Frank sprang up, and burst into tears: "Oh! Amyas, my brother, my brother! stop! I cannot endure this.Oh, God! was it not enough to have entangled myself in this fatal fancy, but over and above, Imust meet the shame of my brother's discovering it?""What shame, then, I'd like to know?" said Amyas, recovering himself."Look here, brother Frank! I've thought it all over in the garden; and I was an ass and a braggart for talking to you as Idid last night.Of course you love her! Everybody must; and I was a fool for not recollecting that; and if you love her, your taste and mine agree, and what can be better? I think you are a sensible fellow for loving her, and you think me one.And as for who has her, why, you're the eldest; and first come first served is the rule, and best to keep to it.Besides, brother Frank, though I'm no scholar, yet I'm not so blind but that I tell the difference between you and me; and of course your chance against mine, for a hundred to one; and I am not going to be fool enough to row against wind and tide too.I'm good enough for her, I hope; but if I am, you are better, and the good dog may run, but it's the best that takes the hare; and so I have nothing more to do with the matter at all; and if you marry her, why, it will set the old house on its legs again, and that's the first thing to be thought of, and you may just as well do it as I, and better too.Not but that it's a plague, a horrible plague!" went on Amyas, with a ludicrously doleful visage; "but so are other things too, by the dozen; it's all in the day's work, as the huntsman said when the lion ate him.
One would never get through the furze-croft if one stopped to pull out the prickles.The pig didn't scramble out of the ditch by squeaking; and the less said the sooner mended; nobody was sent into the world only to suck honey-pots.What must be must, man is but dust; if you can't get crumb, you must fain eat crust.So I'll go and join the army in Ireland, and get it out of my head, for cannon balls fright away love as well as poverty does; and that's all I've got to say." Wherewith Amyas sat down, and returned to the beer; while Mrs.Leigh wept tears of joy.
"Amyas! Amyas!" said Frank; "you must not throw away the hopes of years, and for me, too! Oh, how just was your parable! Ah! mother mine! to what use is all my scholarship and my philosophy, when this dear simple sailor-lad outdoes me at the first trial of courtesy!""My children, my children, which of you shall I love best? Which of you is the more noble? I thanked God this morning for having given me one such son; but to have found that I possess two!" And Mrs.Leigh laid her head on the table, and buried her face in her hands, while the generous battle went on.
"But, dearest Amyas!--"
"But, Frank! if you don't hold your tongue, I must go forth.It was quite trouble enough to make up one's mind, without having you afterwards trying to unmake it again.""Amyas! if you give her up to me, God do so to me, and more also, if I do not hereby give her up to you!""He had done it already--this morning!" said Mrs.Leigh, looking up through her tears."He renounced her forever on his knees before me! only he is too noble to tell you so.""The more reason I should copy him," said Amyas, setting his lips, and trying to look desperately determined, and then suddenly jumping up, he leaped upon Frank, and throwing his arms round his neck, sobbed out, "There, there, now! For God's sake, let us forget all, and think about our mother, and the old house, and how we may win her honor before we die! and that will be enough to keep our hands full, without fretting about this woman and that.--What an ass I have been for years! instead of learning my calling, dreaming about her, and don't know at this minute whether she cares more for me than she does for her father's 'prentices!""Oh, Amyas! every word of yours puts me to fresh shame! Will you believe that I know as little of her likings as you do?""Don't tell me that, and play the devil's game by putting fresh hopes into me, when I am trying to kick them out.I won't believe it.If she is not a fool, she must love you; and if she don't, why, be hanged if she is worth loving!""My dearest Amyas! I must ask you too to make no more such speeches to me.All those thoughts I have forsworn.""Only this morning; so there is time to catch them again before they are gone too far.""Only this morning," said Frank, with a quiet smile: "but centuries have passed since then.""Centuries? I don't see many gray hairs yet.""I should not have been surprised if you had, though," answered Frank, in so sad and meaning a tone that Amyas could only answer--"Well, you are an angel!"
"You, at least, are something even more to the purpose, for you are a man!"And both spoke truth, and so the battle ended; and Frank went to his books, while Amyas, who must needs be doing, if he was not to dream, started off to the dockyard to potter about a new ship of Sir Richard's, and forget his woes, in the capacity of Sir Oracle among the sailors.And so he had played his move for Rose, even as Eustace had, and lost her: but not as Eustace had.
