THE LOVER
/Mr. Crosby’s/ bearing was marked upon his departure from Arwenack by
none of that exultation proper to the setting out of a young man who
regards the world as his oyster. Too much that he valued was being
left behind unsecured; and the Earl, he could not help admitting to
himself, had not been encouraging. But what youth desires, it believes
that it will ultimately possess. His confidence in himself and in his
star was restored and his natural buoyancy reëstablished long before
the journey was accomplished.
Travelling by roads which were obstacles to, rather than means of
progress, Sir John Killigrew and his young cousin reached London
exactly a week after setting out. There no time was lost. Sir John was
a person of considerable consequence, wielding great influence in the
West and therefore to be well received at Court. Moreover, some
personal friendship existed between himself and the Lord Admiral
Howard of Effingham. To the Admiral he took his young cousin. The
Admiral was disposed to be friendly. Recruits for the navy at such a
time, especially if they happened to be gentlemen of family, were more
than welcome. The difficulty was to find immediate employment for Mr.
Crosby. The Admiral took the young man to Deptford and presented him
to the manager of Her Majesty’s dockyards, that old-time slaver and
hardy seaman Sir John Hawkins. Sir John talked to the lad, liked him,
admired his clean length of limb and read promise in his resolute
young countenance and frank, steady blue eyes. If he was in haste for
adventure, Sir John thought he could put him in the way of it. He gave
him a letter to his young kinsman, Sir Francis Drake, who was about to
put to sea from Plymouth, though on the object of that seagoing Sir
John seemed singularly--perhaps wilfully--ignorant.
Back to the West went Gervase, once more in the charge of Killigrew.
At Plymouth they sought and duly found Sir Francis. He paid heed to
the strong recommendation of Hawkins’s letter, still greater heed to
the personality of the tall lad who stood before him, some heed also,
no doubt, to the fact that the lad was a kinsman of Sir John
Killigrew, who was a considerable power in Cornwall. Young Crosby was
obviously eager and intelligent, knew already at least enough of the
sea to be able to sail a fore-and-aft rig, and was fired by a proper
righteous indignation at the evil deeds of Spain.
Drake offered him employment, the scope of which he could not
disclose. A fleet of twenty-five privateers was about to sail. They
had no royal warrant, and in what they went to do they might
afterwards be disowned. It was dangerous work, but it was righteous.
Gervase accepted the offer without seeking to know more, took leave of
his kinsman, and went on board Drake’s own ship. That was on the 10th
September. Four mornings later, Drake’s maintop was flying the signal
‘up anchor and away.’
If none knew, perhaps not even Drake himself, exactly what he went to
do, at the least all England, simmering just then with indignation,
knew why he went to do it, whatever it might prove to be. There was a
bitter wrong to be avenged, and private hands must do the work, since
the hands of authority were bound by too many political
considerations.
In the North of Spain that year the harvest had failed and there was
famine. Despite the hostile undercurrent between Spain and England,
which at any moment might blaze into open war, despite Spanish
intrigues in which Philip II was spurred on by the Pope to exert the
secular arm against the excommunicate bastard heretic who occupied the
English throne, yet officially at least, on the surface, there was
peace between the two nations. England had more corn than she required
for her own consumption and was willing to trade it to the
famine-stricken Galician districts. But because of certain recent
barbarous activities of the Holy Office upon English seamen seized in
Spanish ports, no merchant ships would venture into Spanish waters
without guarantees. These guarantees had ultimately been forthcoming
in the shape of a special undertaking from King Philip that the crews
of the grain ships should suffer no molestation.
Into the northern harbours of Corunna, Bilbao, and Santander sailed
the ships of the English corn-fleet, there to be seized, in despite of
the royal safe-conduct, their cargoes confiscated, their crews
imprisoned. The pretext was that England was lending aid to the
Netherlands, then in rebellion against Spain.
