Derval Hampton

“ 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. ”

“ Panting, and perspiring at every pore, with agitation, exertion, and an emotion of no small dismay to see the deck and the men thereon seem so small and so far down below, Derval, with tingling fingers, while a prayer rose to his lips, grasped the futtock-shrouds, surmounted them as one in a dream, and found himself safe beside Titford. ”

“ And yet, how Greville Hampton envied the contentment of the dwellers in those cob-cottages—people with whom the world seemed to go precisely as they wished it to do; and who deemed that human life out of Finglecombe and beyond the circuit of its interests and apple-orchards, must be a dull affair indeed for the greatest portion of mankind.
"Poor Derval!" he sighed, as he saw the reluctance with which the child at last gathered up his toys; "Dryden was right—'men are but children of a larger growth'; children who often toil a lifetime in rearing fabrics unstable as yours. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He is a genuine brick!" said Derval; "and as for our ship, no better sails the sea!"
"Fill your glass, Derval—that Burgundy is better than any we used to have long ago."
"Thanks, Papa—'Governor,' I suppose I should call you in the parlance of the present day—even Rook, I perceive, has adopted it."
"Bad form, I deem it—very."
"Whatever I call you, you will ever be the same dear old man to me!" exclaimed Derval, as his eyes filled, and he wrung his father's hand. "But I should like you to see the Amethyst under full sail before the wind, or even close hauled with her tacks aboard!" ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 ”

“ Joe," said Derval, laughing, "I fear you don't know what love is."
"Don't I, though!" exclaimed old Grummet, as he bit a quid off the twist of pigtail that was always in his right-hand pocket. "I often boast myself as one of the not-to-be-done squadron of the Royal Naval Reserve, Mr. Hampton; yet I am always done brown when I am on shore, which is the reason I generally stick close to the ship, as one can't fall in love when in blue water and the anchor's catted." ”

“ Old Patty Fripp was gone now to God's Acre, and with her ended another of "the innumerable simple and honest lives of pain and love, that are swept away like the dead leaves by the winds of autumn," and there was no one in Finglecombe now, save Mr. Asperges Laud, to lament for Derval Hampton, and, aware of Rookleigh's hatred of the latter, he bewailed his sorrowful destiny in strong language.
"Destiny brings stranger things to pass than ever you dream of," said Rookleigh, with a grimace of triumph. ”

“ Now past eighteen years of age, Derval's face was decidedly of a handsome cast, inherited, like his well-knit figure, from his father, and he had the soft, gentle, and earnest eyes of his mother—the tender Mary, whose grave was under the shadow of Finglecombe Church, but on which no loving hand laid a chaplet now. He was intelligent and experienced far beyond his years, and had, in the opinion of Joe Grummet, only one defect as a sailor—a fancy for sedulously cultivating on his upper lip something that Joe stigmatised as "fluff" ”

“ Paul Bitts, bowing low ironically; "allow me to introduce Mr. Derval Hampton—Mr. Joe Grummet, our boatswain; Mr. Joe Grummet—Mr. Derval——"
"Stow that 'ere nonsense," said the other bluntly; "welcome aboard, my little lad, and if any man in the Amethyst can make a sailor of you, I am he."
Then Joe Grummet shook Derval's hand very cordially indeed.
"Take him aft to the captain," said Mr. Bitts; "but before you go, youngster, hand over all the cakes and jam-pots the old woman at home gave you." ”

“ Full of natural interest at treading on new soil, and looking on that which he had never seen before, Derval, penetrating through the brushwood, advanced some hundred yards upward and inshore, and heard with pleasure the tender rustling of the leaves in the morning sea-breeze, while inhaling the perfume of the aromatic plants and myrtle-trees. The brilliant green of the woods that crept up the sides of the hills, which in one place were so lofty that the haze shrouded their summits, were all novel and delightful, after the monotony of the sea and sky during a long voyage. ”

