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SPRINGHAVEN:
A Tale of the Great War
BY
R. D. BLACKMORE (1825-1900)
1887
CHAPTER I
WHEN THE SHIP COMES HOME
In the days when England trusted mainly to the vigor and valor of
one man, against a world of enemies, no part of her coast was in
greater peril than the fair vale of Springhaven. But lying to the
west of the narrow seas, and the shouts both of menace and
vigilance, the quiet little village in the tranquil valley forbore
to be uneasy.
For the nature of the place and race, since time has outlived
memory, continually has been, and must be, to let the world pass
easily. Little to talk of, and nothing to do, is the healthy
condition of mankind just there. To all who love repose and
shelter, freedom from the cares of money and the cark of fashion,
and (in lieu of these) refreshing air, bright water, and green
country, there is scarcely any valley left to compare with that of
Springhaven. This valley does not interrupt the land, but comes in
as a pleasant relief to it. No glaring chalk, no grim sandstone,
no rugged flint, outface it; but deep rich meadows, and foliage
thick, and cool arcades of ancient trees, defy the noise that men
make. And above the trees, in shelving distance, rise the crests
of upland, a soft gray lias, where orchards thrive, and greensward
strokes down the rigor of the rocks, and quick rills lace the bosom
of the slope with tags of twisted silver.
In the murmur of the valley twenty little waters meet, and
discoursing their way to the sea, give name to the bay that
receives them and the anchorage they make. And here no muddy
harbor reeks, no foul mouth of rat-haunted drains, no slimy and
scraggy wall runs out, to mar the meeting of sweet and salt. With
one or two mooring posts to watch it, and a course of stepping-
stones, the brook slides into the peaceful bay, and is lost in
larger waters. Even so, however, it is kindly still, for it forms
a tranquil haven.
Because, where the ruffle of the land stream merges into the
heavier disquietude of sea, slopes of shell sand and white gravel
give welcome pillow to the weary keel. No southerly tempest smites
the bark, no long groundswell upheaves her; for a bold point, known
as the "Haven-head," baffles the storm in the offing, while the
bulky rollers of a strong spring-tide, that need no wind to urge
them, are broken by the shifting of the shore into a tier of white-
frilled steps. So the deep-waisted smacks that fish for many
generations, and even the famous "London trader" (a schooner of
five-and-forty tons), have rest from their labors, whenever they
wish or whenever they can afford it, in the arms of the land, and
the mouth of the water, and under the eyes of Springhaven.
At the corner of the wall, where the brook comes down, and pebble
turns into shingle, there has always been a good white gate,
respected (as a white gate always is) from its strong declaration
of purpose. Outside of it, things may belong to the Crown, the
Admiralty, Manor, or Trinity Brethren, or perhaps the sea itself--
according to the latest ebb or flow of the fickle tide of Law
Courts--but inside that gate everything belongs to the fine old
family of Darling.
Concerning the origin of these Darlings divers tales are told,
according to the good-will or otherwise of the diver. The Darlings
themselves contend and prove that stock and name are Saxon, and the
true form of the name is "Deerlung," as witness the family
bearings. But the foes of the race, and especially the Carnes, of
ancient Sussex lineage, declare that the name describes itself.
Forsooth, these Darlings are nothing more, to their contemptuous
certainty, than the offset of some court favorite, too low to have
won nobility, in the reign of some light-affectioned king.
If ever there was any truth in that, it has been worn out long ago
by friction of its own antiquity. Admiral Darling owns that gate,
and all the land inside it, as far as a Preventive man can see with
his spy-glass upon the top bar of it. And this includes nearly all
the village of Springhaven, and the Hall, and the valley, and the
hills that make it. And how much more does all this redound to the
credit of the family when the gazer reflects that this is nothing
but their younger tenement! For this is only Springhaven Hall,
while Darling Holt, the headquarters of the race, stands far
inland, and belongs to Sir Francis, the Admiral's elder brother.
When the tides were at their spring, and the year 1802 of our era
in the same condition, Horatia Dorothy Darling, younger daughter of
the aforesaid Admiral, choosing a very quiet path among thick
shrubs and under-wood, came all alone to a wooden building, which
her father called his Round-house. In the war, which had been
patched over now, but would very soon break out again, that veteran
officer held command of the coast defense (westward of Nelson's
charge) from Beachy Head to Selsey Bill. No real danger had
existed then, and no solid intent of invasion, but many sharp
outlooks had been set up, and among them was this at Springhaven.
Here was established under thatch, and with sliding lights before
it, the Admiral's favorite Munich glass, mounted by an old ship's
carpenter (who had followed the fortunes of his captain) on a stand
which would have puzzled anybody but the maker, with the added
security of a lanyard from the roof. The gear, though rough, was
very strong and solid, and afforded more range and firmer rest to
the seven-feet tube and adjustments than a costly mounting by a
London optician would have been likely to supply. It was a
pleasure to look through such a glass, so clear, and full of light,
and firm; and one who could have borne to be looked at through it,
or examined even by a microscope, came now to enjoy that pleasure.
Miss Dolly Darling could not be happy--though her chief point was
to be so--without a little bit of excitement, though it were of her
own construction. Her imagination, being bright and tender and
lively, rather than powerful, was compelled to make its own
material, out of very little stuff sometimes. She was always
longing for something sweet and thrilling and romantic, and what
chance of finding it in this dull place, even with the longest
telescope? For the war, with all its stirring rumors and perpetual
motion on shore and sea, and access of gallant visitors, was gone
for the moment, and dull peace was signed.
This evening, as yet, there seemed little chance of anything to
enliven her. The village, in the valley and up the stream, was
hidden by turns of the land and trees; her father's house beneath
the hill crest was out of sight and hearing; not even a child was
on the beach; and the only movement was of wavelets leisurely
advancing toward the sea-wall fringed with tamarisk. The only
thing she could hope to see was the happy return of the fishing-
smacks, and perhaps the "London trader," inasmuch as the fishermen
(now released from fencible duty and from French alarm) did their
best to return on Saturday night to their moorings, their homes,
the disposal of fish, and then the deep slumber of Sunday. If the
breeze should enable them to round the Head, and the tide avail for
landing, the lane to the village, the beach, and even the sea
itself would swarm with life and bustle and flurry and incident.
But Dolly's desire was for scenes more warlike and actors more
august than these.
Beauty, however, has an eye for beauty beyond its own looking-
glass. Deeply as Dolly began to feel the joy of her own
loveliness, she had managed to learn, and to feel as well, that so
far as the strength and vigor of beauty may compare with its grace
and refinement, she had her own match at Springhaven. Quite a
hardworking youth, of no social position and no needless education,
had such a fine countenance and such bright eyes that she neither
could bear to look at him nor forbear to think of him. And she
knew that if the fleet came home she would see him on board of the
Rosalie.
Flinging on a shelf the small white hat which had scarcely covered
her dark brown curls, she lifted and shored with a wooden prop the
southern casement of leaded glass. This being up, free range was
given to the swinging telescope along the beach to the right and
left, and over the open sea for miles, and into the measureless
haze of air. She could manage this glass to the best advantage,
through her father's teaching, and could take out the slide and
clean the lenses, and even part the object-glass, and refix it as
well as possible. She belonged to the order of the clever virgins,
but scarcely to that of the wise ones.
CHAPTER II
WITH HER CREW AND CARGO
Long after the time of those who write and those who read this
history, the name of Zebedee Tugwell will be flourishing at
Springhaven.
To achieve unmerited honor is the special gift of thousands, but to
deserve and win befalls some few in every century, and one of these
few was Zebedee. To be the head-man of any other village, and the
captain of its fishing fleet, might prove no lofty eminence; but to
be the leader of Springhaven was true and arduous greatness. From
Selsey Bill to Orfordness, taking in all the Cinque Ports and all
the port of London, there was not a place that insisted on, and
therefore possessed, all its own rights so firmly as this village
did. Not less than seven stout fishing-smacks--six of them sloops,
and the seventh a dandy--formed the marine power of this place, and
behaved as one multiplied by seven. All the bold fishermen held
their line from long-established ancestry, and stuck to the stock
of their grandfathers, and their wisdom and freedom from prejudice.
Strength was condensed into clear law with them--as sinew boils
down into jelly--and character carried out its force as the stamp
of solid impress. What the father had been, the son became, as the
generation squared itself, and the slates for the children to do
their copies were the tombstones of their granddads. Thus brave
Etruria grew, and thus the Rome which was not built in a day became
the flower of the world, and girt in unity of self seven citadels.
There was Roman blood--of the Tenth Legion, perhaps--in the general
vein of Springhaven. There was scarcely a man who pretended to
know much outside of his own business, and there was not a woman
unable to wait (when her breath was quite gone) for sound reason.
Solidity, self-respect, pure absence of frivolous humor, ennobled
the race and enabled them to hold together, so that everybody not
born in Springhaven might lament, but never repair, his loss.
This people had many ancient rules befitting a fine corporation,
and among them were the following: "Never do a job for a stranger;
sleep in your own bed when you can; be at home in good time on a
Saturday; never work harder than you need; throw your fish away
rather than undersell it; answer no question, but ask another;
spend all your money among your friends; and above all, never let
any stranger come a-nigh your proper fishing ground, nor land any
fish at Springhaven."
These were golden laws, and made a snug and plump community. From
the Foreland to the Isle of Wight their nets and lines were sacred,
and no other village could be found so thriving, orderly, well-
conducted, and almost well-contented. For the men were not of rash
enterprise, hot labor, or fervid ambition; and although they
counted things by money, they did not count one another so. They
never encouraged a friend to work so hard as to grow too wealthy,
and if he did so, they expected him to grow more generous than he
liked to be. And as soon as he failed upon that point, instead of
adoring, they growled at him, because every one of them might have
had as full a worsted stocking if his mind had been small enough to
forget the difference betwixt the land and sea, the tide of labor
and the time of leisure.
To these local and tribal distinctions they added the lofty
expansion of sons of the sea. The habit of rising on the surge and
falling into the trough behind it enables a biped, as soon as he
lands, to take things that are flat with indifference. His head
and legs have got into a state of firm confidence in one another,
and all these declare--with the rest of the body performing as
chorus gratis--that now they are come to a smaller affair, upon
which they intend to enjoy themselves. So that, while strenuous
and quick of movement--whenever they could not help it--and
sometimes even brisk of mind (if anybody strove to cheat them),
these men generally made no griefs beyond what they were born to.
Zebedee Tugwell was now their chief, and well deserved to be so.
Every community of common-sense demands to have somebody over it,
and nobody could have felt ashamed to be under Captain Tugwell. He
had built with his own hands, and bought--for no man's work is his
own until he has paid for as well as made it--the biggest and
smartest of all the fleet, that dandy-rigged smack, the Rosalie.
He was proud of her, as he well might be, and spent most of his
time in thinking of her; but even she was scarcely up to the size
of his ideas. "Stiff in the joints," he now said daily--"stiff in
the joints is my complaint, and I never would have believed it.
But for all that, you shall see, my son, if the Lord should spare
you long enough, whether I don't beat her out and out with the
craft as have been in my mind this ten year."
But what man could be built to beat Zebedee himself, in an age like
this, when yachts and men take the prize by profundity of false
keel? Tugwell yearned for no hot speed in his friends, or his
house, or his wife, or his walk, or even his way of thinking. He
had seen more harm come from one hour's hurry than a hundred years
of care could cure, and the longer he lived the more loath he grew
to disturb the air around him.
"Admirable Nelson," he used to say--for his education had not been
so large as the parts allotted to receive it; "to my mind he is a
brave young man, with great understanding of his dooties. But he
goeth too fast, without clearing of his way. With a man like me
'longside of 'un, he'd have brought they boats out of Bulong. See
how I brings my boats in, most particular of a Saturday!"
It was Saturday now, when Miss Dolly was waiting to see this great
performance, of which she considered herself, as the daughter of an
admiral, no mean critic. And sure enough, as punctual as in a
well-conducted scheme of war, and with nice forecast of wind and
tide, and science of the supper-time, around the westward headland
came the bold fleet of Springhaven!
Seven ships of the line--the fishing line--arranged in perfect
order, with the Rosalie as the flag-ship leading, and three upon
either quarter, in the comfort and leisure of the new-born peace,
they spread their sails with sunshine. Even the warlike Dolly
could not help some thoughts of peacefulness, and a gentle tide of
large good-will submerged the rocks of glory.
"Why should those poor men all be killed?" she asked herself, as a
new thing, while she made out, by their faces, hats, fling of knee
or elbow, patch upon breeches, or sprawl of walking toward the
attentive telescope, pretty nearly who everybody of them was, and
whatever else there was about him. "After all, it is very hard,"
she said, "that they should have to lose their lives because the
countries fight so."
But these jolly fellows had no idea of losing their lives, or a
hair of their heads, or anything more than their appetites, after
waging hot war upon victuals. Peace was proclaimed, and peace was
reigning; and the proper British feeling of contempt for snivelly
Frenchmen, which produces the entente cordiale, had replaced the
wholesome dread of them. Not that Springhaven had ever known fear,
but still it was glad to leave off terrifying the enemy. Lightness
of heart and good-will prevailed, and every man's sixpence was
going to be a shilling.
In the tranquil afternoon the sun was making it clear to the coast
of Albion that he had crossed the line once more, and rediscovered
a charming island. After a chilly and foggy season, worse than a
brave cold winter, there was joy in the greeting the land held out,
and in the more versatile expression of the sea. And not beneath
the contempt of one who strives to get into everything, were the
creases and patches of the sails of smacks, and the pattern of the
resin-wood they called their masts, and even the little striped
things (like frogs with hats on, in the distance) which had grown
to believe themselves the only object the sun was made to shine
upon.
But he shone upon the wide sea far behind, and the broad stretch of
land before them, and among their slowly gliding canvas scattered
soft touches of wandering light. Especially on the spritsail of
the Rosalie, whereunder was sitting, with the tiller in his hand
and a very long pipe in his mouth, Captain Zebedee Tugwell. His
mighty legs were spread at ease, his shoulders solid against a
cask, his breast (like an elephant's back in width, and bearing a
bright blue crown tattooed) shone out of the scarlet woolsey, whose
plaits were filled with the golden shower of a curly beard,
untouched with gray. And his face was quite as worthy as the
substance leading up to it, being large and strengthful and slow to
move, though quick to make others do so. The forehead was heavy,
and the nose thickset, the lower jaw backed up the resolution of
the other, and the wide apart eyes, of a bright steel blue, were as
steady as a brace of pole-stars.
"What a wonderful man!" fair Dolly thought, as the great figure,
looking even grander in the glass, came rising upon a long slow
wave--"what a wonderful man that Tugwell is! So firmly resolved to
have his own way, so thoroughly dauntless, and such a grand beard!
Ten times more like an admiral than old Flapfin or my father is, if
he only knew how to hold his pipe. There is something about him so
dignified, so calm, and so majestic; but, for all that, I like the
young man better. I have a great mind to take half a peep at him;
somebody might ask whether he was there or not."
Being a young and bashful maid, as well as by birth a lady, she had
felt that it might be a very nice thing to contemplate sailors in
the distance, abstract sailors, old men who pulled ropes, or
lounged on the deck, if there was one. But to steal an unsuspected
view at a young man very well known to her, and acknowledged (not
only by his mother and himself, but also by every girl in the
parish) as the Adonis of Springhaven--this was a very different
thing, and difficult to justify even to one's self. The proper
plan, therefore, was to do it, instead of waiting to consider it.
"How very hard upon him it does seem," she whispered to herself,
after a good gaze at him, "that he must not even dream of having
any hope of me, because he has not happened to be born a gentleman!
But he looks a thousand times more like one than nine out of ten of
the great gentlemen I know--or at any rate he would if his mother
didn't make his clothes."
For Zebedee Tugwell had a son called "Dan," as like him as a tender
pea can be like a tough one; promising also to be tough, in course
of time, by chafing of the world and weather. But at present Dan
Tugwell was as tender to the core as a marrowfat dallying till its
young duck should be ready; because Dan was podding into his first
love. To the sympathetic telescope his heart was low, and his mind
gone beyond astronomical range, and his hands (instead of briskly
pairing soles) hung asunder, and sprawled like a star-fish.
"Indeed he does look sad," said Miss Dolly, "he is thinking of me,
as he always does; but I don't see how anybody can blame me. But
here comes daddy, with dear old Flapfin! I am not a bit afraid of
either of them; but perhaps I had better run away."
CHAPTER III
AND HER TRUE COMMANDER
The nature of "Flapfin"--as Miss Dolly Darling and other young
people were pleased to call him--was to make his enemies run away,
but his friends keep very near to him. He was one of the simplest-
minded men that ever trod the British oak. Whatever he thought he
generally said; and whatever he said he meant and did. Yet of
tricks and frauds he had quick perception, whenever they were tried
against him, as well as a marvellous power of seeing the shortest
way to everything. He enjoyed a little gentle piece of vanity, not
vainglory, and he never could sec any justice in losing the credit
of any of his exploits. Moreover, he was gifted with the highest
faith in the hand of the Almighty over him (to help him in all his
righteous deeds), and over his enemies, to destroy them. Though he
never insisted on any deep piety in his own behavior, he had a good
deal in his heart when time allowed, and the linstocks were waiting
the signal. His trust was supreme in the Lord and himself; and he
loved to be called "My Lord Admiral."
And a man of this noble type deserved to be met with his own
nobility. But the English government, according to its lights--
which appear to be everlasting--regarded him as the right man, when
wanted, but at other times the wrong one. They liked him to do
them a very good turn, but would not let him do himself one; and
whenever he looked for some fair chance of a little snug prize-
money, they took him away from the likely places, and set him to
hard work and hard knocks. But his sense of duty and love of
country enabled him to bear it, with grumbling.
"I don't care a rope's end," he was saying, with a truthfulness
simple and solid as beefsteak is, "whether we have peace or war;
but let us have one or the other of them. I love peace--it is a
very fine thing--and I hate to see poor fellows killed. All I want
is to spend the rest of my life ashore, and lay out the garden.
You must come and see what a bridge I have made to throw across the
fish-pond. I can do well enough with what I have got, as soon as
my farm begins to pay, and I hope I may never hear another shotted
cannon; but, my dear Lingo, you know as well as I do how much
chance there is of that."
"Laudo manentem. Let us praise her while we have got her. Parson
Twemlow keeps up my Latin, but you have forgotten all yours, my
friend. I brought you down here to see the fish come in, and to
choose what you like best for dinner. In the days when you were my
smallest youngster, and as proud as Punch to dine with me, your
taste was the finest in the ship, because your stomach was the
weakest. How often I thought that the fish would eat you! and but
for your wonderful spirit, my friend, that must have happened long
ago. But your nature was to fight, and you fought through, as you
always do. A drumstick for your praise of peace!"
Admiral Darling, a tall, stout man in the sixty-fifth year of his
age, looked down at his welcome and famous guest as if he knew a
great deal more of his nature than the owner did. And this made
that owner, who thought very highly of his own perception, look up
and laugh.
"Here comes the fish!" he cried. "Come along, Darling. Never lose
a moment--that's my rule. You can't get along as fast as I can.
I'll go and settle all the business for you."
"Why should you be in such a hurry always? You will never come to
my age if you carry on so. You ought to tow a spar astern. Thank
God, they don't know who he is, and I'll take good care not to let
them know. If this is what comes of quick promotion, I am glad
that I got on slowly. Well, he may do as he likes for me. He
always does--that's one thing."
Stoutly grumbling thus, the elder and far heavier Admiral descended
the hill to the white gate slowly, as behooved the owner. And, by
the time he halted there, the other had been upon the beach five
minutes, and taken command of the fishing fleet.
"Starboard there! Brail up your gaff! Is that the way to take the
ground? Ease helm, Rosalie. Smartly, smartly. Have a care, you
lubber there. Fenders out! So, so. Now stand by, all! There are
two smart lads among you, and no more. All the rest are no better
than a pack of Crappos. You want six months in a man-of-war's
launch. This is what comes of peace already!"
The fishermen stared at this extraordinary man, who had taken all
the business out of Master Tugwell's hands; but without thinking
twice about it, all obeyed him with a speed that must have robbed
them of a quantity of rust. For although he was not in uniform,
and bore no sword, his dress was conspicuous, as he liked to have
it, and his looks and deeds kept suit with it. For he wore a blue
coat (very badly made, with gilt buttons and lappets too big for
him), a waistcoat of dove-colored silk, very long, coming over the
place where his stomach should have been, and white plush breeches,
made while he was blockading Boulogne in 1801, and therefore had
scarcely any flesh upon his bones. Peace having fattened him a
little, these breeches had tightened upon him (as their way is with
a boy having six weeks' holiday); but still they could not make his
legs look big, though they showed them sharp and muscular. Below
them were brisk little sinewy calves in white silk hose, with a
taper descent to ankles as fine as a lady's, and insteps bright
with large silver buckles. Yet that which surpassed all the beauty
of the clothes was the vigor of the man inside them, who seemed to
quicken and invigorate the whole, even to the right sleeve, doubled
up from the want of any arm inside it. But the loss of the right
arm, and the right eye also, seemed to be of no account to the
former owner, so hard did he work with the residue of his body, and
so much did he express with it.
His noble cocked hat was in its leathern box yet, for he was only
just come from Merton; but the broad felt he wore was looped up in
front, and displayed all the power of his countenance, or rather
the vigor; for power is heavy, and his face was light and
quickness. Softness also, and a melancholy gift of dreaminess and
reflection, enlarged and impressed the effect of a gaze and a smile
which have conquered history.
"Why don't 'ee speak up to 'un, Cap'en Zeb?" cried young Harry
Shanks, of the Peggy, the smartest smack next to the Rosalie.
"Whoever can 'a be, to make thee so dumb? Doth 'a know our own
business afore our own selves? If 'ee don't speak up to 'un,
Cap'en Zeb, I'll never take no more commands from thee."
"Harry Shanks, you was always a fool, and you always will be,"
Master Tugwell replied, with his deep chest voice, which no gale of
wind could blow away. "Whether he be wrong or right--and I won't
say but what I might have done it better--none but a fool like you
would dare to set his squeak up against Admirable Lord Nelson."
CHAPTER IV
AND HER FAITHFUL CHAPLAIN
"I am not a man of the world, but a man of the Word," said Parson
Twemlow, the Rector of Springhaven; "and I shall not feel that I
have done my duty unless I stir him up to-morrow. His valor and
glory are nothing to me, nor even his value to the country. He
does his duty, and I shall do mine. It is useless to talk to me,
Maria; I never shall have such a chance again."
"Well, dear, you know best," replied Mrs. Twemlow; "and duty is
always the highest and best and most sacred consideration. But you
surely should remember, for Eliza's sake, that we never shall dine
at the Hall again."
"I don't care a snap for their dinners, or the chance of Eliza
catching some young officer; and very few come while this peace
goes on. I won't shirk my duty for any of that."
"Nothing would ever make you shirk your duty, Joshua. And I hope
that you know me too well to suppose that I ever would dream of
suggesting it. But I do want to see you a Canon, and I know that
he begins to have influence in the Church, and therefore the Church
is not at all the place to allude to his private affairs in. And,
after all, what do we know about them? It does seem so low to be
led away by gossip."
"Maria," said the Rector, severely sorry, "I must beg you to leave
me to my conscience. I shall not refer to his private affairs. I
shall put leading truths in a general way, and let him make the
home application."
"Put the cap on if it fits. Very well: you will injure yourself,
and do no one any good. Lord Nelson won't know it; he is too
simple-minded. But Admiral Darling will never forgive us for
insulting him while he is staying at the Hall."
"Maria! Well, I have long given up all attempts at reasoning with
you. If I see a man walking into a furnace, do I insult him by
saying beware?"
"As I am beyond all reason, Joshua, it is far above me to
understand that. But if you escape insulting him, what you do is
far worse, and quite unlike a gentleman. You heap a whole pile of
insults upon your own brother clergymen."
"I do not at all understand you, Maria: you fly off in such a way
from one thing to another!"
"Not at all. Anybody who is not above paying attention must
understand me. When he is at Merton he goes to church, and his
Rector is bound to look after him. When he is at sea, he has his
Chaplain, who preaches whenever the weather permits, and dare not
neglect his duties. But the strongest point of all is this--his
very own father and brother are clergymen, and bound to do their
best for him. All these you insult, and in so many words condemn
for neglecting their duty, because you are unable to resist the
pleasure of a stray shot at a celebrated man when he comes down
here for hospitality."
"My dear, you have put the matter in a new light," said the Rev.
Joshua Twemlow; "I would be the last man in the world to cast a
slur upon any brother clergyman. But it is a sad denial to me,
because I had put it so neatly, and a line of Latin at the end of
it."
"Never mind, dear. That will do for some one else who deserves it,
and has got no influence. And if you could only put instead of it
one of your beautifully turned expressions about our debt of
gratitude to the noble defender of our country--"
"No, no, Maria!" said her husband, with a smile; "be content
without pushing your victory further than Nelson himself would push
it. It may be my duty to spare him, but I will not fall down and
worship him."
Joshua Twemlow, Bachelor of Divinity, was not very likely to
worship anybody, nor even to admire, without due cause shown. He
did not pretend to be a learned man, any more than he made any
other pretense which he could not justify. But he loved a bit of
Latin, whenever he could find anybody to share it with him, and
even in lack of intelligent partners he indulged sometimes in that
utterance. This was a grievance to the Squire of the parish,
because he was expected to enjoy at ear-shot that which had passed
out of the other ear in boyhood, with a painful echo behind it.
But the Admiral had his revenge by passing the Rector's bits of
Latin on--when he could remember them--to some one entitled to an
explanation, which he, with a pleasant smile, vouchsafed. This is
one of the many benefits of a classical education.
But what are such little tags, compared with the pith and marrow of
the man himself? Parson Twemlow was no prig, no pedant, and no
popinjay, but a sensible, upright, honorable man, whose chief
defect was a quick temper. In parish affairs he loved to show his
independence of the Hall, and having a stronger will than Admiral
Darling, he mostly conquered him. But he knew very well how far to
go, and never pressed the supremacy of the Church beyond endurance.
His wife, who was one of the Carnes of Carne Castle, some few miles
to the westward, encouraged him strongly in holding his own when
the Admiral strove to override him. That was her manner of putting
the case; while Admiral Darling would rather have a score of
nightmares than override any one. But the Carnes were a falling as
much as the Darlings were a rising family, and offense comes down
the hill like stones dislodged by the upward traveller. Mrs.
Twemlow knew nothing she disliked so much as any form of haughtiness;
it was so small, so petty, so opposed to all true Christianity. And
this made her think that the Darlings were always endeavoring to
patronize her--a thing she would much rather die than put up with.
This excellent couple had allowed, however, their only son Erle, a
very fine young man, to give his heart entirely to Faith Darling,
the Admiral's eldest daughter, and to win hers to an equal extent;
and instead of displaying any haughtiness, her father had simply
said: "Let them wait two years; they are both very young, and may
change their minds. If they keep of the same mind for two years,
they are welcome to one another."
For a kinder-hearted man than Admiral Darling never saw the sun.
There was nothing about him wonderful in the way of genius,
heroism, large-mindedness, or unselfishness. But people liked him
much better than if he combined all those vast rarities; because he
was lively, genial, simple, easily moved to wrath or grief, free-
handed, a little fond, perhaps, of quiet and confidential brag, and
very fond of gossip.
"I tell you," he said to Lord Nelson now, as they walked down the
hill to the church together that lovely Sunday morning, "you will
not have seen a finer sight than our fishermen in church--I dare
say never. Of course they don't all go. Nobody could expect it.
But as many as a reasonable man could desire come there, because
they know I like it. Twemlow thinks that they come to please him;
but he finds a mighty difference in his congregation when I and my
daughters are out of the parish. But if he goes away, there they
are all the same, or perhaps even more, to get a change from him.
That will show which of us they care about pleasing."
"And they are quite right. I hate the levelling system," the hero
of the Nile replied. "A man should go to church to please his
landlord, not to please the parson. Is the Chaplain to settle how
many come to prayers?"
"That is the right way to look at the thing," said the larger-
bodied Admiral; "and I only wish Twemlow could have heard you. I
asked him to dine with us yesterday, as you know, because you would
have done him so much good; but he sent some trumpery excuse,
although his wife was asked to come with him. She stopped him, no
doubt; to look big, I dare say; as if they could dine with a Lord
Nelson every day!"
"They can do that every day, when they dine with a man who has done
his duty. But where is my pretty godchild Dolly? Horatia seems
too long for you. What a long name they gave me! It may have done
very well for my granduncle. But, my dear Lingo, look sharp for
your Dolly. She has no mother, nor even a duenna--she has turned
her off, she said yesterday. Your daughter Faith is an angel, but
Dolly--"
"My Dolly is a little devil, I suppose! You always found out
everything. What have you found my Dolly at? Perhaps she got it
at her baptism." A word against his pet child was steel upon flint
to Admiral Darling.
"I am not concerned with your opinion," Lord Nelson answered,
loftily. "But Horatia Dorothy Darling is my godchild by baptism,
and you will find her down in my will for a thousand pounds, if she
behaves well, and if it should please the Lord to send me some of
the prize-money I deserve."
This was announced in such a manner, with the future testator's
useful eye bearing brightly on his comrade, and his cocked hat
lifted as he spoke of the great Awarder of prizes, that no one able
to smile could help a friendly and simple smile at him. So Admiral
Darling forgot his wrath, which never had long memory, and scorning
even to look round for Dolly, in whom he felt such confidence, took
the mighty warrior by the good arm and led him toward the peaceful
bells.
"Hurry; we shall be late," he said. "You remember when we called
you 'Hurry,' because of being always foremost? But they know
better than to stop the bells till they see me in the church porch.
Twemlow wanted to upset that, for the parsons want to upset
everything. And I said: 'Very well; then I shall square it by
locking the gate from your shrubbery. That will give me five
minutes to come down the hill.' For my grandfather put up that
gate, you must know, and of course the key belongs to me. It saves
Twemlow a cable's-length every time, and the parsons go to church
so often now, he would have to make at least another knot a month.
So the bells go on as they used to do. How many bells do you make
it, Mr. Nelson?"
"Eight bells, sir," Lord Nelson replied, saluting like the middy in
charge of the watch. And at this little turn they both laughed,
and went on, with memory of ancient days, to church.
CHAPTER V
OPINION, MALE AND FEMALE
The fine young parsons of the present generation are too fond of
asking us why we come to church, and assigning fifty reasons out of
their own heads, not one of which is to our credit or theirs;
whereas their proper business is to cure the fish they have caught,
instead of asking how they caught them. Mr. Twemlow had sense
enough for this, and treated the largest congregation he had ever
preached to as if they were come for the good of their souls, and
should have it, in spite of Lord Nelson. But, alas! their bodies
fared not so well, and scarcely a man got his Sunday dinner
according to his liking. Never a woman would stay by the fire for
the sake of a ten-pound leg of mutton, and the baker put his
shutters up at half past ten against every veal pie and every loin
of pork. Because in the church there would be seen this day (as
the servants at the Hall told every one) the man whom no Englishman
could behold without pride, and no Frenchman with it--the victor of
the Nile, and of Copenhagen, and countless other conflicts.
Knowing that he would be stared at well, he was equal to the
occasion, and the people who saw him were so proud of the sight
that they would talk of it now if they were alive.
But those who were not there would exhibit more confidence than
conscience by describing every item of his raiment, which verily
even of those who beheld it none could do well, except a tailor or
a woman. Enough that he shone in the light of the sun (which came
through a windowful of bull's-eyes upon him, and was surprised to
see stars by daylight), but the glint of his jewels and glow of his
gold diverted no eye from the calm, sad face which in the day of
battle could outflash them all. That sensitive, mild, complaisant
face (humble, and even homely now, with scathe and scald and the
lines of middle age) presented itself as a great surprise to the
many who came to gaze at it. With its child-like simplicity and
latent fire, it was rather the face of a dreamer and poet than of a
warrior and hero.
Mrs. Cheeseman, the wife of Mr. Cheeseman, who kept the main shop
in the village, put this conclusion into better English, when Mrs.
Shanks (Harry's mother) came on Monday to buy a rasher and compare
opinions.
"If I could have fetched it to my mind," she said, "that Squire
Darling were a tarradiddle, and all his wenches liars--which some
of them be, and no mistake--and if I could refuse my own eyes about
gold-lace, and crown jewels, and arms off, happier would I sleep in
my bed, ma'am, every night the Lord seeth good for it. I would
sooner have found hoppers in the best ham in the shop than have
gone to church so to delude myself. But there! that Cheeseman
would make me do it. I did believe as we had somebody fit to do
battle for us against Boney, and I laughed about all they invasion
and scares. But now--why, 'a can't say bo to a goose! If 'a was
to come and stand this moment where you be a-standing, and say,
'Mrs. Cheeseman, I want a fine rasher,' not a bit of gristle would
I trim out, nor put it up in paper for him, as I do for you,
ma'am."
And Widow Shanks quite agreed with her.
"Never can I tell you what my feelings was, when I seed him a-
standing by the monument, ma'am. But I said to myself--'why, my
poor John, as is now in heaven, poor fellow, would 'a took you up
with one hand, my lord, stars and garters and crowns and all, and
put you into his sow-west pocket.' And so he could have done, Mrs.
Cheeseman."
But the opinion of the men was different, because they knew a bee
from a bull's foot.
"He may not be so very big," they said, "nor so outrageous
thunderin', as the missus looked out for from what she have read.
They always goes by their own opinions, and wrong a score of times
out of twenty. But any one with a fork to his leg can see the sort
of stuff he is made of. He 'tended his duty in the house of the
Lord, and he wouldn't look after the women; but he kept his live
eye upon every young chap as were fit for a man-of-war's-man--Dan
Tugwell especial, and young Harry Shanks. You see if he don't have
both of they afore ever the war comes on again!"
Conscious of filling the public eye, with the privilege of being
upon private view, Lord Nelson had faced the position without
flinching, and drawn all the fire of the enemy. After that he
began to make reprisals, according to his manner, taking no trouble
to regard the women--which debarred them from thinking much of him--
but settling with a steady gaze at each sea-faring man, whether he
was made of good stuff or of pie-crust. And to the credit of the
place it must be said that he found very little of that soft
material, but plenty of good stuff, slow, perhaps, and heavy, but
needing only such a soul as his to rouse it.
"What a fine set of fellows you have in your village!" he said to
Miss Darling after dinner, as she sat at the head of her father's
table, for the Admiral had long been a widower. "The finest I have
seen on the south coast anywhere. And they look as if they had
been under some training. I suppose your father had most of them
in the Fencibles, last summer?"
"Not one of them," Faith answered, with a sweet smile of pride.
"They have their own opinions, and nothing will disturb them.
Nobody could get them to believe for a moment that there was any
danger of invasion. And they carried on all their fishing business
almost as calmly as they do now. For that, of course, they may
thank you, Lord Nelson; but they have not the smallest sense of the
obligation."
"I am used to that, as your father knows; but more among the noble
than the simple. For the best thing I ever did I got no praise, or
at any rate very little. As to the Boulogne affair, Springhaven
was quite right. There was never much danger of invasion. I only
wish the villains would have tried it. Horatia, would you like to
see your godfather at work? I hope not. Young ladies should be
peaceful."
"Then I am not peaceful at all," cried Dolly, who was sitting by
the maimed side of her "Flapfin," as her young brother Johnny had
nicknamed him. "Why, if there was always peace, what on earth
would any but very low people find to do? There could scarcely be
an admiral, or a general, or even a captain, or--well, a boy to
beat the drums."
"But no drum would want to be beaten, Horatia," her elder sister
Faith replied, with the superior mind of twenty-one; "and the
admirals and the generals would have to be--"
"Doctors, or clergymen, or something of that sort, or perhaps even
worse--nasty lawyers." Then Dolly (whose name was "Horatia" only
in presence of her great godfather) blushed, as befitted the age of
seventeen, at her daring, and looked at her father.
"That last cut was meant for me," Frank Darling, the eldest of the
family, explained from the opposite side of the table. "Your
lordship, though so well known to us, can hardly be expected to
know or remember all the little particulars of our race. We are
four, as you know; and the elder two are peaceful, while the
younger pair are warlike. And I am to be the 'nasty lawyer,'
called to the bar in the fullness of time--which means after dining
sufficiently--to the great disgust of your little godchild, whose
desire from her babyhood has been to get me shot."
"LITTLE, indeed! What a word to use about me! You told a great
story. But now you'll make it true."
"To wit--as we say at Lincoln's Inn--she has not longed always for
my death in battle, but henceforth will do so; but I never shall
afford her that gratification. I shall keep out of danger as
zealously as your lordship rushes into it."
"Franky going on, I suppose, with some of his usual nonsense,"
Admiral Darling, who was rather deaf, called out from the bottom of
the table. "Nobody pays much attention to him, because he does not
mean a word of it. He belongs to the peace--peace--peace-at-any-
price lot. But when a man wanted to rob him last winter, he
knocked him down, and took him by the throat, and very nearly
killed him."
"That's the only game to play," exclaimed Lord Nelson, who had been
looking at Frank Darling with undisguised disgust. "My young
friend, you are not such a fool after all. And why should you try
to be one?"
"My brother," said the sweet-tempered Faith, "never tries to be a
fool, Lord Nelson; he only tries to be a poet."
This made people laugh; and Nelson, feeling that he had been rude
to a youth who could not fairly answer him, jumped from his chair
with the lightness of a boy, and went round to Frank Darling, with
his thin figure leaning forward, and his gray unpowdered hair
tossed about, and upon his wrinkled face that smile which none
could ever resist, because it was so warm and yet so sad.
"Shake hands, my dear young friend," he cried, "though I can not
offer the right one. I was wrong to call you a fool because you
don't look at things as I do. Poets are almost as good as sailors,
and a great deal better than soldiers. I have felt a gift that way
myself, and turned out some very tidy lines. But I believe they
were mainly about myself, and I never had time to go on with them."
Such little touches of simplicity and kindness, from a man who
never knew the fear of men, helped largely to produce that love of
Nelson which England felt, and will always feel.
"My lord," replied the young man, bending low--for he was half a
cubit higher than the mighty captain--"it is good for the world
that you have no right arm, when you disarm it so with your left
one."
CHAPTER VI
AS OTHERS SEE US
Admiral Darling was very particular in trying to keep his grounds
and garden tolerably tidy always. But he never succeeded, for the
simple reason that he listened to every one's excuses; and not
understanding a walk or a lawn half so well as the deck of a
battle-ship, he was always defeated in argument.
"Here's a state of things!" he used to say in summer-time;
"thistles full of seed within a biscuit-heave of my front door, and
other things--I forget their names--with heads like the head of a
capstan bursting, all as full of seeds as a purser is of lies!"
"Your lordship do not understand them subjects," Mr. Swipes, the
head gardener, was in the habit of replying; "and small blame to
you, in my opinion, after so many years upon the briny wave. Ah!
they can't grow them things there."
"Swipes, that is true, but to my mind not at all a satisfactory
reason for growing them here, just in front of the house and the
windows. I don't mind a few in the kitchen-garden, but you know as
well as I do, Swipes, that they can have no proper business here."
"I did hear tell down to the Club, last night," Mr. Swipes would
reply, after wiping his forehead, as if his whole mind were
perspired away, "though I don't pretend to say how far true it may
be, that all the land of England is to be cultivated for the public
good, same as on the continence, without no propriety or privacy,
my lord. But I don't altogether see how they be to do it. So I
thought I'd better ask your lordship."
