“Why not, indeed. Ah, therein lies the root of all my bitterness! When I had finished my studies at Oxford and got my degree as a physician and chirurgeon in London, I found myself with a scanty portion of a thousand pounds. Yet had I none the less high hopes of carving my way to fame and fortune, as other men have done from still lower estate. This did I write to Sir William Romney, and in a packet I enclosed a letter to his daughter.
“Therein I told her anew what she knew of old, that I loved her. I asked her not to share the fortunes of a poor adventurer. I did but seek a pledge that she would grant me a year and a day, and a promise that if by that time I had aught of success to lay at her feet, she would look on my suit with favor.”
“It was done like thyself, Humphrey. What answer made she?”
“Answer! Oh, it makes me mad to think on’t! She might have said me nay, and yet I would have gone my way loving her like a knight of old, without hope of reward or return; but to be flouted and baited, and badgered and mocked, when I had offered her that poor thing, my heart—oh, it was ill done!”
The instinct of my body to keep pace with my restless and turbulent soul led me to stride up and down, striving to master the storm within me. When I took my seat again, Captain Chester drew me on to speak further.
“Perhaps,” he said, “the maid was but the mouthpiece of her father. I hear of him everywhere as a hard, cold man.”
“Oh! Ay, ay, ay,” I broke in, “I have said all that over and over to myself, like a madman, since ever I received Sir William’s cool note of dismissal, inclosing the daughter’s mocking lines; but whenever I would soothe my sore heart with the thought that she wrote it not of her own free will, my reason says: ‘’Tis false, and thou knowst it!’ She would brave a thousand fathers if she really loved, and her will was crossed. I know, of course, that her refusal jumped with her father’s wish.”
I was down for a week with that wretched James City fever. By day I shivered, and by night I burned with a consuming heat. Pory said it served me right that I, who had come hither hoping to fatten on the misfortunes of others, should myself fall a victim.
Thus he talked, like himself, and equally like himself he stayed by my bedside day and night, scarcely taking off his clothes, tending me as if I were a baby, and mixing doses of the bark, a sovran remedy, till he saw me well on the road to recovery.
My convalescence he cheered as he had cured my illness. One day (I was quite recovered then) my lively friend came bounding in, full of excitement.