CHAPTER XXXI.
“Of that, and all the progress, more and less,Resolvedly more leisure shall express:All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.”All’s Well that Ends Well.
“Of that, and all the progress, more and less,Resolvedly more leisure shall express:All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.”All’s Well that Ends Well.
“Of that, and all the progress, more and less,Resolvedly more leisure shall express:All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.”All’s Well that Ends Well.
“Of that, and all the progress, more and less,
Resolvedly more leisure shall express:
All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,
The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.”
All’s Well that Ends Well.
Feliciana was taken to herfallucha, which immediately changed her course, and returned to Trinidad.
Lorenzo built a camp on the shore for the protection of his men, until he should be able to send a vessel to their rescue, and then began to traverse the island under the guidance of Jack Jimmy, whose excitability had now yielded to a melancholy and dull sombreness.
One evening the sun had set, the twilight was passing away, and gloom was settling over the forests, when Lorenzo, exhausted and fatigued, thought of going to ask shelter on a plantation, which he knew to be near athand, by the repeated crowings of cocks, that noisely vented their loud farewell-clarions to the departing day.
“Jack Jimmy, do you know who is the proprietor of the estate which I think we are approaching?”
“No, massa,” answered Jack Jimmy.
“Do you think they would give us shelter for to-night?” inquired Lorenzo.
“Yes, massa,” answered Jack Jimmy.
“Then will you endeavour to find your way to it?”
“Yes, massa.”
In about half an hour, Lorenzo and Jack Jimmy came out amidst a number of flourishing gardens, that lay smiling at the back of a village of labourer’s houses.
The two travellers quickly crossed there, and opened into a long lane that was shaded by tall tamarind and sappodilla trees.
An ecclesiastic was seen calmly pacing this umbrageous retreat, while his lips rapidly moved as he pored over the dark and riband-marked breviary, which he held open before.
The father was so wrapped up in what he was reading, that he did not perceive the two strangers until they had almost met face to face.
The priest started back, as he came on Lorenzo. “Mercy on us! the pirate officer!” he cried.
“What, what new deed is it, sir;” he said, after a pause: “which now tarnishes your soul again, and draws you to this peaceful and quiet retreat?”
“Pirate officer no longer, good father,” answered Lorenzo, “and I bring no outrage on your peaceful retreat. My spirit now itself requires too much calm to break it wherever it already exists.”
The priest folded his arms across his breast, and looked silently and sympathisingly on the unhappy man before him.
“My son,” he said, with a countenance that beamed with charity; “my son, there is one above that can relieve our bitterest woes. Seek consolation in the afflictions which, press upon your soul from His hand.”
“I am now in your power, good father,” said Lorenzo. “The schooner is wrecked on these shores; Appadocca is no more.”
“Is he dead?” cried the priest.
“Yes.”
The priest turned towards heaven, and prayed for the soul of the pirate captain.
“God forbid that I should ever refuse charity to theafflicted: come with me, sir, and my good patron will, I doubt not, afford you hospitality.”
The three persons walked up the lane, and discovered a comfortable planter’s house, that stood in an open space amidst a number of orange trees. They quickly approached the house; and Agnes, who was sitting at the open window enjoying the evening breeze, fell senseless to the ground, as she beheld Lorenzo.
“Accommodate the stranger as soon as possible,” said a fiery looking old man, whose gray hair floated over his shoulders, and fell over a large and turned-down collar, while the boots which had not crossed the threshold for many a day, still shone with heavy and immense silver spurs.
“Accommodate the stranger, and get him a guide as soon as possible,” he said, as soon as the priest told him of Agnes’s illness, and had no doubt expressed his own surmises.
The time for Lorenzo’s departure approached. He was informed that a guide and a mule awaited his leisure.
“I must see the master of the house,” he said.
The servant withdrew, and shortly afterwards conducted the officer into the presence of the old man, who stood up as well as he could, bowed, and asked Lorenzo to be seated.
“Sir,” said Lorenzo, speaking without any preliminaries; “your daughter and I love each other.”
“What, sir! mention my daughter!” cried the old man, furiously, without hearing any more. “Sir, the mule and guide are ready.”
But there was a softening balm even for the inflammable spirit of the old gentleman. He, like all other men, had the particular point by which he could be lead!
The pirate officer immediately disclosed that his real name was not Lorenzo, but St. James Carmonte; and that he was the lineal descendant of the Carmontes, who fell fighting for the Prince. He went on to explain that his people before him had vegetated in a number of corners all over Europe; but that he and the others that then survived had been eventually expelled from France at the epoch of the great revolution. That he had then taken to the sea, there to seek adventures; as he imagined he had been long-enough on the enduring side.
“What! the descendant of Carmonte,” cried the oldman, who was touched in a sensitive part: “Carmonte, whose fathers fought at the side of mine. How can you vouch this, sir?”
Lorenzo presented a ring.
“The word, sir.”
Lorenzo said something.
“Agnes, Agnes, come hither, Agnes,” vociferated the old man.
The young lady appeared. She was still pale and emaciated.
“Take her, take her, man,” cried the old cavalier. “May God bless you, and preserve you to see the day when the king shall enjoy his own again.”
The priest blessed the union, and Lorenzo, after disposing of Appadocca’s followers, lived happy in the retreat of the plantation.
Jack Jimmy served the officer of his young master with fidelity. A smile, however, was never seen more on his face; and when the winds howled more loudly than usual, the drops calmly fell from his now aged eyes.
In a certain city of Venezuela, Feliciana might be seen in her white veil, and her sombre dress, amidst the abodes of the heart-stricken and afflicted; she was known as the “Succouring Mother.” Twice a-year shemight also be seen on her pilgrimage to Trinidad, when she plucked the weeds from off his mother’s tomb, and tended the sea-grape tree that grew over the lonely grave ofEmmanuel Appadocca.
THE END.
LONDON: SAMUEL BIRD, PRINTER, BOW STREET, COVENT GARDEN.