"For the public good! The public-house good, you mean." The
Admiral answered nine times out of ten, being easily led from the
track of his wrath, and tired of telling Swipes that he was not a
lord. "How many times more must I tell you, Swipes, that I hate
that Jacobin association? Can you tell me of one seaman belonging
to it? A set of fish-jobbers, and men with barrows, and cheap-
jacks from up the country. Not one of my tenants would be such a
fool as to go there, even if I allowed him. I make great
allowances for you, Swipes, because of your obstinate nature. But
don't let me hear of that Club any more, or YOU may go and
cultivate for the public good."
"Your lordship knows that I goes there for nothing except to keep
up my burial. And with all the work there is upon this place, the
Lord only knows when I may be requiring of it. Ah! I never see
the like; I never did. And a blade of grass the wrong way comes
down on poor old Swipes!"
Hereupon the master, having done his duty, was relieved from
overdoing it, and went on other business with a peaceful mind. The
feelings, however, of Mr. Swipes were not to be appeased so
lightly, but demanded the immediate satisfaction of a pint of beer.
And so large was his charity that if his master fell short of duty
upon that point, he accredited him with the good intention, and
enabled him to discharge it.
"My dear soul," he said, with symptoms of exhaustion, to good Mrs.
Cloam, the housekeeper, who had all the keys at her girdle, about
ten o'clock on the Monday morning, "what a day we did have
yesterday!"
"A mercy upon me, Mr. Swipes," cried Mrs. Cloam, who was also short
of breath, "how you did exaggerate my poor narves, a-rushing up so
soft, with the cold steel in both your hands!"
"Ah! ma'am, it have right to be a good deal wuss than that," the
chivalrous Swipes made answer, with the scythe beside his ear. "It
don't consarn what the masters say, though enough to take one's
legs off. But the ladies, Mrs. Cloam, the ladies--it's them as
takes our heads off."
"Go 'long with you, Mr. Swipes! You are so disastrous at turning
things. And how much did he say you was to have this time? Here's
Jenny Shanks coming up the passage."
"Well, he left it to myself; he have that confidence in me. And
little it is I should ever care to take, with the power of my own
will, ma'am. Why, the little brown jug, ma'am, is as much as I can
manage even of our small beer now. Ah! I know the time when I
would no more have thought of rounding of my mouth for such small
stuff than of your growing up, ma'am, to be a young woman with the
sponsorship of this big place upon you. Wonderful! wonderful! And
only yesterday, as a man with a gardening mind looks at it, you was
the prettiest young maiden on the green, and the same--barring
marriage--if you was to encounter with the young men now."
"Oh," said Mrs. Cloam, who was fifty, if a day, "how you do make me
think of sad troubles, Mr. Swipes! Jenny, take the yellow jug with
the three beef-eaters on it, and go to the third cask from the
door--the key turns upside down, mind--and let me hear you whistle
till you bring me back the key. Don't tell me nonsense about your
lips being dry. You can whistle like a blackbird when you choose."
"Here's to your excellent health, Mrs. Cloam, and as blooming as it
finds you now, ma'am! As pretty a tap as I taste since Christmas,
and another dash of malt would 'a made it worthy a'most to speak
your health in. Well, ma'am, a leetle drop in crystal for
yourself, and then for my business, which is to inquire after your
poor dear health to-day. Blooming as you are, ma'am, you must bear
in mind that beauty is only skin-deep, Mrs. Cloam; and the purtier
a flower is, the more delicate it grows. I've a-been a-thinking of
you every night, ma'am, knowing how you must 'a been put about and
driven. The Admiral have gone down to the village, and Miss Dolly
to stare at the boats going out."
"Then I may speak a word for once at ease, Mr. Swipes, though the
Lord alone knows what a load is on my tongue. It requires a fine
gardener, being used to delicacy, to enter into half the worry we
have to put up with. Heroes of the Nile, indeed, and bucklers of
the country! Why, he could not buckle his own shoe, and Jenny
Shanks had to do it for him. Not that I blame him for having one
arm, and a brave man he is to have lost it, but that he might have
said something about the things I got up at a quarter to five every
morning to make up for him. For cook is no more than a smoke-jack,
Mr. Swipes; if she keeps the joint turning, that's as much as she
can do."
"And a little too fond of good beer, I'm afeard," replied Mr.
Swipes, having emptied his pot. "Men's heads was made for it, but
not women's, till they come to superior stations in life. But, oh,
Mrs. Cloam, what a life we lead with the crotchets of they gentry!"
"It isn't that so much, Mr. Swipes, if only there was any way of
giving satisfaction. I wish everybody who is born to it to have
the very best of everything, likewise all who have fought up to it.
But to make all the things and have nothing made of them, whether
indigestion or want of appetite, turns one quite into the Negroes
almost, that two or three people go on with."
"I don't look at what he hath aten or left," Mr. Swipes made
answer, loftily; "that lieth between him and his own stommick. But
what hath a' left for me, ma'am? He hath looked out over the
garden when he pleased, and this time of year no weeds is up, and
he don't know enough of things to think nothing of them. When his
chaise come down I was out by the gate with a broom in my hand, and
I pulled off my hat, but his eye never seemed to lay hold of me."
"His eye lays hold of everything, whether he makes 'em feel or no.
One thing I'm sure of--he was quite up to Miss Dolly, and the way
she carries on with you know who, every blessed Sunday. If that is
what they go to church for--"
"But, my dear soul," said the genial Swipes, whose heart was
enlarged with the power of good beer, "when you and I was young
folk, what did we go to church for? I can't speak for you, ma'am,
being ever so much younger, and a baby in the gallery in long
clothes, if born by that time; but so far as myself goes, it was
the girls I went to look at, and most of 'em come as well to have
it done to them."
"That never was my style, Mr. Swipes, though I know there were some
not above it. And amongst equals I won't say that there need be
much harm in it. But for a young man in the gallery, with a long
stick of the vile-base in his hand, and the only clean shirt of the
week on his back, and nothing but a plank of pitch to keep him,
however good-looking he may be, to be looking at the daughter, and
the prettiest one too, though not the best, some people think, of
the gentleman that owns all the houses and the haven--presumption
is the smallest word that I can find to use for it; and for her to
allow it, fat--fat something in the nation."
"Well, ma'am," said Mr. Swipes, whose views were loose and liberal,
"it seems a little shock at first to those on trust in families.
But Dannel is a brave boy, and might fight his way to glory, and
then they has the pick of the femmels up to a thousand pound a
year. You know what happened the miller's son, no further off than
Upton. And if it hadn't been for Dannel, when she was a little
chit, where would proud Miss Dolly be, with her feathers and her
furbelows? Natur' is the thing I holds by, and I sees a deal of
it. And betwixt you and me and the bedpost, ma'am, whoever hath
Miss Dolly will have to ride to London on this here scythe. Miss
Faith is the lass for a good quiet man, without no airs and graces,
and to my judgment every bit as comely, and more of her to hold on
by. But the Lord 'a mercy upon us. Mrs. Cloam, you've a-been
married like my poor self; and you knows what we be, and we knows
what you be. Looks 'ain't much to do with it after the first week
or two. It's the cooking, and the natur', and the not going
contrairy. B'lieve Miss Dolly would go contrairy to a hangel, if
her was j'ined to him three days."
"Prejudice! prejudice!" the housekeeper replied, while shaking her
finger severely at him. "You ought to be above such opinions, Mr.
Swipes, a superior man, such as you are. If Miss Faith came into
your garden reading books, and finding fault here and there, and
sniffing at the flowers, a quarter so often as pretty Dolly does,
perhaps you wouldn't make such a perfect angel of her, and run down
her sister in comparison. But your wonderful Miss Faith comes
peeping here and poking there into pots and pans, and asking the
maids how their mothers are, as if her father kept no housekeeper.
She provoked me so in the simple-room last week, as if I was hiding
thieves there, that I asked her at last whether she expected to
find Mr. Erle there. And you should have seen how she burst out
crying; for something had turned on her mind before."
"Well, I couldn't have said that to her," quoth the tender-hearted
Swipes--"not if she had come and routed out every key and every
box, pot, pan, and pannier in the tool-house and stoke-hole and
vinery! The pretty dear! the pretty dear! And such a lady as she
is! Ah, you women are hard-hearted to one another, when your minds
are up! But take my word for it, Mrs. Cloam, no one will ever have
the chance of making your beautiful Miss Dolly cry by asking her
where her sweetheart is."
CHAPTER VII
A SQUADRON IN THE DOWNS
"My dear girls, all your courage is gone," said Admiral Darling to
his daughters at luncheon, that same Monday; "departed perhaps with
Lord Nelson and Frank. I hate the new style of such come-and-go
visits, as if there was no time for anything. Directly a man knows
the ways of the house, and you can take him easily, off he goes.
Just like Hurry, he never can stop quiet. He talks as if peace was
the joy of his life, and a quiet farm his paradise, and very likely
he believes it. But my belief is that a year of peace would kill
him, now that he has made himself so famous. When that sort of
thing begins, it seems as if it must go on."
"But, father dear," exclaimed the elder daughter, "you could have
done every single thing that Lord Nelson has ever contrived to do,
if you had only happened to be there, and equally eager for
destruction. I have heard you say many times, though not of course
before him, that you could have managed the battle of the Nile
considerably better than he did. And instead of allowing the great
vessel to blow up, you would have brought her safe to Spithead."
"My dear, you must have quite misunderstood me. Be sure that you
never express such opinions, which are entirely your own, in the
presence of naval officers. Though I will not say that they are
quite without foundation."
"Why, papa," cried Miss Dolly, who was very truthful, when her own
interests were not involved, "you have often said twice as much as
that. How well I remember having heard you say--"
"You young people always back up one another, and you don't care
what you make your poor father say. I wonder you don't vow that I
declared I could jump over the moon with my uniform on. But I'll
tell you what we'll do, to bring back your senses--we will go for a
long ride this fine afternoon. I've a great mind to go as far as
Stonnington."
"Now how many times have you told us that? I won't believe it till
we get there," young Dolly answered, with her bright eyes full of
joy. "You must be ashamed of yourself, papa, for neglecting your
old friend's son so long."
"Well, to tell you the truth, I am, my dear," confessed the good-
natured Admiral; "but no one but myself has the least idea of the
quantity of things I have to do."
"Exactly what old Swipes said this very morning, only much more
impressively. And I really did believe him, till I saw a yellow
jug, and a horn that holds a pint, in the summer-house. He threw
his coat over them, but it was too late."
"Dolly, I shall have to put you in the blackhole. You belong too
much to the rising generation, or the upstart generation is the
proper word. What would Lord Nelson say? I must have him back
again. He is the man for strict discipline."
"Oh, I want to ask one thing about my great godfather. You know he
only came down with one portmanteau, and his cocked-hat box, and
two hampers. But when I went into his bedroom to see, as a
goddaughter should, that his pillow was smooth, there he had got
tacked up at the head of his bed a picture of some very beautiful
lady, and another at the side, and another at the foot! And Jenny
Shanks, who couldn't help peeping in, to see how a great hero goes
to sleep, wishes that she may be an old maid forever if she did not
see him say his prayers to them. Now the same fate befall me if I
don't find out who it is. You must know, papa, so you had better
tell at once."
"That hussy shall leave the house tomorrow. I never heard of
anything so shameless. Mrs. Cloam seems to have no authority
whatever. And you too, Dolly, had no business there. If any one
went to see the room comfortable, it should have been Faith, as the
lady of the house. Ever since you persuaded me that you were too
old for a governess, you seem to be under no discipline at all."
"Now you know that you don't mean that, papa. You say those cruel
things just to make me kiss you," cried Dolly, with the action
suited to the word, and with her bright hair falling upon his snowy
beard the father could not help returning the salute; "but I must
know who that lady is. And what can he want with three pictures of
her?"
"How should I know, Dolly? Perhaps it is his mother, or perhaps it
is the Queen of Naples, who made a Duke of him for what he did out
there. Now be quick, both of you, or no ride to-day. It is
fifteen long miles to Stonnington, I am sure, and I am not going to
break my neck. As it is, we must put dinner off till half past
six, and we shall all be starved by that time. Quick, girls,
quick! I can only give you twenty minutes."
The Admiral, riding with all the vigor of an ancient mariner,
looked well between his two fair daughters, as they turned their
horses' heads inland, and made over the downs for Stonnington.
Here was beautiful cantering ground, without much furze or many
rabbit-holes, and lovely air flowing over green waves of land, to
greet and to deepen the rose upon young cheeks. Behind them was
the broad sea, looking steadfast, and spread with slowly travelling
tints; before them and around lay the beauty of the earth, with the
goodness of the sky thrown over it. The bright world quivered with
the breath of spring, and her smile was shed on everything.
"What a lovely country we have been through! I should like to come
here every day," said Faith, as they struck into the London road
again. "If Stonnington is as nice as this, Mr. Scudamore must be
happy there."
"Well, we shall see," her father answered. "My business has been
upon the coast so much, that I know very little about Stonnington.
But Scudamore has such a happy nature that nothing would come much
amiss to him. You know why he is here, of course?"
"No, I don't, papa. You are getting so mysterious that you never
tell us anything now," replied Dolly. "I only know that he was in
the navy, and now he is in a grammar school. The last time I saw
him he was about a yard high."
"He is a good bit short of two yards now," said the Admiral,
smiling as he thought of him, "but quite tall enough for a sailor,
Dolly, and the most active young man I ever saw in my life, every
inch of him sound and quick and true. I shall think very little of
your judgment unless you like him heartily; not at first, perhaps,
because he is so shy, but as soon as you begin to know him. I mean
to ask him to come down as soon as he can get a holiday. His
captain told me, when he served in the Diomede, that there was not
a man in the ship to come near him for nimbleness and quiet
fearlessness."
"Then what made him take to his books again? Oh, how terribly dull
he must find them! Why, that must be Stonnington church, on the
hill!"
"Yes, and the old grammar school close by. I was very near going
there once myself, but they sent me to Winchester instead. It was
partly through me that he got his berth here, though not much to
thank me for, I am afraid. Sixty pounds a year and his rations
isn't much for a man who has been at Cambridge. But even that he
could not get in the navy when the slack time came last year. He
held no commission, like many other fine young fellows, but had
entered as a first-class volunteer. And so he had no rating when
this vile peace was patched up--excuse me, my dear, what I meant to
say was, when the blessings of tranquillity were restored. And
before that his father, my dear old friend, died very suddenly, as
you have heard me say, without leaving more than would bury him.
Don't talk any more of it. It makes me sad to think of it."
"But," persisted Dolly, "I could never understand why a famous man
like Sir Edmond Scudamore--a physician in large practice, and head
doctor to the King, as you have often told us--could possibly have
died in that sort of way, without leaving any money, or at least a
quantity of valuable furniture and jewels. And he had not a number
of children, papa, to spend all his money, as I do yours, whenever
I get the chance; though you are growing so dreadfully stingy now
that I never can look even decent."
"My dear, it is a very long sad story. Not about my stinginess, I
mean--though that is a sad story, in another sense, but will not
move my compassion. As to Sir Edmond, I can only tell you now
that, while he was a man of great scientific knowledge, he knew
very little indeed of money matters, and was not only far too
generous, but what is a thousand times worse, too trustful. Being
of an honorable race himself, and an honorable sample of it, he
supposed that a man of good family must be a gentleman; which is
not always the case. He advanced large sums of money, and signed
bonds for a gentleman, or rather a man of that rank, whose name
does not concern you; and by that man he was vilely betrayed; and I
would rather not tell you the rest of it. Poor Blyth had to leave
Cambridge first, where he was sure to have done very well indeed,
and at his wish he was sent afloat, where he would have done even
better; and then, as his father's troubles deepened, and ended in
his death of heart complaint, the poor boy was left to keep his
broken-hearted mother upon nothing but a Latin Grammar. And I fear
it is like a purser's dip. But here we are at Stonnington--a long
steep pitch. Let us slacken sail, my dears, as we have brought no
cockswain. Neither of you need land, you know, but I shall go into
the schoolroom."
"One thing I want to know," said the active-minded Dolly, as the
horses came blowing their breath up the hill: "if his father was
Sir Edmond, and he is the only child, according to all the laws of
nature, he ought to be Sir Blyth Scudamore."
"It shows how little you have been out--as good Mrs. Twemlow
expresses it--that you do not even understand the laws of nature as
between a baronet and a knight."
"Oh, to be sure; I recollect! How very stupid of me! The one goes
on, and the other doesn't, after the individual stops. But whose
fault is it that I go out so little? So you see you are caught in
your own trap, papa."
CHAPTER VIII
A LESSON IN THE AENEID
In those days Stonnington was a very pretty village, and such it
continued to be until it was ravaged by a railway. With the
railway came all that is hideous and foul, and from it fled all
that is comely. The cattle-shed, called by rail-highwaymen "the
Station," with its roof of iron Pan-pipes and red bull's-eyes stuck
on stack-poles, whistles and stares where the grand trees stood and
the village green lay sleeping. On the site of the gray-stone
grammar school is an "Operative Institute," whose front (not so
thick as the skin of a young ass) is gayly tattooed with a ringworm
of wind-bricks. And the old manor-house, where great authors used
to dine, and look out with long pipes through the ivy, has been
stripped of every shred of leaf, and painted red and yellow, and
barge-boarded into "the Temperance Tap."
Ere ever these heathen so furiously raged, there was peace and
content, and the pleasure of the eyes, and of neighborly feeling
abundance. The men never burst with that bubble of hurry which
every man now is inflated with; and the women had time enough to
mind one another's affairs, without which they grow scandalous.
And the trees, that kept company with the houses, found matter for
reflection in their calm blue smoke, and the green crop that
promised a little grove upon the roof. So that as the road went up
the hill, the traveller was content to leave his legs to nature,
while his eyes took their leisure of pleasant views, and of just
enough people to dwell upon.
At the top of the hill rose the fine old church, and next to it,
facing on the road itself, without any kind of fence before it,
stood the grammar school of many generations. This was a long low
building, ridged with mossy slabs, and ribbed with green, where the
drip oozed down the buttresses. But the long reach of the front
was divided by a gable projecting a little into the broad high-
road. And here was the way, beneath a low stone arch, into a porch
with oak beams bulging and a bell-rope dangling, and thence with an
oaken door flung back into the dark arcade of learning.
This was the place to learn things in, with some possibility of
keeping them, and herein lay the wisdom of our ancestors. Could
they ever have known half as much as they did, and ten times as
much as we know, if they had let the sun come in to dry it all up,
as we do? Will even the fourteen-coated onion root, with its
bottom exposed to the sun, or will a clever puppy grow long ears,
in the power of strong daylight?
The nature and nurture of solid learning were better understood
when schools were built from which came Shakespeare and Bacon and
Raleigh; and the glare of the sun was not let in to baffle the
light of the eyes upon the mind. And another consideration is that
wherever there is light, boys make a noise, which conduces but
little to doctrine; whereas in soft shadow their muscles relax, and
their minds become apprehensive. Thus had this ancient grammar
school of Stonnington fostered many scholars, some of whom had
written grammars for themselves and their posterity.
The year being only at the end of March, and the day going on for
five o'clock, the light was just right, in the long low room, for
correction of manners and for discipline. Two boys had been horsed
and brushed up well, which had strengthened the conscience of all
the rest, while sobs and rubs of the part affected diffused a
tender silence. Dr. Swinks, the head-master, was leaning back in
his canopied oaken chair, with the pride inspired by noble actions.
"What wonderfully good boys!" Dolly whispered, as she peeped in
through the dark porch with Faith, while her father was giving the
horses in charge to the hostler from the inn across the way; "I
declare that I shall be frightened even to look at Mr. Scudamore,
if this is a specimen of what he does. There is scarcely a boy
looking off his book. But how old he does look! I suppose it must
be the effect of so much hard teaching."
"You silly thing," her sister answered; "you are looking at the
great head-master. Mr. Scudamore is here at the bottom of the
school. Between these big hinges you can see him; and he looks as
young as you do."
Miss Dolly, who dearly loved any sly peep, kept her light figure
back and the long skirt pulled in, as she brought her bright eyes
to the slit between the heavy black door and the stone-work. And
she speedily gave her opinion.
"He is nothing but a regular frump. I declare I am dreadfully
disappointed. No wonder the title did not come on! He is nothing
but a very soft-natured stupe. Why, the boys can do what they like
with him!"
Certainly the scholars of the Virgil class, which Blyth Scudamore
was dealing with, had recovered from the querimonies of those two
sons of Ovid, on the further side of Ister, and were having a good
laugh at the face of "Captain Scuddy," as they called their beloved
preceptor. For he, being gifted with a gentle sense of humor,
together with a patient love of the origin of things, was questing
in his quiet mind what had led a boy to render a well-known line as
follows: "Such a quantity of salt there was, to season the Roman
nation." Presently he hit upon the clue to this great mystery.
"Mola, the salted cake," he said; "and the next a little error of
conjugation. You have looked out your words, Smith, but chanced
upon the wrong ones."
"Oh, Captain Scuddy," cried the head boy, grinning wisely, though
he might have made just the same blunder himself; "after that, do
tell us one of your sea-stories. It will strike five in about five
minutes. Something about Nelson, and killing ten great Frenchmen."
"Oh, do," cried the other little fellows, crowding round him. "It
is ever so much better than Virgil, Captain Scuddy!"
"I am not Captain Scuddy, as I tell you every day. I'm afraid I am
a great deal too good-natured with you. I shall have to send a
dozen of you up to be caned."
"No, you couldn't do that if you tried, Captain Scuddy. But what
are you thinking of, all this time? There are two pretty ladies in
riding-habits peeping at you from the bell porch. Why, you have
got sweethearts, Captain Scuddy! What a shame of you never to have
told us!"
The youngest and fairest of all the boys there could scarcely have
blushed more deeply than their classical tutor did, as he stooped
for his hat, and shyly went between the old desks to the door in
the porch. All the boys looked after him with the deepest
interest, and made up their minds to see everything he did. This
was not at all what he desired, and the sense of it increased his
hesitation and confusion. Of the Admiral's lovely daughters he had
heard while in the navy, and now he was frightened to think that
perhaps they were come here to reconnoitre him. But luckily the
Admiral was by this time to the fore, and he marched into the
school-room and saluted the head-master.
"Dr. Swinks," he said, "I am your very humble servant, Vice-Admiral
of the Blue, Charles Darling, and beg a thousand pardons for
intrusion on deep learning. But they tell me that your watch is
over in some half a minute. Allow me to ask for the son of an old
friend, Blyth Scudamore, late of the Diomede frigate, but now of
this ancient and learned grammar school. When his labors are over,
I would gladly speak with him."
"Boys may go," the head-master pronounced, as the old clock wheezed
instead of striking. "Sir, my valued young coadjutor is advancing
from the fourth form toward you."
The Doctor was nice in his choice of words, and prided himself on
Johnsonian precision, but his young coadjutor's advance was hardly
to be distinguished from a fine retreat. Like leaves before the
wind, the boys rushed out by a back door into the play-ground,
while the master solemnly passed to his house, with a deep slow bow
to the ladies; and there was poor Scudamore--most diffident of men
whenever it came to lady-work--left to face the visitors with a
pleasing knowledge that his neckcloth was dishevelled, and his hair
sheafed up, the furrows of his coat broadcast with pounce, and one
of his hands gone to sleep from holding a heavy Delphin for three-
quarters of an hour.
As he came out thus into the evening light, which dazed his blue
eyes for a moment, Miss Dolly turned away to hide a smile, but
Faith, upon her father's introduction, took his hand and looked at
him tenderly. For she was a very soft-hearted young woman, and the
tale of his troubles and goodness to his mother had moved her
affection toward him, while as one who was forever pledged--
according to her own ideas--to a hero beyond comparison, she was
able to regard young men with mercy, and with pity, if they had
none to love. "How hard you have been at work!" she said; "it
makes us seem so lazy! But we never can find any good thing to
do."
"That's a cut at me," cried the Admiral. "Scudamore, when you come
to my age, be wiser than to have any daughters. Sure enough, they
find no good to do; and they not only put all the fault of that on
me, but they make me the victim of all the mischief they invent.
Dolly, my darling, wear that cap if it fits. But you have not
shaken hands with Mr. Scudamore yet. I hope you will do so, some
hundreds of times."
"Not all at once, papa; or how thankful he would be! But stop, I
have not got half my glove off; this fur makes them stick so."
Miss Dolly was proud of her hands, and lost few chances of getting
them looked at. Then with a little smile, partly at herself for
petulance, partly to him for forgiveness, she offered her soft warm
rich white hand, and looked at him beautifully as he took it.
Alack and alas for poor "Captain Scuddy"!
His eyes, with a quick shy glance, met hers; and hers with soft
inquiry answered, "I wonder what you think of me?" Whenever she
met a new face, this was her manner of considering it.
"Scudamore, I shall not allow you any time to think about it,"
Admiral Darling broke in suddenly, so that the young man almost
jumped. "Although you have cut the service for a while, because of
our stingy peacefulness, you are sure to come back to us again when
England wants English, not Latin and Greek. I am your commanding
officer, and my orders are that you come to us from Saturday till
Monday. I shall send a boat--or at least I mean a buggy--to fetch
you, as soon as you are off duty, and return you the same way on
Monday. Come, girls, 'twill be dark before we are home; and since
the patrols were withdrawn, I hear there's a highwayman down this
road again. That is one of the blessings of peace, Scudamore; even
as Latin and Greek are. 'Apertis otia portis'--Open the gates for
laziness. Ah, I should have done well at old Winton, they tell me,
if I had not happened to run away to sea."
CHAPTER IX
THE MAROON
If yet there remained upon our southern coast a home for the rarer
virtues, such as gratitude, content, liberality (not of other
people's goods alone), faith in a gracious Providence, and strict
abstinence from rash labor, that home and stronghold was
Springhaven. To most men good success brings neither comfort, nor
tranquillity, nor so much as a stool to sit upon, but comes as a
tread-mill which must be trodden without any getting to the top of
it. Not so did these wise men take their luck. If ever they came
from the fickle wave-bosom to the firm breast of land on a
Saturday, with a fine catch of fish, and sold it well--and such was
their sagacity that sooner would they keep it for cannibal
temptation than sell it badly--did they rush into the waves again,
before they had dried their breeches? Not they; nor did their
wives, who were nearly all good women, stir them up to be off
again. Especially at this time of year, with the days pulling out,
and the season quickening, and the fish coming back to wag their
tails upon the shallows, a pleasant race of men should take their
pleasure, and leave flints to be skinned by the sons of flint.
This was the reason why Miss Dolly Darling had watched in vain at
the Monday morning tide for the bold issue of the fishing fleet.
The weariless tide came up and lifted the bedded keel and the
plunged forefoot, and gurgled with a quiet wash among the straky
bends, then lurched the boats to this side and to that, to get
their heft correctly, and dandled them at last with their bowsprits
dipped and their little mast-heads nodding. Every brave smack then
was mounted, and riding, and ready for a canter upon the broad sea:
but not a blessed man came to set her free. Tethered by head and
by heel, she could only enjoy the poised pace of the rocking-horse,
instead of the racer's delight in careering across the free sweep
of the distance.
Springhaven had done so well last week, that this week it meant to
do still better, by stopping at home till the money was gone, and
making short work afterward. Every man thoroughly enjoyed himself,
keeping sober whenever good manners allowed, foregoing all
business, and sauntering about to see the folk hard at work who had
got no money. On Wednesday, however, an order was issued by
Captain Zebedee Tugwell that all must be ready for a three days'
trip when the tide should serve, which would be at the first of the
ebb, about ten in the morning. The tides were slackening now, and
the smacks had required some change of berth, but still they were
not very far from the Admiral's white gate.
"I shall go down to see them, papa, if you please," Dolly said to
her father at breakfast-time. "They should have gone on Monday;
but they were too rich; and I think it very shameful of them. I
dare say they have not got a halfpenny left, and that makes them
look so lively. Of course they've been stuffing, and they won't
move fast, and they can't expect any more dinner till they catch
it. But they have got so much bacon that they don't care."
"What could they have better, I should like to know?" asked the
Admiral, who had seen hard times. "Why, I gave seven men three
dozen apiece for turning their noses up at salt horse, just because
he whisked his tail in the copper. Lord bless my soul! what is the
nation coming to, when a man can't dine upon cold bacon?"
"No, it is not that, papa. They are very good in that way, as
their wives will tell you. Jenny Shanks tells me the very same
thing, and of course she knows all about them. She knew they would
never think of going out on Monday, and if I had asked her I might
have known it too. But she says that they are sure to catch this
tide."
"Very well, Dolly. Go you and catch them. You are never content
without seeing something. Though what there is to see in a lot of
lubberly craft pushing off with punt-poles--"
"Hush, papa, hush! Don't be so contemptuous. What did my
godfather say the other day? And I suppose he understands things."
"Don't quote your godfather against your father. It was never
intended in the Catechism. And if it was, I would never put up
with it."
Dolly made off; for she knew that her father, while proud of his
great impartiality, candor, and scorn of all trumpery feeling, was
sometimes unable to make out the reason why a queer little middy of
his own should now stand upon the giddy truck of fame, while
himself, still ahead of him in the Navy List, might pace his
quarter-deck and have hats touched to him, but never a heart beat
one pulse quicker. Jealous he was not; but still, at least in his
own family--
Leaving her dear father to his meditations, which Faith ran up to
kiss away, fair Dolly put on a plain hat and scarf, quite good
enough for the fishermen, and set off in haste for the Round-house,
to see the expedition start. By the time she was there, and had
lifted the sashes, and got the spy-glass ready, the flow of the
tide was almost spent, and the brimming moment of the slack was
nigh. For this all the folk of the village waited, according to
the tradition of the place; the manhood and boyhood, to launch
forth; old age, womanhood, and childhood, to contribute the comfort
of kind looks and good-by. The tides, though not to be compared to
the winds in fickleness, are capricious here, having sallies of
irregularity when there has been a long period of northeast winds,
bringing a counter-flow to the Atlantic influx. And a man must be
thoroughly acquainted with the coast, as well as the moon and the
weather, to foretell how the water will rise and fall there. For
the present, however, there was no such puzzle. The last lift of
the quiet tide shone along the beach in three straight waves,
shallow steps that arose inshore, and spent themselves without
breaking.
"Toorn o' the tide!" the Captain shouted; "all aboord, aboord, my
lads! The more 'ee bide ashore, the wuss 'ee be. See to Master
Cheeseman's craft! Got a good hour afront of us. Dannel, what be
mooning at? Fetch 'un a clout on his head, Harry Shanks; or Tim,
you run up and do it. Doubt the young hosebird were struck last
moon, and his brains put to salt in a herring-tub. Home with you,
wife! And take Dan, if you will. He'd do more good at the
chipping job, with the full moon in his head so."
"Then home I will take my son, Master Tugwell," his wife answered,
with much dignity, for all the good wives of Springhaven heard him,
and what would they think of her if she said nothing? "Home I will
take my son and yours, and the wisest place for him to abide in,
with his father set agin him so. Dannel, you come along of me. I
won't have my eldest boy gainsaid so."
Zebedee Tugwell closed his lips, and went on with his proper
business. All the women would side with him if he left them the
use of their own minds, and the sound of his wife's voice last;
while all the men in their hearts felt wisdom. But the young man,
loath to be left behind, came doubtfully down to the stern of the
boat, which was pushed off for the Rosalie. And he looked at the
place where he generally sat, and then at his father and the rest
of them.
"No gappermouths here!" cried his father, sternly. "Get theezell
home with the vemmelvolk. Shove off without him, Tim! How many
more tides would 'ee lose?"
Young Dan, whose stout legs were in the swirling water, snatched up
his striped woolsey from under the tiller, threw it on his
shoulder, and walked off, without a farewell to any one. The whole
of Springhaven that could see saw it, and they never had seen such
a thing before. Captain Zeb stood up and stared, with his big
forehead coming out under his hat, and his golden beard shining in
the morning sun; but the only satisfaction for his eyes was the
back of his son growing smaller and smaller.
"Chip of the old block!" "Sarve 'ee right, Cap'en!" "Starve 'un
back to his manners again!" the inferior chieftains of the
expedition cried, according to their several views of life. But
Zebedee Tugwell paid no heed to thoughts outside of his own hat and
coat. "Spake when I ax you," he said, urbanely, but with a glance
which conveyed to any too urgent sympathizer that he would be
knocked down, when accessible.
But, alas! the less-disciplined women rejoiced, with a wink at
their departing lords, as Mrs. Zebedee set off in chase of her
long-striding Daniel. The mother, enriched by home affections and
course of duties well performed, was of a rounded and ample figure,
while the son was tall, and thin as might be one of strong and
well-knit frame. And the sense of wrong would not permit him to
turn his neck, or take a glance at the enterprise which had
rejected him.
"How grand he does look! what a noble profile!" thought Dolly, who
had seen everything without the glass, but now brought it to bear
upon his countenance. "He is like the centurion in the painted
window, or a Roman medallion with a hat on. But that old woman
will never catch him. She might just as well go home again. He is
walking about ten miles an hour, and how beautifully straight his
legs are! What a shame that he should not be a gentleman! He is
ten times more like one than most of the officers that used to come
bothering me so. I wonder how far he means to go? I do hope he
won't make away with himself. It is almost enough to make him do
it, to be so insulted by his own father, and disgraced before all
the village, simply because he can't help having his poor head so
full of me! Nobody shall ever say that I did anything to give him
the faintest encouragement, because it would be so very wicked and
so cruel, considering all he has done for me. But if he comes
back, when his father is out of sight, and he has walked off his
righteous indignation, and all these people are gone to dinner, it
might give a turn to his thoughts if I were to put on my shell-
colored frock and the pale blue sash, and just go and see, on the
other side of the stepping-stones, how much longer they mean to be
with that boat they began so long ago."
CHAPTER X
ACROSS THE STEPPING-STONES
Very good boats were built at this time in the south of England,
stout, that is to say, and strong, and fit to ride over a heavy
sea, and plunge gallantly into the trough of it. But as the
strongest men are seldom swift of foot or light of turn, so these
robust and sturdy boats must have their own time and swing allowed
them, ere ever they would come round or step out. Having met a
good deal of the sea, they knew, like a man who has felt a good
deal of the world, that heavy endurance and patient bluffness are
safer to get through the waves somehow than sensitive fibre and
elegant frame.
But the sea-going folk of Springhaven had learned, by lore of
generations, to build a boat with an especial sheer forward, beam
far back, and deep run of stern, so that she was lively in the
heaviest of weather, and strong enough to take a good thump
smiling, when unable to dance over it. Yet as a little thing often
makes all the difference in great things, it was very difficult for
anybody to find out exactly the difference between a boat built
here and a boat built ten or twenty miles off, in imitation of her.
The sea, however, knew the difference in a moment between the true
thing and the counterfeit, and encouraged the one to go merrily on,
while it sent back the other staggering. The secret lay chiefly in
a hollow curve forward of nine or ten planks upon either side,
which could only be compassed by skilful use of adze and chisel,
frame-saw and small tools, after choice of the very best timber,
free from knots, tough, and flexible. And the best judge of these
points was Zebedee Tugwell.
Not having cash enough just at present (by reason of family
expenses, and the high price of bread and of everything else) to
set upon the stocks the great smack of the future, which should
sail round the Rosalie, Captain Tugwell was easing his mind by
building a boat for stormy weather, such as they very seldom have
inshore, but are likely to meet with outside the Head. As yet
there were not many rowing boats here fit to go far in tumbling
water, though the few that could do it did it well, and Tugwell's
intention was to beat them all, in power, and spring, and buoyancy.
The fame of his meaning was spread for as much as twenty leagues
along the coast; and jealous people laughed, instead of waiting for
him to finish it.
Young Daniel had been well brought up in the mysteries of his
father's craft, and having a vigorous turn of wrist, as well as a
true eye and quick brain, he was even outgrowing the paternal
skill, with experiments against experience. He had beautiful
theories of his own, and felt certain that he could prove them, if
any one with cash could be brought to see their beauty. His father
admitted that he had good ideas, and might try them, if any fool
would find the money.
Wroth as he had been at the sharp rebuff and contumely of his
father, young Daniel, after a long strong walk, began to look at
things more peaceably. The power of the land and the greatness of
the sea and the goodness of the sky unangered him, and the air that
came from some oyster beds, as the tide was falling, hungered him.
Home he went, in good time for dinner, as the duty of a young man
is; and instead of laughing when he came by, the maids of
Springhaven smiled at him. This quite righted him in his own
opinion, yet leaving him the benefit of the doubt which comes from
a shake in that cradle lately. He made a good dinner, and
shouldered his adze, with a frail of tools hanging on the neck of
it, and troubled with nothing but love--which is a woe of self-
infliction--whistled his way to the beach, to let all the women
understand that he was not a bit ashamed. And they felt for him
all the more, because he stood up for himself a little.
Doubtful rights go cheap; and so the foreshore westward of the
brook being claimed by divers authorities, a tidy little cantle of
it had been leased by Admiral Darling, lord of the manor, to
Zebedee Tugwell, boat-builder, for the yearly provent of two and
sixpence sterling. The Admiral's man of law, Mr. Furkettle, had
strongly advised, and well prepared the necessary instrument, which
would grow into value by-and-by, as evidence of title. And who
could serve summary process of ejectment upon an interloper in a
manner so valid as Zebedee's would be? Possession was certain as
long as he lived; ousters and filibusters, in the form of railway
companies and communists, were a bubble as yet in the womb of ages.
This piece of land, or sand, or rush, seemed very unlikely to be
worth dispute. If seisin corporeal, user immemorial, and
prescription for levance and couchance conferred any title
indefeasible, then were the rabbits the owners in fee-simple,
absolute, paramount, and source of pedigree. But they, while
thoroughly aware of this, took very little heed to go into it, nor
troubled their gentle natures much about a few yards of sand or
grass, as the two-legged creatures near them did. Inasmuch as they
had soft banks of herb and vivid moss to sit upon, sweet crisp
grass and juicy clover for unlabored victuals--as well as a
thousand other nibbles which we are too gross to understand--and
for beverage not only all the abundance of the brook (whose
brilliance might taste of men), but also a little spring of their
own which came out of its hole like a rabbit; and then for scenery
all the sea, with strange things running over it, as well as a
great park of their own having countless avenues of rush, ragwort,
and thistle-stump--where would they have deserved to be, if they
had not been contented? Content they were, and even joyful at the
proper time of day. Joyful in the morning, because the sun was
come again; joyful in the middle day to see how well the world
went; and in the evening merry with the tricks of their own
shadows.
Quite fifteen stepping-stones stepped up--if you counted three that
were made of wood--to soothe the dignity of the brook in its last
fresh-water moments, rather than to gratify the dry-skin'd soles of
gentlefolk. For any one, with a five-shilling pair of boots to
terminate in, might skip dry-footed across the sandy purlings of
the rivulet. And only when a flood came down, or the head of some
springtide came up, did any but playful children tread the lichened
cracks of the stepping-stones. And nobody knew this better than
Horatia Dorothy Darling.
The bunnies who lived to the west of the brook had reconciled their
minds entirely now to the rising of that boat among them. At first
it made a noise, and scratched the sand, and creaking things came
down to it; and when the moon came through its ribs in the evening,
tail was the quarter to show to it. But as it went on naturally
growing, seldom appearing to make much noise, unless there was a
man very near it, and even then keeping him from doing any harm--
outside the disturbance that he lives in--without so much as a
council called, they tolerated this encroachment. Some of the
bolder fathers came and sat inside to consider it, and left their
compliments all round to the masters of the enterprise. And even
when Daniel came to work, as he happened to do this afternoon, they
carried on their own work in its highest form--that of play--upon
the premises they lent him.
