Among the letters for post on the hall-table, he saw one in Mrs. Hampton's handwriting, addressed to "Reeve Rudderhead, Esq., Mate, ShipAmethyst, West India Dock, London."
"Who the dickens is he?" thought Derval; "we have no such man, and it is improbable that there are two ships of the same name in the same dock."
He inquired of Mrs. Hampton who this Rudderhead was.
"He has succeeded Mr. Girtline in your ship."
"As first mate?"
"Yes."
"Who told you of this?"
"My aunt Rookleigh, by letter."
"And about what are you writing to him?" asked Derval, so abruptly or suspiciously, that she coloured with annoyance and said:
"That ismybusiness; besides, he is my cousin-german, and was an admirer of mine in my girlish days," she added, and left the room.
Soon after Derval was in the library, penning a letter to Hal Bowline, and while doing so, the appearance of his own name on the blotting-pad, several times, in Mrs. Hampton's handwriting, attracted his attention, and very naturally excited his curiosity. The blotting-paper was new, yellow tinted, and clean otherwise, and anxious to know in what way she was interested in his affairs, he deemed himself quite entitled to examine into the matter; and he could make out, by the address which was thereto, that the fragments he could decipher were part of his step-mother's letter to her nautical cousin, Mr. Reeve Rudderhead, and though unconnected, they ran thus:—
"... so Derval, you see, is ... y, and for the old love you bore me ... good round sum, rid ... him in any way ... lad and evil ... see him no more, again ...."
Derval read these strange fragments between him and the light again and again, till he fairly committed them to memory. He could not make out the mystery, or why she should be writing about him in any way. He quite failed to understand it, nor could he exactly speak of it; but he had good reason to remember it when several degrees of latitude lay between him and Finglecombe.
He felt that his visit there had been a mistake; that his father was all but alienated from him by a step-mother who wickedly hated him; that his step-brother was a greedy, sullen, and most unlikeable youth. Thus, more than ever, was his loving heart thrust back upon itself. Why was all this? What had he done beyond the crime of being the eldest son of his father, that his own flesh and blood should treat him thus?
He had but one unalloyed satisfaction during his visit. He received the Albert Medal for saving the life of Lord Oakhampton's daughter, and as he looked on it, his heart reverted again to the bright little maid in that isle of "Vexed Bermoothes," and he wished that theAmethysthad been bound for that region again, instead of Van Dieman's Land, or Tasmania as we name it now.
So the hour of his departure came, and with heedlessness and mortification curiously mingling in his heart, he once more quitted his home, on the very day preceding one which Mrs. Hampton had fixed for a brilliant dinner-party, and when she knew that Derval must, without fail, be on board his ship.
London: Printed by W. H. Allen & Co., 13, Waterloo Place, S.W.