Indeed, the last words spoken that evening by Don Augustino were to this effect: “Send a courier to Praya and let the boy be brought here immediately. I must see him once more, and I haven’t many hours to live.”
But succor came unexpectedly to the upright knight, the succeeding morning.
It was his custom to pace a quay, looking seaward every dawn, in anxious hope of the appearance of the missing ship, the others having already made harbor at Praya and elsewhere; and for the first time he saw a sail on the northwestern horizon. Some hours later Padilh himself, boarded the vessel and was surprised beyond measure to find his countess and her protegée on board. His gratification, however, was even greater, and so he told her, on hearing the somewhat vague account of the object of this voyage.
“It was a madcap enterprise,” he said, smiling, “but the end is undoubtedly good; I would have sent for Doña Viola, if there had been the least probability of her arriving in time.”
A speech which greatly reassured Doña Hermosa, who had been considering during the voyage, what good reason she could offer her lord, for sanctioning the expedition, and had found with dismay there would be none forthcoming. As ladies generally do they had laid their hearts together in the first instance, instead of their heads, and mistook sentiment for conviction, after their usual fashion.
With a more disturbed mind, the knight listened to the recital of the shipwreck, and subsequently cross questioned the old woman accompanying them, who made no favorable impression. “I don't like her,” he told his countess; “she sheds too many crocodile tears, over a disaster, which to only one person concerned, can appear in any other light, than a cessation of pain. I have cautioned her to keep out of sight for the present, as the knowledge would assuredly kill Don Augustino.”
It was necessary to break the news of her father’s situation, and its antecedents to poor Viola, who by imagining the occurrence of all manner of evils during the few past weeks, had arrived at a state of mind not entirely unprepared for any thing, and the two ladies mingled their tears freely together, while Don Pedro returned to prepare his associate for the meeting. Little preparation was needed in this quarter, the dying man’s thoughts being occupied by a single object. Who of us can fix a bound to the justice of Heaven, and blasphemously call all beyond it harsh exercise of omnipotent power. It seems to me even retribution, that this soldier who had prided himself above all things, on his honor and the world’s applause, should die without one scrip of either, if what was conceded in acknowledgement of his tardy confession be excepted, and from compassion had, step by step, arrived at such a state of infatuation for the witness of his passionate pride at St. Quentin, that natural affection for his own offspring seemed almost wholly stifled, and the ignominious fate of his accredited son, gave occasion to scarce any emotion. People are apt to attribute such perverseness to want of sanity, much as a coroner’s jury gives in a like verdict in cases of suicide; yet Inique was as collected as you or I, and his weakness merely physical. The man’s nature had received a wrench in youth, and the tree retained the twist, only shifting the direction of its growth as it worked around. If he had lived long enough, he might have been more penitent or less, nearer a saint or more openly a sinner. How many mercies, and how many lies, our lives will example at the last great day, none of us living can compute.
The soldier was, therefore, not much agitated by the sobs of his daughter, but without agitation, life was fast ebbing now, and in accordance with his promise, Padilh brought Hilo from his prison for a final interview. That young gentleman had been whiling away the time at dice, and left the captain in no good humor at the interruption to his run of luck.
“Why am I brought here?” he asked after a supercilious glance around. “Is avenging an injury so uncommon? If this man had not withheld my dues he would not have received his own as you see.”
“Wretched young man,” the dying maître-de-camp said feebly, rather than sternly, “I had hoped to learn in the haste of the trial, some error had been made, and that it was not from your hand this ball came.”