Diplomatic representations were of no avail. King Philip disclaimed
responsibility. The English seamen, he said, were no longer in his
hands. As heretics they had been claimed by the Holy Office. To purge
them of their heresy, some were left to languish in prison, some sent
as slaves to the galleys, and some were burnt in fools’ coats at the
_autos-da-fé_.
To rescue even those who survived from the talons of the Holy Office
was beyond hope. It remained only to avenge them, to read Spain a
punitive lesson which she should remember, a lesson which, it was
hoped, would teach her to curb in future her zeal of salvation where
English heretics were concerned.
The Queen could not act in her own name. For all her high stomach and
for all the indignation which it is not to be doubted now consumed
her, prudence still dictated that she should avoid with mighty Spain
an open war for which England could not account herself prepared. But
she was willing enough to give a free hand to adventurers, whom at
need she could afterwards disown.
That was the reason of Drake’s setting forth with his twenty-five
privateer ships. That was the voyage on which Gervase Crosby went to
win his spurs in this new order of chivalry whose tilting-yard was the
wide ocean. It was a voyage that lasted ten months; but so eventful,
adventurous, and instructive did it prove that not in as many years of
ordinary sailing could it have offered a man a more generous schooling
in fighting seamanship.
They sailed first of all into the beautiful Galician port of Vigo at a
time when the grapes were being gathered for the vintage, labours
which their sudden appearance interrupted. And here Drake published,
as it were, his cartel; he made known, inferentially at least, the aim
and purpose of that imposing fleet of his. Of the Governor, who sent
in alarm to know who and what they were who came thus in force and
what they sought at Vigo, Drake asked to be informed whether the King
of Spain was at war with the Queen of England. When he was fearfully
assured that this was not the case, he asked further to be informed
how it happened, then, that English ships which had sailed into
Spanish harbour under the safe-conduct of King Philip’s word had been
seized and their owners, officers, and crews imprisoned, maltreated,
and slain. To this he received no proper answer. He did not press for
one unduly; he contented himself with inviting the Governor to
consider that English seamen could not suffer that such things should
happen to their brethren. After that he demanded water and fresh
provisions. There was also a little plundering, a mere ensample this
of what might be done. Whereafter, with refurnished ships, Sir Francis
sailed away, leaving Spain to conjecture in dismay and rage whither he
was going and to concert measures for forestalling and destroying so
endemonized an Englishman--_inglez tan endemoniado_.
November saw him at Cape Verde, where he missed the plate fleet upon
which no doubt he had intentions. Its capture would have indemnified
England for the loss of the confiscated corn. He turned his
attentions, instead, to the handsome town of Santiago, possessed it,
sacked it, and might have been content with that but for the barbarous
murder and mutilation of a poor ship-boy, which revived memories of
some Plymouth sailors lately murdered there. The town was fired, and
Sir Francis sailed away leaving behind him a heap of ashes to show
King Philip that barbarity was not the prerogative of Spain and that
talion law existed upon earth and always would exist as long as there
were men to enforce it. Let His Most Catholic Majesty learn that
Christianity, whose particular champion he accounted himself, had for
corner-stone the precept that men should do unto their neighbours as
they would have their neighbours do unto them and, conversely, not do
unto their neighbours what was detestable when suffered by themselves.
Lest this King, who was so passionately concerned in the eternal
salvation of others, should himself miss salvation through an
inadequate appreciation of that great principle, Sir Francis meant to
bring it strongly to his notice by further illustration.
The fleet spent Christmas at St. Kitts, and, having there refreshed
itself, went to pay its respects to San Domingo, that magnificent city
of Hispaniola, where as a monument to the greatness of Spain the
grandeurs of the Old World were reproduced in palaces, castles, and
cathedrals. Here things, without being difficult, were not quite so
easy as at Santiago. The Spaniards turned out horse and foot to resist
the landing of the English. There was some fighting, some cannonading,
in the course of which the Spaniards killed the officer commanding the
particular landing-party of which Gervase Crosby was a member.