“ Meanwhile Derval, save for his mother's care and Mr. Laud's tuition, would have grown up in rather a rough and scrambling manner; as it was he was a little undisciplined; prone to bird-nesting, seeking the eggs of the choughs and cormorants among the rocks; helping himself to apples in anyone's orchard, and rambling far afield, and clambering up eminences where he could see the variously tinted groves that bordered on the deep blue bay, the distant sea itself—glorious, glittering and far-stretching ”

“ 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 ”

“ Why did papa bring you here, and set you in her place at table?"
"Dare you say so; you are a very bold child!" she exclaimed with some heat, and in her hard constrained voice, when a more generous woman would have smiled and resorted to caresses; "you ought to learn to love me."
"Never!" said the chubby Derval stoutly; "I shall only love my own mamma; she allowed me to climb on papa's knee and kiss him, but you won't." ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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!" ”

“ When the Amethyst returned home, and Derval stepped on board of her in the London docks, old Joe Grummet, who was smoking his pipe in the gangway, thought he saw a ghost, and uttered a roar of absolute terror! Most extravagant was the joy of the worthy old salt on being assured of Derval's identity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How a woman so refined and lady-like as Mrs. Hampton—for she was both in appearance, unquestionably—came to have such a remarkable kinsman it was difficult to say; but from that hour there was a declared feud between him and Derval, and both were prepared to carry it out to the bitter end.
Derval's indignation was very keen. Through all the years he had been away from home, the tender home-love had never died in his honest and passionate heart. To Finglecombe he had sent all he could give—letters, presents, and many a token of regard ”

“ Hampton," said he angrily.
"Missus Hampton, indeed!" grumbled Patty, but under her breath, however. But one day Greville overheard a remark which gave him a pang.
"Derval, where are you going, sir?" demanded Mrs. Hampton imperiously, as he was taking his little cap.
"To the sea-shore," he answered shyly.
"Again? You are never anywhere else, and always come back with wet and sandy shoes. What takes you there?" ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Towards the end of the fourth year of her absence from home, the Amethyst was running from Rio de Janeiro to Bermuda; and time had seen some changes in her. Many of the old hands had shipped on board other craft; but Captain Talbot still held his post, as did Joe Grummet and Mr. Gritline; but Harry Bowline had been promoted as second mate, and Derval, now past his eighteenth year, was third, vice the ill-conditioned Mr. Paul Bitts, who had come to an untimely end, when Derval nearly lost his life in trying to save him. ”

“ His empty berth and vacant place at table, his uniform cap hanging on a peg, and his little trunk with all his worldly goods remained; but his soft smiling face and his earnest honest eyes were gone from human gaze for ever, and Derval and Hal Bowline were very sad on the subject of his sudden loss, which made them somehow closer friends, while each felt that the victim might have been himself or the other ”

“ De Murrer; "the devil! don't speak thus; and as for the mere matter of a name, one would think you were an old Scotsman of a hundred years ago, rather than an English girl of the nineteenth century!"
"I only think of what I owe him, Papa," urged Clara, greatly apprehensive that Derval's name would now be struck off the visitor's list—but prudence forbade such an order as yet.
"It is possible you may think too much," continued Lord Oakhampton, greatly ruffled; "but remember, Clara, that this young man is as much out of your world as one of yonder boatmen in the bay!" ”

“ Refined, proud, and lovely, and she looked—birth stamped on every feature—a peer's daughter every inch, and in every way a picture fair to look upon; and so thought Derval. Never before had he dreamed that a woman could be so fair.
He was invited to stay to dinner; the invitation was repeated for a second occasion and a third. Lord Oakhampton had evidently few friends in that part of the world, was the modest thought of Derval, and the Bermuda Isles formed a safe and easy topic for general conversation when other subjects failed ”

“ Hampton—just come aboard, sir," said Joe Grummet, removing his hat; and Derval found himself kindly welcomed by Captain Talbot, a man about thirty, with a handsome open countenance, a bright cheerful expression, and a stout well-set figure, and his two other mates, Mr. Girtline and Mr. Tyeblock, who pressed him to join them in a glass of sherry and a biscuit, of which they were partaking before going on shore. ”