The day before he was to leave, Derval went alone to her grave, to read again the words—how well he knew them!—on the little cross at the head of the dear mound, and to take farewell of her, as it were—that turfy mound, to him the most hallowed spot on earth, yea, hallowed as that on which the Angel of God once alighted; and waves of feeling seemed to swell painfully up in his little heart as he turned slowly to leave the spot, for years—perhaps for ever.
Often in the lonely watches of the night, under the glory of the southern skies, or in dark and stormy hours, when the bleak wind blustered aloft and bellied out the close-reefed topsails, when giant waves came thundering from windward to wash the deck and gorge the lee-scuppers, making the stout ship reel like a toy in the perilous trough of the sea, did the sailor boy's thoughts fly back to that peaceful grave and his farewell visit there.
And now the last night came that Derval was to spend under the roof of his father, and for a time the heart of the latter really did go forth to him; the present wife was almost forgotten; dead Mary came back to his soul, and seemed to take her place again. Fain would he have gone with his boy to London, to have seen him off, or into safe hands on board his future home; but Mrs. Hampton said no—she could not and would not be left alone just then.
How tenderly old Patty wept over her "darling's things," and folded them carefully and neatly for the last time, and packed his little portmanteau, yearningly as his own mother would have done, and thought truly, with a great sob, that had she lived he would not now have been "going into the world as a sailor boy." And for that dead mother's sake she kissed him many times, and with her old scissors snipped off a lock of his once golden curls, that were gradually turning to rich dark brown like his father's; but Derval had the crisp hair that indicates character, firmness, and decision of purpose. As he was to depart in the early morning, he kissed and hung over his brother, "little Rook," as he called him, whom he was not permitted to waken; and the episode of the lonely boy doing this moved the heart of his father; but Mrs. Hampton looked coldly on, for hers was hard as flint to him and cold as iron.
At last it was all over, and in the early hours of the next morning he found himself, as one in a dream, in the train for London, and leaving fast behind every feature of the landscape with which he had been familiar from infancy. Already Finglecombe, with all its groves and little church tower had vanished, and now Bideford, with its wide and airy streets that shelve towards the water, came and went as the train swept on, and after that, all his wistful eyes looked on was new to him.
It was an inauspicious morning on which to begin the world, being a dull and raw one in February; the rain fell aslant the grey sky, and reedy fens and lonesome marshes, where the bittern boomed, were full of water, and the rooks were cawing in the leafless elms as they built their nests. The orchards were leafless, and the furrows in the ploughed fields were like long narrow runnels filled with water; but despite all this, the novelty of Derval's situation, a certain sense of freedom, and being the lord of his own proper person, kept up his spirits for a time.
The last hand in which his hand had lingered was that of Mr. Asperges Laud, and in fancy he seemed still to see his kind and earnest face, his Roman collarino, broad hat, and long-skirted coat, as he stood on the platform and gave a farewell wave, like a wafted blessing, after the departing train.
The railway journey was precisely like any other; he saw many places new to him, Taunton, with all its pleasant villages and beautiful orchards, and Salisbury with its wonderful spire, among others, and after a run of two hundred and twenty miles his train ran clanking into Waterloo Station. After traversing miles of streets (which he thought would never come to an end), about ten at night, and with a heart beating almost painfully with excitement, young Derval found himself in the mighty wilderness of London, and surrounded by more people than he thought the world contained, and an appalling bustle, strange lights and sights and sounds, and where all men seemed to be engaged in a race with time and for bare existence.
By the guard who had him in charge he was taken to an hotel; excitement rendered him incapable of eating, and weary with intense thinking he went supperless to bed. Sooth to say, he felt very friendless and miserable. He dearly loved his father, despite his later abstraction and coldness, and already he was longing to see his face again, and the face, too, of Patty Fripp, who had been a mother to him. He had left home but that morning, and already ages seemed to have lapsed since then.
The thoughts of Robinson Crusoe, Captain Cook, Peter Simple, and so forth, failed now to keep up his spirits in the unutterable loneliness of his condition; already he wept for the home he had so lately quitted and loathed, and from which he had been literally driven; but he had no anger at any one there now—not even Mrs. Hampton; and folding his hands, he repeated the prayers, from which mockery was soon to make him refrain when on board the good ship Amethyst.