Gervase, eager and audacious, acting upon impulse and without any sort
of authority, took his place, and skilfully brought up his men to join
the vanguard under Christopher Carlile which carried the gate and cut
its way into the town.
For his part in this, Gervase was afterwards commended by Carlile to
Drake, and by Drake confirmed in the command which he had so
opportunely usurped.
The castle meanwhile had surrendered, and the English put the city to
ransom. Its treasure had already been removed out of it, and all that
Drake could extract from the Governor was twenty-five thousand ducats,
nor did he succeed in extracting this until he had reduced nearly all
its marble splendours to ruins.
After San Domingo came Cartagena, where a tougher resistance was
encountered, but subdued, and where again young Gervase Crosby showed
his mettle when he led the men of his recent command to scale the
parapets and engage the Spanish infantry at point of pike. The
captured city saved itself from the fate of Santiago and San Domingo
by a promptly forthcoming ransom of thirty thousand ducats.
That was enough for the purpose; enough to show King Philip that the
activities of the Holy Office were not meekly to be suffered by
English seamen. Destroying in passing a Spanish fort in Florida,
Drake’s fleet set sail for home and was back in Plymouth by the end of
July, having proved to all humanity that the mightiest empire of the
world was by no means invulnerable, and having apparently made war
inevitable by throwing down a gauntlet which the hesitating King of
Spain could hardly ignore.
The Gervase Crosby who came back to Arwenack was a very different
person from the Gervase Crosby who had gone forth a year ago.
Adventure and experience had ripened him, dangers faced and conquered,
and an increase of general knowledge, which included a fair command of
Spanish, had given him a calmer self-assurance. Also he was bronzed
and bearded. He came in confidence to Trevanion Chase, conceiving that
the capture of the Lady Margaret would prove now a trifling matter to
one who had been at the capturing of Spanish cities. But the Lady
Margaret manifested no enthusiasm for his deeds, when, for her benefit
and in her presence, he recounted them to the Earl, who had no wish to
hear them. When his lordship had heard them despite himself, he curtly
pronounced Drake a shameless pirate, and, in the matter of the hanging
of some monks at San Domingo, a murderer. His daughter agreeing with
him, Master Gervase departed in a dudgeon too deep for expression that
his glorious deeds upon the Spanish Main should be so contemptuously
dismissed.
The explanation lies in the fact that the Earl of Garth had been
brought up in the Catholic Faith. He had long since ceased to practise
the Christian religion in any of its forms. The narrow intolerance of
priestcraft of whatever denomination had revolted him, and study and
brooding, and Plato in particular, had brought him to demand a nobler
and wider conception of God than he could discover in any creed
alleged to have been revealed. But underneath his philosophic outlook
there lingered ineradicably an affection for the faith of his youth
and of his fathers. It was purely sentimental, but it vitiated his
judgment on those rare occasions when he permitted himself at all to
turn his attention to the problems that were afflicting England.
Unconsciously, imperceptibly, this had created at Trevanion Chase, the
atmosphere in which Margaret had been reared. In addition to this, and
probably in common with the majority of the gentry of her
day--certainly so if we are to believe those who kept King Philip
informed of the state of public opinion in England--she could not
exclude from her heart a certain sympathy with the Queen of Scots, now
languishing in an English prison and in peril of her life. The Lady
Margaret might be imbued with some of the widespread English antipathy
to Spain and resentment of its operations against men of her own
English blood; she might shudder at the tales of the activities of the
Holy Office; but all this was tempered in her by a disposition to
regard King Philip as a Spanish Perseus intent upon the deliverance of
the Scottish Andromeda.
Gervase’s angrily silent departure she observed with a smile.
Afterwards she grew thoughtful. Could the wound be so deep that he
would not come again? she wondered. She confessed frankly to herself
that she would be sorry if that were so. They had been good friends,
Gervase and she; and it was far from her wish that their friendship
should end like this. Apparently it was also far from Gervase’s wish.