Though not very large, it was a lively, punctual, well-conducted,
and pleasant rabbit-warren. Sudden death was avoidable on the part
of most of its members, nets, ferrets, gins, and wires being alike
forbidden, foxes scarcely ever seen, and even guns a rare and very
memorable visitation. The headland staves the southern storm,
sand-hills shevelled with long rush disarm the western fury, while
inland gales from north and east leap into the clouds from the
uplands. Well aware of all their bliss, and feeling worthy of it,
the blameless citizens pour forth, upon a mild spring evening, to
give one another the time of day, to gaze at the labors of men upon
the sea, and to take the sweet leisure, the breeze, and the browse.
The gray old conies of curule rank, prime senators of the sandy
beach, and father of the father-land, hold a just session upon the
head borough, and look like brown loaves in the distance. But
these are conies of great mark and special character, full of light
and leading, because they have been shot at, and understand how to
avoid it henceforth. They are satisfied to chew very little bits
of stuff, and particular to have no sand in it, and they hunch
their round backs almost into one another, and double up their legs
to keep them warm, and reflect on their friends' gray whiskers.
And one of their truest pleasures is, sitting snug at their own
doors, to watch their children's gambols.
For this is the time, with the light upon the slope, and the
freshness of salt flowing in from the sea, when the spirit of youth
must be free of the air, and the quickness of life is abounding.
Without any heed of the cares that are coming, or the prick-eared
fears of the elders, a fine lot of young bunnies with tails on the
frisk scour everywhere over the warren. Up and down the grassy
dips and yellow piles of wind-drift, and in and out of the ferny
coves and tussocks of rush and ragwort, they scamper, and caper,
and chase one another, in joy that the winter is banished at last,
and the glorious sun come back again.
Suddenly, as at the wave of a wand, they all stop short and listen.
The sun is behind them, low and calm, there is not a breath of wind
to stir their flax, not even the feather of a last year's bloom has
moved, unless they moved it. Yet signal of peril has passed among
them; they curve their soft ears for the sound of it, and open
their sensitive nostrils, and pat upon the ground with one little
foot to encourage themselves against the panting of their hearts
and the traitorous length of their shadows.
Ha! Not for nothing was their fear this day. An active and
dangerous specimen of the human race was coming, lightly and
gracefully skimming the moss, above salt-water reach, of the
stepping-stones. The steps are said to be a thousand years old,
and probably are of half that age, belonging to a time when sound
work was, and a monastery flourished in the valley. Even though
they come down from great Hercules himself, never have they been
crossed by a prettier foot or a fairer form than now came gayly
over them. But the rabbits made no account of that. To the young
man with the adze they were quite accustomed, and they liked him,
because he minded his own business, and cared nothing about theirs;
but of this wandering maiden they had no safe knowledge, and judged
the worst, and all rushed away, some tenscore strong, giving notice
to him as they passed the boat that he also had better be cautious.
Daniel was in a sweet temper now, by virtue of hard labor and
gratified wit. By skill and persistence and bodily strength he had
compassed a curve his father had declared impossible without a
dock-yard. Three planks being fixed, he was sure of the rest, and
could well afford to stop, to admire the effect, and feel proud of
his work, and of himself the worker. Then the panic of the conies
made him turn his head, and the quick beat of his heart was
quickened by worse than bodily labor.
Miss Dolly Darling was sauntering sweetly, as if there were only
one sex in the world, and that an entirely divine one. The gleam
of spring sunset was bright in her hair, and in the soft garnish of
health on her cheeks, and the vigorous play of young life in her
eyes; while the silvery glance of the sloping shore, and breezy
ruffle of the darkening sea, did nothing but offer a foil for the
form of the shell-colored frock and the sky-blue sash.
Young Daniel fell back upon his half-shaped work, and despised it,
and himself, and everything, except what he was afraid to look at.
In the hollow among the sand-hills where the cradle of the boat
was, fine rushes grew, and tufts of ragwort, and stalks of last
year's thistles, and sea-osiers where the spring oozed down.
Through these the white ribs of the rising boat shone forth like an
elephant's skeleton; but the builder entertained some hope, as well
as some fear, of being unperceived.
But a far greater power than his own was here. Curved and hollow
ships are female in almost all languages, not only because of their
curves and hollows, but also because they are craft--so to speak.
"Oh, Captain Tugwell, are you at work still? Why, you really ought
to have gone with the smacks. But perhaps you sent your son
instead. I am so glad to see you! It is such nice company to hear
you! I did not expect to be left alone, like this."
"If you please, miss, it isn't father at all. Father is gone with
the fishing long ago. It is only me, Daniel, if you please, miss."
"No, Daniel, I am not pleased at all. I am quite surprised that
you should work so late. It scarcely seems respectable."
At this the young man was so much amazed that he could only stare
while she walked off, until the clear duty of righting himself in
her good opinion struck him. Then he threw on his coat and ran
after her.
"If you please, Miss Dolly--will you please, Miss Dolly?" he
called, as she made off for the stepping-stones; but she did not
turn round, though her name was "Miss Dolly" all over Springhaven,
and she liked it. "You are bound to stop, miss," he said, sternly;
and she stopped, and cried, "What do you mean by such words to me?"
"Not any sort of harm, miss," he answered, humbly, inasmuch as she
had obeyed him; "and I ask your pardon for speaking so. But if you
think twice you are bound to explain what you said concerning me,
now just."
"Oh, about your working so late, you mean. I offered good advice
to you. I think it is wrong that you should go on, when everybody
else has left off long ago. But perhaps your father makes you."
"Father is a just man," said young Tugwell, drawing up his own
integrity; "now and then he may take a crooked twist, or such like;
but he never goeth out of fair play to his knowledge. He hath a-
been hard upon me this day; but the main of it was to check mother
of her ways. You understand, miss, how the women-folk go on in a
house, till the other women hear of it. And then out-of-doors they
are the same as lambs."
"It is most ungrateful and traitorous of you to your own mother to
talk so. Your mother spoils you, and this is all the thanks she
gets! Wait till you have a wife of your own, Master Daniel!"
"Wait till I am dead then I may, Miss Dolly," he answered, with a
depth of voice which frightened her for a moment; and then he
smiled and said, "I beg your pardon," as gracefully as any
gentleman could say it; "but let me see you safe to your own gate;
there are very rough people about here now, and the times are not
quite as they used to be, when we were a-fighting daily."
He followed her at a respectful distance, and then ran forward and
opened the white gate. "Good-night, Daniel," the young lady said,
as he lifted his working cap to her, showing his bright curls
against the darkening sea; "I am very much obliged to you, and I do
hope I have not said anything to vex you. I have never forgotten
all you did for me, and you must not mind the way I have of saying
things."
"What a shame it does appear--what a fearful shame it is," she
whispered to herself as she hurried through the trees--"that he
should be nothing but a fisherman! He is a gentleman in everything
but birth and education; and so strong, and so brave, and so good-
looking!"
CHAPTER XI
NO PROMOTION
Do it again now, Captain Scuddy; do it again; you know you must."
"You touched the rim with your shoe, last time. You are bound to
do it clean, once more."
"No, he didn't. You are a liar; it was only the ribbon of his
shoe."
"I'll punch your head if you say that again. It was his heel, and
here's the mark."
"Oh, Scuddy dear, don't notice them. You can do it fifty times
running, if you like. Nobody can run or jump like you. Do it just
once more to please me."
Kitty Fanshawe, a boy with large blue eyes and a purely gentle
face, looked up at Blyth Scudamore so faithfully that to resist him
was impossible.
"Very well, then; once more for Kitty," said the sweetest-tempered
of mankind, as he vaulted back into the tub. "But you know that I
always leave off at a dozen. Thirteen--thirteen I could never stop
at. I shall have to do fourteen at least; and it is too bad, just
after dinner. Now all of you watch whether I touch it anywhere."
A barrel almost five feet in height, and less than a yard in
breadth, stood under a clump of trees in the play-ground; and Blyth
Scudamore had made a clean leap one day, for his own satisfaction,
out of it. Sharp eyes saw him, and sharp wits were pleased, and a
strong demand had arisen that he should perform this feat
perpetually. Good nerve, as well as strong spring, and compactness
of power are needed for it; and even in this athletic age there are
few who find it easy.
"Come, now," he said, as he landed lightly, with both heels
together; "one of you big fellows come and do it. You are three
inches taller than I am. And you have only got to make up your
minds."
But all the big fellows hung back, or began to stimulate one
another, and to prove to each other how easy it was, by every proof
but practice. "Well, then, I must do it once more," said Blyth,
"for I dare not leave off at thirteen, for fear of some great
calamity, such as I never could jump out of."
But before he could get into the tub again, to prepare for the
clear spring out of it, he beheld a man with silver buttons coming
across the playing-field. His heart fell into his heels, and no
more agility remained in him. He had made up his mind that Admiral
Darling would forget all about him by Saturday; and though the fair
image of Dolly would abide in that quiet mind for a long while, the
balance of his wishes (cast by shyness) was heavily against this
visit. And the boys, who understood his nature, with a poignant
love--like that of our friends in this world--began to probe his
tender places.
"One more jump, Captain Scuddy! You must; to show the flunky what
you can do."
"Oh, don't I wish I was going? He'll have turtle soup, and
venison, and two men behind his chair."
"And the beautiful young ladies looking at him every time he takes
a mouthful."
"But he dare not go courting after thirteen jumps. And he has
vowed that he will have another. Come, Captain Scuddy, no time to
lose."
But Scudamore set off to face his doom, with his old hat hanging on
the back of his head--as it generally did--and his ruddy face and
mild blue eyes full of humorous diffidence and perplexity.
"If you please, sir, his honour the Hadmiral have sent me to fetch
'e and your things; and hoss be baiting along of the Blue Dragon."
"I am sorry to say that I forgot all about it, or, at least, I
thought that he would. How long before we ought to start?"
"My name is Gregory, sir--Coachman Gregory--accustomed always to a
pair, but doesn't mind a single hoss, to oblige the Hadmiral, once
in a way. About half an hour, sir, will suit me, unless they comes
down to the skittle-alley, as ought to be always on a Saturday
afternoon; but not a soul there when I looked in."
Any man in Scudamore's position, except himself, would have grieved
and groaned. For the evening dress of that time, though less
gorgeous than of the age before, was still an expensive and
elaborate affair; and the young man, in this ebb of fortune, was
poorly stocked with raiment. But he passed this trouble with his
usual calmness and disregard of trifles. "If I wear the best I
have got," he thought, "I cannot be charged with disrespect. The
Admiral knows what a sailor is; and, after all, who will look at
me?" Accordingly he went just as he was, for he never wore an
overcoat, but taking a little canvas kit, with pumps and silk
stockings for evening wear, and all the best that he could muster
of his Volunteer equipment.
The Admiral came to the door of the Hall, and met him with such
hearty warmth, and a glance of such kind approval at his open
throat and glowing cheeks, that the young man felt a bound of love
and tender veneration towards him, which endured for lifetime.
"Your father was my dearest friend, and the very best man I ever
knew. I must call you 'Blyth,'" said the Admiral, "for if I call
you 'Scudamore,' I shall think perpetually of my loss."
At dinner that day there was no other guest, and nothing to disturb
the present one, except a young lady's quick glances, of which he
endeavored to have no knowledge. Faith Darling, a gentle and
beautiful young woman, had taken a natural liking to him, because
of his troubles, and simplicity, and devotion to his widowed
mother. But to the younger, Dolly Darling, he was only a visitor,
dull and stupid, requiring, without at all repaying, the trouble of
some attention. He was not tall, nor handsome, nor of striking
appearance in any way; and although he was clearly a gentleman, to
her judgment he was not an accomplished, or even a clever one. His
inborn modesty and shyness placed him at great disadvantage, until
well known; and the simple truth of his nature forbade any of the
large talk and bold utterance which pleased her as yet among young
officers.
"What a plague he will be all day tomorrow!" she said to her sister
in the drawing-room. "Father was obliged, I suppose, to invite
him; but what can we do with him all the day? Sundays are dull
enough, I am sure, already, without our having to amuse a gentleman
who has scarcely got two ideas of his own, and is afraid to say
'bo' to a goose, I do believe. Did you hear what he said when I
asked him whether he was fond of riding?"
"Yes; and I thought it so good of him, to answer so straightforwardly.
He said that he used to be very fond of it, but was afraid that
he should fall off now."
"I should like to see him. I tell you what we'll do. We will make
him ride back on Monday morning, and put him on 'Blue Bangles,' who
won't have seen daylight since Friday. Won't he jump about a bit!
What a shame it is, not to let us ride on Sundays!"
Ignorant of these kind intentions, Scudamore was enjoying himself
in his quiet, observant way. Mr. Twemlow, the rector of the
parish, had chanced--as he often chanced on a Saturday, after
buckling up a brace of sermons--to issue his mind (with his body
outside it) for a little relief of neighbourhood. And these little
airings of his chastening love--for he loved everybody, when he had
done his sermon--came, whenever there was a fair chance of it, to a
glass of the fine old port which is the true haven for an ancient
Admiral.
"Just in time, Rector," cried Admiral Darling, who had added by
many a hardship to his inborn hospitality. "This is my young
friend Blyth Scudamore, the son of one of my oldest friends. You
have heard of Sir Edmond Scudamore?"
"And seen him and felt him. And to him I owe, under a merciful
Providence, the power of drinking in this fine port the health of
his son, which I do with deep pleasure, for the excellence both of
end and means."
The old man bowed at the praise of his wine, and the young one at
that of his father. Then, after the usual pinch of snuff from the
Rector's long gold box, the host returned to the subject he had
been full of before this interruption.
"The question we have in hand is this. What is to be done with our
friend Blyth? He was getting on famously, till this vile peace
came. Twemlow, you called it that yourself, so that argument about
words is useless. Blyth's lieutenancy was on the books, and the
way they carry things on now, and shoot poor fellows' heads off, he
might have been a post-captain in a twelvemonth. And now there
seems nothing on earth before him better than Holy-Orders."
"Admiral Darling is kind enough to think," said Scudamore, in his
mild, hesitative way, blushing outwardly, but smiling inwardly,
"that I am too good to be a clergyman."
"And so you are, and Heaven knows it, Blyth, unless there was a
chance of getting on by goodness, which there is in the Navy, but
not in the Church. Twemlow, what is your opinion?"
"It would not be modest in me," said the Rector, "to stand up too
much for my own order. We do our duty, and we don't get on."
"Exactly. You could not have put it better. You get no vacancies
by shot and shell, and being fit for another world, you keep out of
it. Have you ever heard me tell the story about Gunner MacCrab, of
the Bellerophon?"
"Fifty times, and more than that," replied the sturdy parson, who
liked to make a little cut at the Church sometimes, but would not
allow any other hand to do it. "But now about our young friend
here. Surely, with all that we know by this time of the character
of that Bony, we can see that this peace is a mere trick of his to
bamboozle us while he gets ready. In six months we shall be at war
again, hammer and tongs, as sure as my name is Twemlow."
"So be it!" cried the Admiral, with a stamp on his oak floor, while
Scudamore's gentle eyes flashed and fell; "if it is the will of
God, so be it. But if it once begins again, God alone knows where
France will be before you and I are in our graves. They have
drained all our patience, and our pockets very nearly; but they
have scarcely put a tap into our energy and endurance. But what
are they? A gang of slaves, rammed into the cannon by a Despot."
"They seem to like it, and the question is for them. But the
struggle will be desperate, mountains of carnage, oceans of blood,
universal mourning, lamentation, and woe. And I have had enough
trouble with my tithes already."
"Tithes are dependent on the will of the Almighty," said the
Admiral, who paid more than he altogether liked; "but a war goes by
reason and good management. It encourages the best men of the day,
and it brings out the difference between right and wrong, which are
quite smothered up in peace time. It keeps out a quantity of
foreign rubbish and stuff only made to be looked at, and it makes
people trust one another, and know what country they belong to, and
feel how much they have left to be thankful for. And what is the
use of a noble fleet, unless it can get some fighting? Blyth, what
say you? You know something about that."
"No, sir, I have never been at close quarters yet. And I doubt--or
at least I am certain that I should not like it. I am afraid that
I should want to run down below."
Mr. Twemlow, having never smelled hostile powder, gazed at him
rather loftily, while the young man blushed at his own truth, yet
looked up bravely to confirm it.
"Of all I have ever known or met," said Admiral Darling, quietly,
"there are but three--Nelson and two others, and one of those two
was half-witted--who could fetch up muzzle to muzzle without a
feeling of that sort. The true courage lies in resisting the
impulse, more than being free from it. I know that I was in a
precious fright the first time I was shot at, even at a decent
distance; and I don't pretend to like it even now. But I am pretty
safe now from any further chance, I fear. When we cut our wisdom-
teeth, they shelf us. Twemlow, how much wiser you are in the
Church! The older a man gets, the higher they promote him."
"Then let them begin with me," the Rector answered, smiling; "I am
old enough now for almost anything, and the only promotion I get is
stiff joints, and teeth that crave peace from an olive. Placitam
paci, Mr. Scudamore knows the rest, being fresh from the learned
Stonnington. But, Squire, you know that I am content. I love
Springhaven, Springhaven loves me, and we chasten one another."
"A man who knows all the Latin you know, Rector--for I own that you
beat me to the spelling-book--should be at least an Archdeacon in
the Church, which is equal to the rank of Rear-Admiral. But you
never have pushed as you should do; and you let it all off in
quotations. Those are very comforting to the mind, but I never
knew a man do good with them, unless they come out of the Bible.
When Gunner Matthew of the Erigdoupos was waiting to have his leg
off, with no prospect before him--except a better world--you know
what our Chaplain said to him; and the effect upon his mind was
such, that I have got him to this day upon my land."
"Of course you have--the biggest old poacher in the county. He
shoots half your pheasants with his wooden leg by moonlight. What
your Chaplain said to him was entirely profane in the turn of a
text of Holy-Writ; and it shows how our cloth is spoiled by contact
with yours"--for the Admiral was laughing to himself at this old
tale, which he would not produce before young Scudamore, but loved
to have out with the Rector--"and I hope it will be a good warning
to you, Squire, to settle no more old gunners on your property.
You must understand, Mr. Scudamore, that the Admiral makes a sort
of Naval Hospital, for all his old salts, on his own Estates."
"I am sure it is wonderfully kind in him," the young man answered,
bravely, "for the poor old fellows are thrown to the dogs by the
country, when it has disabled them. I have not seen much of the
service, but quite enough to know that, Mr. Twemlow."
"I have seen a great deal, and I say that it is so. And my good
friend knows it as well as I do, and is one of the first to lend a
helping hand. In all such cases he does more than I do, whenever
they come within his knowledge. But let us return to the matter in
hand. Here is a young man, a first-rate sailor, who would have
been under my guardianship, I know, but for--but for sad
circumstances. Is he to be grinding at Virgil and Ovid till all
his spirit goes out of him, because we have patched up a very
shabby peace? It can never last long. Every Englishman hates it,
although it may seem to save his pocket. Twemlow, I am no
politician. You read the papers more than I do. How much longer
will this wretched compact hold? You have predicted the course of
things before."
"And so I will again," replied the Rector. "Atheism, mockery,
cynicism, blasphemy, lust, and blood-thirstyness cannot rage and
raven within a few leagues of a godly and just nation without
stinking in their nostrils. Sir, it is our mission from the Lord
to quench Bony, and to conquer the bullies of Europe. We don't
look like doing it now, I confess. But do it we shall, in the end,
as sure as the name of our country is England."
"I have no doubt of it," said the Admiral, simply; "but there will
be a deal of fighting betwixt this and then. Blyth, will you leave
me to see what I can do, whenever we get to work again?"
"I should think that I would, sir, and never forget it. I am not
fond of fighting; but how I have longed to feel myself afloat
again!"
CHAPTER XII
AT THE YEW-TREE
All the common-sense of England, more abundant in those days than
now, felt that the war had not been fought out, and the way to the
lap of peace could only be won by vigorous use of the arms. Some
few there were even then, as now there is a cackling multitude,
besotted enough to believe that facts can be undone by blinking
them. But our forefathers on the whole were wise, and knew that
nothing is trampled more basely than right that will not right
itself.
Therefore they set their faces hard, and toughened their hearts
like knotted oak, against all that man could do to them. There
were no magnificent proclamations, no big vaunts of victory at the
buckling on of armour, but the quiet strength of steadfast wills,
and the stern resolve to strike when stricken, and try to last the
longest. And so their mother-land became the mother of men and
freedom.
In November, 1802, the speech from the throne apprised the world
that England was preparing. The widest, longest, and deadliest
war, since the date of gunpowder, was lowering; and the hearts of
all who loved their kin were heavy, but found no help for it.
The sermon which Mr. Twemlow preached in Springhaven church was
magnificent. Some parishioners, keeping memory more alert than
conscience, declared that they had received it all nine, or it
might be ten, years since, when the fighting first was called for.
If so, that proved it none the worse, but themselves, for again
requiring it. Their Rector told them that they thought too much of
their own flesh-pots and fish-kettles, and their country might go
to the bottom of the sea, if it left them their own fishing-
grounds. And he said that they would wake up some day and find
themselves turned into Frenchmen, for all things were possible with
the Lord; and then they might smite their breasts, but must confess
that they had deserved it. Neither would years of prayer and
fasting fetch them back into decent Englishmen; the abomination of
desolation would be set up over their doorways, and the scarlet
woman of Babylon would revel in their sanctuaries.
"Now don't let none of us be in no hurry," Captain Tugwell said,
after dwelling and sleeping upon this form of doctrine; "a man
knoweth his own trade the best, the very same way as the parson
doth. And I never knew no good to come of any hurry. Our lives
are given us by the Lord. And He never would 'a made 'em
threescore and ten, or for men of any strength fourscore, if His
will had been to jerk us over them. Never did I see no Frenchman
as could be turned to an Englishman, not if he was to fast and pray
all day, and cut himself with knives at the going down of the sun.
My opinion is that Parson Twemlow were touched up by his own
conscience for having a nephew more French than English; and 'Caryl
Carne' is the name thereof, with more French than English sound to
it."
"Why, he have been gone for years and years," said the landlord of
the Darling Arms, where the village was holding council; "he have
never been seen in these parts since the death of the last Squire
Carne, to my knowledge."
"And what did the old Squire die of, John Prater? Not that he were
to be called old--younger, I dare say, than I be now. What did he
die of, but marrying with a long outlandish 'ooman? A femmel as
couldn't speak a word of English, to be anyhow sure of her meaning!
Ah, them was bad times at Carne Castle; and as nice a place as need
be then, until they dipped the property. Six grey horses they were
used to go with to London Parliament every year, before the last
Squire come of age, as I have heered my father say scores of times,
and no lie ever come from his mouth, no more than it could from
mine, almost. Then they dropped to four, and then to two, and
pretended that the roads were easier."
"When I was down the coast, last week, so far as Littlehampton,"
said a stout young man in the corner, "a very coorous thing
happened me, leastways by my own opinion, and glad shall I be to
have the judgment of Cappen Zeb consarning it. There come in there
a queer-rigged craft of some sixty ton from Halvers, desiring to
set up trade again, or to do some smoogling, or spying perhaps.
Her name was the Doctor Humm, which seem a great favorite with they
Crappos, and her skipper had a queer name too, as if he was two men
in one, for he called himself 'Jacks'; a fellow about forty year
old, as I hauled out of the sea with a boat-hook one night on the
Varners. Well, he seemed to think a good deal of that, though
contrary to their nature, and nothing would do but I must go to be
fated with him everywhere, if the folk would change his money. He
had picked up a decent bit of talk from shipping in the oyster line
before the war; and I put his lingo into order for him, for which
he was very thankful."
"And so he was bound to be. But you had no call to do it, Charley
Bowles." Captain Tugwell spoke severely, and the young man felt
that he was wrong, for the elders shook their heads at him, as a
traitor to the English language.
"Well, main likely, I went amiss. But he seemed to take it so
uncommon kind of me hitching him with a boat-hook, that we got on
together wonderful, and he called me 'Friar Sharley,' and he tried
to take up with our manners and customs; but his head was
outlandish for English grog. One night he was three sheets in the
wind, at a snug little crib by the river, and he took to the brag
as is born with them. 'All dis contray in one year now,' says he,
nodding over his glass at me, 'shall be of the grand nashong, and I
will make a great man of you, Friar Sharley. Do you know what
prawns are, my good friend?' Well, I said I had caught a good many
in my time; but he laughed and said, 'Prawns will catch you this
time. One tousand prawns, all with two hondred men inside him, and
the leetle prawns will come to land at your house, Sharley.
Bootiful place, quiet sea, no bad rocks. You look out in the
morning, and the white coast is made black with them.' Now what do
you say to that, Cappen Tugwell?"
"I've a-heered that style of talk many times afore," Master Tugwell
answered, solidly; "and all I can say is that I should have punched
his head. And you deserve the same thing, Charley Bowles, unless
you've got more than that to tell us."
"So I might, Cappen, and I won't deny you there. But the discourse
were consarning Squire Carne now just, and the troubles he fell
into, before I was come to my judgment yet. Why, an uncle of mine
served footman there--Jeremiah Bowles, known to every one, until he
was no more heard of."
Nods of assent to the fame of Jeremiah encouraged the stout young
man in his tale, and a wedge of tobacco rekindled him.
"Yes, it were a coorous thing indeed, and coorous for me to hear of
it, out of all mast-head of Springhaven. Says Moosoo Jacks to me,
that night when I boused him up unpretending: 'You keep your
feather eye open, my tear,' for such was his way of pronouncing it,
'and you shall arrive to laglore, laglore--and what is still
nobler, de monnay. In one two tree month, you shall see a young
captain returned to his contray dominion, and then you will go to
his side and say Jacks, and he will make present to you a sack of
silver.' Well, I hailed the chance of this pretty smart, you may
suppose, and I asked him what the sailor's name would be, and
surprised I was when he answered Carne, or Carny, for he gave it in
two syllables. Next morning's tide, the Doctor Humm cleared out,
and I had no other chance of discourse with Moosoo Jacks. But I
want to know what you think, Cappen Zeb."
"So you shall," said the captain of Springhaven, sternly. "I think
you had better call your Moosoo Jacks 'Master Jackass,' or 'Master
Jackanapes,' and put your own name on the back of him. You been
with a Frenchman hob and nobbing, and you don't even know how they
pronounce themselves, unchristian as it is to do so. 'Jarks' were
his name, the very same as Navy beef, and a common one in that
country. But to speak of any Carne coming nigh us with French
plottings, and of prawns landing here at Springhaven--'tis as
likely as I should drop French money into the till of this baccy-
box. And you can see that I be not going to play such a trick as
that, John Prater."
"Why to my mind there never was bigger stuff talked," the landlord
spoke out, without fear of offence, for there was no other sign-
board within three miles, "than to carry on in that way, Charley.
What they may do at Littlehampton is beyond my knowledge, never
having kept a snug crib there, as you was pleased to call it. But
at Springhaven 'twould be the wrong place for hatching of French
treacheries. We all know one another a deal too well for that, I
hope."
"Prater, you are right," exclaimed Mr. Cheeseman, owner of the main
shop in the village, and universally respected. "Bowles, you must
have an imagination the same as your uncle Jerry had. And to speak
of the Carnes in a light way of talking, after all their
misfortunes, is terrible. Why, I passed the old castle one night
last week, with the moon to one side of it, and only me in my one-
horse shay to the other, and none but a man with a first-rate
conscience would have had the stomach to do so. However, I seed no
ghosts that time, though I did hear some noises as made me use the
whip; and the swing of the ivy was black as a hearse. A little
drop more of my own rum, John: it gives me quite a chill to think
of it."
"I don't take much account of what people say," Harry Shanks, who
had a deep clear voice, observed, "without it is in my own family.
But my own cousin Bob was coming home one night from a bit of
sweethearting at Pebbleridge, when, to save the risk of rabbit-
holes in the dark, for he put out his knee-cap one time, what does
he do but take the path inland through the wood below Carne Castle--
the opposite side to where you was, Master Cheeseman, and the same
side as the moon would be, only she wasn't up that night. Well, he
had some misgivings, as anybody must; still he pushed along,
whistling and swinging his stick, and saying to himself that there
was no such thing as cowardice in our family; till just at the
corner where the big yew-tree is, that we sometimes starboard helm
by when the tide is making with a nor'west wind; there Bob seed a
sight as made his hair crawl. But I won't say another word about
it now, and have to go home in the dark by myself arter'ards."
"Come, now, Harry!" "Oh, we can't stand that!" "We'll see you to
your door, lad, if you out with it, fair and forcible."
Of these and other exhortations Harry took no notice, but folded
his arms across his breast, and gazed at something which his mind
presented.
"Harry Shanks, you will have the manners"--Captain Tugwell spoke
impressively, not for his own sake, for he knew the tale, and had
been consulted about it, but from sense of public dignity--"to
finish the story which you began. To begin a yarn of your own
accord, and then drop it all of a heap, is not respectful to
present company. Springhaven never did allow such tricks, and will
not put up with them from any young fellow. If your meaning was to
drop it, you should never have begun."
Glasses and even pipes rang sharply upon the old oak table in
applause of this British sentiment, and the young man, with a
sheepish look, submitted to the voice of the public.
"Well, then, all of you know where the big yew-tree stands, at the
break of the hill about half a mile inland, and how black it looms
among the other stuff. But Bob, with his sweetheart in his head,
no doubt, was that full of courage that he forgot all about the old
tree, and the murder done inside it a hundred and twenty years ago,
they say, until there it was, over his head a'most, with the gaps
in it staring like ribs at him. 'Bout ship was the word, pretty
sharp, you may be sure, when he come to his wits consarning it, and
the purse of his lips, as was whistling a jig, went as dry as a bag
with the bottom out. Through the grey of the night there was
sounds coming to him, such as had no right to be in the air, and a
sort of a shiver laid hold of his heart, like a cold hand flung
over his shoulder. As hard as he could lay foot to the ground,
away he went down hill, forgetting of his kneecap, for such was the
condition of his mind and body.
"You must understand, mates, that he hadn't seen nothing to skeer
him, but only heard sounds, which come into his ears to make his
hair rise; and his mind might have put into them more than there
was, for the want of intarpreting. Perhaps this come across him,
as soon as he felt at a better distance with his wind short;
anyhow, he brought up again' a piece of rock-stuff in a hollow of
the ground, and begun to look skeerily backward. For a bit of a
while there was nothing to distemper him, only the dark of the hill
and the trees, and the grey light a-coming from the sea in front.
But just as he were beginning for to call himself a fool, and to
pick himself onto his legs for trudging home, he seed a thing as
skeered him worse than ever, and fetched him flat upon his lower
end.
"From the black of the yew-tree there burst a big light, brighter
than a lighthouse or a blue thunder-bolt, and flying with a long
streak down the hollow, just as if all the world was a-blazing.
Three times it come, with three different colours, first blue, and
then white, and then red as new blood; and poor Bob was in a
condition of mind must be seen before saying more of it. If he had
been brought up to follow the sea, instead of the shoemaking, maybe
his wits would have been more about him, and the narves of his
symptom more ship-shape. But it never was borne into his mind
whatever, to keep a lookout upon the offing, nor even to lie snug
in the ferns and watch the yew-tree. All he was up for was to make
all sail, the moment his sticks would carry it; and he feared to go
nigh his sweetheart any more, till she took up with another
fellow."
"And sarve him quite right," was the judgment of the room, in high
fettle with hot rum and water; "to be skeered of his life by a
smuggler's signal! Eh, Cappen Zebedee, you know that were it?"
But the captain of Springhaven shook his head.
CHAPTER XIII
WHENCE, AND WHEREFORE?
At the rectory, too, ere the end of that week, there was no little
shaking of heads almost as wise as Zebedee Tugwell's. Mrs.
Twemlow, though nearly sixty years of age, and acquainted with many
a sorrow, was as lively and busy and notable as ever, and even more
determined to be the mistress of the house. For by this time her
daughter Eliza, beginning to be twenty-five years old--a job which
takes some years in finishing--began at the same time to approve
her birth by a vigorous aim at the mastery. For, as everybody
said, Miss Eliza was a Carne in blood and breed and fibre. There
was little of the Twemlow stock about her--for the Twemlows were
mild and humorous--but plenty of the strength and dash and wildness
and contemptuous spirit of the ancient Carnes.
Carne a carne, as Mr. Twemlow said, when his wife was inclined to
be masterful--a derivation confirmed by the family motto, "Carne
non caret carne." In the case, however, of Mrs. Twemlow, age,
affliction, experience, affection, and perhaps above all her good
husband's larger benevolence and placidity, had wrought a great
change for the better, and made a nice old lady of her. She was
tall and straight and slender still; and knew how to make the most,
by grave attire and graceful attitude, of the bodily excellence
entailed for ages on the lineage of Carne. Of moral goodness there
had not been an equally strict settlement, at least in male
heredity. So that Mrs. Twemlow's thoughts about her kith and
kindred were rather sad than proud, unless some ignorance was shown
about them.
"Poor as I am," said Mr. Twemlow, now consulting with her, "and
poor as every beneficed clergyman must be, if this war returns, I
would rather have lost a hundred pounds than have heard what you
tell me, Maria."
"My dear, I cannot quite see that," his wife made thoughtful
answer; "if he only had money to keep up the place, and clear off
those nasty incumbrances, I should rejoice at his coming back to
live where we have been for centuries."
"My dear, you are too poetical, though the feeling is a fine one.
Within the old walls there can scarcely be a room that has a sound
floor to it. And as for the roof, when that thunder-storm was, and
I took shelter with my pony--well, you know the state I came home
in, and all my best clothes on for the Visitation. Luckily there
seems to be no rheumatism in your family, Maria; and perhaps he is
too young as yet to pay out for it till he gets older. But if he
comes for business, and to see to the relics of his property,
surely he might have a bedroom here, and come and go at his liking.
After all his foreign fanglements, a course of quiet English life
and the tone of English principles might be of the greatest use to
him. He would never wish to see the Continent again."
"It is not to be thought of," said Mrs. Twemlow. "I would not have
him to live in this house for fifty thousand pounds a year. You
are a great deal wiser than I am, Joshua; but of his nature you
know nothing, whereas I know it from his childhood. And Eliza is
so strong-willed and stubborn--you dislike, of course, to hear me
say it, but it is the fact--it is, my dear. And I would rather
stand by our daughter's grave than see her fall in love with Caryl
Carne. You know what a handsome young man he must be now, and full
of French style and frippery. I am sure it is most kind of you to
desire to help my poor family; but you would rue the day, my dear,
that brought him beneath our quiet roof. I have lost my only son,
as it seems, by the will of the Lord, who afflicts us. But I will
not lose my only daughter, by any such folly of my own."
Tears rolled down Mrs. Twemlow's cheeks as she spoke of her
mysterious affliction; and her husband, who knew that she was not
weak-minded, consoled her by sharing her sorrow.
"It shall be exactly as you like," he said, after a quiet interval.
"You say that no answer is needed; and there is no address to send
one to. We shall hear of it, of course, when he takes possession,
if, indeed, he is allowed to do so."
"Who is to prevent him from coming, if he chooses, to live in the
home of his ancestors? The estates are all mortgaged, and the park
is gone, turned into a pound for Scotch cattle-breeding. But the
poor old castle belongs to us still, because no one would take the
expense of it."
"And because of the stories concerning it, Maria. Your nephew
Caryl is a brave young fellow if he means to live there all alone,
and I fear he can afford himself no company. You understand him so
much better: what do you suppose his motive is?"
"I make no pretence to understand him, dear, any more than his poor
father could. My dear brother was of headstrong order, and it did
him no good to contradict him, and indeed it was dangerous to do
so; but his nature was as simple as a child's almost, to any one
accustomed to him. If he had not married that grand French lady,
who revelled in every extravagance, though she knew how we all were
impoverished, he might have been living and in high position now,
though a good many years my senior. And the worst of it was that
he did it at a time when he ought to have known so much better.
However, he paid for it bitterly enough, and his only child was set
against him."
"A very sad case altogether," said the rector. "I remember, as if
it were yesterday, how angry poor Montagu was with me. You
remember what words he used, and his threat of attacking me with
his horsewhip. But he begged my pardon, most humbly, as soon as he
saw how thoroughly right I was. You are like him in some things,
as I often notice, but not quite so generous in confessing you were
wrong."
"Because I don't do it as he did, Joshua. You would never
understand me if I did. But of course for a man you can make
allowance. My rule is to do it both for men and women, quite as
fairly as if one was the other."
"Certainly, Maria--certainly. And therefore you can do it, and
have always done it, even for poor Josephine. No doubt there is
much to be pleaded, by a candid and gentle mind, on her behalf."
"What! that dreadful creature who ruined my poor brother, and
called herself the Countess de Lune, or some such nonsense! No,
Joshua, no! I have not so entirely lost all English principle as
to quite do that. Instead of being largeness, that would be mere
looseness."
"There are many things, however, that we never understood, and
perhaps never shall in this world," Mr. Twemlow continued, as if
talking to himself, for reason on that subject would be
misaddressed to her; "and nothing is more natural than that young
Caryl should side with his mother, who so petted him, against his
poor father, who was violent and harsh, especially when he had to
pay such bills. But perhaps our good nephew has amassed some cash,
though there seems to be but little on the Continent, after all
this devastation. Is there anything, Maria, in his letter to
enable us to hope that he is coming home with money?"
"Not a word, I am afraid," Mrs. Twemlow answered, sadly. "But take
it, my dear, and read it to me slowly. You make things so plain,
because of practice every Sunday. Oh, Joshua, I never can be sure
which you are greatest in--the Lessons or the Sermon. But before
you begin I will shoot the bolt a little, as if it had caught by
accident. Eliza does rush in upon us sometimes in the most
unbecoming, unladylike way. And I never can get you to reprove
her."
"It would be as much as my place is worth, as the maids say when
imagined to have stolen sugar. And I must not read this letter so
loud as the Lessons, unless you wish Lizzie to hear every word, for
she has all her mother's quick senses. There is not much of it,
and the scrawl seems hasty. We might have had more for three and
fourpence. But I am not the one to grumble about bad measure--as
the boy said about old Busby. Now, Maria, listen, but say nothing;
if feminine capacity may compass it. Why, bless my heart, every
word of it is French!" The rector threw down his spectacles, and
gazed at his wife reproachfully. But she smiled with superior
innocence.
"What else could you expect, after all his years abroad? I cannot
make out the whole of it, for certain. But surely it is not beyond
the compass of masculine capacity."
"Yes, it is, Maria; and you know it well enough. No honest
Englishman can endure a word of French. Latin, or Greek, or even
Hebrew--though I took to that rather late in life. But French is
only fit for women, and very few of them can manage it. Let us
hear what this Frenchman says."
"He is not a Frenchman, Joshua. He is an Englishman, and probably
a very fine one. I won't be sure about all of his letter, because
it is so long since I was at school; and French books are generally
unfit to read. But the general meaning is something like this:
'MY BELOVED AND HIGHLY VALUED AUNT,--Since I heard from you there
are many years now, but I hope you have held me in memory. I have
the intention of returning to the country of England, even in this
bad time of winter, when the climate is most funereal. I shall do
my best to call back, if possible, the scattered ruins of the
property, and to institute again the name which my father made
displeasing. In this good work you will, I have faith, afford me
your best assistance, and the influence of your high connection in
the neighbourhood. Accept, dear aunt, the assurance of my highest
consideration, of the most sincere and the most devoted, and allow
me the honour of writing myself your most loving and respectful
nephew,
'CARYL CARNE.'
