
each boat probably thought--if they thought on the subject at
all--that Derval was on board the other; nor was it till the boats
were being actually hoisted in on each quarter, that he was missed,
and Joe Grummet asked, with some asperity and much alarm:
"Where is the third mate--where is Mr. Hampton?"
Then the boats' crews looked inquiringly and blankly into each
other's faces.
"Left on shore!" said Captain Talbot. "Good heaven! what a fate he
must have met by this time!"
"We had not a moment to lose, sir, as you must have seen, if you had
been watching us," said Rudderhead sullenly and with averted eyes;
"his safety was his own look-out--not mine; and I think the third
mate could take jolly good care of himself."
The Captain was silent; the beach was now covered by a dingy horde of
savages, yelling and brandishing their weapons in defiance at the
ship, and he could not for a moment doubt that Derval Hampton must
have perished at their hands.
As for Mr. Reeve Rudderhead, he had not the smallest doubt about it
either, believing that the little life he had left, if any, in
Derval, would speedily be beaten out of him by the knob-sticks or
war-clubs of the islanders.
All on board--save Reeve Rudderhead--sorrowed for Derval, and were
loud in their praises and vehement in their regret (for, as an
officer, he was active, vigilant, and, if distant, yet most kind),
and none, perhaps, more than Captain Talbot, who valued him highly
for his gentlemanly bearing, good appearance, skill, and
conscientious interest in his duty; and in all this the Captain was
joined by old Joe Grummet, who would miss the listener to many a yarn
of the sea, and who sighed heavily, Like a head wind through a
hawse-hole, slapped his thigh, viciously chewed his quid, and
clenched his hard first many times, menacingly, while swearing
"strange oaths," and objurgating the eyes, limbs, and blood of some
individual unnamed, but who was shrewdly supposed to be the first
mate.
Closely did the Captain and his officers question the boats' crews,
but nothing could be elicited from them, save the facts that the
first and third mates had gone a little way inland together, and the
former would seem to have come back _alone_; but yet that Derval was
not specially missed till the boats were hoisted in; so Grummet and
Hal Bowline felt sure there must have been some treachery at work,
and that the most artful savage on Turtle Island had been Reeve
Rudderhead, and the brutal indifference of the latter greatly
exasperated them.
"What better could you expect of a fellow who was neither man nor
boy, sojer nor sailor?" growled Rudderhead. "A lubber he was--always
reading when he should have been knotting, splicing, and learning to
box the compass."
Reading was not to the speaker's taste, though grog was, and he drank
it at night to keep out the cold, by day to cure the heat, never
sipping it, "but shipping it in bulk, at a mouthful," so Joe Grummet
said.
But now, regrets for Derval apart, active work was cut out for the
crew of the _Amethyst_.
Thick as bees the dark natives seemed to be swarming around the
shores of the bay; the alarm and muster of them seemed to be general,
and more than a score of pretty large canoes, full of armed warriors,
paddling the water into foam, howling like madmen, and all in a
frantic state of activity, shot out of mangrove creeks and other
places where they would seem to have been concealed, and very soon
the ship was nearly environed with them.
The small arms were all distributed by this time, the guns cast loose
and shotted with grape, the ports triced up, and the watch on deck
were ordered to prepare for sea. The courses were let fall, the
topsails half-hoisted, and the ship was sheered to her anchor, _i.e._
steered towards it while weighing, so as to keep the wind and current
ahead, and thus lessen the friction on the hawse-pipe.
If the intentions of these people were hostile, which Captain Talbot
and his crew never doubted, they were not immediately aggressive, but
continued to paddle round and round the ship, coming as near as they
dared, as they had probably been fired upon by other vessels and knew
the effect of cannon and musketry.
