After striving for half a year to do my duty as a hermit Signor, I found myself, one dreary morning, fingering my pistols gloomily, and fitting a small bullet into my ear. My thumb caught in the guard of the Signor's locket, and jerked it up my waistcoat. It was the same which the poor old man had pressed to his dying lips. There was Lily's hair and Harry's, and a tiny wisp of down since added, belonging to baby--name unknown. Looking at them and seeing how Lily's bound them together and to me, I felt ashamed of my cowardly gloom, and resolved to quit myself like a man in my duty towards the three. I rode at once to Prato, and persuaded Count Gaffori to come and live at the tower. Like his old friend the Signor, he had only himself and his lovely daughter to think of; but unlike Signor Dezio he had lost nearly all his paternal property, through political troubles. Therefore it was for him no little comfort and advantage to be placed at the head of a household again, and restored to some worldly importance. Nevertheless, his sense of honour was so nice and exacting, that I thought I should never succeed in bringing him to my views; and indeed I must have failed but for his daughter's assistance. A very sweet elegant girl she was, and she had been a great friend of my Lily's. If I could ever have loved again, I should have loved that maiden: but the thing was impossible.
The old Count promised to come and settle at Veduta tower--which name, in light days, I had corrupted into "Vendetta"--and living there to assume the management of the estates, in trust for my lost infants, as soon as his arrangements could be made. I saw nothing that need have delayed him a day; however, he declared that he must have a month to get ready, and he was plainly a man whom nature meant not to be pushed. So I employed the interval in having my dear old "Lilyflower" overhauled at Marseilles, coppered, and thoroughly painted. I could not bear to alter our little love-boat, as my darling called it, even in outward appearance; but like our love she had laboured through many a tempest; unlike it, she needed repairs. However, I saved from the painter's brush our favourite quarter-deck bench, whereon through the moonlight watches my Lily seemed still to recline.
And so my life for some years wandered on, a worthless, unsettled, forlorn existence, only refreshed at intervals by return to the scenes of past happiness. If I had really wronged Lepardo Della Croce, he could hardly have wished for a better revenge. But in truth I had never wronged him. Even if I had never come near his betrothed, it is quite certain she would not have accepted him. And he, by his own desertion, had left her free to choose.
Late in the autumn of 1812, when I had abandoned all hope of ever recovering my little ones, except by one of those eddies of Providence, which we men call accidents, and in which I place my confidence to this hour, at that season, I say, I landed at Gibraltar, being wind-bound in the straits. We were making for Lisbon, where I was to ship some English watches, guns, and fine cutlery for Ajaccio. What a loss of rank for the "Lilyflower," to turn her into a trading smack! Well, I could not see it so; and I am sure her late mistress, who with all her sweet romance was an excellent hand at a bargain, would have thought it far more below my dignity for me to sponge on our children. There was plenty of money in hand at Veduta tower; but having retired from stewardship, I did not feel myself justified in drawing upon my children. Therefore, and for the sake of the large acquaintance and great opportunities gained, I had renewed my connection with the firm of Green, Vowler, and Green. Somehow, I could not bear to revisit the shores of England; otherwise I am sure that with the knowledge I now possessed of the Mediterranean ports, and a house of such standing and enterprise to back me, I should quickly have made my fortune. My vessel, moreover, was much too small for the fruit-trade, even if I could have lowered her to an uncleanly freight; but she was just the craft for valuable goods in small compass. I knew the Corsican fondness for arms and first-rate cutlery; and the tools the poor Signor Dezio meant to astonish me with, certainly did astonish me by their wonderful badness. True, the material was good, but all the waters of the Restonica will not convert a hammer into a handsaw. Although hardware was not at all in his line of business, Peter Green most kindly undertook to send me a cargo of first-rate Sheffield and Birmingham goods, by a return fruit-schooner. These, consigned to his Lisbon agent, I could fetch away, as I pleased, or wanted them. Having arranged with a shrewd merchant of Ajaccio to take my goods wholesale, and save the dignity of all the Vogheni from haggling, I had already made six trips, and in spite of the most tyrannical douane perhaps in all the world, I as a Corsican, importing goods in a Corsican bottom, had cleared very nearly three hundred per cent. on my outlay. We were now on our seventh voyage, to reship the last of the second English consignment, when a violent gale from the west met us right in the teeth, and we were forced to bear up for the anchorage. A first-rate sea-boat the "Lilyflower" was, although she had been built for racing, and for two or three years had beaten all competitors, whenever there was wind enough for a cat to stand on the sheets. But one hot June day she got beaten in a floating match, when the lightest bung went fastest, and her prig of a "noble owner" sold her in disgust, and built a thing that drew as much water as a nautilus. In her he was happily upset, and could hardly find a sheet of paper to hold on by. Knowing some little about yachts, from my pool and reach experiences, I bought the famous racing cutter at about a quarter her value; and even in these, her olden days, she could exhibit her taffrail to the smartest fruit-clipper--the name was then just invented--that ever raced for the Monument. Her register was fifty tons, but she carried eighty.