Now, Joshua, what do you think of that?"
"Fine words and no substance; like all French stuff. And he never
even mentions me, who gave him a top, when he should have had the
whip. I will not pretend to understand him, for he always was
beyond me. Dark and excitable, moody and capricious, haughty and
sarcastic, and devoid of love for animals. You remember his pony,
and what he did to it, and the little dog that crawled upon her
stomach towards him. For your sake I would have put up with him,
my dear, and striven to improve his nature, which is sure to be
much worse at six-and-twenty, after so many years abroad. But I
confess it is a great relief to me that you wisely prefer not to
have him in this house, any more at least than we can help it. But
who comes here? What a hurry we are in! Lizzie, my darling, be
patient."
"Here's this plague of a door barred and bolted again! Am I not to
have an atom of breakfast, because I just happened to oversleep
myself? The mornings get darker and darker; it is almost
impossible to see to dress oneself."
"There is plenty of tinder in the house, Eliza, and plenty of good
tallow candles," Mrs. Twemlow replied, having put away the letter,
while her husband let the complainant in. "For the third time this
week we have had prayers without you, and the example is shocking
for the servants. We shall have to establish the rule you suggest--
too late to pray for food, too late to get it. But I have kept
your help of bacon hot, quite hot, by the fire. And the teapot is
under the cozy."
"Thank you, dear mother," the young lady answered, careless of
words, if deeds were in her favour, and too clever to argue the
question. "I suppose there is no kind of news this morning to
reward one for getting up so early."
"Nothing whatever for you, Miss Lizzie," said her father, as soon
as he had kissed her. "But the paper is full of the prospects of
war, and the extent of the preparations. If we are driven to fight
again, we shall do it in earnest, and not spare ourselves."
"Nor our enemies either, I do hope with all my heart. How long are
we to be afraid of them? We have always invaded the French till
now. And for them to talk of invading us! There is not a bit of
spirit left in this island, except in the heart of Lord Nelson."
"What a hot little patriot this child is!" said the father, with a
quiet smile at her. "What would she say to an Englishman, who was
more French than English, and would only write French letters? And
yet it might be possible to find such people."
"If such a wretch existed," cried Miss Twemlow, "I should like to
crunch him as I crunch this toast. For a Frenchman I can make all
fair allowance, because he cannot help his birth. But for an
Englishman to turn Frenchman--"
"However reluctant we may be to allow it," the candid rector
argued, "they are the foremost nation in the world, just now, for
energy, valour, decision, discipline, and I fear I must add
patriotism. The most wonderful man who has appeared in the world
for centuries is their leader, and by land his success has been
almost unbroken. If we must have war again, as I fear we must, and
very speedily, our chief hope must be that the Lord will support
His cause against the scoffer and the infidel, the libertine and
the assassin."
"You see how beautifully your father puts it, Eliza; but he never
abuses people. That is a habit in which, I am sorry to say, you
indulge too freely. You show no good feeling to anybody who
differs from you in opinion, and you talk as if Frenchmen had no
religion, no principles, and no humanity. And what do you know
about them, pray? Have you ever spoken to a Frenchman? Have you
ever even seen one? Would you know one if you even set eyes upon
him?"
"Well, I am not at all sure that I should," the young lady replied,
being thoroughly truthful; "and I have no wish for the opportunity.
But I have seen a French woman, mother; and that is quite enough
for me. If they are so, what must the men be?"
"There is a name for this process of feminine reasoning, this
cumulative and syncopetic process of the mind, entirely feminine
(but regarded by itself as rational), a name which I used to know
well in the days when I had the ten Fallacies at my fingers' ends,
more tenaciously perhaps than the Decalogue. Strange to say, the
name is gone from my memory; but--but--"
"But then you had better go after it, my dear," his wife suggested
with authority. "If your only impulse when you hear reason is to
search after hard names for it, you are safer outside of its sphere
altogether."
"I am struck with the truth of that remark," observed the rector;
"and the more so because I descry a male member of our race
approaching, with a hat--at once the emblem and the crown of sound
reason. Away with all fallacies; it is Church-warden Cheeseman!"
CHAPTER XIV
A HORRIBLE SUGGESTION
"Can you guess what has brought me down here in this hurry?" Lord
Nelson asked Admiral Darling, having jumped like a boy from his
yellow post-chaise, and shaken his old friend's broad right hand
with his slender but strenuous left one, even as a big bell is
swung by a thin rope. "I have no time to spare--not a day, not an
hour; but I made up my mind to see you before I start. I cannot
expect to come home alive, and, except for one reason, I should not
wish it."
"Nonsense!" said the Admiral, who was sauntering near his upper
gate, and enjoying the world this fine spring morning; "you are
always in such a confounded hurry! When you come to my time of
life, you will know better. What is it this time? The Channel
fleet again?"
"No, no; Billy Blue keeps that, thank God! I hate looking after a
school of herring-boats. The Mediterranean for me, my friend. I
received the order yesterday, and shall be at sea by the twentieth."
"I am very glad to hear it, for your sake. If ever there was a
restless fellow--in the good old times we were not like that. Come
up to the house and talk about it; at least they must take the
horses out. They are not like you; they can't work forever."
"And they don't get knocked about like me; though one of them has
lost his starboard eye, and he sails and steers all the better for
it. Let them go up to the stable, Darling, while you come down to
the beach with me. I want to show you something."
"What crotchet is in his too active brain now?" the elder and
stronger man asked himself, as he found himself hooked by the right
arm, and led down a track through the trees scarcely known to
himself, and quite out of sight from the village. "Why, this is
not the way to the beach! However, it is never any good to oppose
him. He gets his own way so because of his fame. Or perhaps
that's the way he got his fame. But to show me about over my own
land! But let him go on, let him go on."
"You are wondering, I dare say, what I am about," cried Nelson,
stopping suddenly, and fixing his sound eye--which was wonderfully
keen, though he was always in a fright about it--upon the large and
peaceful blinkers of his ancient commander; "but now I shall be
able to convince you, though I am not a land-surveyor, nor even a
general of land-forces. If God Almighty prolongs my life--which is
not very likely--it will be that I may meet that scoundrel,
Napoleon Bonaparte, on dry land. I hear that he is eager to
encounter me on the waves, himself commanding a line-of-battle
ship. I should send him to the devil in a quarter of an hour. And
ashore I could astonish him, I think, a little, if I had a good
army to back me up. Remember what I did at Bastia, in the land
that produced this monster, and where I was called the Brigadier;
and again, upon the coast of Italy, I showed that I understood all
their dry-ground business. Tush! I can beat him, ashore and
afloat; and I shall, if I live long enough. But this time the
villain is in earnest, I believe, with his trumpery invasion; and
as soon as he hears that I am gone, he will make sure of having his
own way. We know, of course, there are fifty men as good as myself
to stop him, including you, my dear Darling; but everything goes by
reputation--the noise of the people--praise-puff. That's all I
get; while the luckier fellows, like Cathcart, get the prize-money.
But I don't want to grumble. Now what do you see?"
"Well, I see you, for one thing," the Admiral answered, at his
leisure, being quite inured to his friend's quick fire, "and
wearing a coat that would be a disgrace to any other man in the
navy. And further on I see some land that I never shall get my
rent for; and beyond that nothing but the sea, with a few fishing-
craft inshore, and in the offing a sail, an outward-bound East
Indiaman--some fool who wouldn't wait for convoy, with war as good
as proclaimed again."
"Nothing but the sea, indeed? The sweep of the land, and the
shelter of the bay, the shoaling of the shore without a rock to
break it, the headland that shuts out both wind and waves; and
outside the headland, off Pebbleridge, deep water for a fleet of
line-of-battle ships to anchor and command the land approaches--
moreover, a stream of the purest water from deep and never-failing
springs--Darling, the place of all places in England for the French
to land is opposite to your front door."
"I am truly obliged to you for predicting, and to them for doing
it, if ever they attempt such impudence. If they find out that you
are away, they can also find out that I am here, as commander of
the sea defences, from Dungeness to Selsey-Bill."
"That will make it all the more delightful to land at your front
door, my friend; and all the easier to do it. My own plan is to
strike with all force at the head-quarters of the enemy, because
the most likely to be unprepared. About a year ago, when I was
down here, a little before my dear father's death, without your
commission I took command of your fishing-craft coming home for
their Sunday, and showed them how to take the beach, partly to
confirm my own suspicions. There is no other landing on all the
south coast, this side of Hayling Island, fit to be compared with
it for the use of flat-bottomed craft, such as most of Boney's are.
And remember the set of the tide, which makes the fortunes of your
fishermen. To be sure, he knows nothing of that himself; but he
has sharp rogues about him. If they once made good their landing
here, it would be difficult to dislodge them. It must all be done
from the land side then, for even a 42-gun frigate could scarcely
come near enough to pepper them. They love shoal water, the
skulks--and that has enabled them to baffle me so often. Not that
they would conquer the country--all brag--but still it would be a
nasty predicament, and scare the poor cockneys like the very
devil."
"But remember the distance from Boulogne, Hurry. If they cannot
cross twenty-five miles of channel in the teeth of our ships, what
chance would they have when the distance is nearer eighty?"
"A much better chance, if they knew how to do it. All our cruisers
would be to the eastward. One afternoon perhaps, when a haze is
on, they make a feint with light craft toward the Scheldt--every
British ship crowds sail after them. Then, at dusk, the main body
of the expedition slips with the first of the ebb to the westward;
they meet the flood tide in mid-channel, and using their long
sweeps are in Springhaven, or at any rate the lightest of them, by
the top of that tide, just when you are shaving. You laugh at such
a thought of mine. I tell you, my dear friend, that with skill and
good luck it is easy; and do it they should, if they were under my
command."
If anybody else had even talked of such a plan as within the bounds
of likelihood, Admiral Darling would have been almost enraged. But
now he looked doubtfully, first at the sea (as if it might be thick
with prames already), and then at the land--which was his own--as
if the rent might go into a Frenchman's pocket, and then at his old
and admired friend, who had ruined his sleep for the summer.
"Happily they are not under your command, and they have no man to
compare with you;" he spoke rather nervously; while Nelson smiled,
for he loved the praise which he had so well earned; "and if it
were possible for you to talk nonsense, I should say that you had
done it now. But two things surely you have overlooked. In
the first place, the French can have no idea of the special
opportunities this place affords. And again, if they had, they
could do nothing, without a pilot well acquainted with the spot.
Though the landing is so easy, there are shoals outside, very
intricate and dangerous, and known to none except the natives of
the place, who are jealous to the last degree about their
knowledge."
"That is true enough; and even I should want a pilot here, though I
know every spit of sand eastward. But away fly both your
difficulties if there should happen to be a local traitor."
"A traitor at Springhaven! Such a thing is quite impossible. You
would laugh at yourself, if you only knew the character of our
people. There never has been, and there never will be, a
Springhaven man capable of treachery."
"That is good news, ay, and strange news too," the visitor
answered, with his left hand on his sword, for he was now in full
though rather shabby uniform. "There are not many traitors in
England, I believe; but they are as likely to be found in one place
as another, according to my experience. Well, well, I am very glad
you have no such scoundrels here. I won't say a single word
against your people, who are as fine a lot as any in the south of
England, and as obstinate as any I could wish to see. Of an
obstinate man I can always make good; with a limp one I can do
nothing. But bear in mind every word you have heard me say,
because I came down on purpose about it; and I generally penetrate
the devices of the enemy, though they lead me on a wild-goose-chase
sometimes, but only when our own folk back them up, either by lies
or stupidity. Now look once more, for you are slower as well as a
great deal wiser than I am. You see how this land-locked bight of
Springhaven seems made by the Almighty for flat-bottomed craft, if
once they can find their way into it; while the trend of the coast
towards Pebbleridge is equally suited for the covering fleet,
unless a gale from southwest comes on, in which case they must run
for it. And you see that the landed force, by crowning the hill
above your house and across the valley, might defy our noble
Volunteers, and all that could be brought against them, till a
hundred thousand cutthroats were established here. And Boney would
make his head-quarters at the Hall, with a French cook in your
kitchen, and a German butler in your cellar, and my pretty godchild
to wait upon him, for the rogue loves pretty maidens."
"That will do. That is quite enough. No wonder you have written
poems, Nelson, as you told us the last time you were here. If my
son had only got your imagination--but perhaps you know something
more than you have told me. Perhaps you have been told--"
"Never mind about that," the great sea-captain answered, turning
away as if on springs; "it is high time for me to be off again, and
my chaise has springs on her cables."
"Not she. I have ordered her to be docked. Dine with us you shall
this day, if we have to dine two hours earlier, and though Mother
Cloam rage furiously. How much longer do you suppose you can carry
on at this pace? Look at me. I have double your bodily substance;
but if I went on as you do--you remember the twenty-four-pounder
old Hotcoppers put into the launch, and fired it, in spite of all I
could say to him? Well, you are just the same. You have not got
the scantling for the metal you carry and are always working. You
will either blow up, or else scuttle yourself. Look here, how your
seams are opening!" Here Admiral Darling thrust his thumb through
the ravelled seam of his old friend's coat, which made him jump
back, for he loved his old coat. "Yes, and you will go in the very
same way. I wonder how any coat lasts so much as a month, with you
inside it."
"This coat," said Nelson, who was most sweet-tempered with any one
he loved, though hot as pepper when stirred up by strangers--"this
coat is the one I wore at Copenhagen, and a sounder and kinder coat
never came on a man's back. Charles Darling, you have made a bad
hit this time. If I am no more worn out than this coat is, I am
fit to go to sea for a number of years yet. And I hope to show it
to a good many Frenchmen, and take as many ships, every time they
show fight, as there are buttons on it."
"Then you will double all your captures at the Nile;" such a series
of buttons had this coat, though mostly loose upon their moorings,
for his guardian angel was not "domestic"; "but you may be trusted
not to let them drift so. You have given me a lesson in coast-
defence, and now you shall be boarded by the ladies. You possess
some gifts of the tongue, my friend, as well as great gifts of hand
and eye; but I will back my daughters to beat you there. Come up
to the house. No turning of tail."
"I spoke very well in the House of Lords," said Nelson, in his
simple way, "in reply to the speech of his Majesty, and again about
the Commissioner's Bill; or at least everybody tells me so. But in
the House of Ladies I hold my tongue, because there is abundance
without it."
This, however, he failed to do when the matter came to the issue;
for his godchild Horatia, more commonly called Dolly, happened to
be in the mood for taking outrageous liberties with him. She
possessed very little of that gift--most precious among women--the
sense of veneration; and to her a hero was only a man heroic in
acts of utility. "He shall do it," she said to Faith, when she
heard that he was come again; "if I have to kiss him, he shall do
it; and I don't like kissing those old men."
"Hush!" said her elder sister. "Dolly, you do say things so
recklessly. One would think that you liked to kiss younger men!
But I am sure that is not your meaning. I would rather kiss Lord
Nelson than all the young men in the kingdom."
"Well done, Faith! All the young men in the kingdom! How
recklessly you do say things! And you can't kiss him--he is MY
godfather. But just see how I get round him, if you have wits
enough to understand it."
So these two joined in their kind endeavour to make the visitor
useful, the object being so good that doubtful means might be
excused for it. In different ways and for divers reasons, each of
these young ladies now had taken to like Blyth Scudamore. Faith,
by power of pity first, and of grief for her own misfortunes, and
of admiration for his goodness to his widowed mother--which made
his best breeches shine hard at the knees; and Dolly, because of
his shy adoration, and dauntless defence of her against a cow
(whose calf was on the road to terminate in veal), as well as his
special skill with his pocket-knife in cutting out figures that
could dance, and almost sing; also his great gifts, when the tide
was out, of making rare creatures run after him. What avails to
explore female reason precisely?--their minds were made up that he
must be a captain, if Nelson had to build the ship with his one
hand for him.
"After that, there is nothing more to be said," confessed the
vanquished warrior; "but the daughters of an Admiral should know
that no man can be posted until he has served his time as
lieutenant; and this young hero of yours has never even held the
King's commission yet. But as he has seen some service, and is
beyond the age of a middy, in the present rush he might get
appointed as junior lieutenant, if he had any stout seconders.
Your father is the man, he is always at hand, and can watch his
opportunity. He knows more big-wigs than I do, and he has not
given offence where I have. Get your father, my dears, to attend
to it."
But the ladies were not to be so put off, for they understood the
difference of character. Lord Nelson was as sure to do a thing as
Admiral Darling was to drop it if it grew too heavy. Hence it came
to pass that Blyth Scudamore, though failing of the Victory and
Amphion--which he would have chosen, if the choice were his--
received with that cheerful philosophy (which had made him so dear
to the school-boys, and was largely required among them) his
appointment as junior lieutenant to the 38-gun frigate Leda,
attached to the Channel fleet under Cornwallis, whose business it
was to deal with the French flotilla of invasion.
CHAPTER XV
ORDEAL OF AUDIT
England saw the growing danger, and prepared, with an even mind and
well-girt body, to confront it. As yet stood up no other country
to help or even comfort her, so cowed was all the Continent by the
lash, and spur of an upstart. Alone, encumbered with the pack of
Ireland, pinched with hunger and dearth of victuals, and cramped
with the colic of Whiggery, she set her strong shoulder to the
wheel of fortune, and so kept it till the hill was behind her.
Some nations (which owe their existence to her) have forgotten
these things conveniently; an Englishman hates to speak of them,
through his unjust abhorrence of self-praise; and so does a
Frenchman, by virtue of motives equally respectable.
But now the especial danger lay in the special strength of England.
Scarcely any man along the coast, who had ever come across a
Frenchman, could be led (by quotations from history or even from
newspapers) to believe that there was any sense in this menace of
his to come and conquer us. Even if he landed, which was not
likely--for none of them could box the compass--the only thing he
took would be a jolly good thrashing, and a few pills of lead for
his garlic. This lofty contempt on the part of the seafaring men
had been enhanced by Nelson, and throve with stoutest vigour in the
enlightened breasts of Springhaven.
Yet military men thought otherwise, and so did the owners of crops
and ricks, and so did the dealers in bacon and eggs and crockery,
and even hardware. Mr. Cheeseman, for instance, who left nothing
unsold that he could turn a penny by, was anything but easy in his
mind, and dreamed such dreams as he could not impart to his wife--
on account of her tendency to hysterics--but told with much power
to his daughter Polly, now the recognised belle of Springhaven.
This vigilant grocer and butterman, tea, coffee, tobacco, and
snuffman, hosier also, and general provider for the outer as well
as the inner man, had much of that enterprise in his nature which
the country believes to come from London. His possession of this
was ascribed by all persons of a thoughtful turn to his ownership
of that well-built schooner the London Trader. Sailing as she did,
when the weather was fine, nearly every other week, for London, and
returning with equal frequency, to the women who had never been ten
miles from home she was a mystery and a watchword. Not one of them
would allow lad of hers to join this romantic galleon, and tempt
the black cloud of the distance; neither did Mr. Cheeseman yearn
(for reasons of his own about city prices) to navigate this good
ship with natives. Moreover, it was absurd, as he said, with a
keen sense of his own cheapness, to suppose that he could find the
funds to buy and ply such a ship as that!
Truth is a fugitive creature, even when she deigns to be visible,
or even to exist. The truth of Mr. Cheeseman's statement had
existed, but was long since flown. Such was his worth that he
could now afford to buy the London Trader three times over, and pay
ready money every time. But when he first invested hard cash in
her--against the solid tears of his prudent wife--true enough it
was that he could only scrape together one quarter of the sum
required. Mrs. Cheeseman, who was then in a condition of absorbing
interest with Polly, made it her last request in this world--for
she never expected to get over it--that Jemmy should not run in
debt on a goose-chase, and fetch her poor spirit from its grave
again. James Cheeseman was compelled--as the noblest man may be--
to dissemble and even deny his intentions until the blessed period
of caudle-cup, when, the weather being pleasant and the wind along
the shore, he found himself encouraged to put up the window gently.
The tide was coming in with a long seesaw, and upon it, like the
baby in the cradle full of sleep, lay rocking another little
stranger, or rather a very big one, to the lady's conception.
Let bygones be bygones. There were some reproaches; but the weaker
vessel, Mrs. Cheeseman, at last struck flag, without sinking, as
she threatened to do. And when little Polly went for her first
airing, the London Trader had accomplished her first voyage, and
was sailing in triumphantly with a box of "tops and bottoms" from
the ancient firm in Threadneedle Street, which has saved so many
infants from the power that cuts the thread. After that,
everything went as it should go, including this addition to the
commercial strength of Britain, which the lady was enabled soon to
talk of as "our ship," and to cite when any question rose of the
latest London fashion. But even now, when a score of years, save
one, had made their score and gone, Mrs. Cheeseman only guessed and
doubted as to the purchase of her ship. James Cheeseman knew the
value of his own counsel, and so kept it; and was patted on both
shoulders by the world, while he patted his own butter.
He wore an apron of the purest white, with shoulder-straps of linen
tape, and upon his counter he had a desk, with a carved oak rail in
front of it and returned at either end. The joy of his life was
here to stand, with goodly shirt sleeves shining, his bright cheeks
also shining in the sun, unless it were hot enough to hurt his
goods. He was not a great man, but a good one--in the opinion of
all who owed him nothing, and even in his own estimate, though he
owed so much to himself. It was enough to make any one who
possessed a shilling hungry to see him so clean, so ready, and
ruddy among the many good things which his looks and manner, as
well as his words, commended. And as soon as he began to smack his
rosy lips, which nature had fitted up on purpose, over a rasher, or
a cut of gammon, or a keg of best Aylesbury, or a fine red herring,
no customer having a penny in his pocket might struggle hard enough
to keep it there. For the half-hearted policy of fingering one's
money, and asking a price theoretically, would recoil upon the
constitution of the strongest man, unless he could detach from all
cooperation the congenial researches of his eyes and nose. When
the weather was cool and the air full of appetite, and a fine smack
of salt from the sea was sparkling on the margin of the plate of
expectation, there was Mr. Cheeseman, with a knife and fork, amid a
presence of hungrifying goods that beat the weak efforts of
imagination. Hams of the first rank and highest education, springs
of pork sweeter than the purest spring of poetry, pats of butter
fragrant as the most delicious flattery, chicks with breast too
ample to require to be broken, and sometimes prawns from round the
headland, fresh enough to saw one another's heads off, but for
being boiled already.
Memory fails to record one-tenth of all the good things gathered
there. And why? Because hope was the power aroused, and how
seldom can memory endorse it! Even in the case of Mr. Cheeseman's
wares there were people who said, after making short work with
them, that short weight had enabled them to do so. And every one
living in the village was surprised to find his own scales require
balancing again every time he sent his little girl to Cheeseman's.
This upright tradesman was attending to his business one cold day
in May, 1803, soon after Nelson sailed from Portsmouth, and he
stood with his beloved pounds of farm-house butter, bladders of
lard, and new-laid eggs, and squares of cream-cheese behind him,
with a broad butter-spathe of white wood in his hand, a long goose-
pen tucked over his left ear, and the great copper scales hanging
handy. So strict was his style, though he was not above a joke,
that only his own hands might serve forth an ounce of best butter
to the public. And whenever this was weighed, and the beam
adjusted handsomely to the satisfaction of the purchaser, down went
the butter to be packed upon a shelf uninvaded by the public eye.
Persons too scantily endowed with the greatest of all Christian
virtues had the hardihood to say that Mr. Cheeseman here indulged
in a process of high art discovered by himself. Discoursing of the
weather, or the crops, or perhaps the war, and mourning the
dishonesty of statesmen nowadays, by dexterous undersweep of keen
steel blade, from the bottom of the round, or pat, or roll, he
would have away a thin slice, and with that motion jerk it into the
barrel which he kept beneath his desk.
"Is this, then, the establishment of the illustrious Mr.
Cheeseman?" The time was yet early, and the gentleman who put this
question was in riding dress. The worthy tradesman looked at him,
and the rosy hue upon his cheeks was marbled with a paler tint.
"This is the shop of the 'umble James Cheeseman," he answered, but
not with the alacrity of business. "All things good that are in
season, and nothing kept unseasonable. With what can I have the
honor of serving you, sir?"
"With a little talk." The stranger's manner was not unpleasantly
contemptuous, but lofty, and such as the English shopman loves, and
calls "aristocratic."
"To talk with a gentleman is a pleasure as well as an honour," said
Cheeseman.
"But not in this public establishment." The visitor waved both
hands as he spoke, in a style not then common with Englishmen--
though they are learning eloquent gesticulation now. "It is fine,
Mr. Cheeseman; but it is not--bah, I forget your English words."
"It is fine, sir, as you are good enough to observe"--the humble
James Cheeseman was proud of his shop--"but not, as you remarked,
altogether private. That can hardly be expected, where business is
conducted to suit universal requirements. Polly, my dear, if your
mother can spare you, come and take my place at the desk a few
minutes. I have business inside with this gentleman. You may sell
almost anything, except butter. If any one wants that, they must
wait till I come back."
A very pretty damsel, with a cap of foreign lace both adorning and
adorned by her beautiful bright hair, came shyly from a little door
behind the counter, receiving with a quick blush the stranger's
earnest gaze, and returning with a curtsey the courteous flourish
of his looped-up riding-hat. "What a handsome gentleman!" said
Polly to herself; "but there is something very sad and very wild in
his appearance." Her father's conclusion was the same, and his
heart misgave him as he led in this unexpected guest.
"There is no cause for apologies. This place is a very good one,"
the stranger replied, laying down his heavy whip on the table of a
stone-floored room, to which he had been shown. "You are a man of
business, and I am come upon dry business. You can conjecture--is
it not so?--who I am by this time, although I am told that I do not
bear any strong resemblance to my father."
He took off his hat as he spoke, shook back his long black hair,
and fixed his jet-black eyes upon Cheeseman. That upright dealer
had not recovered his usual self-possession yet, but managed to
look up--for he was shorter by a head than his visitor--with a
doubtful and enquiring smile.
"I am Caryl Carne, of Carne Castle, as you are pleased to call it.
I have not been in England these many years; from the death of my
father I have been afar; and now, for causes of my own, I am
returned, with hope of collecting the fragments of the property of
my ancestors. It appears to have been their custom to scatter, but
not gather up again. My intention is to make a sheaf of the relics
spread by squanderers, and snapped up by scoundrels."
"To be sure, to be sure," cried the general dealer; "this is vastly
to your credit, sir, and I wish you all success, sir, and so will
all who have so long respected your ancient and honourable family,
sir. Take a chair, sir--please to take a chair."
"I find very little to my credit," Mr. Carne said, dryly, as he
took the offered chair, but kept his eyes still upon Cheeseman's;
"but among that little is a bond from you, given nearly twenty
years agone, and of which you will retain, no doubt, a vivid
recollection."
"A bond, sir--a bond!" exclaimed the other, with his bright eyes
twinkling, as in some business enterprise. "I never signed a bond
in all my life, sir. Why, a bond requires sureties, and nobody
ever went surety for me."
"Bond may not be the proper legal term. It is possible. I know
nothing of the English law. But a document it is, under hand and
seal, and your signature is witnessed, Mr. Cheeseman."
"Ah well! Let me consider. I begin to remember something. But my
memory is not as it used to be, and twenty years makes a great hole
in it. Will you kindly allow me to see this paper, if you have it
with you, sir?"
"It is not a paper; it is written upon parchment, and I have not
brought it with me. But I have written down the intention of it,
and it is as follows:
"'This indenture made between James Cheeseman (with a long
description), of the one part, and Montagu Carne (treated
likewise), of the other part, after a long account of some
arrangement made between them, witnesseth that in consideration of
the sum of 300 pounds well and truly paid by the said Montagu Carne
to Cheeseman, he, the said Cheeseman, doth assign, transfer, set
over, and so on, to the said Carne, etc., one equal undivided
moiety and one half part of the other moiety of and in a certain
vessel, ship, trading-craft, and so forth, known or thenceforth to
be known as the London Trader, of Springhaven, in the county of
Sussex, by way of security for the interest at the rate of five per
cent. per annum, payable half-yearly, as well as for the principal
sum of 300 pounds, so advanced as aforesaid.'"
"If it should prove, sir, that money is owing," Mr. Cheeseman said,
with that exalted candour which made a weak customer condemn his
own eyes and nose, "no effort on my part shall be wanting, bad as
the times are, to procure it and discharge it. In every commercial
transaction I have found, and my experience is now considerable,
that confidence, as between man and man, is the only true footing
to go upon. And how can true confidence exist, unless--"
"Unless a man shows some honesty. And a man who keeps books such
as these," pursued the visitor, suggesting a small kick to a pile
of ledgers, "can hardly help knowing whether he owes a large sum or
whether he has paid it. But that is not the only question now.
In continuation of that document I find a condition, a clause
provisional, that it shall be at the option of the aforesaid
Montagu Carne, and his representatives, either to receive the
interest at the rate before mentioned and thereby secured, or,
if he or they should so prefer, to take for their own benefit
absolutely three-fourths of the net profits, proceeds, or other
increment realised by the trading ventures, or other employment
from time to time, of the said London Trader. Also there is a
covenant for the insurance of the said vessel, and a power of sale,
and some other provisions about access to trading books, etc., with
which you have, no doubt, a good acquaintance, Mr. Cheeseman."
That enterprising merchant, importer of commodities, and wholesale
and retail dealer was fond of assuring his numerous friends that
"nothing ever came amiss to him." But some of them now would have
doubted about this if they had watched his face as carefully as
Caryl Carne was watching it. Mr. Cheeseman could look a hundred
people in the face, and with great vigour too, when a small account
was running. But the sad, contemptuous, and piercing gaze--as if
he were hardly worth penetrating--and the twirl of the black tuft
above the lip, and the firm conviction on the broad white forehead
that it was confronting a rogue too common and shallow to be worth
frowning at--all these, and the facts that were under them, came
amiss to the true James Cheeseman.
"I scarcely see how to take this," he said, being clever enough to
suppose that a dash of candour might sweeten the embroilment. "I
will not deny that I was under obligation to your highly respected
father, who was greatly beloved for his good-will to his
neighbours. 'Cheeseman,' he used to say, 'I will stand by you.
You are the only man of enterprise in these here parts. Whatever
you do is for the good of Springhaven, which belonged to my family
for centuries before those new-fangled Darlings came. And,
Cheeseman, you may trust to the honour of the Carnes not to grind
down a poor man who has his way to make.' Them were his words,
sir; how well I recollect them!"
"Too well almost," replied the young man, coldly, "considering how
scanty was your memory just now. But it may save time, and painful
efforts of your memory, if I tell you at once that I am not
concerned in any way with the sentiments of my father. I owe him
very little, as you must be well aware; and the matter betwixt you
and me is strictly one of business. The position in which I am
left is such that I must press every legal claim to the extremest.
And having the option under this good document, I have determined
to insist upon three-quarters of the clear proceeds of this
trading-ship, from the date of the purchase until the present day,
as well as the capital sum invested on this security."
"Very well, sir, if you do, there is only one course left me--to go
into the Court of Bankruptcy, see all my little stock in trade sold
up, and start in life again at the age of fifty-seven, with a curse
upon all old families."
"Your curse, my good friend, will not add sixpence to your credit.
And the heat you exhibit is not well adapted for calculations
commercial. There is one other course which I am able to propose,
though I will not give a promise yet to do so--a course which would
relieve me from taking possession of this noble ship which has made
your fortune, and perhaps from enforcing the strict examination of
your trading-books, to which I am entitled. But before I propose
any such concession, which will be a grand abdication of rights,
one or two things become necessary. For example, I must have some
acquaintance with your character, some certitude that you can keep
your own counsel, and not divulge everything that arrives within
your knowledge; also that you have some courage, some freedom of
mind from small insular sentiments, some desire to promote the true
interests of mankind, and the destruction of national prejudices."
"Certainly, sir; all of those I can approve of. They are very
glorious things," cried Cheeseman--a man of fine liberal vein,
whenever two half-crowns were as good as a crown. "We are cramped
and trampled and down-trodden by the airs big people give
themselves, and the longing of such of us as thinks is to speak our
minds about it. Upon that point of freedom, sir, I can heartily go
with you, and every stick upon my premises is well insured."
"Including, I hope, the London Trader, according to your covenant.
And that reminds me of another question--is it well-found, well-
manned, and a good rapid ship to make the voyage? No falsehood, if
you please, about this matter."
"She is the fastest sailer on the English coast, built at Dunkirk,
and as sound as a bell. She could show her taffrail, in light
weather, to any British cruiser in the Channel. She could run a
fine cargo of French cognac and foreign laces any day."
"It is not my desire," Caryl Carne replied, "to cheat the British
Revenue. For that purpose exist already plenty of British
tradesmen. For the present I impress upon you one thing only, that
you shall observe silence, a sacred silence, regarding this
conversation. For your own sake you will be inclined to do so, and
that is the only sake a man pays much attention to. But how much
for your own sake you are obliged to keep your counsel, you will
very soon find out if you betray it."
CHAPTER XVI
FOX-HILL
When it was known in this fine old village that young Squire Carne
from foreign parts was come back to live in the ancient castle,
there was much larger outlay (both of words and thoughts) about
that than about any French invasion. "Let them land if they can,"
said the able-bodied men, in discussion of the latter question;
"they won't find it so easy to get away again as they seem to put
into their reckoning. But the plague of it all is the damage to
the fishing."
Not that the squadron of Captain Tugwell was shorn as yet of its
number, though all the young men were under notice to hold
themselves ready as "Sea-Fencibles." The injury to their trade lay
rather in the difficulty of getting to their fishing-grounds, and
in the disturbance of these by cruisers, with little respect for
their nets and lines. Again, as the tidings of French preparation
waxed more and more outrageous, Zebedee had as much as he could do
to keep all his young hands loyal. All their solid interest lay
(as he told them every morning) in sticking to the Springhaven
flag--a pair of soles couchant, herring salient, and mackerel
regardant, all upon a bright sea-green--rather than in hankering
after roll of drum and Union-Jack. What could come of these but
hardship, want of victuals, wounds, and death; or else to stump
about on one leg, and hold out a hat for a penny with one arm?
They felt that it was true; they had seen enough of that; it had
happened in all their own families.
Yet such is the love of the native land and the yearning to stand
in front of it, and such is the hate of being triumphed over by
fellows who kiss one another and weep, and such is the tingling of
the knuckles for a blow when the body has been kicked in sore
places, that the heart will at last get the better of the head--or
at least it used to be so in England. Wherefore Charley Bowles was
in arms already against his country's enemies; and Harry Shanks
waited for little except a clear proclamation of prize-money; and
even young Daniel was tearing at his kedge like a lively craft
riding in a brisk sea-way. He had seen Lord Nelson, and had spoken
to Lord Nelson, and that great man would have patted him on the
head--so patriotic were his sentiments--if the great man had been a
little taller.
But the one thing that kept Dan Tugwell firm to his moorings at
Springhaven was the deep hold of his steadfast heart in a love
which it knew to be hopeless. To die for his country might become
a stern duty, about which he would rather not be hurried; but to
die for Miss Dolly would be a wild delight; and how could he do it
unless he were at hand? And now there were so many young officers
again, landing in boats, coming in post-chaises, or charging down
the road on horseback, that Daniel, while touching up the finish of
his boat with paint and varnish and Venetian Red, was not so happy
as an artist should be who knows how to place the whole.
Sometimes, with the paint stirred up and creaming, and the ooze of
the brush trimmed warily, through the rushes and ragwort and sea-
willow his keen, unconquerable eyes would spy the only figure that
quelled them, faraway, shown against the shining water, or shadowed
upon the flat mirror of the sand. But, alas! there was always
another figure near it, bigger, bulkier, framed with ugly angles,
jerking about with the elbow sticking out, instead of gliding
gracefully. Likely enough the lovely form, brought nearer to the
eyes and heart by love, would flit about beautifully for two sweet
moments, filling with rapture all the flashes of the sea and calm
of the evening sky beyond; and then the third moment would be
hideous. For the figure of the ungainly foe would stride across
the delicious vision, huge against the waves like Cyclops, and like
him gesticulant, but unhappily not so single-eyed that the slippery
fair might despise him. Then away would fly all sense of art and
joy in the touch of perfection, and a very nasty feeling would
ensue, as if nothing were worth living for, and nobody could be
believed in.
That plaguesome Polypheme was Captain Stubbard, begirt with a wife,
and endowed with a family almost in excess of benediction, and
dancing attendance upon Miss Dolly, too stoutly for his own
comfort, in the hope of procuring for his own Penates something to
eat and to sit upon. Some evil genius had whispered, or rather
trumpeted, into his ear--for he had but one left, and that worked
very seldom, through alarm about the bullet which had carried off
its fellow--that if he desired, as he did with heart and stomach,
to get a clear widening by 200 pounds of his strait ways and
restricted means, through Admiral Darling it might be done, and
Miss Dolly was the proper one to make him do it. For the
Inspectorship of Sea-Fencibles from Selsea-Bill to Dungeness was
worth all that money in hard cash yearly; and the late Inspector
having quitted this life--through pork boiled in a copper kettle--
the situation was naturally vacant; and the Admiral being the man
for whose check the Inspectorship was appointed, it is needless to
say that (in the spirit of fair play) the appointment was vested in
the Admiral.
The opinion of all who knew him was that Captain Stubbard was
fairly entitled to look for something higher. And he shared that
opinion, taking loftier aim than figures could be made to square
with, till the latter prevailed, as they generally do, because they
can work without victuals. For although the brave Captain had lost
three ribs--or at any rate more than he could spare of them (not
being a pig)--in the service of his country, he required as much as
ever to put inside them; and his children, not having inherited
that loss as scientifically as they should have done, were hard to
bring up upon the 15 pounds yearly allowed by Great Britain for
each of the gone bones. From the ear that was gone he derived no
income, having rashly compounded for 25 pounds.
In the nature of things, which the names have followed, the father
is the feeder; and the world is full of remarks unless he becomes a
good clothier also. But everything went against this father, with
nine little Stubbards running after him, and no ninepence in any of
his pockets, because he was shelfed upon half-pay, on account of
the depression of the times and of his ribs. But Miss Dolly
Darling was resolved to see him righted, for she hated all national
meanness.
"What is the use of having any influence," she asked her good
father, "unless you employ it for your own friends? I should be
quite ashamed to have it said of me, or thought, that I could get a
good thing for any one I was fond of, and was mean enough not to do
it, for fear of paltry jealousy. Mean is much too weak a word; it
is downright dishonest, and what is much worse, cowardly. What is
the government meant for, unless it is to do good to people?"
"Certainly, my dear child, certainly. To the people at large, that
is to say, and the higher interests of the country."
"Can there be any people more at large than Captain Stubbard and
his wife and children? Their elbows are coming out of their
clothes, and they have scarcely got a bed to sleep upon. My income
is not enough to stop to count, even when I get it paid punctually.
But every farthing I receive shall go--that is to say, if it ever
does come--into the lap of Mrs. Stubbard, anonymously and
respectfully."
"Pay your bills, first," said the Admiral, taking the weather-gage
of the discussion: "a little bird tells me that you owe a good
trifle, even in Springhaven."
