The First of the English: A Novel
Spain? What indomitable determination, what intense assurance you
English have!” The last is a slight laugh. Then her face grows serious
and she falters: “What awful risks you took to win your bride, my
Guy—my Englishman!”
But Chester has to tear himself from her and go on deck to forget the
bridegroom in the sailor. The flag of England is run up on the Dover
Lass, her sails are spread, and the vessel speeds down the Schelde
estuary, and passes Flushing, for Guy will not stop there for fear of
pursuing Spanish warships.
The next evening as they drop anchor they hear the merry church bells
of Harwich steeple.
“Welcome to England,” cries Guy, and takes his bride on shore. Here it
is given out that Chester has captured a galleon of most wondrous
riches: and he pays thereon ten per cent., as is usual, to the crown of
England, by Drake, Hawkins and other rovers of the sea.
The rest of the treasure, by the law of the land is his, and he makes
division with Bodé Volcker, paying him his share. With this money in
hand the commercial Fleming hies him to Holland, and some years after
when Amsterdam is taken by Orange, settles there, to become one of its
merchant princes.
When they are paid and the rewards are given unto them, there are no
happier sailormen carousing in the ports of England than those of the
Dover Lass; and for weeks afterwards when a Jack tar is seen in
Plymouth or Portsmouth sporting two big watches, bought from excited
Jews, the cry is: “That’s one of Chester’s men, no one but a Dover Lass
could flash such elegance!”
These things coming to the ears of Queen Elizabeth, Her Majesty remarks
to her prime minister: “Burleigh, this Sir Guy Chester is the grandest
thief of us all. He has stole that minx of Alva, and he and the girl
have got together and robbed her father, the poor old Duke.
“They took Your Majesty as precedent,” murmurs Burleigh. “Dost remember
the eight hundred thousand crowns?”
“Yea, in God’s truth I do! But this Knight of mine, Chester, is lost to
me as a fighting man if his fortune is a fifth what they say it is, and
his bride’s loveliness is a tenth what rumor gives to her. Bring the
wench to me. I would lay eyes upon this Spanish beauty.”
“In truth,” answers Cecil, who has seen and wondered at Hermoine’s
loveliness, “Lady Chester is the most beautiful woman on earth—saving
Your Majesty.”
“Out upon your cozening courtier’s tongue—that ‘saving your majesty’
was an afterthought,” laughs Elizabeth. “But bring the wench with you,
I believe you’re half in love with her yourself—you old
philanderer—bring me this minx of Alva, quick!”
So Sir Guy Chester, coming with his bride to court, Hermoine, by the
graces of her mind, which are enchanting, and by her beauty, which is
grand and winning, sends Shene and Westminster wild with admiration.
Looking on this, Queen Bess remarks sadly: “Good fortune has made this
Chester a carpet knight; he now eats with that Italian abomination
called a fork. Still, he has an eye for treasure; his lady’s diamonds
are finer than my own. Perchance he may make a good Lord of the
Treasury, for he’ll do no more fighting—unless he is a fool.”
Elizabeth’s guess is true, Chester buying great properties round
London, settles down in almost princely state with his fair bride to
contented happiness; though some ten years afterwards he buckles on his
sword, as every true Englishman did, and fitting out at his own expense
six stout vessels, the smallest of which is the old Dover Lass, which
Dalton commands now, he takes his station in the channel, under my Lord
Howard of Effingham, to battle against the great Armada Philip of Spain
has sent against the liberties of his country.
That glorious victory is the last sea fight of the “First of the
English.” From that time he lives most of the year amid the mild
climate of the Kentish coast, which pleases best his Spanish bride, who
remembers the soft breezes of her native land. Here, to the end of her
long and happy life, she reigns bride of her husband’s heart and
mistress of his soul.
Their one sorrow is that no son comes to inherit their great estates,
but they have a daughter, brunette-like as her mother, with Hermoine’s
ivory skin and glorious, Madonna eyes, and she marries into a great
English family, bringing to it a dower of lands that now makes it one
of the grandest and richest of England’s ducal houses.
Every now and again some daughter of the house has Hermoine’s exquisite
eyes, ivory skin and wondrous hair, and her loveliness is not that of
the North but of the South. Then her brothers and sisters laugh and say
it is the Spanish beauty broken out once more, though they have
forgotten from whence it came.
It is only a legend with them now in early chronicle, of the hardy
sailor, the indomitable fighter, the non-despairing lover, who stole
Alva’s treasure and with greater fortune won the noble heart of Alva’s
daughter to make her bride to “The First of the English!”
FINIS.