The windlass bars were all shipped, but there was a great and
altogether unexpected delay in getting the anchor a-trip or even
roused. The flukes seemed to hold on to something, and for a time
the bars were vainly strained in the grasp of the seamen, but "the
main piece," or beam of the windlass, remained immovable on its iron
spindles, and the oaths and execrations of Mr. Rudderhead, who, in
his anxiety, began to think of slipping the cable, were loud and
bitter. The mouth of the bay was becoming well-nigh blocked up by
canoes, and the minds of all on board the _Amethyst_ were full of
those stories which ever and anon the public prints give, of the
wholesale massacre of ships' crews by savages in the isles of the
South Sea.
To intimidate them Captain Talbot ordered a 9-pounder, loaded with a
blank cartridge, to be fired; but like blank firing on a mob at home,
this precisely made matters worse, for even while the echoes of the
gun pealed over the water, seeing no effect followed, the savages
uttered screams of defiance and pulled closer, with the evident
intention of boarding, and arrows began to whizz over the ship, or
stick quivering into her sides and deck every instant.
At that instant the clanking of the windlass pawls was heard, a
welcome sound; the anchor was roused, "up-torn, reluctant from its
oozy bed," and was seen dripping a-cockbill at the cat-head. The
topsails were fully hoisted and the courses sheeted home, but there
was very little wind, so the ship's progress was slow, and the arrows
were flying faster than ever. Captain Talbot had his cheek laid open
by one, and three of the crew were more or less wounded, one by a
barbed reed, which cost Dr. Strang the greatest trouble to extract,
and perceiving that the strangers were taking to flight emboldened
the pursuers who came so close that they were endeavouring to reach
the side plates and chains.
"Depress the guns to port and starboard, fire wherever these devils
are thickest, and blaze away the small-arm men," cried Captain
Talbot, whose face was streaming with blood.
The savages, their canoes huddled close together, jostling and
crashing side by side, were now nearly all within pistol-range: thus
the effect of the double broadside, together with a sputtering fire
from the breechloading rifles over the gunnel, had a terrific effect
upon them. The simultaneous roar of the 9-pounders burst like
thunder over the waters of the bay; for a brief space the vessel was
shrouded in smoke, and amid it the crew could hear that the defiant
war-yells had given place to those of terror, rage, and agony.
As the light smoke curled up through the rigging, or went ahead with
the wind, and the guns were drawn in for reloading, a scene of
terrible devastation became visible. Many of the canoes were dashed
to pieces and floated in fragments on the water, clutched desperately
by hands that had relinquished the bow, the spear, or the war-club.
Other canoes were riddled and sinking with all on board. Scores of
black heads were bobbing about like fishermen's floats, and all
around the _Amethyst_ the clear blue water of the bay was streaked
with blood.
The groans and gurglings of the wounded and dying who floated about
were somewhat heart-sickening.
"Cease firing the guns," cried the Captain, "but pick off any
scoundrel within range of the small arms."
Thus from the waist and quarter on both sides a desultory fire was
maintained; most deliberate were the aims taken at any black head
that appeared, for the crew had been thoroughly alarmed and
exasperated. Just as the ship got clear of the bight or little bay,
and the wind began to freshen, a most singular act of retribution
took place.
As the guns and ports were being made fast, Reeve Rudderhead
chanced--for what reason or by what impulse he knew not--to look over
the side, when he perceived just beneath him a savage crouching in
the main chains dripping with blood from a wound in his throat, and
while hopeless of mercy, fearing to trust himself to the water while
the deadly rifles were in activity over his head. Finding himself
discovered, quick as thought, with deadly and unerring hand, he
launched a spear at the first mate's head, and leaping into the water
was seen no more.
The lance, which had a small barbed head, went right through the two
cheeks of Mr. Rudderhead, who uttered a howl of rage and anguish, as
he rushed back fairly "spritsail-yarded," as the sailor's said, and
with his mouth so full of blood that he was soon speechless and
well-nigh choked, for a labial artery had been cut, and when Dr.
Strang removed the lance, by first sawing off its head, the
hæmorrhage was so great that the crew began to think--if they did not
precisely hope--that the wounded man would "slip his cable."