"Then the little bird has got a false bill," replied Dolly, who was
not very easy to fluster. "Who is there to spend sixpence with in
a little hole of this kind? I am not a customer for tea, coffee,
tobacco, snuff, or pepper, nor even for whiting, soles, or conger.
Old Cheeseman imports all the fashions, as he says; but I go by my
own judgment. And trumpery as my income is, very little of it goes
into his till. But I should like to know who told you such a
wicked story, father?"
"Things are mentioned in confidence, and I put them together," said
the Admiral. "Don't say another word, or look as if you would be
happier if you had something to cry about. Your dear mother used
to do it; and it beats me always. I have long had my eye upon
Captain Stubbard, and I remember well that gallant action when his
three ribs flew away. We called him Adam, because of his wife
coming just when his middle rib went, and his name was Adam
Stubbard, sure enough. Such men, in the prime of their life,
should be promoted, instead of being disabled, for a scratch like
that. Why, he walks every bit as well as I do, and his watch-
ribbon covers it. And nine children! Lord bless my heart! I
scarcely know which way to turn, with only four!"
Within a short fortnight Captain Stubbard was appointed, with an
office established at the house of Widow Shanks--though his real
office naturally was at the public-house--and Royal Proclamations
aroused the valour of nearly everybody who could read them. Nine
little Stubbards soon were rigged too smart to know themselves, as
the style is of all dandies; and even Mrs. Stubbard had a new belt
made to go round her, when the weather was elastic.
"These are the things that prove the eye of an All-wise Providence
over us," said the Captain to the Admiral, pointing out six pairs
of short legs, galligaskined from one roll of cloth; "these are the
things that make one feel the force of the words of David."
"Certainly, yes, to be sure!" replied the gallant senior officer,
all at sea as to the passage suggested. "Good legs they have got,
and no mistake; like the polished corners of the temple. Let them
go and dip them in the sea, while you give the benefit of your
opinion here. Not here, I mean, but upon Fox-hill yonder; if Mrs.
Stubbard will spare you for a couple of hours, most kindly."
Of the heights that look down with a breezy air upon the snug nest
of Springhaven, the fairest to see from a distance, and to tread
with brisk foot, is Fox-hill. For the downs, which are channelled
with the springs that form the brook, keep this for their own last
spring into the air, before bathing in the vigorous composure of
the sea. All the other hills fall back a little, to let Fox-hill
have the first choice of aspect--or bear the first brunt, as itself
would state the matter. And to anybody coming up, and ten times to
a stranger, this resolute foreland offers more invitation to go
home again, than to come visiting. For the bulge of the breast is
steep, and ribbed with hoops coming up in denial, concrete with
chalk, muricated with flint, and thornily crested with good stout
furze. And the forefront of the head, when gained, is stiff with
brambles, and stubbed with sloes, and mitred with a choice band of
stanch sting-nettles.
"It would take a better Frenchman," said the Admiral, with that
brevity which is the happy result of stoutness up steep hill, "than
any of 'they flat-bottoms,' as Swipes, my gardener, calls them, to
get through these prickles, Stubbard, without Sark-blewing. Such a
wonderfully thin-skinned lot they are! Did I ever tell you the
story of our boatswain's mate? But that takes a better sailing
breeze than I've got now. You see where we are, don't you?"
"Certainly, Admiral," replied Captain Stubbard, disdaining to lay
hand to his injured side, painfully as it yearned for pressure; "we
have had a long pull, and we get a fine outlook over the country
for leagues, and the Channel. How close at hand everything looks!
I suppose we shall have rain, and we want it. I could thump that
old castle among the trees into smash, and your church looks as if
I could put a shot with a rifle-gun into the bell-chamber."
"And so you could. What I want to show you is that very point, and
the importance of it. With a battery of long twenty-fours up here,
the landing, the bay, and all the roads are at our mercy. My dear
old friend Nelson drew my attention to it."
"It is plain as a pikestaff to Tom, Dick, or Harry:" Captain
Stubbard was a frank, straightforward man, and much as he owed to
the Admiral's aid, not a farthing would he pay in flattery. "But
why should we want to command this spot? There is nothing to
protect but a few common houses, and some half-score of fishing-
craft, and a schooner that trades to London, and yonder old church,
and--oh yes, to be sure, your own house and property, Admiral."
"Those must take their chance, like others. I hope I know better
than to think of them in comparison with the good of the country.
But if we fail to occupy this important post, the enemy might take
us by surprise, and do so."
"Possible, but most improbable. This little place lies, by the
trend of the coast, quite out of their course from Boulogne to
London; and what is there here to tempt them? No rich town to
sack, no great commerce to rob, no valuable shipping to lay hands
on."
"No; but there's my house and my two girls; and I don't want my old
roof burned, and my daughters put to wait on Boney. But to think
of self-interest is below contempt, with our country going through
such trials. Neither should we add any needless expense to a
treasury already overburdened."
"Certainly not. It would be absolutely wicked. We have a long and
costly war before us, and not a shilling should be spent except in
case of clear necessity."
"I am very glad indeed to find your opinion so decided, so
untainted with petty self-interest." As Admiral Darling spoke he
closed a little silver telescope, with which he had been gazing
through the wooded coronet of the hill. "I thought it my duty to
consult you, Stubbard, before despatching this letter, which, being
backed by Nelson's opinion, would probably have received attention.
If a strong battery were thrown up here, as it would be in a
fortnight from the receipt of this bit of foolscap, the appointment
of commandant would rest with me, and I could appoint nobody but
your good self, because of your well-known experience in
earthworks. The appointment would have doubled your present pay,
which, though better than nothing, is far below your merits. But
your opinion settles the question otherwise, and I must burn my
letter. Let us lose no more time. Mrs. Stubbard will call me a
savage, for keeping you away so long."
"Important business," replied the Captain, "will not wait even for
ladies, or, rather, they must try to wait for it, and give way to
more reasonable urgency. Some time is required for considering
this matter, and deciding what is most for the interest of the
nation. Oblige me with your spy-glass, Admiral. There is one side
on which I have neglected to look out, and that may of all be the
most important. A conclusion arrived at by yourself and Nelson is
not to be hastily set aside. Your knowledge of the country is so
far beyond mine, though I may have had more to do with land-works.
We ought to think twice, sir, if the government will pay for it,
about a valuable job of this kind."
With these words Captain Stubbard began to use the telescope
carefully, forming his opinion through it, and wisely shaking his
head, now and then, with a longer and longer focus. Then he closed
the glass, and his own lips firmly--whereby a man announces that no
other should open his against them--and sternly striding the yard
exact, took measurement for the battery. The hill was crowned with
a ring of Scotch firs, casting a quiet shade upon the warlike haste
of the Captain. If Admiral Darling smiled, it was to the landscape
and the offing, for he knew that Stubbard was of rather touchy
fibre, and relished no jokes unless of home production. His slow,
solid face was enough to show this, and the squareness of his
outline, and the forward thrust of his knees as he walked, and the
larkspur impress of his lingering heels. And he seldom said much,
without something to say.
"Well," cried the Admiral, growing tired of sitting so long upon a
fallen trunk, "what conclusion do you feel inclined to come to?
'Tis a fine breezy place to clear the brain, and a briny air to
sharpen the judgment."
"Only one tree need come down--this crooked one at the southeast
corner." Captain Stubbard began to swing his arms about, like a
windmill uncertain of the wind. "All gentlemen hate to have a tree
cut down, all blackguards delight in the process. Admiral, we will
not hurt your trees. They will add to our strength, by masking it.
Six long twenty-fours of the new make, here in front, and two
eighteens upon either flank, and I should like to see the whole of
the Boulogne flotilla try to take yonder shore by daylight. That
is to say, of course, if I commanded, with good old salts to second
me. With your common artillery officers, landlubbers, smell-the-
wicks, cross-the-braces sons of guns, there had better not be
anything at all put up. They can't make a fortification; and when
they have made it, they can't work it. Admiral Darling, you know
that, though you have not had the bad luck to deal with them as I
have. I may thank one of them for being up here on the shelf."
"Of one thing you may be quite certain," replied the commander of
the sea defence; "if we have any battery on this Fox-hill, it shall
be constructed and manned by blue-jackets. I have a large draft of
them now at discretion. Every man in Springhaven will lend a hand,
if paid for it. It would take at least a twelvemonth to get it
done from Woolwich. A seaman does a thing before a landsman thinks
about it."
CHAPTER XVII
SEA-SIDE LODGINGS
To set a dog barking is easier than to stop him by the soundest
reasoning. Even if the roof above his honest head, growing loose
on its nails, is being mended, he comes out to ask about the
matter, and in strong terms proclaims his opinion to the distance.
After this kind behaved the people about to be protected by this
battery. They had dreamed of no danger till they saw their houses
beginning to be protected, and for this--though it added to their
importance--they were not truly thankful. They took it in various
ways, according to their rich variety of reflection; but the way in
which nobody took it was that of gratitude and humility.
"Everything upside down," they said, "everything gone clean topsy-
turvy! And the deep meaning of it is to rob our fishing, under
pretence of the Nationals. It may bring a good bit of money to the
place, for the lining of one or two pockets, such as John Prater's
and Cheeseman's; but I never did hold so much with money, when
shattery ways comes along of it. No daughter of mine stirs out-of-
doors after sundown, I can tell them."
Thus were the minds of the men disturbed, or at any rate those of
the elder ones; while the women, on the whole, were pleased,
although they pretended to be contemptuous. "I'll tell you what I
think, ma'am," Mrs. Cheeseman said to Widow Shanks quite early, "if
you take a farthing less than half a guinea a week for your dimity-
parlour, with the window up the hill, and the little door under the
big sweet-briar, I shall think that you are not as you used to be."
"And right you would be, ma'am, and too right there;" Mrs. Shanks
sighed deeply as she thought of it. "There is nobody but you can
understand it, and I don't mind saying it on that account to you.
Whenever I have wanted for a little bit of money, as the nature of
lone widows generally does, it has always been out of your power,
Mrs. Cheeseman, to oblige me, and quite right of you. But I have a
good son, thank the Lord, by the name of Harry, to provide for me;
and a guinea a week is the agreement now for the dimity-parlour,
and the three leg'd bed, and cold dinner to be paid for extra, such
as I might send for to your good shop, with the money ready in the
hand of my little girl, and jug below her apron for refreshment
from the Darling."
"Well, I never! My dear soul, you have taken all my breath away.
Why, it must be the captain of all the gunners. How gunpowder do
pay, to be sure!"
"Lor, ma'am, why, don't you know," replied Mrs. Shanks, with some
contempt, "that the man with three ribs is the captain of the
gunners--the man in my back sitting-room? No dimity-parlour for
him with his family, not for a guinea and a half a week. But if I
was to tell you who the gentleman is, and one of the highest all
round these parts, truthful as you know me, Mrs. Cheeseman, you
would say to yourself, what a liar she is!"
"Mrs. Shanks, I never use coarse expressions, even to myself in
private. And perhaps I could tell you a thing or two would
astonish you more than me, ma'am. Suppose I should tell you, to
begin with, who your guinea lodger is?"
"That you could never do, Mrs. Cheeseman, with all your time a-
counting changes. He is not of the rank for a twopenny rasher, or
a wedge of cheese packed in old petticoat."
These two ladies now looked at one another. They had not had a
quarrel for almost three months, and a large arrear of little
pricks on either side was pending. Sooner or later it would have
to be fought out (like a feud between two nations), with a houseful
of loss and woe to either side, but a thimbleful of pride and
glory. Yet so much wiser were these women than the most sagacious
nations that they put off to a cheaper time their grudge against
each other.
"His rank may be royal," said the wife of Mr. Cheeseman, "though a
going-downhill kind of royalty, perhaps, and yet he might be glad,
Mrs. Shanks, to come where the butter has the milk spots, and none
is in the cheese, ma'am."
"If such should be his wish, ma'am, for supper or for breakfast, or
even for dinner on a Sunday when the rain comes through the Castle,
you may trust me to know where to send him, but not to guarantee
him at all of his money."
"They high ones is very apt to slip in that," Mrs. Cheeseman
answered, thoughtfully; "they seem to be less particular in paying
for a thing than they was to have it good. But a burnt child
dreads the fire, as they say; and a young man with a castleful of
owls and rats, by reason of going for these hundred years on
credit, will have it brought home to him to pay ready money. But
the Lord be over us! if I don't see him a-going your way already!
Good-by, my dear soul--good-by, and preserve you; and if at any
time short of table or bed linen, a loan from an old friend, and
coming back well washed, and it sha'n't be, as the children sing,
'A friend with a loan has the pick of your bone, and he won't let
you very long alone.'"
"Many thanks to you for friendly meaning, ma'am," said the widow,
as she took up her basket to go home, "and glad I may be to profit
by it, with the time commanding. But as yet I have had neither
sleepers or feeders in my little house, but the children. Though
both of them reserves the right to do it, if nature should so
compel them--the three-ribbed gentleman with one ear, at five
shillings a week, in the sitting-room, and the young man up over
him. Their meaning is for business, and studying, and keeping of
accounts, and having of a quiet place in bad weather, though feed
they must, sooner or later, I depend; and then who is there but Mr.
Cheeseman?"
"How grand he do look upon that black horse, quite as solid as if
he was glued to it!" the lady of the shop replied, as she put away
the money; "and to do that without victuals is beyond a young man's
power. He looks like what they used to call a knight upon an
errand, in the picture-books, when I was romantic, only for the
hair that comes under his nose. Ah! his errand will be to break
the hearts of the young ladies that goes down upon the sands in
their blue gowns, I'm afraid, if they can only manage with the hair
below his nose."
"And do them good, some of them, and be a judgment from the Lord,
for the French style in their skirts is a shocking thing to see.
What should we have said when you and I were young, my dear? But
quick step is the word for me, for I expect my Jenny home on her
day out from the Admiral, and no Harry in the house to look after
her. Ah! dimity-parlours is a thing as may happen to cut both
ways, Mrs. Cheeseman."
Widow Shanks had good cause to be proud of her cottage, which was
the prettiest in Springhaven, and one of the most commodious. She
had fought a hard fight, when her widowhood began, and the children
were too young to help her, rather than give up the home of her
love-time, and the cradle of her little ones. Some of her
neighbours (who wanted the house) were sadly pained at her
stubbornness, and even dishonesty, as they put it, when she knew
that she never could pay her rent. But "never is a long time,"
according to the proverb; and with the forbearance of the Admiral,
the kindness of his daughters, and the growth of her own children,
she stood clear of all debt now, except the sweet one of gratitude.
And now she could listen to the moaning of the sea (which used to
make her weep all night) with a milder sense of the cruel woe that
it had drowned her husband, and a lull of sorrow that was almost
hope; until the dark visions of wrecks and corpses melted into
sweet dreams of her son upon the waters, finishing his supper, and
getting ready for his pipe. For Harry was making his own track
well in the wake of his dear father.
Now if she had gone inland to dwell, from the stroke of her great
calamity--as most people told her to make haste and do--not only
the sympathy of the sea, but many of the little cares, which are
the ants that bury heavy grief, would have been wholly lost to her.
And amongst these cares the foremost always, and the most
distracting, was that of keeping her husband's cottage--as she
still would call it--tidy, comfortable, bright, and snug, as if he
were coming on Saturday.
Where the brook runs into the first hearing of the sea, to defer
its own extinction it takes a lively turn inland, leaving a
pleasant breadth of green between itself and its destiny. At the
breath of salt the larger trees hang back, and turn their boughs
up; but plenty of pretty shrubs come forth, and shade the cottage
garden. Neither have the cottage walls any lack of leafy mantle,
where the summer sun works his own defeat by fostering cool
obstruction. For here are the tamarisk, and jasmin, and the old-
fashioned corchorus flowering all the summer through, as well as
the myrtle that loves the shore, with a thicket of stiff young
sprigs arising, slow of growth, but hiding yearly the havoc made in
its head and body by the frost of 1795, when the mark of every wave
upon the sands was ice. And a vine, that seems to have been
evolved from a miller, or to have prejected him, clambers with grey
silver pointrels through the more glossy and darker green. And
over these you behold the thatch, thick and long and parti-
coloured, eaved with little windows, where a bird may nest for
ever.
But it was not for this outward beauty that Widow Shanks, stuck to
her house, and paid the rent at intervals. To her steadfast and
well-managed mind, the number of rooms, and the separate staircase
which a solvent lodger might enjoy, were the choicest grant of the
household gods. The times were bad--as they always are when
conscientious people think of them--and poor Mrs. Shanks was
desirous of paying her rent, by the payment of somebody. Every now
and then some well-fed family, hungering (after long carnage) for
fish, would come from village pastures or town shambles, to gaze at
the sea, and to taste its contents. For in those days fish were
still in their duty, to fry well, to boil well, and to go into the
mouth well, instead of being dissolute--as nowadays the best is--
with dirty ice, and flabby with arrested fermentation. In the
pleasant dimity-parlour then, commanding a fair view of the lively
sea and the stream that sparkled into it, were noble dinners of
sole, and mackerel, and smelt that smelled of cucumber, and dainty
dory, and pearl-buttoned turbot, and sometimes even the crisp sand-
lance, happily for himself, unhappily for whitebait, still unknown
in London. Then, after long rovings ashore or afloat, these diners
came back with a new light shed upon them--that of the moon outside
the house, of the supper candles inside. There was sure to be a
crab or lobster ready, and a dish of prawns sprigged with parsley;
if the sea were beginning to get cool again, a keg of philanthropic
oysters; or if these were not hospitably on their hinges yet,
certainly there would be choice-bodied creatures, dried with a dash
of salt upon the sunny shingle, and lacking of perfection nothing
more than to be warmed through upon a toasting-fork.
By none, however, of these delights was the newly won lodger
tempted. All that he wanted was peace and quiet, time to go
through a great trunk full of papers and parchments, which he
brought with him, and a breath of fresh air from the downs on the
north, and the sea to the south, to enliven him. And in good truth
he wanted to be enlivened, as Widow Shanks said to her daughter
Jenny; for his eyes were gloomy, and his face was stern, and he
seldom said anything good-natured. He seemed to avoid all company,
and to be wrapped up wholly in his own concerns, and to take little
pleasure in anything. As yet he had not used the bed at his
lodgings, nor broken his fast there to her knowledge, though he
rode down early every morning and put up his horse at Cheeseman's,
and never rode away again until the dark had fallen. Neither had
he cared to make the acquaintance of Captain Stubbarb, who occupied
the room beneath his for a Royal Office--as the landlady proudly
entitled it; nor had he received, to the best of her knowledge, so
much as a single visitor, though such might come by his private
entrance among the shrubs unnoticed. All these things stirred with
deep interest and wonder the enquiring mind of the widow.
"And what do they say of him up at the Hall?" she asked her
daughter Jenny, who was come to spend holiday at home. "What do
they say of my new gentleman, young Squire Carne from the Castle?
The Carnes and the Darlings was never great friends, as every one
knows in Springhaven. Still, it do seem hard and unchristianlike
to keep up them old enmities; most of all, when the one side is
down in the world, with the owls and the bats and the coneys."
"No, mother, no. They are not a bit like that," replied Jenny--a
maid of good loyalty; "it is only that he has not called upon them.
All gentlefolks have their proper rules of behaviour. You can't be
expected to understand them, mother."
"But why should he go to them more than they should come to him,
particular with young ladies there? And him with only one horse to
their seven or eight. I am right, you may depend upon it, Jenny;
and my mother, your grandmother, was a lady's-maid in a higher
family than Darling--it depends upon them to come and look him up
first, and he have no call to knock at their door without it. Why,
it stands to reason, poor young man! And not a bit hath he eaten
from Monday."
"Well, I believe I am right, but I'll ask Miss Dolly. She is that
sharp, she knows everything, and I don't mind what I say to her,
when she thinks that she looks handsome. And it takes a very bad
dress, I can tell you, to put her out of that opinion."
"She is right enough there:" Mrs. Shanks shook her head at her
daughter for speaking in this way. "The ugliest frock as ever came
from France couldn't make her any but a booty. And the Lord knows
the quality have come to queer shapes now. Undecent would be the
name for it in our ranks of women. Why, the last of her frocks she
gave you, Jenny, how much did I put on, at top and bottom, and you
three inches shorter than she is! And the slips they ties round
them--oh dear! oh dear! as if that was to hold them up and buckle
them together! Won't they have the groanings by the time they come
to my age?"
CHAPTER XVIII
FRENCH AND ENGLISH
Admiral Darling was now so busy, and so continually called from
home by the duties of his commandership, that he could not fairly
be expected to call upon Mr. Caryl Carne. Yet that gentleman,
being rather sensitive--which sometimes means very spiteful--
resented as a personal slight this failure; although, if the
overture had been made, he would have ascribed it to intrusive
curiosity, and a low desire to behold him in his ruins. But truly
in the old man's kindly heart there was no sour corner for ill
blood to lurk in, and no dull fibre for ill-will to feed on. He
kept on meaning to go and call on Caryl Carne, and he had quite
made up his mind to do it, but something always happened to prevent
him.
Neither did he care a groat for his old friend Twemlow's advice
upon that subject. "Don't go near him," said the Rector, taking
care that his wife was quite safe out of hearing; "it would ill
become me to say a word against my dear wife's own nephew, and the
representative of her family. And, to the utmost of my knowledge,
there is nothing to be said against him. But I can't get on with
him at all. I don't know why. He has only honored us with a visit
twice, and he would not even come to dinner. Nice manners they
learn on the Continent! But none of us wept when he declined; not
even his good aunt, my wife. Though he must have got a good deal
to tell us, and an extraordinary knowledge of foreign ways. But
instead of doing that, he seems to sneer at us. I can look at a
question from every point of view, and I defy anybody to call me
narrow-minded. But still, one must draw the line somewhere, or
throw overboard all principles; and I draw it, my dear Admiral,
against infidels and against Frenchmen."
"No rational person can do otherwise"--the Admiral's opinion was
decisive--"but this young man is of good English birth, and one
can't help feeling sorry for his circumstances. And I assure you,
Twemlow, that I feel respect as well for the courage that he shows,
and the perseverance, in coming home and facing those vile usurers.
And your own wife's nephew! Why, you ought to take his part
through thick and thin, whatever you may think of him. From all I
hear he must be a young man of exceedingly high principle; and I
shall make a point of calling upon him the first half-hour I get to
spare. To-morrow, if possible; or if not, the day after, at the
very latest."
But the needful half-hour had not yet been found; and Carne, who
was wont to think the worst of everybody, concluded that the
Darling race still cherished the old grudge, which had always been
on his own side. For this he cared little, and perhaps was rather
glad of it. For the old dwelling-place of his family (the Carne
Castle besieged by the Roundheads a hundred and sixty years agone)
now threatened to tumble about the ears of any one knocking at the
gate too hard. Or rather the remnants of its walls did so; the
greater part, having already fallen, lay harmless, and produced
fine blackberries.
As a castle, it had been well respected in its day, though not of
mighty bulwarks or impregnable position. Standing on a knoll,
between the ramp of high land and the slope of shore, it would
still have been conspicuous to traveller and to voyager but for the
tall trees around it. These hid the moat, and the relics of the
drawbridge, the groined archway, and cloven tower of the keep--
which had twice been struck by lightning--as well as the windows of
the armoury, and the chapel hushed with ivy. The banqueting hall
was in better repair, for the Carnes had been hospitable to the
last; but the windows kept no wind off, neither did the roof
repulse the rain. In short, all the front was in a pretty state of
ruin, very nice to look at, very nasty to live in, except for
toads, and bats, and owls, and rats, and efts, and brindled slugs
with yellow stripes; or on a summer eve the cockroach and the
carrion-beetle.
At the back, however, and above the road which Cheeseman travelled
in his pony-chaise, was a range of rooms still fit to dwell in,
though poorly furnished, and floored with stone. In better times
these had been the domain of the house-keeper and the butler, the
cook and the other upper servants, who had minded their duty and
heeded their comfort more truly than the master and mistress did.
For the downfall of this family, as of very many others, had been
chiefly caused by unwise marriage. Instead of choosing sensible
and active wives to look after their home affairs and regulate the
household, the Carnes for several generations now had wedded
flighty ladies of good birth and pretty manners, none of whom
brought them a pipkinful of money, while all helped to spend a
potful. Therefore their descendant was now living in the kitchens,
and had no idea how to make use of them, in spite of his French
education; of comfort also he had not much idea, which was all the
better for him; and he scarcely knew what it was to earn and enjoy
soft quietude.
One night, when the summer was in full prime, and the weather
almost blameless, this young Squire Carne rode slowly back from
Springhaven to his worn-out castle. The beauty of the night had
kept him back, for he hated to meet people on the road. The
lingering gossips, the tired fagot-bearers, the youths going home
from the hay-rick, the man with a gun who knows where the hares
play, and beyond them all the truant sweethearts, who cannot have
enough of one another, and wish "good-night" at every corner of the
lane, till they tumble over one another's cottage steps--all these
to Caryl Carne were a smell to be avoided, an eyesore to shut the
eyes at. He let them get home and pull their boots off, and set
the frying-pan a-bubbling--for they ended the day with a bit of
bacon, whenever they could cash or credit it--and then he set forth
upon his lonely ride, striking fear into the heart of any bad child
that lay awake.
"Almost as good as France is this," he muttered in French, though
for once enjoying the pleasure of good English air; "and better
than France would it be, if only it were not cut short so suddenly.
There will come a cold wind by-and-by, or a chilly black cloud from
the east, and then all is shivers and rawness. But if it only
remained like this, I could forgive it for producing me. After
all, it is my native land; and I saw the loveliest girl to-day that
ever I set eyes on. None of their made-up and highly finished
demoiselles is fit to look at her--such simple beauty, such charms
of nature, such enchanting innocence! Ah, that is where those
French girls fail--they are always studying how they look, instead
of leaving us to think of it. Bah! What odds to me? I have
higher stakes to play for. But according to old Twemlow's
description, she must be the daughter of that old bear Darling,
with whom I shall have to pick a bone some day. Ha! How amusing
is that battery to me! How little John Bull knows the nature of
French troops! To-morrow we are to have a grand practice-day; and
I hope they won't shoot me in my new lodgings. Nothing is
impossible to such an idiot as Stubbard. What a set of imbeciles I
have found to do with! They have scarcely wit enough to amuse
oneself with. Pest of my soul! Is that you, Charron? Again you
have broken my orders."
"Names should be avoided in the open air," answered the man, who
was swinging on a gate with the simple delight of a Picard. "The
climate is of France so much to-night that I found it my duty to
encourage it. For what reason shall not I do that? It is not so
often that I have occasion. My dear friend, scold not, but accept
the compliment very seldom truthful to your native land. There are
none of your clod-pates about to-night."
"Come in at once. The mere sound of your breath is enough to set
the neighbourhood wondering. Could I ever have been burdened with
a more French Frenchman, though you speak as good English as I do?"
"It was all of that miserable Cheray," the French gentleman said,
when they sat in the kitchen, and Jerry Bowles was feeding the fine
black horse. "Fruit is a thing that my mouth prepares for,
directly there is any warmth in the sun. It puts itself up, it is
elevated, it will not have meat, or any substance coarse. Wine of
the softest and fruit of the finest is what it must then have, or
unmouth itself. That miserable Cheray, his maledictioned name put
me forth to be on fire for the good thing he designs. Cherays you
call them, and for cherays I despatched him, suspended between the
leaves in the good sun. Bah! there is nothing ever fit to eat in
England. The cherays look very fine, very fine indeed; and so many
did I consume that to travel on a gate was the only palliation.
Would you have me stay all day in this long cellar? No diversion,
no solace, no change, no conversation! Old Cheray may sit with his
hands upon his knees, but to Renaud Charron that is not sufficient.
How much longer before I sally forth to do the things, to fight, to
conquer the nations? Where is even my little ship of despatch?"
"Captain," answered Caryl Carne, preparing calmly for his frugal
supper, "you are placed under my command, and another such speech
will despatch you to Dunkirk, bound hand and foot, in the hold of
the Little Corporal, with which I am now in communication. Unless
by the time I have severed this bone you hand me your sword in
submission, my supper will have to be postponed, while I march you
to the yew-tree, signal for a boat, and lay you strapped beneath
the oarsmen."
Captain Charron, who had held the command of a French corvette,
stared furiously at this man, younger than himself, so strongly
established over him. Carne was not concerned to look at him; all
he cared about was to divide the joint of a wing-rib of cold roast
beef, where some good pickings lurked in the hollow. Then the
French man, whose chance would have been very small in a personal
encounter with his chief, arose and took a naval sword, short but
rather heavy, from a hook which in better days had held a big dish-
cover, and making a salute rather graceful than gracious, presented
the fringed handle to the carver.
"This behaviour is sensible, my friend, and worthy of your
distinguished abilities." Carne's resolute face seldom yielded to
a smile, but the smile when it came was a sweet one. "Pardon me
for speaking strongly, but my instructions must be the law to you.
If you were my commander (as, but for local knowledge, and
questions of position here, you would be), do you think then that
you would allow me to rebel, to grumble, to wander, to demand my
own pleasure, when you knew that it would ruin things?"
"Bravo! It is well spoken. My captain, I embrace you. In you
lives the spirit of the Grand Army, which we of the sea and of the
ships admire always, and always desire to emulate. Ah, if England
possessed many Englishmen like you, she would be hard to conquer."
The owner of this old English castle shot a glance at the Frenchman
for any sign of irony in his words. Seeing none, he continued, in
the friendly vein:
"Our business here demands the greatest caution, skill, reserve,
and self-denial. We are fortunate in having no man of any keen
penetration in the neighbourhood, at least of those in authority
and concerned with public matters. As one of an ancient family,
possessing the land for centuries, I have every right to be here,
and to pursue my private business in privacy. But if it once gets
talked about that a French officer is with me, these stupid people
will awake their suspicions more strongly by their own stupidity.
In this queer island you may do what you like till the neighbourhood
turns against you; and then, if you revolve upon a pin, you cannot
suit them. You understand? You have heard me before. It is this
that I never can knock into you."
Renaud Charron, who considered himself--as all Frenchmen did then,
and perhaps do now--far swifter of intellect than any Englishman,
found himself not well pleased at this, and desired to know more
about it.
"Nothing can be simpler," the Englishman replied; "and therefore
nothing surer. You know the old proverb--'Everything in turn,
except scandal, whose turn is always.' And again another saying of
our own land--'The second side of the bread takes less time to
toast.' We must not let the first side of ours be toasted; we will
shun all the fire of suspicion. And to do this, you must not be
seen, my dear friend. I may go abroad freely; you must hide your
gallant head until matters are ripe for action. You know that you
may trust me not to keep you in the dark a day longer than is
needful. I have got the old shopkeeper under my thumb, and can do
what I please with his trading-ship. But before I place you in
command I must change some more of the crew, and do it warily.
There is an obstinate Cornishman to get rid of, who sticks to the
planks like a limpet. If we throw him overboard, we shall alarm
the others; if we discharge him without showing cause, he will go
to the old Admiral and tell all his suspicions. He must be got rid
of in London with skill, and then we ship three or four Americans,
first-rate seamen, afraid of nothing, who will pass here as fellows
from Lancashire. After that we may run among the cruisers as we
like, with the boldness and skill of a certain Captain Charron, who
must be ill in his cabin when his ship is boarded."
"It is famous, it is very good, my friend. The patience I will
have, and the obedience, and the courage; and so much the more
readily because my pay is good, and keeps itself going on dry land
as well as sea."
CHAPTER XIX
IN THE LINE OF FIRE
No wonder there had been a great deal of talking in the village all
that evening, for the following notice had appeared in a dozen
conspicuous places, beginning with the gate of the church-yard, and
ending with two of the biggest mooring-posts, and not even sparing
the Admiral's white gate, where it flapped between the two upper
rails. It was not printed, but written in round hand, with a
liberal supply of capitals, on a stiff sheet of official paper,
stamped with the Royal Arms at the top. And those who were in the
secret knew that Master Bob Stubbard, the Captain's eldest son, had
accomplished this great literary feat at a guerdon of one shilling
from the public service funds every time he sucked his pen at the
end of it.
"By order of His Majesty King George III. To-morrow being
Wednesday, and the fishing-boats at sea, Artillery practice from
Fox-hill fort will be carried on from twelve at noon until three
P.M. at a mark-boat moored half a mile from the shore. Therefore
His Majesty's loyal subjects are warned to avoid the beach westward
of the brook between the white flagstaffs, as well as the sea in
front of it, and not to cross the line of fire below the village
but at their own risk and peril.
"(Signed) ADAM JACKSON STUBBARD, R.N., commanding Fox-hill
Battery."
Some indignation was aroused by this; for Mrs. Caper junior (who
was Mrs. Prater's cousin) had been confined, out of proper
calculation, and for the very first time, the moment the boats were
gone on Monday; and her house, being nearest to the fort, and in a
hollow where the noise would be certain to keep going round and
round, the effect upon her head, not to mention the dear baby's,
was more than any one dared to think of, with the poor father so
far away. And if Squire Darling had only been at home, not a woman
who could walk would have thought twice about it, but gone all
together to insist upon it that he should stop this wicked
bombardment. And this was most unselfish of all of them, they were
sure, because they had so long looked forward to putting cotton-
wool in their ears, and seeing how all the enemies of England would
be demolished. But Mrs. Caper junior, and Caper, natu minimus,
fell fast asleep together, as things turned out, and heard not a
single bang of it.
And so it turned out, in another line of life, with things against
all calculation, resenting to be reckoned as they always do, like
the countless children of Israel. For Admiral Darling was gone far
away inspecting, leaving his daughters to inspect themselves.
"You may just say exactly what you consider right, dear," said Miss
Dolly Darling to her sister Faith; "and I dare say it makes you
more comfortable. But you know as well as I do, that there is no
reason in it. Father is a darling; but he must be wrong sometimes.
And how can he tell whether he is wrong or right, when he goes away
fifty miles to attend to other people? Of course I would never
disobey his orders, anymore than you would. But facts change
according to circumstances, and I feel convinced that if he were
here he would say, 'Go down and see it, Dolly.'"
"We have no right to speculate as to what he might say," replied
Faith, who was very clear-headed. "His orders were definite:
'Keep within the grounds, when notice is given of artillery
practice.' And those orders I mean to obey."
"And so do I; but not to misunderstand them. The beach is a part
of our grounds, as I have heard him say fifty times in argument,
when people tried to come encroaching. And I mean to go on that
part of his grounds, because I can't see well from the other part.
That is clearly what he meant; and he would laugh at us, if we
could tell him nothing when he comes home. Why, he promised to
take us as far as Portsmouth to see some artillery practice."
"That is a different thing altogether, because we should be under
his control. If you disobey him, it is at your own risk, and I
shall not let one of the servants go with you, for I am mistress of
the household, if not of you."
"What trumpery airs you do give yourself! One would think you were
fifty years old at least. Stay at home, if you are such a coward!
I am sure dear daddy would be quite ashamed of you. They are
popping already, and I mean to watch them."
"You won't go so very far, I am quite sure of that," answered
Faith, who understood her sister. "You know your own value,
darling Dolly, and you would not go at all, if you had not been
forbidden."
"When people talk like that, it goads me up to almost anything. I
intend to go, and stand, as near as can be, in the middle of the
space that is marked off 'dangerous.'"
"Do, that's a dear. I will lend you my shell-silk that measures
twenty yards, that you may be sure of being hit, dear."
"Inhuman, selfish, wicked creature!" cried Dolly, and it was almost
crying; "you shall see what comes of your cold-bloodedness! I
shall pace to and fro in the direct line of fire, and hang on my
back the king's proclamation, inside out, and written on it in
large letters--'By order of my sister I do this.' Then what will
be said of you, if they only kill me? My feelings might be very
sad, but I should not envy yours, Faith."
"Kiss me, at any rate, before you perish, in token of forgiveness;"
and Dolly (who dearly loved her sister at the keenest height of
rebellion) ran up and kissed Faith, with a smile for her, and a
tear for her own self-sacrifice. "I shall put on my shell-pink,"
she said, "and they won't have the heart to fire shells at it."
The dress of the ladies of the present passing period had been
largely affected by the recent peace, which allowed the "French
babies"--as the milliners' dolls were called--to come in as quickly
as they were conceived. In war time scores of these "doxy-
dummies"--as the rough tars called them--were tossed overboard from
captured vessels or set up as a mark for tobacco-juice, while sweet
eyes in London wept for want of them. And even Mr. Cheeseman had
failed to bring any type genuinely French from the wholesale house
in St. Mary's Axe, which was famed for canonical issue. But
blessed are the patient, if their patience lasts long enough. The
ladies of England were now in full enjoyment of all the new French
discoveries, which proved to be the right name, inasmuch as they
banished all reputable forms of covering. At least, so Mrs.
Twemlow said; and the Rector went further than she did, obtaining
for his sympathy a recommendation to attend to his own business.
But when he showed the Admiral his wife's last book of patterns--
from a drawer which he had no right to go to--great laughter was
held between the twain, with some glancing over shoulders, and much
dread of bad example. "Whatever you do, don't let my girls see it;
I'll be bound you won't let your Eliza," said the Admiral, after a
pinch of snuff to restore the true balance of his principles;
"Faith would pitch it straight into the fire; but I am not quite so
sure that my Dolly would. She loves a bit of finery, and she looks
well in it."
"Tonnish females," as the magazine of fashion called the higher
class of popinjays, would have stared with contempt at both Faith
and Dolly Darling in their simple walking-dress that day. Dowdies
would have been the name for them, or frumps, or frights, or
country gawks, because their attire was not statuesque or classic,
as it should have been, which means that they were not half naked.
Faith, the eldest sister, had meant to let young Dolly take the
course of her own stubbornness; but no sooner did she see her go
forth alone than she threw on cloak and hat, and followed. The day
was unsuited for classic apparel, as English days are apt to be,
and a lady of fashion would have looked more foolish, and even more
indecent, than usual. A brisk and rather crisp east wind had
arisen, which had no respect for persons, and even Faith and Dolly
in their high-necked country dresses had to handle their tackle
warily.
Dolly had a good start, and growing much excited with the petulance
of the wind and with her own audacity, crossed the mouth of the
brook at a very fine pace, with the easterly gusts to second her.
She could see the little mark-boat well out in the offing, with a
red flag flaring merrily, defying all the efforts of the gunners on
the hill to plunge it into the bright dance of the waves. And now
and then she heard what she knew to be the rush of a round shot far
above her head, and following the sound saw a little silver
fountain leap up into the sunshine and skim before the breeze; then
glancing up the hill she saw the gray puff drifting, and presently
felt the dull rumble of the air. At the root of the smoke-puffs,
once or twice, she descried a stocky figure moving leisurely, and
in spite of the distance and huddle of vapour could declare that it
was Captain Stubbard. Then a dense mass of smoke was brought down
by an eddy of wind, and set her coughing.
"Come away, come away this very moment, Dolly," cried Faith, who
had hurried up and seized her hand; "you are past the danger-post,
and I met a man back there who says they are going to fire shells,
and they have got two short guns on purpose. He says it will be
very dangerous till they get the range, and he begged me most
earnestly not to come on here. If I were anybody else, he said, he
would lay hands on me and hold me back."
"Some old fisherman, no doubt. What do they know about gun
practice? I can see Captain Stubbard up there; he would rather
shoot himself than me, he said yesterday."
While Dolly was repeating this assurance, the following words were
being exchanged upon the smoky parapet: "If you please, sir, I can
see two women on the beach, half-way between the posts a'most."