He was back again in two days’ time, his indignation having cooled,
and when she hailed his appearance with a ‘Give you welcome, Master
Pirate!’ he had enough good sense to laugh, realizing that she no more
than rallied him. He would have kissed her according to the fraternal
custom which had grown up between them, but this she denied him on the
score of his beard. She could not suffer to be kissed by a hairy man;
she would as soon be hugged by a bear.
As a consequence of this assertion, he appeared before her on the
morrow shaved like a Puritan, which sent her into such an ecstasy of
mirth that he lost his temper, laid rough hands upon her and kissed
her forcibly and repeatedly in pure anger and just to show her that he
was master, and man enough to take what he lacked.
At last he let her go, and was prepared to be merry in his turn. Not
so the lady. She stood tense and quivering, breathing hard, her face
white, save for a red spot on each cheek-bone, her red-gold hair in
disorder, and flames in her vivid blue eyes. For a long moment those
eyes pondered him in silent fury. This and the outraged dignity which
he read in every line of her tall supple figure abashed him a little,
rendered him conscious that he had behaved like an oaf.
‘Faith!’ she said at last with ominous composure of voice, ‘you must
think yourself still in San Domingo.’
‘In San Domingo?’ quoth he, labouring to discover the inference.
‘Where you no doubt learnt to mishandle women in this fashion.’
‘I?’ He was scandalized. ‘Margaret, I vow to God…’
She, however, cared nothing for his vows and interrupted them. ‘But
this is Trevanion Chase, not a city conquered by pirates; and I am the
Lady Margaret Trevanion, not some unfortunate Spanish victim of your
raid.’
He was wounded and indignant. ‘Margaret, how can you suppose that I…
that I…’ He became inarticulate. Indeed, there were no words for it
that a lady could tolerate. And she, perceiving that she had found the
heel of her Achilles, turned the arrow in the wound to avenge herself.
‘Such ready expertness argues abundant practice, sir. I am glad to
know, even at the cost of the indignity, the quality of those
adventures which were left out of your brave narrative to my father.
As you boasted, sir, you’ve learnt a deal on the Spanish Main. But in
your place I shouldn’t practise in England what you learnt there.’
He read in her tone, as she intended that he should, a depth of
conviction against which he felt that protestations and arguments
would be idle. It would need evidence to dispel it, and where should
he find evidence? Moreover, she was no longer there to listen to
arguments. She had departed whilst he was still deep in his dumb,
bewildered mortification. Useless to go after her in her present mood,
he assured himself. And so he went home to Arwenack, trusting
dejectedly that time would efface the bad impression he had made and
modify the terrible assumptions to which he had given rise.
Time, however, was denied him. Before the month was out there came a
summons from Sir Francis recalling him to Plymouth. If he was a clumsy
lover, there is no doubt that he was a very promising seaman, as Drake
had observed, and Drake had urgent need of all such men. War was
coming. That was now beyond all doubt. A great fleet was building in
the Spanish dockyards, and in Flanders the Prince of Parma was
assembling a mighty army of the finest troops in Europe for the
invasion of England so soon as the fleet should be ready to cover his
passage.
Gervase went to take his leave of Margaret and her father. Lord Garth
he found as usual in his library, his gaunt, spare frame wrapped in a
bedgown, his head covered by a black velvet cap with ear-flaps, his
mind fathoms deep in scholarly speculation. The fiddling of Nero
during the burning of Rome seemed to Gervase a reasonably pardonable
trifle of conduct, compared with the Earl of Garth’s absorption at
such a time in the works of men who had been dead a thousand years and
more. To startle him out of this unpatriotic lethargy, Master Crosby
talked of the Spanish invasion as if it were already taking place. His
lordship was not startled. A man who is obsessed by the Platonic
theory that the earth, the sun, the moon, and all the visible heavenly
bodies are so much sediment in the ether, with a more or less clear
perception of all that this connotes, cannot be expected to concern
himself deeply with the fortunes of such ephemeral things as empires.