The wounds were dressed, a good horn of grog was next given him, and
he was tucked into his berth, where, doubtless, his reflections would
be of a somewhat mingled character. His visage had received a double
wound, which, though he had not much beauty to mar, would render him
unpleasant to look upon for the remainder of his life. He had no
compunction for his treacherous conduct to Derval, even in the least
degree, and he was chiefly occupied in surmising whether he had
killed him outright, or if the savages were--like most of the South
Sea islanders--cannibals, what they might do if they found him dead
or alive; and, lastly, whether Mrs. Hampton would "come down
handsomely" on learning that she was--as her letter had it--rid of
him; then he savagely cursed his present plight, and lay growling on
his pillow, while the breeze freshened and sail was made on the ship,
and ere night fell upon the sea Turtle Island was out of sight.
And now to record the retribution referred to!
The arrow-wounds of Captain Talbot and others progressed most
favourably under Dr. Strang's skilful treatment; but whether it was
that the blood of Rudderhead was in an unhealthy state, or that the
spearhead had been poisoned, it was difficult to discover, as the
hurts he had received, so far from healing, grew daily worse and
worse. His agony increased till it drove him to madness; he could
neither eat nor drink. His face swelled up and became discoloured
until he was something frightful to look upon, and times there were
when his groans, prayers, and imprecations rang through the whole
ship, and chilled the very souls of the men in the watches of the
night.
To Dr. Strang it was soon evident that he was dying; but he had much
vitality in him, and died hard, in his latter hours raving of the
scuttled ship or the stowaway, of Derval Hampton, and many other
persons and events. The wind was blowing a heavy and increasing
gale, and the _Amethyst_ was scudding under close-reefed topsails, in
a perilous and chopping sea, when Rudderhead passed away, clutching
the Captain's hands, as if he could retain him in this world, and
passed from it, impenitent for the past, yet hopeless of the future;
and the fiat of the doctor was that the ship could not be too soon
rid of his remains.
At that crisis the brevity of even a funeral at sea was dispensed
with, and he was thrown overboard to leeward, into the trough of an
angry midnight sea, with four 9-pound shot at his heels--buried
precisely as he had buried the poor stowaway boy, without a prayer,
finding a grave "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown."
As if his departure had been awaited for by the spirit of the storm,
the latter lulled rapidly, and, when day broke, the cheerful cry of
"Land ahead!" announced that the bold and rocky south-west cape of
Tasmania was only ten miles distant, and bearing north-east, with the
mountains, snow-capped ate that season, in the back-ground.
Next day saw the _Amethyst_ working through D'Encastreaux's Channel,
sixteen miles eastward of it, to her safe anchorage off Hobart Town,
from whence the mail took home the intelligence of Derval Hampton's
fate on Turtle Island. The fight with the natives there formed a
passing newspaper paragraph, and, so far as he was concerned, there
was an end of it.
When Greville Hampton--that sorely-changed man, whose god had become
gold--heard of his eldest son's miserable fate, "some natural tears
he shed," as memory went back to the little golden-haired boy that
was wont to nestle at Mary's knee, in the little cottage which was as
much a thing of the past as herself. Master Rookleigh Hampton heard
of it with perfect philosophy, as became, he thought, a lad of his
years; and Mrs. Hampton, as in duty bound, put on, for as brief a
period as decency required, a most becoming suit of mourning. But
there was one who, when he read of the event while glancing over the
newspaper, really sorrowed for Derval--Lord Oakhampton, who, when he
looked at his happy little daughter in her budding beauty, and
thought of what might have been, and how nearly he lost her, could
not but regret the untimely fate of the brave young sailor to whom he
owed her life and safety, and said much to her on the subject that
made the gentle girl feel deeply.
Four more years passed on, and the name and existence of Derval
Hampton became almost forgotten in his father's house, or was,
perhaps, remembered chiefly by his nurse, old Patty Fripp.