"Can't help it--wouldn't stop for all the petticoats in the
kingdom. If they choose to go there, they must take their chance.
A bit more up, and to you, my good man. Are you sure you put in
twenty-three? Steady! so, so--that's beautiful."
"What a noisy thing! What does it come here for? I never saw it
fall. There must be some mistake. I hope there's nothing nasty
inside it. Run for your life, Faith; it means to burst, I do
believe."
"Down on your faces!" cried a loud, stern voice; and Dolly obeyed
in an instant. But Faith stood calmly, and said to the man who
rushed past her, "I trust in the Lord, sir."
There was no time to answer. The shell had left off rolling, and
sputtered more fiercely as the fuse thickened. The man laid hold
of this, and tried to pull it out, but could not, and jumped with
both feet on it; while Faith, who quite expected to be blown to
pieces, said to herself, "What pretty boots he has!"
"A fine bit of gunnery!" said the young man, stooping over it,
after treading the last spark into the springy sand. "The little
artillery man is wanted here. Ladies, you may safely stay here
now. They will not make two hits in proximity to each other."
"You shall not go," said Faith, as he was hurrying away, "until we
know who has been so reckless of his life, to save the lives of
others. Both your hands are burned--very seriously, I fear."
"And your clothes, sir," cried Dolly, running up in hot terror, as
soon as the danger was over; "your clothes are spoiled sadly. Oh,
how good it was of you! And the whole fault was mine--or at least
Captain Stubbard's. He will never dare to face me again, I should
hope."
"Young ladies, if I have been of any service to you," said the
stranger, with a smile at their excitement, "I beg you to be silent
to the Captain Stubbard concerning my share in this occasion. He
would not be gratified by the interest I feel in his beautiful
little bombardments, especially that of fair ladies. Ha, there
goes another shell! They will make better aim now; but you must
not delay. I beseech you to hasten home, if you would do me
kindness."
The fair daughters of the Admiral had enjoyed enough of warfare to
last them till the end of their honeymoon, and they could not
reject the entreaty of a man who had risked his life to save them.
Trembling and bewildered, they made off at the quickest step
permitted by maiden dignity, with one or two kindly turns of neck,
to show that he was meant to follow them. But another sulphurous
cloud rushed down from the indefatigable Stubbard, and when it had
passed them, they looked back vainly for the gentleman who had
spoiled his boots.
CHAPTER XX
AMONG THE LADIES
It would have surprised the stout Captain Stubbard, who thought no
small beer of his gunnery, to hear that it was held in very light
esteem by the "Frenchified young man overhead," as he called Caryl
Carne, to his landlady. And it would have amazed him to learn that
this young man was a captain of artillery, in the grand army
mustering across the sea, and one of the most able among plenty of
ability, and favoured by the great First Consul.
In the gully where the Tugwell boats were built, behind a fringe of
rough longshore growth, young Carne had been sitting with a good
field-glass, observing the practice of the battery. He had also
been able to observe unseen the disobedient practices of young
ladies, when their father is widely out of sight. Upon Faith,
however, no blame could fall, for she went against her wish, and
only to retrieve the rebellious Dolly.
Secure from the danger, these two held council in the comfort of
the Admiral's Round-house. There Miss Dolly, who considered it her
domain, kept sundry snug appliances congenial to young ladies, for
removing all traces of sudden excitement, and making them fit to be
seen again. Simple and unfashionable as they were in dress, they
were sure to have something to do to themselves after the late
derangement, ere ever they could run the risk of meeting any of the
brave young officers, who were so mysteriously fond of coming for
orders to Springhaven Hall.
"You look well enough, dear," said Faith at last, "and much better
than you deserve to look, after leading me such a dance by your
self-will. But one thing must be settled before we go back--are we
to speak of this matter, or not?"
"How can you ask such a question, Faith?" Miss Dolly loved a bit
of secrecy. "Of course we must rather bite our tongues out, than
break the solemn pledges which we have given." She had cried a
good deal, and she began to cry again.
"Don't cry, that's a darling," said the simple-hearted sister.
"You make the whole world seem so cruel when you cry, because you
look so innocent. It shall be as you please, if I can only think
it right. But I cannot see how we gave a pledge of any sort,
considering that we ran away without speaking. The question is--
have we any right to conceal it, when father has a right to know
everything?"
"He would be in such a sad passion," pleaded Dolly, with a stock of
fresh tears only waiting, "and he never would look again at poor
Captain Stubbard, and what would become of all his family?"
"Father is a just and conscientious man," replied the daughter who
inherited those qualities; "he would not blame Captain Stubbard; he
would blame us, and no others."
"Oh, I could not bear to hear you blamed, Faith. I should have to
say that it was all my fault. And then how I should catch it, and
be punished for a month! Confined to the grounds for a month at
least, and never have a bit of appetite. But I am not thinking of
myself, I am quite sure of that. You know that I never do that
much. I am thinking of that heroic gentleman, who stamped out the
sparks so cleverly. All the time I lay on the sand I watched him,
though I expected to be blown to pieces every single moment. Oh!
what a nasty sensation it was! I expected to find all my hair
turned grey. But, thank Heaven, I don't see a streak in it!" To
make sure of that, she went to the glass again.
"If all mine had turned grey, 'twould be no odds to nobody--as
Captain Zeb says about his income--because I am intended for an old
maid." Miss Darling, whose beauty still lacked many years of its
prime, turned away for a moment, because her eyes were glistening,
and her sister was tired of the subject. "But for yours there are
fifty to weep, Dolly. Especially perhaps this young gentleman,
towards whom you feel so much gratitude."
"How unkind you are, Faith! All the gratitude I owe him is for
saving your life. As for myself, I was flat upon the sand, with a
heap of sea-weed between me and the thing. If it had gone off, it
would have gone over me; but you chose to stand up, like a stupid.
Your life was saved, beyond all doubt, by him; and the way you
acknowledge it is to go and tell his chief enemy that he was there
observing him!"
"Well, I never!" Faith exclaimed, with more vigour than grace of
language. "A minute ago you knew nothing of him, and even wondered
who he was, and now you know all about his enemies! I am afraid
that you stick at nothing."
"I don't stick thinking, as you do, Miss," Dolly answered, without
abashment, and knowing that the elder hated to be so addressed;
"but things come to me by the light of nature, without a
twelvemonth of brown-study. When I said what you remind me of, in
such a hurry, it was perfectly true--so true that you need have no
trouble about it, with all your truth. But since that, a sudden
idea flashed across me, the sort of idea that proves itself. Your
hero you are in such a hurry to betray can be nobody but the
mysterious lodger in Widow Shanks' dimity-parlour, as she calls it;
and Jenny has told me all she knows about him, which is a great
deal less than she ought to know. I meant to have told you, but
you are so grand in your lofty contempt of what you call gossip,
but which I call good neighbourly intercourse! You know that he is
Mr. Caryl Carne, of course. Everybody knows that, and there the
knowledge seems to terminate. Even the Twemlows, his own aunt and
uncle, are scarcely ever favoured with his company; and I, who am
always on the beach, or in the village, have never had the honour
of beholding him, until--until it came to this"--here she imitated
with her lips the spluttering of the fuse so well that her sister
could not keep from laughing. "He never goes out, and he never
asks questions, any more than he answers them, and he never cares
to hear what fish they have caught, or anything else, about
anybody. He never eats or drinks, and he never says a word about
the flowers they put upon his table; and what he does all day long
nobody knows, except that he has a lot of books with him. Widow
Shanks, who has the best right to know all about him, has made up
her mind that his head has been turned by the troubles of his
family, except for his going without dinner, which no lunatic ever
does, according to her knowledge. And he seems to have got 'Butter
Cheeseman,' as they call him, entirely at his beck and call. He
leaves his black horse there every morning, and rides home at night
to his ancestral ruins. There, now, you know as much as I do."
"There is mischief at the bottom of all this," said Faith; "in
these dangerous times, it must not be neglected. We are bound, as
you say, to consider his wishes, after all that he has done for us.
But the tale about us will be over the place in a few hours, at the
latest. The gunners will have known where their bad shot fell, and
perhaps they will have seen us with their glasses. How will it be
possible to keep this affair from gossip?"
"They may have seen us, without seeing him at all, on account of
the smoke that came afterwards. At any rate, let us say nothing
about it until we hear what other people say. The shell will be
washed away or buried in the sand, for it fell upon the shingle,
and then rolled towards the sea; and there need be no fuss unless
we choose to make it, and so perhaps ruin Captain Stubbard and his
family. And his wife has made such pretty things for us. If he
knew what he had done, he would go and shoot himself. He is so
excessively humane and kind."
"We will not urge his humanity to that extreme. I hate all
mystery, as you know well. But about this affair I will say
nothing, unless there is cause to do so, at least until father
comes back; and then I shall tell him if it seems to be my duty."
"It won't be your duty, it can't be your duty, to get good people
into trouble, Faith. I find it my duty to keep out of trouble, and
I like to treat others the same as myself."
"You are such a lover of duty, dear Dolly, because everything you
like becomes your duty. And now your next duty is to your dinner.
Mrs. Twemlow is coming--I forgot to tell you--as well as Eliza, and
Mrs. Stubbard. And if Johnny comes home in time from Harrow, to be
Jack among the ladies, we shall hear some wonders, you may be quite
sure."
"Oh, I vow, I forgot all about that wicked Johnny. What a blessing
that he was not here just now! It is my black Monday when his
holidays begin. Instead of getting steadier, he grows more
plaguesome. And the wonder of it is that he would tie your kid
shoes; while he pulls out my jaconet, and sits on my French hat.
How I wish he was old enough for his commission! To-morrow he will
be dancing in and out of every cottage, boat, or gun, or rabbit-
hole, and nothing shall be hidden from his eyes and ears. Let him
come. 'I am accustomed to have all things go awry,' as somebody
says in some tragedy. The only chance is to make him fall in love,
deeply in love, with Miss Stubbard. He did it with somebody for
his Easter week, and became as harmless as a sucking dove, till he
found his nymph eating onions raw with a pocketful of boiled
limpets. Maggie Stubbard is too perfect in her style for that.
She is twelve years old, and has lots of hair, and eyes as large as
oysters. I shall introduce Johnny to-morrow, and hope to keep him
melancholy all his holidays."
"Perhaps it will be for his good," said Faith, "because, without
some high ideas, he gets into such dreadful scrapes; and certainly
it will be for our good."
After making light of young love thus, these girls deserved the
shafts of Cupid, in addition to Captain Stubbard's shells. And it
would have been hard to find fairer marks when they came down
dressed for dinner. Mrs. Twemlow arrived with her daughter Eliza,
but without her husband, who was to fetch her in the evening; and
Mrs. Stubbard came quite alone, for her walkable children--as she
called them--were all up at the battery. "Can't smell powder too
young in such days as these," was the Captain's utterance; and,
sure enough, they took to it, like sons of guns.
"I should be so frightened," Mrs. Twemlow said, when Johnny (who
sat at the foot of the table representing his father most
gallantly) had said grace in Latin, to astonish their weak minds,
"so nervous all the time, so excessively anxious, the whole time
that dreadful din was proceeding! It is over now, thank goodness!
But how can you have endured it, how can you have gone about your
household duties calmly, with seven of your children--I think you
said--going about in that fiery furnace?"
"Because, ma'am," replied Mrs. Stubbard, who was dry of speech, and
fit mother of heroes, "the cannons are so made, if you can
understand, that they do not shoot out of their back ends."
"We are quite aware of that"--Miss Twemlow came to her mother's
relief very sharply--"but still they are apt to burst, or to be
overloaded, or badly directed, or even to fly back suddenly, as I
have heard on good authority."
"Very likely, miss, when they are commanded by young women."
Eliza Twemlow coloured, for she was rather quick of temper; but she
did not condescend to pay rudeness in kind.
"It would hardly be a lady-like position, I suppose," she answered,
with a curve of her graceful neck--the Carnes had been celebrated
for their necks, which were longer than those of the Darlings; "but
even under the command of a most skilful man, for instance Captain
Stubbard, little accidents will happen, like the fall of a shell
upon the beach this afternoon. Some people were close to it,
according to the rumour; but luckily it did not explode."
"How providential!" cried Mrs. Twemlow; "but the stupid people
would have gone without much pity, whatever had befallen them,
unless they were blind, or too ignorant to read. Don't you think
so, Faith, my dear?"
"I don't believe a single word of that story," Mrs. Stubbard cut
short the question; "for the simple reason that it never could have
happened. My husband was to direct every gun himself. Is it
likely he would have shelled the beach?"
"Well, the beach is the proper place for shells; but if I had only
known it, wouldn't I have come a few hours earlier?" said Johnny.
"Even now there must be something left to see; and I am bound to
understand that sort of thing. Ladies, I entreat you not to think
me rude, if I go as soon as ever you can do without me. I think I
have got you nearly everything you want; and perhaps you would
rather be without me."
With many thanks and compliments--such a pretty boy he was--the
ladies released him gladly; and then Mrs. Twemlow, having reasons
of her own, drew nigh to Mrs. Stubbard with lively interest in her
children. At first, she received short answers only; for the
Captain's wife had drawn more sour juices than sweet uses from
adversity. But the wife of the man of peace outflanked the better
half of the man of war, drove in her outposts, and secured the key
of all her communications.
"I can scarcely believe that you are so kind. My dear Mrs.
Twemlow, how good you are! My Bob is a nice boy, so manly and
clever, so gentle and well-behaved, even when he knows that I am
not likely to find him out. But that you should have noticed it,
is what surprises me--so few people now know the difference! But
in the House of God--as you so well observe--you can very soon see
what a boy is. When I tell him that he may ride your grey pony, I
wish you could be there to watch the fine expression of his face.
How he does love dumb animals! It was only last Saturday, he
knocked down a boy nearly three times his own size for poking a pin
into a poor donkey with the fish. And Maggie to have a flower-bed
on your front lawn! They won't let her touch a plant, at our
cottage, though she understands gardening so thoroughly. She won't
sleep a wink to-night, if I tell her, and I had better keep that
for the morning. Poor children! They have had a hard time of it;
but they have come out like pure gold from the fire--I mean as many
of them as can use their legs. But to be on horseback--what will
Bob say?"
"You must have met with very little kindness, Mrs. Stubbard, to
attach any importance to such mere trifles. It makes me blush to
think that there can be a spot in England where such children as
yours could pass unnoticed. It is not a question of religious
feeling only. Far from it; in fact, quite the opposite; though my
husband, of course, is quite right in insisting that all our
opinions and actions must be referred to that one standard. But I
look at things also from a motherly point of view, because I have
suffered such sad trials. Three dear ones in the churchyard, and
the dearest of all--the Almighty only knows where he is. Sometimes
it is more than I can bear, to live on in this dark and most
dreadful uncertainty. My medical man has forbidden me to speak of
it. But how can he know what it is to be a mother? But hush! Or
darling Faith may hear me. Sometimes I lose all self-command."
Mrs. Twemlow's eyes were in need of wiping, and stout Mrs.
Stubbard's in the same condition. "How I wish I could help you,"
said the latter, softly: "is there anything in the world that I can
do?"
"No, my dear friend; I wish there was, for I'm sure that it would
be a pleasure to you. But another anxiety, though far less
painful, is worrying me as well just now. My poor brother's son is
behaving most strangely. He hardly ever comes near us, and he
seems to dislike my dear husband. He has taken rooms over your
brave husband's Office, and he comes and goes very mysteriously.
It is my duty to know something about this; but I dare not ask
Captain Stubbard."
"My dear Mrs. Twemlow, it has puzzled me too. But thinking that
you knew all about it, I concluded that everything must be quite
right. What you tell me has surprised me more than I can tell. I
shall go to work quietly to find out all about it. Mystery and
secrecy are such hateful things; and a woman is always the best
hand at either."
CHAPTER XXI
A GRACIOUS MERCY
As a matter of course, every gunner at the fort was ready to make
oath by every colour of the rainbow, that never shot, shell, wad,
sponge, or even powder-flake could by any possibility have fallen
on the beach. And before they had time to grow much more than
doubly positive--that is to say, within three days' time--the sound
of guns fired in earnest drowned all questions of bad practice.
For the following Sunday beheld Springhaven in a state of
excitement beyond the memory of the very oldest inhabitant, or the
imagination of the youngest. Excitement is a crop that, to be
large, must grow--though it thrives all the better without much
root--and in this particular field it began to grow before noon of
Saturday. For the men who were too old to go to sea, and the boys
who were too young, and the women who were never of the proper age,
all these kept looking from the best lookouts, but nothing could
they see to enable them to say when the kettle, or the frying-pan,
or gridiron, would be wanted. They rubbed their eyes grievously,
and spun round three times, if time had brought or left them the
power so to spin; and they pulled an Irish halfpenny, with the harp
on, from their pockets, and moistened it with saliva--which in
English means spat on it--and then threw it into the pocket on the
other side of body. But none of these accredited appeals to heaven
put a speck upon the sea where the boats ought to have been, or
cast upon the clouds a shade of any sail approaching. Uneasily
wondering, the grannies, wives, and little ones went home, when the
nightfall quenched all eyesight, and told one another ancient tales
of woe.
Yet there is a salve for every sore, a bung for every bunghole.
Upon the Sunday morning, when the tide was coming in, and a golden
haze hung upon the peaceful sea, and the seven bells of the old
grey church were speaking of the service cheerfully, suddenly a
deep boom moved the bosom of distance, and palpitated all along the
shore. Six or seven hale old gaffers (not too stiff to walk, with
the help of a staff, a little further than the rest) were coming to
hear parson by the path below the warren, where a smack of salt
would season them for doctrine. They knew from long experience,
the grandmother of science, that the mist of the sea, coming on at
breakfast-time, in the month of August (with the wind where it was
and the tides as they were), would be sure to hold fast until
dinner-time. Else, good as they were, and preparing punctually
once a week for a better world, the hind buttons of their Sunday
coats would have been towards the church, and the front ones to the
headland. For the bodies of their sons were dearer to them,
substantially dearer, than their own old souls.
They were all beginning to be deaf, or rather going on with it very
agreeably, losing thereby a great deal of disturbance, and gaining
great room for reflection. And now when the sound of a gun from
the sea hung shaking in the web of vapour, each of these wise men
gazed steadfastly at the rest, to see his own conclusion reflected,
or concluded. A gun it was indeed--a big well-shotted gun, and no
deafness could throw any doubt on it. There might not be anything
to see, but still there would be plenty to hear at the headland--a
sound more arousing than the parson's voice, a roar beyond that of
all the gallery. "'Tis a battle!" said one, and his neighbour
cried, "A rare one!" They turned to the parish church the quarters
of farewell, and those of salutation to the battle out at sea.
It was all over the village, in the time it takes to put a hat on,
that the British and the French fleets were hammer and tongs at it,
within the distance you may throw an apple off Springhaven
headland.
Even the young women knew that this was quite impossible, because
there was no water there for a collier-brig to anchor; nevertheless,
in the hurry and scare, the thoughts of that new battery and Lord
Nelson, and above all in the fog, they believed it. So that there
was scarcely any room to stand, at the Watch-point, inside the
Shag-rock; while in church there was no one who could help being
there, by force of holy office, or example.
These latter were not in a devout frame of mind, and (but for the
look of it) would have done more good by joining the other
congregation. For the sound of cannon-shot came into their ears,
like balls of unadulterated pepper, and every report made them look
at one another, and whisper--"Ah! there goes some poor fellow's
head." For the sacred building was constructed so that the sounds
outside of it had more power than the good things offered in the
inside.
However, as many, or as few, as did their duty, by joining the good
company of the minister, found themselves all the better for it,
and more fresh for a start than the runagates. Inasmuch as these
latter had nearly got enough of listening without seeing anything,
while the steady church-goers had refreshed the entire system by
looking about without listening. And to show the truant people
where their duty should have bound them, the haze had been
thickening all over the sea, while the sun kept the time on the old
church dial. This was spoken of for many years, throughout the
village, as a Scriptural token of the proper thing to do.
"Well, and what have 'e seen?" asked the senior church-warden--not
Cheeseman, who was only the junior, and had neither been at church
nor on the headland--but Farmer Graves, the tenant of the Glebe and
of Up-farm, the Admiral's best holding; "what have 'e seen, good
people all, to leave parson to prache to hisself a'most a sarmon as
he's hathn't prached for five year, to my knowledge? Have 'e seen
fat bulls of Basan?"
"Naw; but us have heer'd un roar," replied one who was sure to say
something. "Wust of it is, there be no making out what language un
do roar in."
"One Englishman, I tell 'e, and two Frenchmen," said an ancient tar
who had served under Keppel; "by the ring of the guns I could swear
to that much. And they loads them so different, that they do."
Before the others had well finished laughing at him, it became his
turn to laugh at them. The wind was in the east, and the weather
set fair, and but for the sea-mist the power of the sun would have
been enough to dazzle all beholders. Already this vapour was
beginning to clear off, coiling up in fleecy wisps above the
glistening water, but clinging still to any bluff or cliff it could
lay hold on.
"Halloa, Jem! Where be going of now?" shouted one or two voices
from the Oar-stone point, the furthest outlook of the Havenhead
hill.
"To see them Frenchy hoppers get a jolly hiding," Jem Prater
replied, without easing his sculls. He was John Prater's nephew,
of the "Darling Arms," and had stopped behind the fishing to see
his uncle's monthly beer in. "You can't see up there, I reckon,
the same as I do here. One English ship have got a job to tackle
two Crappos. But, by George! she'll do it, mates. Good bye, and
the Lord defend you!"
He had nobody but his little brother Sam, who was holding the
tiller, to help him, and his uncle's boat (which he had taken
without leave) was neither stout nor handy. But the stir of the
battle had fetched him forth, and he meant to see the whole of it
without taking harm. Every Englishman had a full right to do this,
in a case of such French audacity, and the English sea and air
began to give him fair occasion. For now the sun had swept the
mist with a besom of gold wire, widening every sweep, and throwing
brilliant prospect down it. The gentle heave of the sea flashed
forth with the white birds hovering over it, and the curdles of
fugitive vapour glowed like pillars of fire as they floated off.
Then out of the drift appeared three ships, partly shrouded in
their own fog.
The wind was too light for manoeuvring much, and the combatants
swung to their broadsides, having taken the breath of the air away
by the fury of their fire. All three were standing to the north-
north-west, under easy sail, and on the starboard tack, but
scarcely holding steerage-way, and taking little heed of it. Close
quarters, closer and closer still, muzzle to muzzle, and beard to
beard, clinched teeth, and hard pounding, were the order of the
day, with the crash of shattered timber and the cries of dying men.
And still the ships came onward, forgetting where they were,
heaving too much iron to have thought of heaving lead, ready to be
shipwrecks, if they could but wreck the enemy.
Between the bulky curls of smoke could be seen the scars of furious
battle, splintered masts and shivered yards, tattered sails and
yawning bulwarks, and great gaps even of the solid side; and above
the ruck of smoke appeared the tricolor flag upon the right hand
and the left, and the Union-jack in the middle.
"She've a'got more than she can do, I reckon," said an old man
famous in the lobster line; "other a one of they is as big as she
be, and two to one seemeth onfair odds. Wish her well out of it--
that's all as can be done."
"Kelks, you're a fool," replied the ancient navyman, steadying his
spy-glass upon a ledge of rock. "In my time we made very little of
that; and the breed may be slacked off a little, but not quite so
bad as that would be. Ah! you should a' heard what old Keppel--on
the twenty-seventh day of July it was, in the year of our Lord
1778. Talk about Nelson! to my mind old Keppel could have boxed
his compass backward. Not but what these men know how to fight
quite as well as need be nowadays. Why, if I was aboard of that
there frigate, I couldn't do much more than she have done. She'll
have one of them, you see if she don't, though she look to have the
worst of it, till you comes to understand. The Leader her name is,
of thirty-eight guns, and she'll lead one of they into Portsmouth,
to refit."
It was hard to understand the matter, in its present aspect, at all
as the ancient sailor did; for the fire of the Leda ceased
suddenly, and she fell behind the others, as if hampered with her
canvas. A thrill of pain ran through all the gazing Britons.
"How now, old Navy-Mike?" cried the lobster man. "Strike is the
word, and no mistake. And small blame to her either. She hathn't
got a sound thread to draw, I do believe. Who is the fool now,
Mike? Though vexed I be to ask it."
"Wait a bit, old lobster-pot. Ah, there now, she breezes! Whistle
for a wind, lads, whistle, whistle. Sure as I'm a sinner, yes!
She's laying her course to board the Frenchman on the weather
quarter. With a slant of wind she'll do it, too, if it only holds
two minutes. Whistle on your nails, my boys, for the glory of old
England."
In reply to their shrill appeal--for even the women tried to
whistle--or perhaps in compulsory sequence of the sun, the wind
freshened briskly from the sunny side of east. The tattered sails
of the brave ship filled, with the light falling through them upon
one another, the head swung round at the command of helm, the
pennons flew gaily and the ensign flapped, and she bore down
smoothly on the outer and therefore unwounded side of the enemy.
"That's what I call judgmatical," old Mike shouted, with a voice
that rivalled cannon; "whoever thought of that deserves three
epulets, one on each shoulder and one upon his head. Doubt if old
Keppel would have thought of that, now. You see, mates, the other
Crappo can't fire at her without first hitting of her own consort.
And better than that--ever so much better--the tilt of the charge
will throw her over on her wounds. Master Muncher hath two great
holes 'twixt wind and water on his larboard side, and won't they
suck the briny, with the weight of our bows upon the starboard
beam? 'Twill take fifty hands to stop leaks, instead of stopping
boarders."
The smoke was drifting off, and the sun shone bravely. The battle
had been gliding toward the feet of the spectators; and now from
the height of the cliff they could descry the decks, the guns, the
coils of rope, the turmoil, and dark rush of men to their fate.
Small fights, man to man, demanded still the power of a telescope,
and distance made the trenchant arms of heroes, working right and
left, appear like the nippers of an earwig. The only thing certain
was that men were being killed, and glory was being manufactured
largely.
"She've a doed it, she've a doed it rarely. There's not a d----d
froggy left to go to heaven; or if there be so he's a' battened
down below," old Mike shouted, flourishing his spy-glass, which
rattled in its joints as much as he did; "down comes the blood,
froth, and blue blazes, as they call the Republican emrods, and up
goes the Union-jack, my hearties. Three cheers! three cheers!
Again! again! again!"
From the sea far below, and far away, came also the volume of a
noble English shout, as the flag began to flutter in the quickening
breeze, and the sea arose and danced with sunshine. No one, who
had got all his blood left in him, could think of anything but
glory.
"My certy, they had better mind their soundings, though!" said the
old navy-man, with a stitch in his side and a lump in his throat,
from loud utterance; "five fathoms is every inch of it where they
be now, and the tide making strong, and precious little wind to
claw off with. Jem Prater! Jem Prater! Oar up, and give signal.
Ah, he's too far off to do any good. In five minutes more they'll
be on the White Pig, where no ship ever got off again. Oh, thank
the Lord, mates, thank the Lord, for his mercy endureth forever!
The other froggy is stuck hard and fast, and our lads will just
fetch out in time."
Old Navy-Mike had made no mistake. The consort of the captured
frigate, a corvette of twenty-four guns, had boldly stood on with
the intention of rounding to the wind, crossing the bows of the
other twain, and retrieving the fortunes of the day perhaps, by a
broadside into the shattered upper works of the terribly hampered
British ship. The idea was clever and spirited, and had a very
fair chance of success; but the land below the sea forefended it.
Full of fine ardour and the noble thirst for fame, speeding on for
the palm of high enterprise and the glory of the native land, alas,
they stuck fast in a soft bit of English sand! It was in their
power now to swear by all they disbelieved in, and in everything
visible and too tangible; but their power was limited strictly to
that; and the faster they swore, the faster they were bound to
stick.
Springhaven dined well, with its enemy so placed, and a message
from the Leda by Jem Prater, that the fishing fleet was rescued,
and would be home to early supper, and so much to be talked about
all dinner-time, that for once in his life nearly everybody found
it more expedient to eat with his fork than his knife. Then all
who could be spared from washing up, and getting ready for further
cookery, went duly to church in the afternoon, to hear the good
rector return humble thanks for a Gracious Mercy to the British
arms, and to see a young man, who had landed with despatches, put a
face full of gunpowder in at window, to learn whether Admiral
Darling was there.
CHAPTER XXII
A SPECIAL URGENCY
Admiral Darling was not in church. His duty to his country kept
him up the hill, and in close consultation with Captain Stubbard,
who was burning to fire his battery.
"I never knew such bad luck in all my life. The devil has been
appointed First Lord of the weather ever since I came to
Springhaven." As Stubbard declared these great truths he strode
about in his little fortress, delivering a kick at the heels of
things which had no right to be lumbering there. "To think that I
should never have seen those beggars, when but for the fog I could
have smashed them right and left. Admiral, these things make a
Christian an infidel."
"Nonsense, sir!" said the Admiral, sternly, for a man of his kind
nature; "you forget that without the fog, or rather the mist--for
it was only that--those fellows would never have come within range.
We have very great blessings to be thankful for, though the credit
falls not to our battery. The Frenchmen fought wonderfully well,
as well as the best Englishman could have done, and to capture them
both is a miracle of luck, if indeed we can manage to secure them.
My friend, young Honyman, of the Leda, has proved himself just what
I said he would be; and has performed a very gallant exploit,
though I fear he is severely wounded. But we shall know more now,
for I see a young fellow jumping up the hill, like a kangaroo, and
probably he comes for orders. One thing we have learned, Stubbard,
and must take the hint to-morrow--put a hut on the Haven head, and
keep a watchman there. Why, bless my heart, it is Blyth Scudamore
that's coming! There is nobody else that can skip like that."
The young lieutenant entered between two guns--the gunners were
dismissed in great disgust to dinner--with his pleasant face still
a little grimed with gunpowder, and flushed by his hurry up the
steep hill-side.
"This for you, sir," he said, saluting the Admiral, presenting his
letter, and then drawing back; "and I am to wait your convenience
for reply."
"What next will the service come to," asked the Admiral of Captain
Stubbard, "when a young man just commissioned gives himself such
mighty airs? Shake hands, Blyth, and promise you will come and
dine with us, unless you are ordered to return on board at once.
How is your good captain? I knew him when he wore Nankins. Jem
Prater brought word that he was wounded. I hope it is not
serious."
"No, sir; not much to speak of. He has only lost three fingers.
That was why I wrote this letter--or report, I ought to call it, if
anybody else had written it. Oh, sir! I cannot bear to think of
it! I was fifth luff when the fight began, and now there is only
one left above me, and he is in command of our biggest prize, the
Ville d'Anvers. But, Admiral, here you will find it all, as I
wrote it, from the lips, when they tied up the fingers, of Captain
Honyman."
"How could you tie them up when they were gone?" Captain Stubbard
enquired, with a sneer at such a youth. He had got on very slowly
in his early days, and could not bear to see a young man with such
vacancies before him. "Why, you are the luckiest lad I ever saw!
Sure to go up at least three steps. How well you must have kept
out of it! And how happy you must feel, Lieutenant Scudamore!"
"I am not at all happy at losing dear friends," the young man
answered, gently, as he turned away and patted the breech of a gun,
upon which there was a little rust next day; "that feeling comes
later in life, I suppose."
The Admiral was not attending to them now, but absorbed in the
brief account of the conflict, begun by Captain Honyman in his own
handwriting, and finished by his voice, but not his pen. Any one
desirous to read this may do so in the proper place. For the
present purpose it is enough to say that the modesty of the
language was scarcely surpassed by the brilliancy of the exploit.
And if anything were needed to commend the writer to the deepest
good will of the reader, it was found in the fact that this
enterprise sprang from warm zeal for the commerce of Springhaven.
The Leda had been ordered on Friday last to protect the peaceful
little fishing fleet from a crafty design for their capture, and
this she had done with good effect, having justice on her side, and
fortune. The particulars of the combat were not so clear, after
the captain's three fingers were gone; but if one made proper
allowance for that, there was not very much to complain of. The
Admiral considered it a very good report; and then put on his
spectacles, and thought it still better.
"Why! why! why!" he said--for without affectation many officers had
caught the style of His then Gracious Majesty--"What's this? what's
this? Something on the other side, in a different man's
handwriting, and mighty difficult to read, in my opinion.
Stubbard, did you ever see such a scrawl? Make it out for me.
You have good eyes, like a hawk, or the man who saw through a
milestone. Scudamore, what was his name? You know."
"Three fingers at five pounds apiece per annum as long as he
lives!" Captain Stubbard computed on his own: "fifteen pounds a
year perhaps for forty years, as you seem to say how young he is;
that comes to just 600 pounds, and his hand as good as ever"--
("I'll be hanged if it is, if he wrote this!" the Admiral
interjected)--"and better, I must say, from a selfish point of
view, because of only two nails left to clean, and his other hand
increased in value; why, the scale is disgraceful, iniquitous,
boobyish, and made without any knowledge of the human frame, and
the comparative value of its members. Lieutenant Scudamore, look
at me. Here you see me without an ear, damaged in the fore-hatch,
and with the larboard bow stove in--and how much do I get, though
so much older?"
"Well, if you won't help me, Stubbard," said the Admiral, who knew
how long his friend would carry on upon that tack, "I must even get
Scudamore to read it, though it seems to have been written on
purpose to elude him. Blyth, my dear boy, can you explain it?"
"It was--it was only something, sir"--the lieutenant blushed, and
hesitated, and looked away unmanfully--"which I asked Captain
Honyman to leave out, because--because it had nothing to do with
it. I mean, because it was of no importance, even if he happened
to have that opinion. His hand was tied up so, that I did not like
to say too much, and I thought that he would go to sleep, because
the doctor had made him drink a poppy head boiled down with
pigtail. But it seems as if he had got up after that--for he
always will have his own way--while I was gone to put this coat on;
and perhaps he wrote that with his left hand, sir. But it is no
part of the business."
"Then we will leave it," said Admiral Darling, "for younger eyes
than mine to read. Nelson wrote better with his left hand than
ever he did with his right, to my thinking, the very first time
that he tried it. But we can't expect everybody to do that. There
is no sign of any change of weather, is there, Stubbard? My orders
will depend very much upon that. I must go home and look at the
quicksilver before I know what is best to do. You had better come
with me, Scudamore."
Admiral Darling was quite right in this. Everything depended upon
the weather; and although the rough autumn was not come yet, the
prime of the hopeful year was past. The summer had not been a
grand one, such as we get about once in a decade, but of loose and
uncertain character, such as an Englishman has to make the best of.
It might be taking up for a golden autumn, ripening corn, and
fruit, and tree, or it might break up into shower and tempest,
sodden earth, and weltering sky.
"Your captain refers to me for orders," said Admiral Darling to
Scudamore, while they were hastening to the Hall, "as Commander of
the Coast Defence, because he has been brought too far inshore, and
one of the Frenchmen is stranded. The frigate you boarded and
carried is the Ville d'Anvers, of forty guns. The corvette that
took the ground, so luckily for you, when half of your hands were
aboard the prize, is the Blonde, teak-built, and only launched last
year. We must try to have her, whatever happens. She won't hurt
where she is, unless it comes on to blow. Our sands hold fast
without nipping, as you know, like a well-bred sheep-dog, and the
White Pig is the toughest of all of them. She may stay there till
the equinox, without much mischief, if the present light airs
continue. But the worst job will be with the prisoners; they are
the plague of all these affairs, and we can't imitate Boney by
poisoning them. On the whole, it had better not have happened,
perhaps. Though you must not tell Honyman that I said so. It was
a very gallant action, very skilful, very beautiful; and I hope he
will get a fine lift for it; and you too, my dear Blyth, for you
must have fought well."
"But, Admiral, surely you would have been grieved if so many of
your tenants, and their boats as well, had been swept away into a
French harbour. What would Springhaven be without its Captain
Zebedee?"
"You are right, Blyth; I forgot that for the moment. There would
have been weeping and wailing indeed, even in our own household.
But they could not have kept them long, though the loss of their
boats would have been most terrible. But I cannot make out why the
French should have wanted to catch a few harmless fishing-smacks.
Aquila non captat muscas, as you taught the boys at Stonnington.
And two ships despatched upon a paltry job of that sort! Either
Captain Honyman was strangely misinformed, or there is something in
the background, entirely beyond our knowledge. Pay attention to
this matter, and let me know what you hear of it--as a friend,
Blyth, as a friend, I mean. But here we are! You must want
feeding. Mrs. Cloam will take care of you, and find all that is
needful for a warrior's cleanup. I must look at the barometer, and
consider my despatches. Let us have dinner, Mrs. Cloam, in twenty
minutes, if possible. For we stand in real need of it."
Concerning that there could be no doubt. Glory, as all English
officers know, is no durable stay for the stomach. The urgency of
mankind for victuals may roughly be gauged by the length of the
jaw. Captain Stubbard had jaws of tremendous length, and always
carried a bag of captain's biscuits, to which he was obliged to
have recourse in the height of the hottest engagement. Scudamore
had short jaws, well set up, and powerful, without rapacity. But
even these, after twelve hours of fasting, demanded something
better than gunpowder. He could not help thinking that his host
was regarding the condition of affairs very calmly, until he
remembered that the day was Sunday, when no Briton has any call to
be disturbed by any but sacred insistency. At any rate, he was
under orders now, and those orders were entirely to his liking. So
he freshened up his cheerful and simple-minded face, put his
sailor-knot neckcloth askew, as usual, and with some trepidation
went down to dinner.
The young ladies would not have been young women if they had not
received him warmly. Kind Faith, who loved him as a sister might--
for she had long discovered his good qualities--had tears in her
beautiful eyes, as she gave him both hands, and smiled sweetly at
his bashfulness. And even the critical Dolly, who looked so
sharply at the outside of everything, allowed her fair hand to stay
well in his, and said something which was melody to him. Then
Johnny, who was of a warlike cast, and hoped soon to destroy the
French nation, shook hands with this public benefactor already
employed in that great work.
"I shall scarcely have time for a bit of dinner," said Admiral
Darling, as they sat down. "I have sent word to have the Protector
launched, and to give little Billy a feed of corn. All you young
people may take your leisure. Youth is the time that commands time
and space. But for my part, if I can only manage this plate of
soup, and a slice of that fish, and then one help of mutton, and
just an apple-fritter, or some trifle of that sort, I shall be
quite as lucky as I can hope to be. Duty perpetually spoils my
dinner, and I must get some clever fellow to invent a plate that
will keep as hot as duty is in these volcanic times. But I never
complain; I am so used to it. Eat your dinners, children, and
don't think of mine."
Having scarcely afforded himself an hour, the Admiral, in full
uniform, embarked upon little Billy, a gentle-minded pony from the
west country, who conducted his own digestion while he consulted
that of his rider. At the haven they found the Protector ready, a
ten-oared galley manned by Captain Stubbard's men, good samples of
Sea-Fencibles. And the Captain himself was there, to take the
tiller, and do any fighting if the chance should arise, for he had
been disappointed all the morning. The boat which brought
Scudamore had been recalled by signal from the Leda, and that
active young officer having sought her vainly, and thereby missed
the Protector, followed steadily in Mr. Prater's boat, with the
nephew, Jem, pulling the other oar, and Johnny Darling, who raged
at the thought of being left behind, steering vaguely. And just as
they rounded the harbour-head, the long glassy sweep of the
palpitating sea bore inward and homeward the peaceful squadron, so
wistfully watched for and so dearly welcome.
CHAPTER XXIII
YOH-HEAVE-OH!
