Deepdale

“ There seemed a tension in the air—as if something was going to snap. Doubtless you have often felt it—a sensation as though pins and needles were pricking you all over. As though you wanted to scream—to cry out—against an uncertain sensation that gripped you. ”

“ Still stronger grew this desire, when one day he overheard his step-mother say:
"Greville dear, we must not have him with us long—with his sea manners and ways; his oaths, no doubt, will come in time, and the mode of treating the servant-maids too; for even they, and the ladies he may meet, are so different to all he is accustomed to."
"Who sent him to sea?" asked her husband curtly, for her remarks were alike unjust and untrue; but though they had a circle of rather fashionable friends now, Derval was conscious that none were invited to meet him ”

“ In the joy of seeing you, I almost forgot it," she continued, sobbing heavily.
"To-morrow—oh heavens, Clara! And I! next day for a ship—a few days whole seas will be between us! We sail for the Cape."
"It is awful to think, Derval, that we may pass out of each others' lives, and be as if we never met—never known each other!"
"Why—how?" he asked regarding her anxiously.
"What can such a secret and forbidden love as ours, with such a separation, lead to? a separation without a place or period for meeting again, and without a means of hearing of each others' lives, safety, or happiness." ”

“ By and by the Deephaven warehouses will fall and be used for firewood by the fisher-people, and the wharves will be worn away by the tides. The few old gentlefolks who still linger will be dead then; and I wonder if some day Kate Lancaster and I will go down to Deephaven for the sake of old times, and read the epitaphs in the burying-ground, look out to sea, and talk quietly about the girls who were so happy there one summer long before. I should like to walk along the beach at sunset, and watch the color of the marshes and the sea change as the light of the sky goes out. ”

“ There's hardly a pretty wench—well, you know, Durrell. Engaged to marry his cousin, too!"
"Poor young woman."
"She is no fool. Has a thousand a year of her own, and a mouth like a man-trap. She will lead Mr. Benham a godly, straight-up-and-down life. Meanwhile the youngster must not be allowed to hang round here."
Durrell picked up a book, glanced at it, and then threw it back upon the table. His austere face had a kind of hard pride.
"A scholar need not be an owl, De Rothan."
"My good sir, did I suggest it? But sweet Nance has a lonely life here. Not much youth comes her way. ”

“ Whether DeBar killed them, or led them on to a death for which his hands were not directly responsible, we have never known. The fact remains that they went out after De Bar—and died. I am not superstitious, but I am beginning to think that DeBar is more than a match for any one man. What do you say? Will you go with Moody, or—”
“I'll go alone, with your permission,” said Philip.
The inspector's voice at once fell into its formal tone of command.
“Then you may prepare to leave at once,” he said. “The factor at Fond du Lac will put you next to your man. ”

“ Derval, a chubby child of six, with rosy dimpled cheeks, his mother's snowy skin, and his father's deep dark eyes, with a wealth of golden curls that rose crisp and in upward spouts from his forehead, grew fast, while the care of his boyish education devolved wholly on the delicate Mary, for Greville, though educated at Eton and finished off at Oxford, was too erratic by nature, and with all his love of their offspring, too impatient to share in the task of tutelage ”

“ It was evening when the party reached the headquarters at Cambridge.
A faint afterglow of the brilliant sunset still lingered, but the roadway leading to the entrance of the house was dusky with the shadows of coming night, which almost hid the great trees on either side.
The air about was filled with the faint hum of camp life. Occasionally a voice could be heard, or the neighing of a horse,—figures of men were discernible here and there, and a sentry was pacing before the steps of the mansion.
"Here we are, Dot," said her brother; and dismounting, he helped her from her horse. ”

“ The rector dived for his snuffbox and vented his feelings disguisedly therein.
“I agree with you, I agree with you, sir,” he said, “she’s a fine lass; the more’s the pity, the more’s the pity. God knows what will become of her in the future!”
“Sugg,” said Jeffray, “I hope to save her yet.”
When the rector had gone with a hearty grip of his muscular fist, Richard made his way to the library and found Peter Gladden waiting for him, suave and subservient. The tenor of the interview astonished the butler not a little. ”

“ There were formerly five families who kept their coaches in Deephaven; there were balls at the governor's, and regal entertainments at other of the grand mansions; there is not a really distinguished person in the country who will not prove to have been directly or indirectly connected with Deephaven. We were shown the cellar of the Chantrey house, and the terraces, and a few clumps of lilacs, and the grand rows of elms. ”

“ In parenthesis, a warning may be given that anyone who wanders from east to west along the south coast of Devon will be wearied beyond measure by the numbers of rooms, banks, porches, and gardens, shown as the identical spot 'where Sir Walter smoked his first pipe.' Dr Brushfield, in an exhaustive article on 'Raleghana,' counts only six places, but they reach from Penzance to Islington, and one is in Ireland.
After the last dreary voyage, rendered fruitless by the contemptible double-dealing of James I, and during his trial, Sir Walter's self-possession and courage showed at their best. ”

“ The flint and steel rang against each other, and sparks dropped on to the scorched linen in the tinder-box. A minute passed before Durrell got one of the sulphur matches alight. He shaded it with his hand, and carried the flame to the candle.
"That's better, Durrell. What a howling, wind-swept hell this house of yours is! I suppose Miss Nance will play us no tricks? She suspects nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Wakefulness! Shall we put it down to Mr. Benham?"
Anthony Durrell's room was crowded with books. A truckle-bed stood in one corner, looking meagre, thin, and austere. ”

“ As Derval entered the cabin, it was lighted only by a swinging lamp in the skylight, where, with the tell-tale compass, it vibrated to and fro with every roll of the ship, and as he made his way towards the berth, where the first mate lay fast asleep with his clothes on, all ready to turn out, he became aware that Rudderhead was in one of his drunken slumbers, for he had a store of spirits in his own baggage, and often imbibed so much as to endanger the ship when in his care. ”