By that time Rookleigh, strangely precocious, had become--in his
sixteenth year--almost a man ere boyhood was past, and during that
part of his career, he showed indeed how "the child is the father of
the man." Greedy, avaricious, like Mr. Ralph Nickleby (in _his_
youth) he was wont to lend to his companions and schoolfellows
halfpence to be repaid by pence, and so forth; and his disposition
was further largely leavened with cruelty, which seemed born in him,
and bade defiance to all remonstrance. Servants, horses, dogs, and
even insects felt its virulence, and when Mr. Asperges Laud spoke
reprehensively on the subject, his mother would merely urge that "he
was just like other boys," and that all boys are cruel. And already
in his sixteenth year, by the influence of companions, though selfish
and avaricious to a degree, he, through the medium of billiards,
cards, and a betting-book, was utterly wasting the time during which
he was waiting for the rent-roll which his mother assured him must
one day be his. He was tall, well-made and well-featured, for both
his parents were handsome, but the expression of his face,
particularly of his shifty green eyes--for they were less
golden-hazel in tint than those of his mother--proved unpleasant to
all who knew him, and indicated a great latent spirit of evil and
malevolence.
In the succession of his tutors, in the society with which he
mingled, and in all his surroundings, Rookleigh Hampton had a
thousand advantages that the unfortunate Derval had never known, yet
with them all he did not eventually make a particular figure amid the
circle in which he moved.
Though lavish enough in his expenditure upon himself, and even on
those who flattered him, ministered unto him, and made life lively
and pleasant by pandering to his weaknesses, the leading features of
his character were gross selfishness and avarice or acquisitiveness,
all of which he seemed to have inherited from his mother, or through
the force of his father's latter thoughts, and were thus, to the
manner, born in him.
As when poor Derval sailed on his fatal voyage, Greville Hampton
might be found daily in his luxurious library, settling mortgages,
signing contracts, adjusting ground-rents, buying up land and old
manor-houses to remodel or remove for new ones--up to the eyes among
deeds and papers, with old Mr. Stephen De Murrer, the family
solicitor, a denizen of Gray's Inn, who about this time began to
exert himself anew in the peerage claim of his lucrative employer,
and eventually visited Lord Oakhampton, at his house in Tyburnia, on
the subject.
Proud and haughty by nature, though a scrupulously well-bred and most
aristocratic-like man, his lordship could be very cold and repellent
to those he disliked; thus his reception of the stout and deliberate
old lawyer, when the latter was ushered into the stately drawing-room
overlooking the park, was neither soothing nor encouraging.
"You are a bold fellow, Mr.--oh--Mr.----"
"De Murrer," said the lawyer, bowing.
"Yes--a bold fellow, sir, to come to me personally on this subject,
of which I admit having heard before--a claim to my hereditary
peerage by this whilom spendthrift--obscure beggar, and latterly
successful speculative builder! Absurd, sir! The matter has no face
upon it--won't hold water," continued Lord Oakhampton, scornfully;
"and anyway, I beg to refer you to my solicitors at Gray's Inn."
"If, my Lord--if the assumption that your great ancestor was summoned
by mistake to the House of Peers, in the reign of Queen Anne, is
proved--and it is also proved that the real heir was then in
existence--the heir from whom my client is descended--what then, my
Lord?"
Mortification, exasperation, and pride made the haughty heart of Lord
Oakhampton thrill painfully, and he listened to this, and much more
that the little lawyer had to advance, as one in a dream. The flies
buzzed about the flowers in a magnificent jardiniere; a French clock
ticked monotonously on the mantelpiece; and the busy life of London
outside, went on as a ceaseless stream; but he felt as if all this
evil were about to happen, not to himself, but to someone else, in
the confusion and irritation of his mind.
"We shall suppose this peculiar claim made good and clear in law,
Mr.--Mr.----"
"De Murrer," suggested the lawyer, blandly.
"What would be the result?"
"Can you ask me?" said Mr. De Murrer; "most calamitous to your
Lordship, I assure you."
"In what way, sir?"