"Her condition was very bad, as bad as could be, without going
straight to the bottom," the Admiral said to the Rector that night,
as they smoked a pipe together; "and to the bottom she must have
gone, if the sea had got up, before we thrummed her. Honyman
wanted to have her brought inside the Head; but even if we could
have got there, she would ground at low water and fill with the
tide. And what could we do with all those prisoners? With our
fresh hands at the pumps, we very soon fetched the water out of
her, and made her as tight as we could; and I think they will
manage to take her to Portsmouth. She has beautiful lines. I
never saw a smarter ship. How she came to the wind, with all that
water in her! The wind is all right for Portsmouth, and she will
be a fine addition to the Navy."
"But what is become of the other vessel, craft, corvette, or
whatever you call her? You say that she is scarcely hurt at all.
And if she gets off the White Pig's back in the night, she may come
up and bombard us. Not that I am afraid; but my wife is nervous,
and the Rectory faces the sea so much. If you have ordered away
the Leda, which seems to have conquered both of them, the least you
can do is to keep Captain Stubbard under arms all night in his
battery."
"I have a great mind to do so; it would be a good idea, for he was
very much inclined to cut up rough to-day. But he never would
forgive me, he is such a hog at hammock--as we used to say, until
we grew too elegant. And he knows that the Blonde has hauled down
her colours, and Scudamore is now prize-captain. I have sent away
most of her crew in the Leda, and I am not at all sure that we
ought not to blow her up. In the end, we shall have to do so, no
doubt; for nothing larger than a smack has ever got off that sand,
and floated. But let our young friend try; let him have a fair
trial. He has the stuff of a very fine seaman in him. And if he
should succeed, it would be scored with a long leg for him.
Halloa! Why, I thought the girls were fast asleep long ago!"
"As if we could sleep, papa, with this upon our minds!" Dolly
waved an open letter in the air, and then presented it. "Perhaps
Faith might, but I am sure I never could. You defied us to make
out this, which is on the other leaf; and then, without giving us
fair play, you took it to the desk in your Oak-room, and there you
left it. Well, I took the liberty of going there for it, for there
can't be any secret about a thing that will be printed; and how are
they to print it, if they can't contrive to read it? How much will
you pay me for interpreting, papa? Mr. Twemlow, I think I ought to
have a guinea. Can you read it, now, with all your learning, and
knowledge of dead languages?"
"My dear, it is not my duty to read it, and not at all my business.
It seems to be written with the end of a stick, by a boy who was
learning his letters. If you can interpret it, you must be almost
a Daniel."
"Do you hear that, papa, you who think I am so stupid? Faith gave
it up; she has no perseverance, or perhaps no curiosity. And I was
very nearly beaten too, till a very fine idea came into my head,
and I have made out every word except three, and perhaps even those
three, if Captain Honyman is not very particular in his spelling.
Can you tell me anything about that, papa?"
"Yes, Dolly, just what you have heard from me before. Honyman is a
good officer; a very good one, as he has just proved. No good
officer ever spells well, whether in the army or the navy. Look at
Nelson's letters. I am inclined to ascribe my own slow promotion
to the unnatural accuracy of my spelling, which offended my lords,
because it puzzled them."
"Then all is straight sailing, as you say, papa. But I must tell
you first how I found it out, or perhaps you won't believe me. I
knew that Captain Honyman wrote this postscript, or whatever it is,
with his left hand, so I took a pen in my own left hand, and
practised all the letters, and the way they join, which is quite
different from the other hand. And here is the copy of the words,
as my left hand taught my right to put them down, after inking ever
so many fingers:
"'We never could have done it without Scudamore. He jumped a most
wonderful jump from our jib-boom into her mizzen chains, when our
grapples had slipped, and we could get no nearer, and there he made
fast, though the enemy came at him with cutlasses, pikes, and
muskets. By this means we borded and carried the ship, with a loss
as above reported. When I grew faint from a trifling wound, Luff
Scudamore led the borders with a cool courage that discomfited the
fo.'"
"Robert Honyman all over!" cried the Admiral, with delight. "I
could swear that he wrote it, if it was written with his toes.
'Twas an old joke against him, when he was lieutenant, that he
never could spell his own title; and he never would put an e after
an o in any word. He is far too straightforward a man to spell
well; and now the loss of three fingers will cut his words shorter
than ever, and be a fine excuse for him. He was faint again, when
I boarded the Leda, partly no doubt through strong medical
measures; for the doctor, who is an ornament to his profession, had
cauterised his stumps with a marlinspike, for fear of inflammation.
And I heard that he had singed the other finger off. But I hope
that may prove incorrect. At any rate, I could not bear to disturb
him, but left written orders with Scudamore; for the senior was on
board the prize. Dolly, be off to bed, this moment."
"Well, now," said the Rector, drawing near, and filling another
deliberative pipe, "I have no right to ask what your orders were,
and perhaps you have no right to tell me. But as to the ship that
remains in my parish, or at any rate on its borders, if you can
tell me anything, I shall be very grateful, both as a question of
parochial duty, and also because of the many questions I am sure to
have to answer from my wife and daughter."
"There is no cause for secrecy; I will tell you everything:" the
Admiral hated mystery. "Why, the London papers will publish the
whole of it, and a great deal more than that, in three days' time.
I have sent off the Leda with her prize to Portsmouth. With this
easterly breeze and smooth water, they will get there, crippled as
they are, in some twenty-four hours. There the wounded will be
cared for, and the prisoners drafted off. The Blonde, the corvette
which is aground, surrendered, as you know, when she found herself
helpless, and within range of our new battery. Stubbard's men
longed to have a few shots at her; but of course we stopped any
such outrage. Nearly all her officers and most of her crew are on
board the Leda, having given their parole to attempt no rising; and
Frenchmen are always honourable, unless they have some very wicked
leader. But we left in the corvette her captain, an exceedingly
fine fellow, and about a score of hands who volunteered to stay to
help to work the ship, upon condition that if we can float her,
they shall have their freedom. And we put a prize crew from the
Leda on board her, only eight-and-twenty hands, which was all that
could be spared, and in command of them our friend Blyth Scudamore.
I sent him to ask Robert Honyman about it, when he managed to
survive the doctor, for a captain is the master of his own luffs;
and he answered that it was exactly what he wished. Our gallant
frigate lost three lieutenants in this very spirited action, two
killed and one heavily wounded. And the first is in charge of the
Ville d'Anvers, so there was nobody for this enterprise except the
gentle Scuddy, as they call him. He is very young for such a
business, and we must do all we can to help him."
"I have confidence in that young man," said Mr. Twemlow, as if it
were a question of theology; "he has very sound views, and his
principles are high; and he would have taken holy orders, I
believe, if his father's assets had permitted it. He perceives all
the rapidly growing dangers with which the Church is surrounded,
and when I was in doubt about a line of Horace, he showed the
finest diffidence, and yet proved that I was right. The 'White
Pig,' as the name of a submarine bank, is most clearly of classic
origin. We find it in Homer, and in Virgil too; and probably the
Romans, who undoubtedly had a naval station in Springhaven, and
exterminated the oyster, as they always did--"
"Come, come, Twemlow," said the Admiral, with a smile which
smoothed the breach of interruption, "you carry me out of my depth
so far that I long to be stranded on my pillow. When your great
book comes out, we shall have in perfect form all the pile of your
discoveries, which you break up into little bits too liberally.
The Blonde on the Pig is like Beauty and the Beast. If gentle
Scuddy rescues her, it won't be by Homer, or Horace, or even holy
orders, but by hard tugs and stout seamanship."
"With the blessing of the Lord, it shall be done," said the Rector,
knocking his pipe out; "and I trust that Providence may see fit to
have it done very speedily; for I dread the effect which so many
gallant strangers, all working hard and apparently in peril, may
produce upon the females of this parish."
But the Admiral laughed, and said, "Pooh, pooh!" for he had faith
in the maids of Springhaven.
For these there was a fine time now in store--young men up and down
everywhere, people running in and out with some new news, before
they could get their hats on, the kettle to boil half a dozen times
a day, and almost as much to see as they could talk of. At every
high-water that came by daylight--and sometimes there were two of
them--every maid in the parish was bound to run to the top of a
sand-hill high enough to see over the neck of the Head, and there
to be up among the rushes all together, and repulse disdainfully
the society of lads. These took the matter in a very different
light, and thought it quite a pity and a piece of fickle-
mindedness, that they might go the round of crab-pots, or of
inshore lug-lines, without anybody to watch them off, or come down
with a basket to meet them.
For be it understood that the great fishing fleet had not launched
forth upon its labours. Their narrow escape from the two French
cruisers would last them a long time to think over, and to say the
same thing to each other about it that each other had said to them
every time they met. And they knew that they could not do this so
well as to make a new credit of it every time, when once they were
in the same craft together, and could not go asunder more than ten
yards and a half. And better, far better, than all these reasons
for staying at home and enjoying themselves, was the great fact
that they could make more money by leisure than by labour, in this
nobly golden time.
Luck fostered skill in this great affair, which deserves to be
recorded for the good of any village gifted with like opportunity.
It appears that the British Admiralty had long been eager for the
capture of the Blonde, because of her speed and strength and
beauty, and the mischief she had done to English trade. To destroy
her would be a great comfort, but to employ her aright would be
glorious; and her proper employment was to serve as a model for
English frigates first, and then to fight against her native land.
Therefore, no sooner did their lordships hear what had happened at
Springhaven than they sent down a rider express, to say that the
ship must be saved at any price. And as nothing could be spared
from the blockading force, or the fleet in the Downs, or the
cruising squadron, the Commander of the coast-defence was
instructed to enrol, impress, or adapt somehow all the men and the
matter available. Something was said about free use of money in
the service of His Majesty, but not a penny was sent to begin upon.
But Admiral Darling carried out his orders, as if he had received
them framed in gold. "They are pretty sure to pay me in the end,"
he said; "and if they don't, it won't break me. I would give 500
pounds on my own account, to carry that corvette to Spithead. And
it would be the making of Scudamore, who reminds me of his father
more and more, every time I come across him."
The fleet under Captain Tugwell had quite lately fallen off from
seven to five, through the fierce patriotism of some younger
members, and their sanguine belief in bounty-money. Captain Zeb
had presented them with his experience in a long harangue--nearly
fifty words long--and they looked as if they were convinced by it.
However, in the morning they were gone, having mostly had tiffs
with their sweethearts--which are fervent incentives to patriotism--
and they chartered themselves, and their boats were numbered for
the service of their Country. They had done their work well,
because they had none to do, except to draw small wages, and they
found themselves qualified now for more money, and came home at the
earliest chance of it.
Two guineas a day for each smack and four hands, were the terms
offered by the Admiral, whose hard-working conscience was twitched
into herring-bones by the strife between native land and native
spot. "I have had many tussles with uncertainty before," he told
Dolly, going down one evening, "but never such vexation of the mind
as now. All our people expect to get more for a day, than a month
of fine fishing would bring them; while the Government goes by the
worst time they make, and expects them to throw in their boats for
nothing. 'The same as our breeches,' Tugwell said to me; 'whenever
we works, we throws in they, and we ought to do the very same with
our boats.' This makes it very hard for me."
But by doing his best, he got over the hardship, as people
generally do. He settled the daily wages as above, with a bonus of
double that amount for the day that saw the Blonde upon her legs
again. Indignation prevailed, or pretended to do so; but common-
sense conquered, and all set to work. Hawsers, and chains, and
buoys, and all other needful gear and tackle were provided by the
Admiralty from the store-house built not long ago for the
Fencibles. And Zebedee Tugwell, by right of position, and without
a word said for it--because who could say a word against it?--
became the commander of the Rescue fleet, and drew double pay
naturally for himself and family.
"I does it," he said, "if you ask me why I does it, without any
intention of bettering myself, for the Lord hath placed me above
need of that; but mainly for the sake of discipline, and the
respectability of things. Suppose I was under you, sir, and knew
you was getting no more than I was, why, my stomach would fly every
time that you gave me an order without a 'Please, Zebedee!' But as
soon as I feels that you pocket a shilling, in the time I take
pocketing twopence, the value of your brain ariseth plain before
me; and instead of thinking what you says, I does it."
CHAPTER XXIV
ACCORDING TO CONTRACT
When the Blonde had been on the White Pig for a week, in spite of
all the science of Scudamore, ready money of the Admiral, and
efforts of the natives, there began to be signs of a change in the
weather. The sea was as smooth, and the sky as bright, and the
land as brown as ever; but the feel of the air was not the same,
and the sounds that came through it were different. "Rain afore
Friday," said Captain Zeb, "and a blow from sowwest afore Sunday.
'Twill break up the Blunder, I reckon, my lads."
With various aspects they looked at him, all holding sweet converse
at the Darling Arms, after the manifold struggles of the day. The
eyes of the younger men were filled with disappointment and anger,
as at a sure seer of evil; the elder, to whom cash was more
important, gazed with anxiety and dismay; while a pair, old enough
to be sires of Zebedee, nodded approval, and looked at one another,
expecting to receive, but too discreet to give, a wink. Then a
lively discourse arose and throve among the younger; and the elders
let them hold it, while they talked of something else.
On the following morning two dialogues were held upon different
parts of Springhaven shore, but each of great import to the
beautiful captive still fast aground in the offing. The first was
between Captain Zebedee Tugwell and Lieutenant Scudamore. The
gentle Scuddy, still hoping against hope, had stuck fast to his
charge, upon whose fortunes so much of his own depended. If he
could only succeed in floating and carrying her into Portsmouth,
his mark would be made, his position secured far quicker than by
ten gallant actions; and that which he cared for a hundredfold, the
comfort of his widowed mother, would be advanced and established.
For, upon the valuation of the prizes, a considerable sum would
fall to him, and every farthing of it would be sent to her. Bright
with youthful hope, and trustful in the rising spring of tide,
which had all but released them yesterday, according to his firm
belief, he ran from the Hall through the Admiral's grounds, to meet
the boat which was waiting for him, while he was having breakfast
and council with his chief. Between the Round-house and the old
white gate he heard a low whistle from a clump of shrubs, and
turning that way, met Tugwell. With that prince of fishermen he
shook hands, according to the manner of Springhaven, for he had
learned to admire the brave habit of the man, his strong mind, and
frank taciturnity. And Tugwell on his part had taken a liking to
the simple and cheerful young officer, who received his suggestions,
was kind to all hands, and so manfully bore the daily
disappointment.
"Nobody in there?" asked Zeb, with one finger pointing to the
Round-house; "then sit down on this bit of bank, sir, a minute.
Less chance to be shot at by any French ship."
The bit of bank really was a bit of hollow, where no one could see
them from the beach, or lane, or even from the Round-house.
Scudamore, who understood his man, obeyed; and Tugwell came to his
bearings on a clump of fern before him.
"How much will Government pay the chaps as fetches her out of that
snug little berth? For division to self and partners, how much?
For division to self and family, how much?"
"I have thought about that," the lieutenant answered, with little
surprise at the question, but much at the secrecy thrown around it;
"and I think it would be very unsafe to count upon getting a penny
beyond the Admiral's terms--double pay for the day that we float
her."
Captain Zebedee shook his head, and the golden sheaf of his
Olympian beard ruffled and crisped, as to an adverse wind.
"Can't a'most believe it," he replied, with his bright eyes
steadily settled on Scudamore's; "the English country, as I belongs
to, can't quite 'a coom to that yet!"
"I fear that it has indeed," Blyth answered, very gravely; "at
least I am sure of this, Master Tugwell, that you must not look
forward to any bounty, bonus, or premium, or whatever it is called,
from the Authorities who should provide it. But for myself, and
the difference it will make to me whether we succeed or fail, I
shall be happy, and will give my word, to send you 50 pounds, to be
divided at your discretion among the smacks. I mean, of course, as
soon as I get paid."
Scudamore was frightened by the size of his own promise; for he had
never yet owned 50 pounds in the solid. And then he was scared at
the wholesale loss of so large a sum to his mother.
"Never fear, lad," honest Tugwell replied, for the young man's face
was fair to read; "we'll not take a farden of thy hard airnings,
not a brass farden, so help me Bob! Gentlefolks has so much call
for money, as none of us know nothing of. And thou hast helped to
save all the lot of us from Frenchies, and been the most
forwardest, as I hear tell. But if us could 'a got 50 pounds out
of Government, why so much more for us, and none the less for they.
But a Englishman must do his duty, in reason, and when 'a don't
hurt his self by the same. There's a change in the weather, as
forbids more sport. You shall have the Blunder off to-morrow, lad.
Wouldn't do to be too sudden like."
"I fear I am very stupid, Master Tugwell. But I don't see how you
can manage it so surely, after labouring nine days all in vain."
Zebedee hesitated half a moment, betwixt discretion and the pride
of knowledge. Then the latter vanquished and relieved his mind.
"I trust in your honour, sir, of course, to keep me clear. I might
have brought 'e off the Pig, first day, or second to the latest, if
it were sound business. But with winter time coming, and the
week's fishing lost, our duty to our families and this place was to
pull 'e on harder, sir, to pull 'e aground firmer; and with the
help of the Lord we have a-doed it well. We wasn't a-going to kill
the goose as laid the golden eggs. No offence to you, sir; it
wasn't you as was the goose."
Master Tugwell rubbed his pockets with a very pleasant smile, and
then put his elbows on his great square knees, and complacently
studied the lieutenant's smaller mind.
"I can understand how you could do such a thing," said Scudamore,
after he had rubbed his eyes, and then looked away for fear of
laughing, "but I cannot understand by what power on earth you are
enabled to look at me and tell me this. For nine days you have
been paid every night, and paid pretty well, as you yourself
acknowledge, to haul a ship off a shoal; and all the time you have
been hauling her harder upon it!"
"Young man," replied Tugwell, with just indignation, "a hofficer
should be above such words. But I forgive 'e, and hope the Lord
will do the same, with allowance for youth and ill-convenience. I
might 'a knowed no better, at your age and training."
"But what were you paid for, just answer me that, unless it was to
pull the Blonde off the sand-bank? And how can you pretend that
you have done an honest thing by pulling her further upon the
bank?"
"I won't ask 'e, sir, to beg my pardon for saying what never man
said to me, without reading the words of the contraction;" Zeb
pulled out a paper from his hat, and spread it, and laid a stone at
every corner; "this contraction was signed by yourself and Squire
Darling, for and on behalf of the kingdom; and the words are for us
to give our services, to pull, haul, tow, warp, or otherwise as
directed, release, relieve, set free, and rescue the aforesaid
ship, or bark, or vessel, craft, or--"
"Please not to read all that," cried Scuddy, "or a gale of wind may
come before you are half-way through. It was Admiral Darling's
lawyer, Mr. Furkettle, who prepared it, to prevent any chance of
misunderstanding."
"Provided always," continued Tugwell, slowly, "and the meaning,
condition, purport, object, sense, and intention of this agreement
is, that the aforesaid Zebedee Tugwell shall submit in everything
to the orders, commands, instructions, counsel, directions,
injunctions, authority, or discretion, whether in writing or
otherwise, of the aforesaid--"
"I would not interrupt you if I could help it"--Scudamore had a
large stock of patience (enhanced by laborious practice at
Stonnington), but who might abide, when time was precious, to see
Zebedee feeling his way with his fingers along the bottom and to
the end of every word, and then stopping to congratulate himself at
the conquest of every one over two syllables? "But excuse me for
saying that I know all these conditions; and the tide will be lost,
if we stop here."
"Very good, sir; then you see how it standeth. Who hath broken
them? Not us! We was paid for to haul; and haul we did, according
to superior orders. She grounded from the south, with the tide
making upp'ard, somewhere about three-quarter flow; and the Squire,
and you, and all the rest of 'e, without no knowledge of the Pig
whatsomever, fastens all your pulley-haulies by the starn, and
says, 'now pull!' And pull we did, to the tune of sixteen guineas
a day for the good of Springhaven."
"And you knew all the time that it was wrong! Well, I never came
across such people. But surely some one of you would have had the
honesty--I beg pardon, I mean the good-will--to tell us. I can
scarcely imagine some forty men and boys preserving such a secret
for nine whole days, hauling for their lives in the wrong
direction, and never even by a wink or smile--"
"Springhaven is like that," said Master Tugwell, proudly; "we does
a thing one and all together, even if us reasons consarning it.
And over and above that, sir, there is but two men in Springhaven
as understands the White Pig, barring my own self. The young 'uns
might 'a smelt a rat, but they knew better than to say so. Where
the Blunder grounded--and she hath airned her name, for the good of
the dwellers in this village--is the chine of the Pig; and he hath
a double back, with the outer side higher than the inner one. She
came through a narrow nick in his outer back, and then plumped,
stem on, upon the inner one. You may haul at her forever by the
starn, and there she'll 'bide, or lay up again on the other back.
But bring her weight forrard, and tackle her by the head, and off
she comes, the very next fair tide; for she hath berthed herself
over the biggest of it, and there bain't but a basketful under her
forefoot."
"Then, Master Tugwell, let us lose no time, but have at her at
once, and be done with it." Scudamore jumped up, to give action to
his words; but Tugwell sate aground still, as firmly as the Blonde.
"Begging of your pardon, sir, I would invite of you not to be in no
sart of hurry hasting forwardly. Us must come off gradual, after
holding on so long there, and better to have Squire Darling round
the corner first, sir. Not that he knoweth much about it, but 'a
might make believe to do so. And when 'a hath seen us pull wrong
ways, a hundred and twenty guineas' worth, a' might grudge us the
reward for pulling right ways. I've a-knowed 'un get into that
state of mind, although it was his own tenants."
The lieutenant was at length compelled to laugh, though for many
reasons loth to do so. But the quiet contempt for the Admiral's
skill, and the brief hint about his character, touched his sense of
the ludicrous more softly than the explanation of his own mishaps.
Then the Captain of Springhaven smiled almost imperceptibly; for he
was a serious man, and his smiles were accustomed to be interior.
"I did hear tell," he said, stroking his beard, for fear of having
discomposed it, "that the Squire were under compulsion to go a bit
westward again to-morrow. And when he cometh back he would be glad
to find us had managed the job without him. No fear of the weather
breaking up afore Friday, and her can't take no harm for a tide or
two. If you thinks well, sir, let us heave at her to-day, as
afore, by superior orders. Then it come into your mind to try
t'other end a bit, and you shift all the guns and heavy lumber
forrard to give weight to the bows and lift the starn, and off her
will glide at the first tug to-morrow, so sure as my name is
Zebedee. But mind one thing, sir, that you keep her, when you've
got her. She hath too many furriner natives aboard of her, to be
any way to my liking."
"Oh, there need be no doubt about them," replied Blyth; "we treat
them like ourselves, and they are all upon their honour, which no
Frenchman ever thinks of breaking. But my men will be tired of
waiting for me. I shall leave you to your plans, Tugwell."
"Ah, I know the natur' of they young men," Captain Zebedee mused,
as he sate in his hollow, till Scudamore's boat was far away; "they
be full of scruples for themselves and faith in other fellows.
He'll never tell Squire, nor no one else here, what I laid him
under, and the laugh would go again' him, if he did. We shall get
to-day's money, I reckon, as well as double pay to-morrow, and airn
it. Well, it might 'a been better, and it might be wuss."
About two miles westward of the brook, some rocks marked the end of
the fine Springhaven sands and the beginning of a far more rugged
beach, the shingles and flint shelves of Pebbleridge. Here the
chalk of the Sussex backbone (which has been plumped over and
sleeked by the flesh of the valley) juts forth, like the scrags of
a skeleton, and crumbles in low but rugged cliffs into the flat
domain of sea. Here the landing is bad, and the anchorage worse,
for a slippery shale rejects the fluke, and the water is usually
kept in a fidget between the orders of the west wind and scurry of
the tide.
This very quiet morning, with the wind off shore, and scarcely
enough of it to comb the sea, four smart-looking Frenchmen, with
red caps on their heads, were barely holding way upon the light gig
of the Blonde, while their Captain was keeping an appointment with
a stranger, not far from the weed-strewn line of waves. In a deep
rocky channel where a land-spring rose (which was still-born except
at low water), and laver and dilsk and claw-coral showed that the
sea had more dominion there than the sky, two men stood facing each
other; and their words, though belonging to the most polite of
tongues, were not so courteous as might be. Each man stood with
his back to a rock--not touching it, however, because it was too
wet--one was as cold and as firm as the rock, the other like the
sea, tumultuous. The passionate man was Captain Desportes, and the
cold one Caryl Carne.
"Then you wish me to conclude, monsieur," Carne spoke as one
offering repentance, "that you will not do your duty to your
country, in the subject set before you? I pray you to deliberate,
because your position hangs upon it."
"Never! Never! Once more, Captain, with all thanks for your
consideration, I refuse. My duty to my own honour has first place.
After that my duty to my country. Speak of it no more, sir; it
quite is to insult me."
"No, Captain Desportes, it is nothing of that kind, or I should not
be here to propose it. Your parole is given only as long as your
ship continues upon the sand. The moment she floats, you are
liberated. Then is the time for a noble stroke of fortune. Is it
not so, my dear friend?"
"No, sir. This affair is impossible. My honour has been pledged,
not until the ship is floating, but until I am myself set free in
France. I am sorry not to see things as you see them for me; but
the question is for my own consideration."
Captain Desportes had resented, as an honest man must do, especially
when more advanced in years, the other's calm settlement, without
invitation, of matters which concerned his own conscience. And as
most mankind--if at all perceptive--like or dislike one another at a
glance, Desportes, being very quick and warm of nature, had felt at
first sight a strong repulsion from the cold and arrogant man who
faced him. His age was at least twice that of Carne, he had seen
much service in the better days of France, and had risen slowly by
his own skill and valour; he knew that his future in the service
depended upon his decision in this matter, and he had a large family
to maintain. But his honour was pledged, and he held fast by it.
"There is one consideration," Carne replied, with rancour slowly
kindling in his great black eyes, "which precedes all others, even
that of honour, in the mind of a trusted officer. It is not that
of patriotism--which has not its usual weight with monsieur--but it
is that of obedience, discipline, loyalty, faith, towards those who
have placed faith in him. Captain Desportes, as commander of a
ship, is entrusted with property; and that confidence is the first
debt upon his honour."
To Desportes, as to most men of action, the right was plainer than
the reason. He knew that this final plea was unsound, but he did
not see how to contest it. So he came back to fact, which was
easier for him.
"How am I to know, monsieur, what would be the wishes of those who
have entrusted me with my position? You are placed in authority by
some means here, in your own country, but against it. That much
you have proved to me, by papers. But your credentials are general
only. They do not apply to this especial case. If the Chief of
the State knew my position, he would wish me to act as I mean to
act, for the honour and credit of our nation."
"Are you then acquainted with his signature? If so, perhaps you
will verify this, even if you are resolved to reject it."
Carne drew a letter from an inner pocket, and carefully unfolded
it. There were many words and minute directions upon various
subjects, written by the hand of the most minute, and yet most
comprehensive, of mankind.
"There is nothing in this that concerns you," he said, after
showing the date, only four days old, "except these few words at
the end, which perhaps you may like to read, before you make final
decision. The signature of the Chief is clear."
Captain Desportes read aloud--"It is of the utmost importance to
me, that the Blonde should not be captured by the enemy, as the
Ville d'Anvers has been. You tell me that it is ashore near you,
and the Captain and crew upon parole, to be liberated if they
assist in the extrication of the vessel. This must not be. In the
service of the State, I demand that they consider not at all their
parole. The well-known speed and light draught of that vessel have
rendered her almost indispensable to me. When the vessel is free,
they must rise upon the enemy, and make for the nearest of our
ports without delay. Upon this I insist, and place confidence in
your established courage and management, to accomplish it to my
satisfaction."
"Your orders are clear enough," said Caryl Carne. "What reason can
you give, as an officer of the Republic, for disobeying them?"
Desportes looked at his ship in the distance, and then at the sea
and the sky, with a groan, as if he were bidding farewell to them.
Carne felt sure that he had prevailed, and a smile shed light, but
not a soft light, on his hard pale countenance.
"Be in no rash haste," said the French sea-captain, and he could
not have found words more annoying to the cold proud man before
him; "I do not recognise in this mandate the voice of my country,
of the honourable France, which would never say, 'Let my sons break
their word of honour!' This man speaks, not as Chief of a grand
State, not as leader of noble gentlemen, but as Emperor of a
society of serfs. France is no empire; she is a grand nation of
spirit, of valour, above all, of honour. The English have treated
me, as I would treat them, with kindness, with largeness, with
confidence. In the name of fair France, I will not do this thing."
Carne was naturally pale, but now he grew white with rage, and his
black eyes flashed.
"France will be an empire within six months; and your honour will
be put upon prison diet, while your family starve for the sake of
it."
"If I ever meet you under other circumstances," replied the brave
Frenchman, now equally pale, "I shall demand reparation, sir."
"With great pleasure," replied Carne, contemptuously; "meanwhile
monsieur will have enough to do to repair his broken fortunes."
Captain Desportes turned his back, and gave a whistle for his crew,
then stepped with much dignity into his boat. "To the Blonde,
lads," he cried, "to the unsullied Blonde!" Then he sate, looking
at her, and stroked his grizzled beard, into which there came
trickling a bitter tear or two, as he thought of his wife and
family. He had acted well; but, according to the measure of the
present world, unwisely.
CHAPTER XXV
NO CONCERN OF OURS
The very next morning it was known to the faithful of Springhaven
that the glory of the place would be trebled that day, and its
income increased desirably. That day, the fair stranger (which had
so long awakened the admiration of the women, and the jealousy of
the men) would by the consummate skill of Captain Zeb--who had
triumphed over all the officers of the British Navy--float forth
magnificently from her narrow bed, hoist her white sails, and under
British ensign salute the new fort, and shape a course for
Portsmouth. That she had stuck fast and in danger so long was
simply because the cocked hats were too proud to give ear to the
wisdom in an old otter-skin. Now Admiral Darling was baffled and
gone; and Captain Tugwell would show the world what he could do,
and what stuff his men were made of, if they only had their way.
From old Daddy Stakes, the bald father of the village, to Mrs.
Caper junior's baby--equally bald, but with a crop as sure of
coming as mustard and cress beneath his flannel--some in arms, some
on legs, some upon brave crutches, all were abroad in the soft air
from the west, which had stolen up under the stiff steel skirt of
the east wind, exactly as wise Captain Zeb predicted.
"My dear," said Mrs. Twemlow to the solid Mrs. Stubbard, for a very
sweet friendship had sprung up between these ladies, and would last
until their interests should happen to diverge, "this will be a
great day for my dear husband's parish. Perhaps there is no other
parish in the kingdom capable of acting as Springhaven has, so
obedient, so disciplined, so faithful to their contract! I am told
that they even pulled the vessel more aground, in preference to
setting up their own opinions. I am told that as soon as the
Admiral was gone--for between you and me he is a little
overbearing, with the very best intentions in the world, but too
confident in his own sagacity--then that clever but exceedingly
modest young man, Lieutenant Scudamore, was allowed at last to
listen to our great man Tugwell, who has long been the oracle of
the neighbourhood about the sea, and the weather, and all questions
of that kind. And between you and me, my dear, the poor old
Admiral seems a little bit jealous of his reputation. And what do
you think he said before he went, which shows his high opinion of
his own abilities? Tugwell said something in his rough and ready
way, which, I suppose, put his mightiness upon the high ropes, for
he shouted out in everybody's hearing, 'I'll tell you what it is,
my man, if you can get her off, by any of your'--something I must
not repeat--'devices, I'll give you fifty guineas, five-and-twenty
for yourself, and the rest to be divided among these other
fellows.' Then Zebedee pulled out a Testament from his pocket, for
he is a man of deep religious convictions, and can read almost all
the easy places, though he thinks most of the hard ones, and he
made his son Dan (who is a great scholar, as they say, and a very
fine-looking youth as well) put down at the end what the Admiral
had said. Now, what do you think of that, dear Mrs. Stubbard?"
"I think," replied that strong-minded lady, "that Tugwell is an
arrant old fox; and if he gets the fifty guineas, he will put every
farthing into his own pocket."
"Oh, no! He is honest as the day itself. He will take his own
twenty-five, and then leave the rest to settle whether he should
share in their twenty-five. But we must be quick, or we shall lose
the sight. Quite a number of people are come from inland. How
wonderfully quickly these things spread! They came the first day,
and then made up their minds that nothing could be done, and so
they stopped at home. But now, here they are again, as if by
magic! If the ship gets off, it will be known halfway to London
before nightfall. But I see Captain Stubbard going up the hill to
your charming battery. That shows implicit faith in Tugwell, to
return the salute of the fair captive! It is indeed a proud day
for Springhaven!"
"But it isn't done yet. And perhaps it won't be done. I would
rather trust officers of the navy than people who catch crabs and
oysters. I would go up to the battery, to laugh at my husband, but
for the tricks the children play me. My authority is gone, at the
very first puff of smoke. How children do delight in that vile
gunpowder!"
"So they ought, in the present state of our country, with five
hundred thousand of Frenchmen coming. My dear Mrs. Stubbard, how
thankful we should be to have children who love gunpowder!"
"But not when they blow up their mother, ma'am."
"Oh, here comes Eliza!" cried Mrs. Twemlow. "I am so glad, because
she knows everything. I thought we had missed her. My dear child,
where are Faith and Dolly Darling gone? There are so many
strangers about to-day that the better class should keep together."
"Here are three of us at any rate," replied the young lady, who
considered her mother old-fashioned: "enough to secure one
another's sanctity from the lower orders. Faith has gone on to the
headland, with that heroic mannikin, Johnny. Dolly was to follow,
with that Shanks maid to protect her, as soon as her hat was
trimmed, or some such era. But I'll answer for it that she loses
herself in the crowd, or some fib of that sort."
"Eliza!" said her mother, and very severely, because Mrs. Stubbard
was present, "I am quite astonished at your talking so. You might
do the greatest injury to a very lively and harmless, but not over-
prudent girl, if any one heard you who would repeat it. We all
know that the Admiral is so wrapped up in Dolly that he lets her do
many things which a mother would forbid. But that is no concern of
ours; and once for all, if such things must be said, I beg that
they may not be said by you."
In the present age, Mrs. Twemlow would have got sharp answer. But
her daughter only looked aggrieved, and glanced at Mrs. Stubbard,
as if to say, "Well, time will show whether I deserve it." And
then they hastened on, among the worse class, to the headland.
Not only all the fishing-smacks, and Captain Stubbard's galley, but
every boat half as sound as a hat, might now be seen near the
grounded vessel, preparing to labour or look on. And though the
White Pig was allowed to be three-quarters of a mile from the
nearest point, the mighty voice of Captain Zeb rode over the
flickering breadth of sea, and through the soft babble of the waves
ashore. The wind was light from southwest, and the warp being
nearly in the same direction now, the Blonde began to set her
courses, to catch a lift of air, when the tide should come busily
working under her. And this would be the best tide since she took
the ground, last Sunday week, when the springs were going off. As
soon as the hawsers were made fast, and the shouts of Zebedee
redoubled with great strength (both of sound and of language), and
the long ropes lifted with a flash of splashes, and a creak of
heavy wood, and the cry was, "With a will! with a will, my gay
lads!" every body having a sound eye in it was gazing intently, and
every heart was fluttering, except the loveliest eyes and quickest
heart in all Springhaven.
Miss Dolly had made up her mind to go, and would have had warm
words ready for any one rash enough to try to prevent her. But a
very short note which was put into her hand about 10 A.M.
distracted her.
"If you wish to do me a real service, according to your kind words
of Saturday, be in the upper shrubbery at half past eleven; but
tell no one except the bearer. You will see all that happens
better there than on the beach, and I will bring a telescope."
Dolly knew at once who had written this, and admired it all the
more because it was followed by no signature. For years she had
longed for a bit of romance; and the common-sense of all the world
irked her. She knew as well as possible that what she ought to do
was to take this letter to her sister Faith, and be guided by her
advice about it. Faith was her elder by three years or more, and
as steadfast as a rock, yet as tender as young moss. There was no
fear that Faith would ride the high horse with her, or lay down the
law severely; she was much more likely to be too indulgent, though
certain not to play with wrong.
All this the younger sister knew, and therefore resolved to eschew
that knowledge. She liked her own way, and she meant to have it,
in a harmless sort of way; her own high spirit should be her guide,
and she was old enough now to be her own judge. Mr. Carne had
saved her sister's life, when she stood up in that senseless way;
and if Faith had no gratitude, Dolly must feel, and endeavour to
express it for her.
Reasoning thus, and much better than this, she was very particular
about her hat, and French pelerine of fluted lawn, and frock of
pale violet trimmed on either side with gathered muslin. Her
little heart fluttered at being drawn in, when it should have been
plumped up to her neck, and very nearly displayed to the public;
but her father was stern upon some points, and never would hear of
the classic discoveries. She had not even Grecian sandals, nor a
"surprise fan" to flutter from her wrist, nor hair oiled into flat
Lesbian coils, but freedom of rich young tresses, and of graceful
figure, and taper limbs. There was no one who could say her nay,
of the lovers of maiden nature.
However, maidens must be discreet, even when most adventurous; and
so she took another maid to help her, of respected but not romantic
name--Jenny Shanks, who had brought her that letter. Jenny was
much prettier than her name, and the ground she trod on was
worshipped by many, even when her shoes were down at heel.
Especially in this track remained the finer part of Charley
Bowles's heart (while the coarser was up against the Frenchmen), as
well as a good deal of Mr. Prater's nephew's, and of several other
sole-fishers. This enabled Jenny to enter kindly into tender
questions. And she fetched her Sunday bonnet down the trap-ladder
where she kept it--because the other maids were so nasty--as soon
as her letter was delivered.
"Your place, Jenny, is to go behind," Miss Dolly said, with no
small dignity, as this zealous attendant kept step for step with
her, and swung her red arm against the lady's fair one. "I am come
upon important business, Jenny, such as you cannot understand, but
may stay at a proper distance."
"Lor, miss, I am sure I begs your pardon. I thought it was a kind
of coorting-match, and you might be glad of my experience."
"Such things I never do, and have no idea what you mean. I shall
be much obliged to you, Jenny, if you will hold your tongue."
"Oh yes, miss; no fear of my telling anybody. Wild horses would
never pull a syllable out of me. The young men is so aggravating
that I keep my proper distance from them. But the mind must be
made up, at one time or other."
Dolly looked down at her with vast contempt, which she would not
lower herself by expressing, even with favour of time and place.
Then turning a corner of the grassy walk, between ground-ash and
young larches, they came upon an opening planted round with ilex,
arbutus, juniper, and laurel, and backed by one of the rocks which
form the outworks of the valley. From a niche in this rock, like
the port-hole of a ship, a rill of sparkling water poured, and
beginning to make a noise already, cut corner's--of its own
production--short, in its hurry to be a brook, and then to help the
sea. And across its exit from the rock (like a measure of its
insignificance) a very comfortable seat was fixed, so that any
gentleman--or even a lady with divided skirts--might freely sit
with one foot on either bank of this menacing but not yet very
formidable stream. So that on the whole this nook of shelter under
the coronet of rock was a favourite place for a sage cock-pheasant,
or even a woodcock in wintry weather.
Upon that bench (where the Admiral loved to sit, in the afternoon
of peace and leisure, observing with a spy-glass the manoeuvres of
his tranquil fishing fleet) Caryl Carne was sitting now, with his
long and strong legs well spread out, his shoulders comfortably
settled back, and his head cast a little on one side, as if he were
trying to compute his property. Then, as Dolly came into the
opening, he arose, made a bow beyond the compass of any true
Briton, and swinging his hat, came to meet her. Dolly made a
curtsey in the style impressed upon her by her last governess but
one--a French lady of exceedingly high ancestry and manners--and
Carne recognised it as a fine thing out of date.