The traditions and duties of gentility imposed it upon him to
dissemble his impatience at the unwelcome interruption of his studies
and to utter a courteous Godspeed which should straightly put an end
to it.
From his lordship, Gervase went in quest of her ladyship. It was a
fine autumn day, and he found her taking the air in the garden with a
company of gallants. There was that handsome fribble Lionel Tressilian
who was too much at Trevanion Chase these days for Gervase’s peace of
mind. There was young Peter Godolphin, a kinsman of Margaret’s, it is
true, but not of such near kinship that he might not aspire to make it
nearer. And there were a half-dozen other beribboned lute-tinklers,
stiffly corseted in modish narrow-waisted doublets, their trunks
puffed out with Spanish bombast. He descended upon them with his news,
hoping to dismay them out of their airy complacency as he had hoped to
dismay the Earl.
Ignoring them, he flung his bombshell at the feet of Margaret.
‘I come to take my leave. I am summoned by the Admiral. The Prince of
Parma is about to invade England.’
It made some little stir, and might have made more but for the
flippancy of young Godolphin.
‘The Prince of Parma cannot have heard that Mr. Crosby is with the
Admiral.’
It raised a general laugh, in which, however, Margaret did not join.
It may have been this little fact that lent Gervase the wit to answer.
‘But he shall, sir. If you have messages for him, you gentlemen who
stay at home, I will do my best to bear them.’
He would gladly have quarrelled with any or all of them. But they
would not indulge him. They were smooth and sleek, whilst Margaret’s
presence made him set limits on his display of the scorn they aroused
in him.
When presently he departed, Margaret went with him through the house.
In the cool grey hall she paused, and he stood to take his final leave
of her. Her eyes were very grave and solemn as she raised them to his
face.
‘Is it war, indeed, Gervase?’
‘That is what I gather from the letters I have had and the urgency of
this summons. I am to leave at once, the Admiral bids me. All hands
are needed.’
She laid a hand upon his arm, a beautiful tapering hand it was,
looking oddly white on the dark crimson velvet of his sleeve. ‘God
keep you, Gervase, and bring you safely back,’ she said.
It was a commonplace enough thing to say in the circumstances. But the
tone she used was a tone he had never heard in her voice before. It
should have heartened him, who normally was bold enough, and upon
occasion, as we have seen, almost overbold. He might have kissed her
then and had no reproach for it. But he couldn’t guess it, any more
than he could guess that not to take the advantages a woman offers is
an even worse offence than to take advantages which she does not
offer. So while his heart beat fast with hope at that gentle tone and
liquid gaze, it beat also with trepidation.
He gulped and stammered: ‘You… You’ll wait, Margaret?’
‘What else? Would you have me follow after you?’
‘I mean… You’ll wait for me; for my return?’
She smiled up at him. ‘I think it’s very likely, sir.’
‘Likely? Not certain, Margaret?’
‘Oh, certain enough.’ She had not the heart to rally him. He was going
on a business from which he might never return, and the thought made
her very tender, gave her almost a foretaste of the sorrow that would
be hers if he should be counted among the fallen. So she took pity on
his halting, and generously gave him the answer he lacked the courage
to demand. ‘It is not likely that I shall marry anyone else, Gervase.’
His heart bounded. ‘Margaret!’ he cried.
And then Peter Godolphin came mincing into the hall to inquire what it
was that kept her ladyship from her guests.
Gervase, wishing him in hell, was forced to cut short his
leave-taking. But he was content enough. He took the slim hand that
lay upon his sleeve and kissed it reverently.
‘Those words, Margaret, shall be as a cuirass to me.’ Upon which
poetical assertion, almost as if ashamed of it, he abruptly departed.