The Sea-Hawk Read Online Free PDF Page B

reduced to half the bulk that had been his before, a mere shadow of a man.
    One of his first visits was to Godolphin Court. He went to remonstrate with Rosamund upon her betrothal, and he did so at the request of her brother. But his remonstrances were strangely lacking in the force that she had looked for.
    The odd fact is that in his near approach to death, and with his earthly interest dwindling, Sir John had looked matters frankly in the face, and had been driven to the conclusion—a conclusion impossible to him in normal health—that he had got no more than he deserved. He realized that he had acted unworthily, if unconscious at the time of the unworthiness of what he did; that the weapons with which he had fought Sir Oliver were not the weapons that become a gentleman or in which there is credit to be won. He perceived that he had permitted his old enmity for the house of Tressilian swollen by a sense of injury lately suffered in the matter of the licence to build at Smithick to warp his judgment and to persuade him that Sir Oliver was all he had dubbed him. He realized that jealousy, too, had taken a hand in the matter. Sir Oliver's exploits upon the seas had brought him wealth, and with this wealth he was building up once more the Tressilian sway in those parts, which Ralph Tressilian had so outrageously diminished, so that he threatened to eclipse the importance of the Killigrews of Arwenack.
    Nevertheless in the hour of reaction he did not go so far as to admit that Sir Oliver Tressilian was a fit mate for Rosamund Godolphin. She and her brother had been placed in his care by their late father, and he had nobly discharged his tutelage until such time as Peter had cometo full age. His affection for Rosamund was tender as that of a lover, but tempered by a feeling entirely paternal. He went very near to worshipping her, and when all was said, when he had cleared his mind of all dishonest bias, he still found overmuch to dislike in Oliver Tressilian, and the notion of his becoming Rosamund's husband was repellent.
    First of all there was that bad Tressilian blood—notoriously bad, and never more flagrantly displayed than in the case of the late Ralph Tressilian. It was impossible that Oliver should have escaped the taint of it; nor could Sir John perceive any signs that he had done so. He displayed the traditional Tressilian turbulence. He was passionate and brutal, and the pirate's trade to which he had not set his hand was of all trades the one for which he was by nature best equipped. He was harsh and over-bearing, impatient of correction, and prone to trample other men's feelings underfoot. Was this, he asked himself in all honesty, a mate for Rosamund? Could he entrust her happiness to the care of such a man? Assuredly he could not.
    Therefore, being whole again, he went to remonstrate with her as he accounted it his duty and as Master Peter had besought him. Yet knowing the bias that had been his, he was careful to understate rather than to overstate his reasons.
    "But, Sir John," she protested, "if every man is to be condemned for the sins of his forbears, but few could escape condemnation, and wherever shall you find me a husband deserving your approval?"
    "His father . . ." began Sir John.
    "Tell me not of his father, but of himself," she interrupted.
    He frowned impatiently—they were sitting in that bower of hers above the river.
    "I was coming to't," he answered, a thought testily, for these interruptions which made him keep to the point robbed him of his best arguments. "However, suffice itthat many of his father's vicious qualities he has inherited, as we see in his ways of life; that he has not inherited others only the future can assure us."
    "In other words," she mocked him, yet very seriously, "I am to wait until he dies of old age to make quite sure that he has no such sins as must render him an unfitting husband?"
    "No, no," he cried. "Good lack! what a perverseness is thine!"
    "The perverseness