Leonard Lindsay ;

by Angus B. Reach

‘But, señor,’ said Joseffa, and all my nerves tingled as I heard her voice, ‘you are of a very cruel and vindictive nation; for when my poor father’s great bark, the Trinidada, was taken, all the sailors were struck down and murdered upon the deck.’

To this I answered, that I understood that the Trinidada had been captured by Louis Montbars, a Frenchman; that I had myself been prisoner in the hands of that captain; and that it was only by a dangerous flight that I escaped being sold into slavery by him in the isle of Tortugas.

This revelation all at once seemed to alter the position in which I stood in the favour of the ladies, who, up to that time, although they had, as I understood, received a good report—but from whence I could not guess—of my conduct before the alcaide—were yet partly prepossessed against me, as a heretic and a pirate of that class which had brought so much desolation on their house. So, presently, they desired to hear somewhat of my adventures, which I told them very faithfully—the narration occupying the greatest portion of the day. While I sat speaking, my eyes often encountered the dark orbs of Joseffa fixed on mine. Then would we both drop our glances to the ground, and my voice, despite myself, would falter, and a red blush would spring over the bright olive cheeks of the young Spanish lady, and her feather-fan would flutter more violently than before.

That day I dined with my hosts. In the cool of the evening I walked with them in the garden; but at the board, and beneath the orange-trees, I saw but one face and one form. In my sleep the star-like eyes of Joseffa haunted me; her voice rang unceasingly in my brain. When I ventured to take her hand, mine trembled as though I were a palsied old man—when she left me, the salt of existence seemed to have lost its savour. I went and came musing. I took no pleasure in aught save what related to her. In short, I had fallen certain fathoms deep in love.

And, verily, it was not wonderful. I lived in a state of existence so new, that it seemed to me, then, and seems to me still, a Dreamland—a long, sweet unreal vision. Consider what I was—a rude mariner, ever-brought up in the coarse company of rough and unpolished men, with hands fit to swing a lead-line, or tie a reef-point; with a voice good for hailing the fore-top in a gale of wind; but with neither hands nor voice trained for the soft requirements of a lady’s bower.

I laugh, with a melancholy mirth, now, when I think of what my uncouthness must have been. Here was I a rough and round sailor—a fellow who had been kicked about in Scotch brigs, and buccaneering small craft all my days—to whose tongue the lingo of the forecastle came as my mother-speech; who had hardly slept but in a swinging hammock—ate but of lobscouse and sea-pie—sang but roaring sea-ballads, or thought but of storms and calms, and ships and rigs, with now and then a waking dream of old boyish days, of the Royal Thistle and the Balwearie Burn, or mayhap the memory of an ancient Scots legend, or a warm gush of feeling when I pondered on my old mother, by the ingle-nook in the fisher’s cottage, near Kirkleslie Pier. Such was I then, such my very nature, body and soul, and yet now did I find myself the lover of a gentle Spanish lady, walking with her through garden bowers, communing with her under shady verandahs, talking of things I hardly dreamt of even as lurking in the bottom of my soul. And she neither jeered at my port, nor flouted my rough speech. She loved to hear of my country, and when I told her our gallant tales of the Bruce, of how he was crowned King of Scotland, crowned not in an abbey, by no holy hand of priest, and without the ancient symbol of the sovereignty of the realm, but in a wilderness, with a circlet of gold hastily wrought out, and by the hands of a famous heroine, dear to the heart and memory of a Scot, for ever—the Countess of Marr—when, I say, I told such tales, Joseffa would hang, as it were, upon my lips, and then saying that Spain also had its great heroes and mighty men of old, would draw her fingers strongly across the thrilling strings of her guitar, and with flashing eye and widened nostril, sing the glorious ballads of her nation, of the battles between the Spanish chivalry and the Paynim Moors, of the conquest of Alhama, and the life and death of Diaz de Bivar, the peerless Cid.

And so flew weeks away. I know not to this day how the Señora Moranté observed not what was passing in our minds. She had taken me into great favour, and consulted me much upon family matters, and upon her design to cross the ocean and return to Alicant; and often she hinted mysteriously at the noble husband her daughter would espouse after her return to Spain. This suitor I knew to be in Carthagena, I knew he ofttimes visited the house. Yet, upon these occasions, the mother managed somehow adroitly to receive him when I was not by. From Joseffa I could learn but this, that the gallant favoured by her mother was not loved by her; that she received him but to humour the fancies of her parent, who was but a weak, though good kind of woman; and finally, she said to me, in low tones, for her eyes were looking closely into mine, and her breath was warm upon my cheek,

‘Do not regard him—Leonard, my own sailor, I will marry only you.’

But a week before these sweet words were spoken, we had (the custom is of Scotland) broken together a crooked coin. Joseffa wore one half of it attached by a braid round her neck and next to her heart, and I wore the other.

So, as I have said, weeks flew by; sometimes I thought sadly of my comrades, and wondered upon what seas the gallant Will-o’-the-Wisp was sailing; but these were only passing moments. My life was a long sweet dream, checkered only by such considerations as I have mentioned, and by doubtings and misgivings touching the strange suitor who persecuted Joseffa with his importunities.