The Knight of the Golden Melice: A Historical Romance

by John Turvill Adams

This young man was Miles Arundel. A year before Master Dunning and his daughter left England, he had come to the town of Exeter, near to which the Dunnings lived on their estate, and opened a studio as a landscape painter. It was not, however, until a month after his arrival, that he seemed at all decided as to his intentions, the time being spent in wandering over the beautiful country, and making occasionally a sketch; nor after he had offered his services to the public in a professional capacity did he work very diligently. Yet was it remarked that he was never in want of money; and the citizens of Exeter thought that he must get high prices for his pictures in London to warrant his expenditure.

Among the families to which he was introduced as an artist, was that of Edmund Dunning. Eveline was no indifferent sketcher herself, and accompanied her father one day on a visit to the rooms of Master Arundel. It is said that the young people blushed at the meeting, but however that may be, the blush was unobserved by Master Dunning.

So agreeable did the young artist make himself, that one visit led on to another, and he was invited to the house of Dunning, and soon found himself, he hardly knew how, on a familiar footing in his family, and giving lessons in painting to his daughter. Edmund Dunning had no intentions that any other lessons should be given, and it accordingly grieved him when he discovered the terms on which the young people stood to one another, and which their ingenuousness could not conceal. With this relation he had made himself acquainted as soon as he suspected it, by inquiring of Eveline, who frankly told him the whole truth. Arundel loved her, but dared not, on account of the distance that separated him from her father, make known his feelings. The father demanded of his child why she did not, at the beginning, check such aspiring thoughts, and whether it was proper to allow of the continuance of such a state of things. Poor Eveline could only reply with tears, and that she could not prevent Miles loving her, but confessed that she had done wrong, and promised to break off the intimacy.

"I am unacquainted with his family, which is probably obscure," said Edmund Dunning; "but were the blood of Alfred in his veins, he should have no daughter of mine so long as he favors the persecuting Church of England, which I know he does, notwithstanding his constant attendance at the meetings of the congregation, the reason whereof I now understand."

The promise which Eveline made to her father she kept, nor from that moment would she consent to see Arundel. He pleaded hard for a single interview, if only to take leave, and though her heart strongly took his part, she replied that she would not increase the reproaches of her conscience by advancing a step further in an intimacy which she had wrongly concealed from her father, and was disapproved by him. All intercourse between the lovers ceased from this time, and shortly after Arundel disappeared from the neighborhood.

But it was at the risk of her health that Eveline obeyed her parent. The rounded form began to become thin; the cheeks, in which red roses were accustomed to bloom, faded, and the lovely blue eyes lost their lustre. The anxious father noticed these signs with apprehension, and in the hope that new scenes and a change of climate might improve his daughter's health, hastened their departure.

Almost immediately on his arrival in the new world he formed an acquaintance with Spikeman, who used every effort to ingratiate himself into his confidence. So successful was Spikeman, that he persuaded Master Dunning to embark a considerable portion of his property in the business wherein Spikeman was engaged, and on the death of Dunning, which happened only six months thereafter, to appoint him the guardian of Eveline. But as the shadows of this world were settling on the eyelids of the dying man, the light of another and a better dawned upon his mind. The differences of opinion which had separated him from the friends of his youth and manhood, and the distinctions of rank, assumed less and less importance. He regarded with pity the sadness of his daughter, and determined that he would be no obstacle in the way of her happiness. He called her and his friend to his bed-side, and after kissing her pale cheek, gave his full consent to her union with Arundel, and made Spikeman promise to favor her wishes in all things. Having thus settled his worldly affairs, Edmund Dunning turned his face to the wall and gave up the ghost.

The tears of Eveline, left an orphan far away from the only spot which she considered her home, flowed bitterly at the loss of her father. He had been a gentle and sweet-tempered man, and an indulgent parent, and she thought of him with a grief and yearning affection, the pain of which the removal of the interdiction to her marriage with one whom she loved, served at first, but in a slight degree, to mitigate. But time had its usual effect. The swollen eyes of poor Eveline at last resumed their brightness; the color returned to her cheeks; her step became lighter, and she looked forward wish pleasure to the time when she should give her hand to one who already had her heart.

But Spikeman was far from sympathizing with her views, nor had he any intention to keep his promise. At the time when he inveigled Edmund Dunning into entrusting property to his hands, his affairs were in an embarrassed condition, and he needed then and now the funds to save him from ruin. And again, hypocrite though he was in some respects, he was not altogether so. A man of violent passions, and unscrupulous in their gratification, deluding himself with the idea that having once tasted the sweets of justification, (as he fancied,) his condition was one of safety, and that the sins which reigned in the members of his body could not reach his soul, he was yet zealous for the faith which he had adopted, and devoted to the interests of the colony. It was to this devotion mainly that he owed his dignity of Assistant. As a Puritan, he was, or at least believed himself to be, opposed to a marriage between Eveline and Arundel on the same principle which had at first influenced her father, and been corrected only by the dawning light of eternity. Shortly before the decease of his friend, Spikeman had frequently, though never in the presence of Eveline, combated Dunning's resolution with which he had been made acquainted, but in vain. Had he dared, he would have resorted to one or more of the elders to exert their potent influence, but this would have been to betray the secret, and in case of their failure, might have placed himself in an unpleasant predicament. He concluded it was better to lock it up in his own breast, and so remain master of his actions and of her destiny, at least till her majority, which lacked two years before attainment. During that time, his circumstances might change—she might decease—no one knew what was in the future.

It is not, therefore, surprising that the Assistant did not write to England to inform Edmund Dunning's relatives of his death; much less that he did not inform Arundel of the fact. Months slowly dragged by, and yet the expecting girl received no word from home. At first Spikeman accounted for it by the length of time required to make the passage between the countries; afterwards by the supposition that the letters might have failed, or intimating that Arundel had probably changed his mind. A cold pang, as if she had been stabbed by an icicle, pierced the bosom of Eveline at this cruel suggestion, and she felt utterly desolute. What, however, frightened and depressed her spirit, only roused the indignation of Prudence Rix, her attendant from England, who even then had a sharper insight into the character of the Assistant than her mistress.