“You say well, Richard,” he replied. “When civilization lies inert, and the organized mass either helps or does not hinder the daily outrage to humanity, it is time for every gentleman to take upon himself the vow which bound the antique chevaliers to suffer no injustice, and to succor the oppressed and helpless. That is the time to try what redress lies in the individual arm. That is the hour of chivalry.”
There was a long pause, in which a subtle flame of enthusiasm, born from the colloquy, beat in the veins of all but Harrington. In him there was no enthusiasm, but cold and sad determination.
“But, John,” said Emily, at length, “you will not go on this desperate adventure alone?”
“Yes. Alone,” he replied.
“You shall not!” she exclaimed, with flashing eyes and her lit face aglow, stopping the fiery answer just bursting from the lips of Wentworth. “Richard shall go with you, and I wish I had twenty lovers to send on such an errand.”
Harrington looked at her with a faint color on his melancholy countenance. As for Wentworth, he sank back in his chair, flushed and throbbing with boundless pride in Emily.
“Emily,” said Harrington, “think! You yourself suggested the danger of this expedition, and there is danger, for if we are opposed, it will be by sailors, who are not slow to handle knives in a quarrel. Now think coolly. It would be dreadful if Richard were brought home to you dead.”
She looked at him with a paling countenance, proud, though the tears gathered in her lustrous eyes.
“If he died in trying to save a poor man from a life worse than the worst death,” she answered with a quivering lip, “I would think of him as gone to our Savior’s rest, and bear my sorrow like a joy till I died and found him with God. Say no more, Harrington. He shall go with you.”
“That I will,” cried Wentworth, as springing to his feet, and leaping to the large fauteuil in which sat Emily, he threw himself by her side, and clasped her in his arms. “Ay, marry will I go, and wo to the nautical mind that shall conceive the idea of assaulting me, after the speech I have heard from you, Emily, for on that depraved and abandoned sailor will I execute, with Berserker fury, all that Bagasse has taught me, and I swear it by this kiss!”