“But, rat me, sir,” cried Foster in bewilderment, “tis too generous—'pon honour it is. I can't consent to it. No, rat me, I can't.”
“I have told you how great a boon you will confer. Believe me, sir, to me it is worth twice, a hundred times the value of those trinkets.”
“You shall have my horses, sir, and my note of hand as well,” said Foster firmly.
“Your note of hand is of no value to me, sir. I look to leave England to-morrow, and I know not when I may return.”
Thus in the end it came about that the bargain was concluded. Cynthia's maid was awakened and bidden to rise. The horses were harnessed to Crispin's coach, and Crispin, leaning upon Harry Foster's arm, descended and took his place within the carriage.
Leaving the London blood at the door of the Suffolk Arms, crushing, burning, damning and ratting himself at Crispin's magnificence, they rolled away through the night in the direction of Ipswich.
Ten o'clock in the morning beheld them at the door of the Garter Inn at Harwich. But the jolting of the coach had so hardly used Crispin that he had to be carried into the hostelry. He was much exercised touching the Lady Jane and his inability to go down to the quay in quest of her, when he was accosted by a burly, red-faced individual who bluntly asked him was he called Sir Crispin Galliard. Ere he could frame an answer the man had added that he was Thomas Jackson, master of the Lady Jane—at which piece of good news Crispin felt like to shout for joy.
But his reflection upon his present position, when at last he lay in the schooner's cabin, brought him the bitter reverse of pleasure. He had set out to bring Cynthia to his son; he had pledged his honour to accomplish it. How was he fulfilling his trust? In his despondency, during a moment when alone, he cursed the knave that had wounded him for his clumsiness in not having taken a lower aim when he fired, and thus solved him this ugly riddle of life for all time.
Vainly did he strive to console himself and endeavour to palliate the wrong he had done with the consideration that he was the man Cynthia loved, and not his son; that his son was nothing to her, and that she would never have accompanied him had she dreamt that he wooed her for another.
No. The deed was foul, and rendered fouler still by virtue of those other wrongs in whose extenuation it had been undertaken. For a moment he grew almost a coward. He was on the point of bidding Master Jackson avoid Calais and make some other port along the coast. But in a moment he had scorned the craven argument of flight, and determined that come what might he would face his son, and lay the truth before him, leaving him to judge how strong fate had been. As he lay feverish and fretful in the vessel's cabin, he came well-nigh to hating Kenneth; he remembered him only as a poor, mean creature, now a bigot, now a fop, now a psalm-monger, now a roysterer, but ever a hypocrite, ever a coward, and never such a man as he could have taken pride in presenting as his offspring.