"What way?"
"Don't repeat my words, sir!"
"With the title would go lands and estate, plate,
pictures--everything, even to your household effects!"
Lord Oakhampton grew pale--very pale, yet less at the thought of
himself than of his daughter, for the world was all before her yet.
Rallying a little, he said:--
"You cannot think, Mr. De Murrer, that I will yield without a
struggle--and a desperate one too!"
"Unquestionably not, my Lord; only----"
"Only what?" he asked, impatiently.
"With the solid and simple proofs we----"
"Proofs that must be submitted to the legal acumen and most searching
analysis of my law advisers!"
"Indubitably, my Lord; yet the dates are, fortunately for us, not
remote ones."
"Indeed!"
"Your Lordship's great-grandfather Derval, to whom a great mass of
the estate came by marriage with the Mohuns, was called to the Upper
House in the year of the Union with Scotland, 1707, and sat in the
first British House of Lords, as the direct heir of Derval, Lord
Oakhampton, who was forfeited under Edward IV., but was restored by
Henry VII. for his service against the King of Scotland; yet your
great-grandsire was so summoned in ignorance that his eldest brother,
who had quarrelled with his family, was not dead, but was married,
and settled in Bermuda, where he became ancestor, in the third
degree, of Greville Hampton, now of Finglecombe."
"Intolerable dry-as-dust stuff this!" exclaimed Lord Oakhampton, his
pride and passion rising again. "Do you imagine that I am an entire
committee of privileges, to listen to all this twaddle, and that the
title that has come to me, through a long line of stainless
ancestors, is to be disturbed by the outrageous pretensions of an
obscure colonist's grandson. Moreover, sir, do you think that I am
also unaware how men of your trade make it their business to rake up
such claims if they can, and assume to guide the destinies of the
rich and noble, as the means of bringing money to their own coffers?"
To this somewhat injurious speech, the little lawyer only shrugged
his shoulders, and smiled deprecatingly, as he replied:
"I can easily understand, and well pardon, your Lordship's natural
irritation at the prospect all this action-at-law involves; the loss
of rank and position--wealth and political influence; your daughter,
at her very entry into life and society, reduced, like yourself, to
the condition of a commoner; the newspaper comments--the nine days'
wonder of London; the sneers of the once servile, and the mockery of
the malevolent, and of all who take a cruel delight in strange
reverses of fortune; but I would beg of you to think over the matter
to be contended; for the mere announcement that not only was your
title about to be contested, but your property litigated, would bring
any creditors you have, like a swarm of hornets on you."
Mr. De Murrer now took his hat and departed, certain that this
Parthian shot was the heaviest and sharpest he had fired; and sooth
to say, my Lord Oakhampton felt and knew it to be so!
His alarm, however, and infinite anxiety, rather died away when
delays ensued consequent to the disappearance or alleged death of
Derval, and still more by the sudden demise of Greville Hampton, who
was found lifeless at his desk one afternoon, when at his usual task
of calculating and speculating.
The bulk of all his fortune he left by will to Rookleigh, while Mrs.
Hampton was handsomely provided for during her life. The sum of £500
per annum was set apart for Derval, in case he was ever heard of; if
not within a given time, it reverted to Rookleigh.
So Greville Hampton was dead, and Rookleigh stood at the head of his
grave as chief mourner; but he was not laid by Mary's side in the
pretty little churchyard where for ages, yea since Saxon times, "the
rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." No, no; Mrs. Hampton took
care of that; so he was deposited in the new and pretentious
mausoleum of Cornish granite, in the fashionable cemetery of "the new
and rising watering-place of Finglecombe," where a special spot was
reserved for herself.
In the matter of the peerage claim, Mrs. Hampton would have left
nothing undone, of course, to urge Mr. De Murrer in advancing the
interests of her well-beloved son Rookleigh; but just about the time
of her husband's death, something occurred which led to a change in
her mind, or to indifference on the subject, and this "something"
proved to be tidings of--Derval!