This, indeed, was a powerful plea to favour the impatience of Harleigh; a plea far more weighty than one urged by the Admiral; that she would be married without further parleying, lest people should be pleased to take it into their heads, that she had been the real wife of that scoundrel commissary, and was forced, therefore, to go through the ceremony of being his widow.
Called, now, to the kind and splendid repast, the Admiral insisted that Juliet should preside at his hospitable board; where, seated between her revered Bishop and beloved brother, and facing her generous uncle, and the man of her heart, she did the honours of the table to the enchanted strangers, with glowing happiness, though blended with modest confusion.
When the desert was served, the joyous Admiral, filling up a bumper of ale, and rising, said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I shall now make free to propose two toasts to you: the first, as in duty bound, is to the King and the Royal Navy. I always put them together; because why? I hold our King to be our pilot, without whom we might soon be all aground; and, in like manner, I hold us tars to be the best part of his majesty's ship's company; for though old England, to my seeming, is at the top of the world, if we tars were to play it false, it would soon pop to the bottom. So here goes to the King and the Royal Navy!'
This ceremony past; 'And now, gentlemen and ladies,' he resumed, 'as I mortally hate a secret; having taken frequent note that what ought not to be said is commonly something that ought not to be done; I shall make bold to propose a second bumper, to the happy espousals of the Honourable Miss Granville; who, you are to know, is my niece; with a very honest gentleman, who is at my elbow; and who had the kindness to take a liking to her before he knew that she had a Lord on one side, and, moreover, an Admiral on t'other for her relations; nor yet that she would have been a lady in her own right, if her father had not taken the long journey before her grandfather.'
This toast being gaily drunk by every one, save the blushing Juliet, the Admiral sent out his grinning sailor, with a bottle of port, to repeat it with the postilions.
'Monsieur the Bishop,' continued the Admiral, 'there's one remark which I must beg leave to make, that I hope you won't think unchristian; though I confess it to be not over and above charitable; but I have always, in my heart, owed a grudge to my Lord Granville, though his lordship was my brother-in-law, for bringing up his daughter in foreign parts; whereby he risked the ruin of her morals both in body and soul. Not that I would condemn a dead man, who cannot speak up in his own defence, for I hold nothing to be narrower than that; therefore, Mr Bishop, if you have any thing to offer in his behalf, it will look very well in you, as a parson, to make the most of it: and, moreover, give great satisfaction both to my niece, the Honourable Miss Granville, and to this young Lord, who is her half brother. And I, also, I hope, as a good Christian, shall sincerely take my share thereof.'
'An irresistible, or, rather, an unresisted disposition to procrastinate whatever was painful,' answered the Bishop, in French, 'was the origin and cause of all that you blame. Lord Granville always persuaded himself that the morrow would offer opportunity, or inspire courage, for a confession of his marriage that the day never presented, nor excited; and to avow his daughter while that was concealed, would have been a disgrace indelible to his deserving departed lady. This from year to year, kept Miss Granville abroad. With the most exalted sentiments, the nicest honour, and the quickest feelings, my noble, however irresolute friend, had an unfortunate indecision of character, that made him waste in weighing what should be done, the time and occasion of action. Could he have foreseen the innumerable hardships, the endless distresses, from which neither prudence nor innocence could guard the helpless offspring of an unacknowledged union, he would either, at once and nobly, have conquered his early passion; or courageously have sustained and avowed its object.'
'It must also be considered,' said Harleigh, while tears of filial tenderness rolled down the cheeks of Juliet, and started into the eyes of Lord Melbury, 'that, when my Lord Granville trusted his daughter to a foreign country, his own premature death was not less foreseen, than the political event in which her property and safety, in common with those of the natives, were involved. That event has not operated more wonderfully upon the fate and fortune, than upon the minds and characters of those individuals who have borne in it any share; and who, according to their temperaments and dispositions, have received its new doctrines as lessons, or as warnings. Its undistinguishing admirers, it has emancipated from all rule and order; while its unwilling, yet observant and suffering witnesses, have been formed by it to fortitude, prudence, and philosophy; it has taught them to strengthen the mind with the body; it has animated the exercise of reason, the exertion of the faculties, activity in labour, resignation in endurance, and cheerfulness under every privation; it has formed, my Lord Melbury, in the school of refining adversity, your firm, yet tender sister! it has formed, noble Admiral, in the trials, perils, and hardships of a struggling existence, your courageous, though so gentle niece!—And for me, may I not hope that it has formed—'
He stopt; the penetrated Juliet cast upon him a look that supplicated silence. He obeyed its expression; and her mantling cheek, dimpling with grateful smiles, amply recompensed his forbearance.
'Gentlemen, both,' said the Admiral, 'I return you my hearty thanks for letting me into this insight of the case. And if I were to give you, in return, a little smattering of what passed in my own mind in those days, I can't deny but I should have been tempted, often enough, to out with the whole business, if I had not been afraid of being jeer'd for my pains; a thing for which I had never much taste. Many and many a time I used to muse upon it, and say to myself, My sister was married; honourably married! And I,—for I was but a young man then to what I am now,—a mere boy; and I, says I to myself, am brother-in-law to a lord! Yet I was too proud to publish it of my own accord, because of his being a lord! for, if I had, the whole ship's company, in those days, might have thought me little better than a puppy.'