“ Dale. “I have written your name in it—‘Pauline Dale, from her affectionate father.’ It is yours now, and it will be yours in the future. If you like to leave it on the shelf in my study, I shall not object, but it is yours to do what you like with.” 112
He sighed profoundly, and turned away with his lip trembling.
“Good gracious!” Miss Tredgold was heard to exclaim. Then she spoke to Adelaide.
“Run into the house and bring out a cup of coffee. The precious man gets queerer each moment. What a present to give the child!” ”

“ I share your hope and wish, Greville, that Derval may be rich, and great too, but I would rather that he were good than either!"
"Rich he shall be, I hope, before I die," exclaimed Greville Hampton; "and I have strange dreams at times, Mary, that seem the harbingers of something to come," he added gravely, and in a lower tone, "Wealth——"
"What need of wealth, dearest? we can save, out of our little pittance for Derval; he is the only chick we have to scrape for," she interrupted him, and took his passive hands caressingly within her own. ”

“ As for his growing inheritance, sailor like, he set no store on it then, and actually cared little, if he always had a ship, whether every shilling of it went to Rookleigh, the failings in whose disposition and character seemed to soften by time and distance, and often in lone watches of the night did Derval think he would try to love him, when the selfish little Rook of the nursery became, like himself, a man. ”

“ She was desired by the doctor to cease from exertion, to abstain from all household work, and to drink plenty of good wine, to procure which Greville Hampton deprived himself of many little things to which in his reduced position he had been accustomed—an occasional cigar, or a glass of cheap Marsala; and when he thought of the past, the strong man's tender and loving heart was wrung, when he heard her hacking cough, and he saw her seated, pale and feeble, her delicate hands unable to persevere even in sewing a little jacket for Derval that lay on the table before her. ”

“ These boys are men now, such as are on the hither side of the darker river, but not a man of them can think, on a hot summer day, of that cool, shaded, mottled Deepole, without a longing in his heart and a lump in his throat. ”

“ Without the spreading elms, without the mottled, golden light upon the cool, deep waters, and without the distant roar of the little rapid, and the soft gurgle at the jam, the Deepole would still have been a place of purest delight, but I doubt if, without these, it would have stolen in among their day dreams in after years, on hot, dusty, weary days, with power to waken in them a vague pain and longing for the sweet, cool woods and the clear, brown waters. ”

“ But in the years to come this baby-brother was fated to have a terrible and calamitous influence upon the destiny of Derval Hampton.
Greville Hampton was so successful in his speculations that he actually hoped, in time, to make quite an estate of Finglecombe. Money makes money, and thus he became a wealthy man; for true it is, "that the thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never in the way we have imagined it."
His dreams of an El Dorado, and Mary's reading thereof, came back to his memory, when he saw house after house being built in the little dell that overlooked the sea ”

“ Rookleigh did not wait for the elucidation of all the reader knows. His brother's sudden appearance in the library was more than enough for him; he evacuated Lord Oakhampton's house with all speed, and even quitted London that night, a prey to baffled spite, ambition, and treachery.
"Oh, Derval, Derval," said Clara, as she reclined upon his breast, "may God forgive that man for all he has made me suffer!" ”

“ As for you," he added, with one of his ferocious maledictions, "they may pick your bones, and welcome!" Then whirling the heavy hand-spike he carried, circularly in the air, he struck Derval a blow on the back of the head that felled him bleeding, stunned, and senseless, among the brushwood!
The moment he had accomplished this terrible and atrocious act, he went plunging down to the beach, shouting—
"The savages—the natives are upon us; into the boats with you for your lives, and shove off to the ship!" ”

“ And little Derval in the golden morning of his life, often wondered already what it was clouded his father's brow and made his manner so triste and pre-occupied.
"It is not given to man to choose his own position in this world," said Mr. Asperges Laud gently to Hampton on one occasion; "but it is given to him to feel honestly content, and without useless repining, in the place so assigned."
"Another and better place in the world than that I now occupy, was assigned to me; but—" and Greville Hampton paused, as something very like an imprecation rose to his quivering lips. ”

“ Derval knew now, however, that he had done an act demanding a supreme amount of gratitude, from a proud and rather repellent man, who would, perhaps, rather have been indebted therefor to any other person in the world, than the son of Greville Hampton; while, on the other hand, Derval had been taught to view his lordship as his hereditary enemy, the usurper of his father's rights, though why, or how, Derval could not define; and that, more than all, in the days of his father's unexpected penury and obscurity at Finglecombe, he had sedulously withheld all countenance and assistance from him. ”

“ Some two months after this found Derval, after quitting the Amethyst at the West India Dock—ever in his mind associated with the awful day of London fog in which he first saw it—hastening homeward on a few weeks' leave, and having with him, sailor-like, presents for all there: a tiger-skin from the Cape for his father's study; furs of the platypus, soft and grey, from Australia, to make muffs and cuffs for Mrs. Hampton, and a shawl for her too; a shark's skull for Mr. Asperges Laud; a model junk for little Rookleigh; several cosy things for old Patty Fripp ”

“ The mind is usually affected by external circumstances. Thus, never more than now in this dark and apparently awful day, did Derval, cowering in the corner of a coffee-room, sigh in heart for the touch of the loving hand and the sound of the caressing voice that the grave had closed over for ever.
At last, as evening drew near, the tiresome fog lifted a little, and a cab was brought for him. To Derval's timidly expressed "hope that he knew the way," the bloated visage of the Jehu of the "four-wheeler" responded by a smile of half amusement, half contempt ”