“Then tell me what, or how; as I have promised to do all in my power to make the voyage agreeable to you.”
After a pause of a minute, during which the invalid seemed struggling with repressed emotion, the mantle was suddenly thrown aside, the recumbent figure sprang from the sofa, and Nina stood before him! “Yes,” she said; “you have promised—and my ears drank in the promise: for it, and for you, I have abandoned home, country, kindred,—what do I say,—I have abandoned nothing; for you are to me home, kindred, country, every thing! Dear, dear Ethelston! this moment repays me for all I have suffered.” As she spoke thus, she threw her arms round his neck, and hid her blushing face upon his breast.
Ethelston was so completely taken by surprise, that for a moment he could not utter a syllable. Mistaking his silence for a full participation in her own impassioned feelings, and looking up in her face, her eyes beaming with undisguised affection, and her dark tresses falling carelessly over her beautiful neck, she continued, “Oh, speak—speak one gentle word,—nay, rather break not this delicious silence, and let me dream here for ever.”
If Ethelston was for a moment stupified, partly by surprise, and partly by the effect of her surpassing loveliness, it was but for a moment. His virtue, pride, and honour were aroused, and the suggestions of passion found no entrance to his heart. Firmly, but quietly replacing her on the sofa she had quitted, he said, in a voice more stern than he had ever before used when addressing her. “Nina, you have grieved me more than I can express; you have persisted in seeking a heart which I frankly told you was not mine to give. I see no longer in you the Nina whom I first knew in Guadaloupe,—gentle, affectionate, and docile,—but a wild, headstrong girl, pursuing a wayward fancy, regardless of truth, and of that maidenly reserve which is woman’s sweetest charm. Not only have you thus hurt my feelings, but you have brought a stain upon my honour,—nay, interrupt me not,” he added, seeing that she was about to speak; “for I must tell you the truth, and you must learn to bear it, even though it may sound harsh to your ears. I repeat, you have brought a stain upon my honour,—for what will your respected father think of the man whom he received wounded, suffering, and a prisoner—whom he cherished with hospitable kindness, and who now requites all his benefits by stealing from his roof the daughter of his love, the ornament and blessing of his home? Nina, I did not think that you would have brought this disgrace and humiliation upon my name! I have now a sacred and a painful duty before me, and I will see you no more until I have restored you to the arms of an offended father. I hope he will forgive you, as I do, for the wrong that you have done to both of us. Farewell, Nina.” With these words, spoken in a voice trembling with contending emotions, he turned and left the cabin.
Reader! have you ever dwelt in Sicily, or in any other southern island of volcanic formation? If so, you may have seen a verdant spot near the base of the mountain, where the flowers and the herbage were smiling in the fresh beauty of summer,—where the luxuriant vine mingled her tendrils with the spreading branches of the elm,—where the air was loaded with fragrance, and the ear was refreshed by the hum of bees and the murmur of a rippling stream: on a sudden, the slumbering mountain–furnace is aroused—the sulphurous crater pours forth its fiery deluge, and in a moment the spot so lately teeming with life, fertility, and fragrance is become the arid, barren abode of desolation. If, reader, you have seen this fearful change on the face of nature, or if you can place it vividly before your imagination, then may you conceive the state of Nina’s mind, when her long–cherished love was thus abruptly and finally rejected by the man for whom she had sacrificed her home, her parents, and her pride! It is impossible for language to portray an agony such as that by which all the faculties of her soul and body seemed absorbed and benumbed. She neither spoke nor wept, nor gave any outward sign of suffering, but, with bloodless and silent lips, sat gazing on vacancy.
Fanchette returned, and looked on her young mistress with fear and dread. She could neither elicit a word in reply, nor the slightest indication of her repeated entreaties being understood. Nina suffered her hands to be chafed, her temples to be bathed, and at length broke into a loud hysteric laugh, that rang through the adjoining cabin, and sent a thrill to the heart of Ethelston. Springing on deck, he ordered Jacques to go below, and aid Fanchette in attending on her young lady; and then, with folded arms, he leaned over the low bulwark, and sat meditating in deep silence on the events of the day.
The moon had risen, and her beams silvered the waves through which the schooner was cutting her way; scarcely a fleeting cloud obscured the brightness of the sky, and all nature seemed hushed in the calm and peaceful repose of night. How different from the fearful storm now raging in the bosom of the young girl from whom he was divided only by a few inches of plank! He shuddered when that thought arose, but his conscience told him that he was acting aright, and, indulging in the reverie that possessed him, he saw a distant figure in the glimmering moonlight, which, as it drew near, grew more and more distinct, till it wore the form, the features, and the approving smile of his Lucy! Confirmed and strengthened in his resolutions, he started from his seat, and bid the astonished Cupid, who was now at the helm, to prepare to go about, and stand to the eastward. Jacques was called from below, the order was repeated in a sterner voice, the sails were trimmed, and in a few minutes the schooner was close–hauled and laying her course, as near as the wind would permit, for Guadaloupe.
While these events were passing on board The Seagull, Captain L’Estrange had returned in the frigate to Point à Pitre. His grief and anger may be better imagined than described, when he learnt the flight of his daughter and of his prisoner, together with the loss of his yacht and two of his slaves.
Concluding that the fugitives would make for New Orleans, he dispatched The Hirondelle immediately in pursuit, with orders to discover them if possible, and to bring them back by stratagem or force. He also wrote to Colonel Brandon, painting in the blackest colours the treachery and ingratitude of Ethelston, and calling upon him, as a man of honour, to disown and punish the perpetrator of such an outrage on the laws of hospitality.
Meanwhile the latter was straining every nerve to reach again the island from which he had so lately escaped. In this object he was hindered, not only by baffling winds, but by the obstinacy of Jacques, who, justly fearing the wrath of his late master, practised every manœuvre to frustrate Ethelston’s design. But the latter was on his guard; and unless he was himself on deck, never trusted the helm in the coxswain’s hands.