Landing at Gibraltar, I kept clear of my countrymen, not that I dislike them, but because--well I cannot tell why; and strolled away to the Spanish and Moorish quarters.
It was a windy evening, and in front of a low refreshment house some sailors and Spanish girls were dancing. A squabble arose among them; something I think it was about a young girl's dress. Knives were drawn, and two men were stabbed in less than the time I am speaking. I just saved the life of one, just saved it by half an inch. A fine-looking Spaniard lay under a Moor, who had tripped him up in their quick way. The point of the knife had flashed through the Spaniard's shirt and his flesh was cut, before the swing of my stick--upwards luckily--had jerked the Moor off his body. If I had struck downwards, or a millionth part of a second later, the blade would have stood in the heart. But I knew those fellows by this time. The Moor lay senseless from the quick upper-cut on his temples, and the knife was quivering where the impulse had failed it.
Now if Petro and I held deliberate choice--"proairesis" Oxford calls it--not to be turned into knife-sheaths, our only chance of developing into action that undeniable process of "nous," was to be found in the policy, vulgarly called "cut and run." At a shrill signal, from ship and from shore, the Moors came swarming silently and swiftly. Their yellow slippers and coffee-coloured legs seemed set upon springs by excitement. Some of the Spaniards stood bravely by us, and with their aid we hurried the wounded man into our boat, and pushed off just in time. Unlike the Corsican peasants, our pursuers carried no fire-arms, and before they could get any, we were at safe distance.
Having sent for an English surgeon, we kept the poor sailor on board the yacht, until he was quite out of danger. We Britons are not, as a general rule, an over-grateful race; we hate to be under an obligation, and too often illustrate the great philosopher's saying, that the doer feels more good will than the receiver of a kindness. Moreover, the Spaniards, in the neighbourhood of the Rock, could hardly be expected to love us, even if we were accustomed, which it is needless to say we are not, to treat them with decent courtesy. Therefore I was surprised at the deep and warm gratitude of this wounded man. A thing that enhanced his debt to me--for life, in my opinion, is very little to owe--was that he loved a young girl, the one over whom they had quarrelled, and he was about to marry her.
Discovering who I was, for he knew nothing of me at first, he saw that he could be of no little service to me. The only obstacle was a solemn oath; but from this, he believed, he could soon obtain release. With an Englishman's honest and honourable repugnance to any breach of faith, I was long reluctant to encourage this absolution. But the thought of my helpless children, robbed of their inheritance, and, still worse, of a father's love, and dependant on the caprice of a superstitious villain, this, and the recollection of my desolating wrongs, overpowered all scruples. And is it not a wiser course, and more truly Christian, to port the helm than to cross the bows of another man's religion, at any rate so long as it be Christian also, though frogged in a pensioner's coat?
Being duly absolved--for which he would not allow me to pay--the Spanish sailor told me all he knew. He had been Lepardo's mate, on many a smuggling run, and in many an act of piracy off the coast of Barbary. But he had never liked his captain, no one ever did; though all the crew admired him as the cleverest man in the world. After the felucca was sold and her crew dispersed, the mate had followed for a while the fortunes of Lepardo. He told me things about him which I knew not how to believe. However, I will not repeat them, because they do not seem to bear upon my story. The name of my little girl he could not remember, for he was not at the christening, and she was always called the baby. Being a good-natured man he took kindly to the children, and told me anecdotes of them which brought the tears to my eyes.