"Jenny, get away!" said Dolly--words not meant for him to hear, but
he had grave command of countenance.
"This lays me under one more obligation:" Carne spoke in a low
voice, and with a smile of diffidence which reminded her of
Scudamore, though the two smiles were as different as night and
day. "I have taken a great liberty in asking you to come, and that
multiplies my gratitude for your good-will. For my own sake alone
I would not have dared to sue this great favour from you, though I
put it so, in terror of alarming you. But it is for my own sake
also, since anything evil to you would be terrible to me."
"No one can wish to hurt me," she answered, looking up at him
bravely, and yet frightened by his gaze, "because I have never
harmed any one. And I assure you, sir, that I have many to defend
me, even when my father is gone from home."
"It is beyond doubt. Who would not rush to do so? But it is from
those who are least suspected that the danger comes the worst. The
most modest of all gentlemen, who blushes like a damsel, or the
gallant officer devoted to his wife and children, or the simple
veteran with his stars, and scars, and downright speech--these are
the people that do the wrong, because no one believes it is in
them."
"Then which of the three is to carry me off from home, and friends,
and family--Lieutenant Scudamore, Captain Stubbard, or my own
godfather, Lord Nelson?"
This young man nourished a large contempt for the intellect of
women, and was therefore surprised at the quickness and spirit of
the girl whom he wished to terrify. A sterner tone must be used
with her.
"I never deal in jokes," he said, with a smile of sad sympathy for
those who do; "my life is one perpetual peril, and that restrains
facetiousness. But I can make allowance for those who like it."
Miss Dolly, the pet child of the house, and all the people round
it--except the gardener, Mr. Swipes, who found her too inquisitive--
quick as she was, could not realise at once the possibility of
being looked down upon.
"I am sorry that you have to be so grave," she said, "because it
prevents all enjoyment. But why should you be in such continual
danger? You promised to explain it, on Saturday, only you had no
time then. We are all in danger from the French, of course, if
they ever should succeed in landing. But you mean something more
than that; and it seems so hard, after all your losses, that you
should not be safe from harm."
With all her many faults--many more than she dreamed of--fair Dolly
had a warm and gentle heart, which filled her eyes with tender
loveliness, whenever it obtained command of them. Carne, who was
watching them steadfastly for his own purpose, forgot that purpose,
and dropped his dark eyes, and lost the way to tell a lie.
"If I may ask you," he said, almost stammering, and longing without
knowledge for the blessing of her touch, "to--to allow me just to
lead you to this seat, I may perhaps be able--I will not take the
liberty of sitting at your side--but I may perhaps be able to
explain as much of my affairs as you can wish to hear of them, and
a great deal more, I fear, a great deal more, Miss Darling."
Dolly blushed at the rich tone in which he pronounced her name,
almost as if it were an adjective; but she allowed him to take her
hand, and lead her to the bench beneath the rock. Then, regardless
of his breeches, although of fine padusoy, and his coat, though of
purple velvet, he sate down on the bank of the rill at her feet,
and waited for her to say something. The young lady loved mainly
to take the lead, but would liefer have followed suit just now.
"You have promised to tell me," she said, very softly, and with an
unusual timidity, which added to her face and manner almost the
only charm they lacked, "some things which I do not understand, and
which I have no right to ask you of, except for your own offer.
Why should you, without injuring any one, but only having suffered
loss of all your family property, and of all your rights and
comforts, and living in that lonely place which used to be full of
company--why should you be in danger now, when you have nothing
more to be robbed of? I beg your pardon--I mean when all your
enemies must have done their worst."
"You are too young yet to understand the world," he answered, with
a well-drawn sigh; "and I hope most truly that you may never do so.
In your gentle presence I cannot speak with bitterness, even if I
could feel it. I will not speak harshly of any one, however I may
have been treated. But you will understand that my life alone
remains betwixt the plunderers and their prey, and that my errand
here prevents them from legally swallowing up the spoil."
Miss Dolly's idea of the law, in common with that of most young
ladies, suggested a horrible monster ravening to devour the fallen.
And the fall of the Carnes had long been a subject of romantic
interest to her.
"Oh, I see!" she exclaimed, with a look of deep wisdom. "I can
quite understand a thing like that, from what I have heard about
witnesses. I hope you will be very careful. My sister owes so
much to you, and so do I."
"You must never speak of that again, unless you wish to grieve me.
I know that I have said too much about myself; but you alone care
to know anything about me; and that beguiles one out--out of one's
wits. If I speak bad English, you will forgive me. I have passed
so many years on the Continent, and am picking up the language of
my childhood very slowly. You will pardon me, when I am misled by--
by my own signification."
"Well done!" cried the innocent Dolly. "Now that is the very first
piece of bad English you have used, to the best of my belief, and I
am rather quick in that. But you have not yet explained to me my
own danger, though you asked me to come here for that purpose, I
believe."
"But you shall not be so; you shall not be in danger. My life
shall be given for your defence. What imports my peril compared
with yours? I am not of cold blood. I will sacrifice all. Have
faith in me purely, and all shall be done."
"All what?" Dolly asked, with a turn of common-sense, which is the
most provoking of all things sometimes; and she looked at him
steadily, to follow up her question.
"You cannot be persuaded that you are in any danger. It is
possible that I have been too anxious. Do you speak the French
language easily? Do you comprehend it, when spoken quickly?"
"Not a word of it. I have had to learn, of course, and can
pronounce very well, my last mistress said; but I cannot make it
out at all in the way the French people pronounce it, when one
comes to talk with them."
"It is very wrong of them, and the loss is theirs. They expect us
to copy them even in their language, because we do it in everything
else. Pardon me--one moment. May I look at the great enterprise
which is to glorify Springhaven? It is more than kind of you to be
here instead of there. But this, as I ventured to say, is a far
better place to observe the operation. Your words reminded me of
Captain Desportes, who has been, I think, your father's guest. A
very gallant sailor, and famed for the most unexpected exploits.
Without doubt, he would have captured all three ships, if he had
not contrived to run his own aground."
"How could he capture his own ship? I thought that you never dealt
in jokes. But if you dislike them, you seem to be fond of a little
mystery. I like the French captain very much, and he took the
trouble to speak slowly for me. My father says that he bears his
misfortune nobly, and like a perfect gentleman. Mr. Scudamore
admires him, and they are great friends. And yet, sir, you seem
inclined to hint that I am in danger from Captain Desportes!"
"Ha! she is afloat! They have succeeded. I thought that they had
so arranged it. The brave ship spreads her pinions. How clever
the people of Springhaven are! If you will condescend to look
through this glass, you will see much embracing of the Saxon and
the Gaul, or rather, I should say, of the Saxon by the Gaul. Old
Tugwell is not fond to be embraced."
"Oh, let me see that! I must see that!" cried Dolly, with all
reserve and caution flown; "to see Capp'en Zeb in the arms of a
Frenchman--yes, I declare, two have got him, if not three, and he
puts his great back against the mast to disentangle it. Oh, what
will he do next? He has knocked down two, in reply to excessive
cordiality. What wonderful creatures Frenchmen are! How kind it
is of you to show me this! But excuse me, Mr. Carne; there will be
twenty people coming to the house before I can get back almost.
And the ship will salute the battery, and the battery will return
it. Look! there goes a great puff of smoke already. They can see
me up here, when they get to that corner."
"But this spot is not private? I trust that I have not intruded.
Your father allows a sort of foot-path through this upper end of
his grounds?"
"Yes, to all the villagers, and you are almost one of them; there
is no right of way at all; and they very seldom come this way,
because it leads to nowhere. Faith is fond of sitting here, to
watch the sea, and think of things. And so am I--sometimes, I
mean."
CHAPTER XXVI
LONG-PIPE TIMES
Daily now the roar and clank of war grew loud and louder, across
the narrow seas, and up the rivers, and around the quiet homes of
England. If any unusual cloud of dust, any moving shade, appeared
afar, if the tramp of horses in the lane were heard, or neigh of a
colt from the four-cross roads, people at dinner would start up and
cry, "The French, the French have landed!" while the men in the
fields would get nearer the hedge to peep through it, and then run
away down the ditch.
But the nation at large, and the governing powers, certainly were
not in any great fright. Nay, rather they erred, if at all, on the
side of tranquillity and self-confidence; as one who has been fired
at with blank-cartridge forgets that the click of the trigger will
not tell him when the bullet has been dropped in. The bullet was
there this time; and it missed the heart of Britannia, only through
the failure of the powder to explode all at once.
It was some years before all this was known; even Nelson had no
perception of it; and although much alarm was indulged in on the
sly, the few who gave voice to it were condemned as faint-hearted
fellows and "alarmists." How then could Springhaven, which never
had feared any enemies, or even neighbours, depart from its habits,
while still an eye-witness of what had befallen the Frenchman? And
in this state of mind, having plenty to talk of, it did not (as
otherwise must have been done) attach any deep importance to the
strange vagaries of the London Trader.
That great Institution, and Royal Exchange, as well as central
embassy of Fashion, had lately become most uncertain in its dates,
which for years had announced to loose-reckoning housewives the day
of the week and the hour to buy candles. Instead of coming home on
a Saturday eve, in the van of all the fishing fleet, returning
their cheers and those of customers on the beach, the London Trader
arrived anywhen, as often in the dark as daylight, never took the
ground at all, and gave a very wide berth to Captain Zeb Tugwell,
his craft, and his crews. At times she landed packages big and
bulky, which would have been searched (in spite of London bills of
lading) if there had been any Custom-house here, or any keen
Officer of Customs. But these were delivered by daylight always,
and carted by Mr. Cheeseman's horse direct to his master's cellars;
and Cheeseman had told everybody that his wife, having come into a
little legacy, was resolved in spite of his advice to try a bit of
speculation in hardware, through her sister miles away at Uckfield.
Most of the neighbours liked Mrs. Cheeseman, because she gave good
weight (scarcely half an ounce short, with her conscience to her
family thrown in against it), as well as the soundest piece of
gossip to be had for the money in Springhaven. And therefore they
wished her well, and boxed their children's ears if they found them
poking nose into her packages. Mrs. Cheeseman shook her head when
enquired of on the subject, and said with grave truth that the Lord
alone can tell how any of poor people's doings may turn out.
Some other things puzzled the village, and would in more sensible
times have produced a sensation. Why did Mr. Cheeseman now think
nothing of as much as three spots on his white linen apron, even in
the first half of the week? Why was he seldom at John Prater's
now, and silent in a corner even when he did appear? What was
become of the ruddy polish, like that of a Winter Redstrake, on his
cheeks, which made a man long for a slice of his ham? Why, the
only joke he had made for the last three months was a terrible one
at his own expense. He had rushed down the street about ten
o'clock one morning, at a pace quite insane for a middle-aged man,
with no hat on his head and no coat on his back, but the strings of
his apron dashed wild on the breeze, and his biggest ham-carver
making flashes in his hand. It was thought that some boy must have
run off with a penny, or some visitor changed a bad shilling; but
no, there was no such good reason to give for it.
The yearning of all ages, especially dotage, is for a relapse to
the infantile state when all playthings were held in common. And
this wisest of all places (in its own opinion) had a certain
eccentric inclination towards the poetic perfection when it will be
impossible to steal, because there will be nothing left worth
stealing. Still everybody here stuck to his own rights, and would
knock down anybody across them, though finding it very nice to talk
as if others could have no such standing-point. Moreover, they had
sufficient common-sense to begin with the right end foremost, and
to take a tender interest in one another's goods, moveable, handy,
and divisible; instead of hungering after hungry land, which feeds
nobody, until itself well fed and tended, and is as useless without
a master as a donkey or a man is. The knowledge of these rudiments
of civilization was not yet lost at Springhaven; and while
everybody felt and even proved his desire to share a neighbour's
trouble, nobody meddled with any right of his, save his right to be
assisted.
Among them throve the old English feeling of respect for ancient
families, which is nowadays called "toadyism" by those whom it
baulks of robbery. To trade upon this good-will is almost as low a
thing as any man can do, even when he does it for good uses. But
to trade upon it, for the harm of those who feel it, and the ruin
of his country, is without exception the very lowest--and this was
what Caryl Carne was at.
He looked at the matter in a wholly different light, and would have
stabbed any man who put it as above; for his sense of honour was as
quick and hot as it was crooked and misguided. His father had been
a true Carne, of the old stamp--hot-blooded, headstrong, stubborn,
wayward, narrow-minded, and often arrogant; but--to balance these
faults and many others--truthful, generous, kind-hearted,
affectionate, staunch to his friends, to his inferiors genial,
loyal to his country, and respectful to religion. And he might
have done well, but for two sad evils--he took a burdened property,
and he plunged into a bad marriage.
His wife, on the other hand, might have done well, if she had
married almost anybody else. But her nature was too like his own,
with feminine vanity and caprice, French conceit, and the pride of
noble birth--in the proudest age of nobility--hardening all her
faults, and hammering the rivets of her strong self-will. To these
little difficulties must be added the difference of religion; and
though neither of them cared two pins for that, it was a matter for
crossed daggers. A pound of feathers weighs as much as (and in
some poise more than) a pound of lead, and the leaden-headed Squire
and the feather-headed Madame swung always at opposite ends of the
beam, until it broke between them. Tales of rough conflict,
imprisonment, starvation, and even vile blows, were told about them
for several years; and then "Madame la Comtesse" (as her husband
disdainfully called her) disappeared, carrying off her one child,
Caryl. She was still of very comely face and form; and the Squire
made known to all whom it concerned, and many whom it did not
concern, that his French wife had run away with a young Frenchman,
according to the habit of her race and kind. In support of this
charge he had nothing whatever to show, and his friends disbelieved
it, knowing him to be the last man in the world to leave such a
wrong unresented.
During the last three generations the fortunes of the Carnes had
been declining, slowly at first, and then faster and faster; and
now they fell with the final crash. The lady of high birth and
great beauty had brought nothing else into the family, but rather
had impoverished it by her settlement, and wild extravagance
afterwards. Her husband Montagu Carne staved off the evil day just
for the present, by raising a large sum upon second mortgage and
the security of a trustful friend. But this sum was dissipated,
like the rest; for the Squire, being deeply wounded by his wife's
desertion, proved to the world his indifference about it by
plunging into still more reckless ways. He had none to succeed
him; for he vowed that the son of the adulteress--as he called her--
should never have Carne Castle; and his last mad act was to buy
five-and-twenty barrels of powder, wherewith to blow up his
ancestral home. But ere he could accomplish that stroke of
business he stumbled and fell down the old chapel steps, and was
found the next morning by faithful Jeremiah, as cold as the ivy
which had caught his feet, and as dead as the stones he would have
sent to heaven.
No marvel that his son had no love for his memory, and little for
the land that gave him birth. In very early days this boy had
shown that his French blood was predominant. He would bite, and
kick, and scratch, instead of striking, as an English child does,
and he never cared for dogs or horses, neither worshipped he the
gamekeeper. France was the proper land for him, as his mother
always said with a sweet proud smile, and his father with a sneer,
or a brief word now condemned. And France was the land for him (as
facts ordained) to be nourished, and taught, and grown into tall
manhood, and formed into the principles and habitude and character
which every nation stamps upon the nature of its members.
However, our strong point--like that of all others--is absolute
freedom from prejudice; and the few English people who met Caryl
Carne were well pleased with his difference from themselves. Even
the enlightened fishermen, imbued with a due contempt for Crappos,
felt a kindly will towards him, and were touched by his return to a
ruined home and a lonely life. But the women, romantic as they
ought to be, felt a tender interest in a young man so handsome and
so unlucky, who lifted his hat to them, and paid his way.
Among the rising spirits of the place, who liked to take a larger
view, on the strength of more education, than their fathers had
found confirmed by life, Dan Tugwell was perhaps the foremost. In
the present days he might have been a hot radical, even a
socialist; but things were not come to that pass yet among people
brought up to their duty. And Dan's free sentiments had not been
worked by those who make a trade of such work now. So that he was
pleased and respectful, instead of carping and contradictory, when
persons of higher position than his own would discuss the condition
of the times with him. Carne had discovered this, although as a
rule he said little to his neighbours, and for reasons of his own
he was striving to get a good hold upon this young fellow. He
knew that it could not be done in a moment, nor by any common
corruption; the mind of the youth being keen, clear-sighted, and
simple--by reason of soundness. Then Carne accidentally heard of
something, which encouraged and helped him in his design upon Dan.
Business was slack upon the sea just now, but unusually active upon
land, a tide of gold having flowed into Springhaven, and bubbled up
in frying-pans and sparkled in new bonnets. The fishing fleet had
captured the finest French frigate--according to feminine history--
that ever endeavoured to capture them. After such a prisoner, let
the fish go free, till hunger should spring again in the human
breast, or the part that stands up under it. The hero of the whole
(unlike most heroes) had not succeeded in ruining himself by his
services to his country, but was able to go about patting his
pocket, with an echo in his heart, every time it tinkled, that a
quantity more to come into it was lying locked up in a drawer at
home. These are the things that breed present happiness in a noble
human nature, all else being either of the future or the past; and
this is the reason why gold outweighs everything that can be said
against it.
Captain Tugwell, in his pithy style, was wont to divide all human
life into two distinctive tenses--the long-pipe time and the short-
pipe time. The long-pipe time was of ease and leisure, comfort in
the way of hot victuals and cool pots, the stretching of legs
without strain of muscle, and that ever-fresh well-spring of
delight to the hard worker, the censorial but not censorious
contemplation of equally fine fellows, equally lazy, yet pegging
hard, because of nothing in their pockets to tap. Such were the
golden periods of standing, or, still better, sitting with his back
against a tree, and a cool yard of clay between his gently smiling
lips, shaving with his girdle-knife a cake of rich tobacco, and
then milling it complacently betwixt his horny palms, with his
resolute eyes relaxing into a gentle gaze at the labouring sea, and
the part (where his supper soon would be) warming into a fine
condition for it, by good-will towards all the world. As for the
short-pipe times, with a bitter gale dashing the cold spray into
his eyes, legs drenched with sleet, and shivering to the fork, and
shoulders racked with rheumatism against the groaning mast, and the
stump of a pipe keeping chatter with his teeth--away with all
thought of such hardship now, except what would serve to fatten
present comfort.
But fatherly feeling and sense of right compelled Captain Zeb to
check idle enjoyment from going too far--i. e., further than
himself. Every other member of his family but himself, however
good the times might be, must work away as hard as ever, and earn
whatever victuals it should please the Lord to send them. There
was always a job to be found, he knew that, if a young man or maid
had a mind for it; and "no silver no supper" was the order of his
house. His eldest son Dan was the first to be driven--for a good
example to the younger ones--and now he was set to work full time
and overtime, upon a heavy job at Pebbleridge.
Young Daniel was not at all afraid of work, whenever there was any
kind of skill to be shown, or bodily strength to be proved by it.
But the present task was hateful to him; for any big-armed yokel,
or common wood-hewer, might have done as much as he could do, and
perhaps more, at it, and could have taken the same wage over it.
Mr. Coggs, of Pebbleridge, the only wheelwright within ten miles of
Springhaven, had taken a Government contract to supply within a
certain time five hundred spoke-wheels for ammunition tumbrils, and
as many block-wheels for small artillery; and to hack out these
latter for better men to finish was the daily task of Dan Tugwell.
This job swelled his muscles and enlarged his calves, and fetched
away all the fat he had been enabled to form in loftier walks of
art; but these outward improvements were made at the expense of his
inner and nobler qualities. To hack and hew timber by the cubic
foot, without any growing pleasure of proportion or design, to knit
the brows hard for a struggle with knots, and smile the stern smile
of destruction; and then, after a long and rough walk in the dark--
for the equinox now was impending--to be joked at by his father
(who had lounged about all day), and have all his money told into
the paternal pocket, with narrow enquiries, each Saturday night.
But worst of all to know that because he was not born with a silver
spoon in his mouth, he had no heart--no heart that he could offer
where he laid it; but there it must lie, and be trodden on in
silence, while rakish-looking popinjays--But this reflection
stopped him, for it was too bitter to be thought out, and fetched
down his quivering hand upon his axe. Enough that these things did
not tend to a healthy condition of mind, or the proper worship of
the British Constitution. However, he was not quite a Radical yet.
CHAPTER XXVII
FAIR IN THEORY
One Saturday evening, when the dusk was just beginning to smoothe
the break of billow and to blunt the edge of rock, young Dan
Tugwell swung his axe upon his shoulder, with the flag basket
hanging from it in which his food had been, and in a rather crusty
state of mind set forth upon his long walk home to Springhaven. As
Harry Shanks had said, and almost everybody knew, an ancient foot-
path, little used, but never yet obstructed, cut off a large bend
of the shore, and saved half a mile of plodding over rock and
shingle. This path was very lonesome, and infested with dark
places, as well as waylaid with a very piteous ghost, who never
would keep to the spot where he was murdered, but might appear at
any shady stretch or woody corner. Dan Tugwell knew three
courageous men who had seen this ghost, and would take good care to
avoid any further interview, and his own faith in ghosts was as
stanch as in gold; yet such was his mood this evening that he
determined to go that way and chance it, not for the saving of
distance, but simply because he had been told in the yard that day
that the foot-path was stopped by the landowner. "We'll see about
that," said Dan; and now he was going to see about it.
For the first field or two there was no impediment, except the
usual stile or gate; but when he had crossed a little woodland
hollow, where the fence of the castle grounds ran down to the brow
of the cliff, he found entrance barred. Three stout oak rails had
been nailed across from tree to tree, and on a board above them
was roughly painted: "No thoroughfare. Tresspassers will be
prosecuted." For a moment the young man hesitated, his dread of
the law being virtuously deep, and his mind well assured that his
father would not back him up against settled authorities. But the
shame of turning back, and the quick sense of wrong, which had long
been demanding some outlet, conquered his calmer judgment, and he
cast the basket from his back. Then swinging his favourite axe, he
rushed at the oaken bars, and with a few strokes sent them rolling
down the steep bank-side.
"That for your stoppage of a right of way!" he cried; "and now
perhaps you'll want to know who done it."
To gratify this natural curiosity he drew a piece of chalk from his
pocket, and wrote on the notice-board in large round hand, "Daniel
Tugwell, son of Zebedee Tugwell, of Springhaven." But suddenly his
smile of satisfaction fled, and his face turned as white as the
chalk in his hand. At the next turn of the path, a few yards
before him, in the gray gloom cast by an ivy-mantled tree, stood a
tall dark figure, with the right arm raised. The face was
indistinct, but (as Dan's conscience told him) hostile and
unforgiving; there was nothing to reflect a ray of light, and there
seemed to be a rustle of some departure, like the spirit fleeing.
The ghost! What could it be but the ghost? Ghosts ought to be
white; but terror scorns all prejudice. Probably this murdered one
was buried in his breeches. Dan's heart beat quicker than his axe
had struck; and his feet were off to beat the ground still quicker.
But no Springhaven lad ever left his baggage. Dan leaped aside
first to catch up his basket, and while he stooped for it, he heard
a clear strong voice.
"Who are you, that have dared to come and cut my fence down?"
No ghost could speak like that, even if he could put a fence up.
The inborn courage of the youth revived, and the shame of his
fright made him hardier. He stepped forward again, catching breath
as he spoke, and eager to meet any man in the flesh.
"I am Daniel Tugwell, of Springhaven. And no living man shall deny
me of my rights. I have a right to pass here, and I mean to do
it."
Caryl Carne, looking stately in his suit of black velvet, drew
sword and stood behind the shattered barrier. "Are you ready to
run against this?" he asked. "Poor peasant, go back; what are your
rights worth?"
"I could smash that skewer at a blow," said Daniel, flourishing his
axe as if to do it; "but my rights, as you say, are not worth the
hazard. What has a poor man to do with rights? Would you stop a
man of your own rank, Squire Carne?"
"Ah, that would be a different thing indeed! Justice wears a
sword, because she is of gentle birth. Work-people with axes must
not prate of rights, or a prison will be their next one. Your
right is to be disdained, young man, because you were not born a
gentleman; and your duty is to receive scorn with your hat off.
You like it, probably, because your father did. But come in,
Daniel; I will not deny you of the only right an English peasant
has--the right of the foot to plod in his father's footsteps. The
right of the hand, and the tongue, and the stomach--even the right
of the eye is denied him; but by some freak of law he has some
little right of foot, doubtless to enable him to go and serve his
master."
Dan was amazed, and his better sense aroused. Why should this
gentleman step out of the rank of his birth, to talk in this way?
Now and then Dan himself had indulged in such ideas, but always
with a doubt that they were wicked, and not long enough to make
them seem good in his eyes. He knew that some fellows at "the
Club" talked thus; but they were a lot of idle strangers, who came
there chiefly to corrupt the natives, and work the fish trade out
of their hands. These wholesome reflections made him doubt about
accepting Squire Carne's invitation; and it would have been good
for him if that doubt had prevailed, though he trudged a thousand
miles for it.
"What! Break down a fence, and then be afraid to enter! That is
the style of your race, friend Daniel. That is why you never get
your rights, even when you dare to talk of them. I thought you
were made of different stuff. Go home and boast that you shattered
my fence, and then feared to come through it, when I asked you."
Carne smiled at his antagonist, and waved his hand.
Dan leaped in a moment through the hanging splinters, and stood
before the other, with a frown upon his face. "Then mind one
thing, sir," he said, with a look of defiance, while touching his
hat from force of habit, "I pass here, not with your permission,
but of right."
"Very well. Let us not split words," said Carne, who had now quite
recovered his native language. "I am glad to find a man that dares
to claim his rights, in the present state of England. I am going
towards Springhaven. Give me the pleasure of your company, and the
benefit of your opinion upon politics. I have heard the highest
praise of your abilities, my friend. Speak to me just as you would
to one of your brother fishermen. By the accident of birth I am
placed differently from you; and in this country that makes all the
difference between a man and a dog, in our value. Though you may
be, and probably are, the better man--more truthful, more
courageous, more generous, more true-hearted, and certain to be the
more humble of the two. I have been brought up where all men are
equal, and the things I see here make a new world to me. Very
likely these are right, and all the rest of the world quite wrong.
Englishmen always are certain of that; and as I belong to the
privileged classes, my great desire is to believe it. Only I want
to know how the lower orders--the dregs, the scum, the dirt under
our feet, the slaves that do all the work and get starved for it--
how these trampled wretches regard the question. If they are
happy, submissive, contented, delighted to lick the boots of their
betters, my conscience will be clear to accept their homage, and
their money for any stick of mine they look at. But you have
amazed me by a most outrageous act. Because the lower orders have
owned a path here for some centuries, you think it wrong that they
should lose their right. Explain to me, Daniel, these extraordinary
sentiments."
"If you please, sir," said Dan, who was following in the track,
though invited to walk by the side, of Caryl Carne, "I can hardly
tell you how the lower orders feel, because father and me don't
belong to them. Our family have always owned their own boat, and
worked for their own hand, this two hundred years, and, for all we
know, ever since the Romans was here. We call them the lower
orders, as come round to pick up jobs, and have no settlement in
our village."
"A sound and very excellent distinction, Dan. But as against those
who make the laws, and take good care to enforce them, even you
(though of the upper rank here) must be counted of the lower order.
For instance, can you look at a pheasant, or a hare, without being
put into prison? Can you dine in the same room with Admiral
Darling, or ask how his gout is, without being stared at?"
"No, sir. He would think it a great impertinence, even if I dared
to do such a thing. But my father might do it, as a tenant and old
neighbour. Though he never gets the gout, when he rides about so
much."
"What a matter-of-fact youth it is! But to come to things every
man has a right to. If you saved the life of one of the Admiral's
daughters, and she fell in love with you, as young people will,
would you dare even lift your eyes to her? Would you not be kicked
out of the house and the parish, if you dared to indulge the right
of every honest heart? Would you dare to look upon her as a human
being, of the same order of creation as yourself, who might one day
be your wife, if you were true and honest, and helped to break down
the absurd distinctions built up by vile tyranny between you? In a
word, are you a man--as every man is on the Continent--or only an
English slave, of the lower classes?"
The hot flush of wrath, and the soft glow of shame, met and
deepened each other on the fair cheeks of this "slave"; while his
mind would not come to him to make a fit reply. That his passion
for Dolly, his hopeless passion, should thus be discovered by a man
of her own rank, but not scorned or ridiculed, only pitied, because
of his want of manly spirit; that he should be called a "slave"
because of honest modesty, and even encouraged in his wild hopes by
a gentleman, who had seen all the world, and looked down from a
lofty distance on it; that in his true estimate of things there
should be nothing but prejudice, low and selfish prejudice,
between--Well, he could not think it out; that would take him many
hours; let this large-minded man begin again. It was so dark now,
that if he turned round on him, unless he was a cat, he would be no
wiser.
"You do well to take these things with some doubt," continued
Carne, too sagacious to set up argument, which inures even young
men in their own opinions; "if I were in your place, I should do
the same. Centuries of oppression have stamped out the plain light
of truth in those who are not allowed it. To me, as an individual,
it is better so. Chance has ordained that I should belong to the
order of those who profit by it. It is against my interest to
speak as I have done. Am I likely to desire that my fences should
be broken, my property invaded, the distinction so pleasing to me
set aside, simply because I consider it a false one? No, no,
friend Daniel; it is not for me to move. The present state of
things is entirely in my favour. And I never give expression to my
sense of right and wrong, unless it is surprised from me by
circumstances. Your bold and entirely just proceedings have forced
me to explain why I feel no resentment, but rather admiration, at a
thing which any other land-owner in England would not rest in his
bed until he had avenged. He would drag you before a bench of
magistrates and fine you. Your father, if I know him, would refuse
to pay the fine; and to prison you would go, with the taint of it
to lie upon your good name forever. The penalty would be wrong,
outrageous, ruinous; no rich man would submit to it, but a poor man
must. Is this the truth, Daniel, or is it what it ought to be--a
scandalous misdescription of the laws of England?"
"No, sir; it is true enough, and too true, I am afraid. I never
thought of consequences, when I used my axe. I only thought of
what was right, and fair, and honest, as between a man who has a
right, and one who takes it from him."
"That is the natural way to look at things, but never permitted in
this country. You are fortunate in having to deal with one who has
been brought up in a juster land, where all mankind are equal. But
one thing I insist upon; and remember it is the condition of my
forbearance. Not a single word to any one about your dashing
exploit. No gentleman in the county would ever speak to me again,
if I were known to have put up with it."
"I am sure, sir," said Daniel, in a truly contrite tone, "I never
should have done such an impudent thing against you, if I had only
known what a nice gentleman you are. I took you for nothing but a
haughty land-owner, without a word to fling at a poor fisherman.
And now you go ever so far beyond what the Club doth, in speaking
of the right that every poor man hasn't. I could listen to you by
the hour, sir, and learn the difference between us and abroad."
"Tugwell, I could tell you things that would make a real man of
you. But why should I? You are better as you are; and so are we
who get all the good out of you. And besides, I have no time for
politics at present. All my time is occupied with stern business--
collecting the ruins of my property."
"But, sir--but you come down here sometimes from the castle in the
evening; and if I might cross, without claiming right of way,
sometimes I might have the luck to meet you."
"Certainly you may pass, as often as you please, and so may anybody
who sets value on his rights. And if I should meet you again, I
shall be glad of it. You can open my eyes, doubtless, quite as
much as I can yours. Good-night, my friend, and better fortunes to
you!"
"It was worth my while to nail up those rails," Carne said to
himself, as he went home to his ruins. "I have hooked that clod,
as firm as ever he hooked a cod. But, thousand thunders! what does
he mean, by going away without touching his hat to me?"
CHAPTER XXVIII
FOUL IN PRACTICE
"I hope, my dear, that your ride has done you good," said the
Rector's wife to the Rector, as he came into the hall with a
wonderfully red face, one fine afternoon in October. "If colour
proves health, you have gained it."
"Maria, I have not been so upset for many years. Unwholesome
indignation dyes my cheeks, and that is almost as bad as
indigestion. I have had quite a turn--as you women always put it.
I am never moved by little things, as you know well, and sometimes
to your great disgust; but to-day my troubles have conspired to
devour me. I am not so young as I was, Maria. And what will the
parish come to, if I give in?"
"Exactly, dear; and therefore you must not give in." Mrs. Twemlow
replied with great spirit, but her hands were trembling as she
helped him to pull off his new riding-coat. "Remember your own
exhortations, Joshua--I am sure they were beautiful--last Sunday.
But take something, dear, to restore your circulation. A reaction
in the system is so dangerous."
"Not anything at present," Mr. Twemlow answered, firmly; "these
mental cares are beyond the reach of bodily refreshments. Let me
sit down, and be sure where I am, and then you may give me a glass
of treble X. In the first place, the pony nearly kicked me off,
when that idiot of a Stubbard began firing from his battery. What
have I done, or my peaceful flock, that a noisy set of guns should
be set up amidst us? However, I showed Juniper that he had a
master, though I shall find it hard to come down-stairs tomorrow.
Well, the next thing was that I saw James Cheeseman, Church-warden
Cheeseman, Buttery Cheeseman, as the bad boys call him, in the
lane, in front of me not more than thirty yards, as plainly as I
now have the pleasure of seeing you, Maria; and while I said 'kuck'
to the pony, he was gone! I particularly wished to speak to
Cheeseman, to ask him some questions about things I have observed,
and especially his sad neglect of public worship--a most shameful
example on the part of a church-warden--and I was thinking how to
put it, affectionately yet firmly, when, to my great surprise,
there was no Cheeseman to receive it! I called at his house on my
return, about three hours afterwards, having made up my mind to
have it out with him, when they positively told me--or at least
Polly Cheeseman did--that I must be mistaken about her 'dear papa,'
because he was gone in the pony-shay all the way to Uckfield, and
would not be back till night."
"The nasty little story-teller!" Mrs. Twemlow cried. "But I am not
at all surprised at it, when I saw how she had got her hair done
up, last Sunday."
"No; Polly believed it. I am quite sure of that. But what I want
to tell you is much stranger and more important, though it cannot
have anything at all to do with Cheeseman. You know, I told you I
was going for a good long ride; but I did not tell you where,
because I knew that you would try to stop me. But the fact was
that I had made up my mind to see what Caryl Carne is at, among his
owls and ivy. You remember the last time I went to the old place I
knocked till I was tired, but could get no answer, and the window
was stopped with some rusty old spiked railings, where we used to
be able to get in at the side. All the others are out of reach, as
you know well; and being of a yielding nature, I came sadly home.
And at that time I still had some faith in your friend Mrs.
Stubbard, who promised to find out all about him, by means of Widow
Shanks and the Dimity-parlour. But nothing has come of that. Poor
Mrs. Stubbard is almost as stupid as her husband; and as for Widow
Shanks--I am quite sure, Maria, if your nephew were plotting the
overthrow of King, Church, and Government, that deluded woman would
not listen to a word against him."
"She calls him a model, and a blessed martyr"--Mrs. Twemlow was
smiling at the thought of it; "and she says she is a woman of great
penetration, and never will listen to anything. But it only shows
what I have always said, that our family has a peculiar power, a
sort of attraction, a superior gift of knowledge of their own
minds, which makes them--But there, you are laughing at me,
Joshua!"
"Not I; but smiling at my own good fortune, that ever I get my own
way at all. But, Maria, you are right; your family has always been
distinguished for having its own way--a masterful race, and a
mistressful. And so much the more do the rest of mankind grow
eager to know all about them. In an ordinary mind, such as mine,
that feeling becomes at last irresistible; and finding no other way
to gratify it, I resolved to take the bull by the horns, or rather
by the tail, this morning. The poor old castle has been breaking
up most grievously, even within the last twenty years, and you, who
have played as a child among the ruins of the ramparts, would
scarcely know them now. You cannot bear to go there, which is
natural enough, after all the sad things that have happened; but if
you did, you would be surprised, Maria; and I believe a great part
has been knocked down on purpose. But you remember the little way
in from the copse, where you and I, five-and-thirty years ago--"
"Of course I do, darling. It seems but yesterday; and I have a
flower now which you gathered for me there. It grew at a very
giddy height upon the wall, full of cracks and places where the
evening-star came through; but up you went, like a rocket or a
race-horse; and what a fright I was in, until you came down safe!
I think that must have made up my mind to have nobody except my
Joshua."
"Well, my dear, you might have done much worse. But I happened to
think of that way in, this morning, when you put up your elbow, as
you made the tea, exactly as you used to do when I might come up
there. And that set me thinking of a quantity of things, and among
them this plan which I resolved to carry out. I took the trouble
first to be sure that Caryl was down here for the day, under the
roof of Widow Shanks; and then I set off by the road up the hill,
for the stronghold of all the Carnes. Without further peril than
the fight with the pony, and the strange apparition of Cheeseman
about half a mile from the back entrance, I came to the copse where
the violets used to be, and the sorrel, and the lords and ladies.
There I tethered our friend Juniper in a quiet little nook, and
crossed the soft ground, without making any noise, to the place we
used to call our little postern. It looked so sad, compared with
what it used to be, so desolate and brambled up and ruinous, that I
scarcely should have known it, except for the gray pedestal of the
prostrate dial we used to moralise about. And the ground inside
it, that was nice turf once, with the rill running down it that
perhaps supplied the moat--all stony now, and overgrown, and
tangled, with ugly-looking elder-bushes sprawling through the ivy.
To a painter it might have proved very attractive; but to me it
seemed so dreary, and so sombre, and oppressive, that, although I
am not sentimental, as you know, I actually turned away, to put my
little visit off, until I should be in better spirits for it. And
that, my dear Maria, would in all probability have been never.
"But before I had time to begin my retreat, a very extraordinary
sound, which I cannot describe by any word I know, reached my ears.
It was not a roar, nor a clank, nor a boom, nor a clap, nor a
crash, nor a thud, but if you have ever heard a noise combining all
those elements, with a small percentage of screech to enliven them,
that comes as near it as I can contrive to tell. We know from Holy
Scripture that there used to be such creatures as dragons, though
we have never seen them; but I seemed to be hearing one as I stood
there. It was just the sort of groan you might have expected from
a dragon, who had swallowed something highly indigestible."
"My dear! And he might have swallowed you, if you had stopped.
How could you help running away, my Joshua? I should have insisted
immediately upon it. But you are so terribly intrepid!"
"Far from it, Maria. Quite the contrary, I assure you. In fact, I
did make off, for a considerable distance; not rapidly as a youth
might do, but with self-reproach at my tardiness. But the sound
ceased coming; and then I remembered how wholly we are in the hand
of the Lord. A sense of the power of right rose within me, backed
up by a strong curiosity; and I said to myself that if I went home,
with nothing more than that to tell you, I should not have at all
an easy time of it. Therefore I resolved to face the question
again, and ascertain, if possible, without self-sacrifice, what was
going on among the ruins. You know every stick and stone, as they
used to be, but not as they are at present; therefore I must tell
you. The wall at the bottom of the little Dial-court, where there
used to be a sweet-briar hedge to come through, is entirely gone,
either tumbled down or knocked down--the latter I believe to be the
true reason of it. Also, instead of sweet-briar, there is now a
very flourishing crop of sting-nettles. But the wall at the side
of the little court stands almost as sound as ever; and what
surprised me most was to see, when I got further, proceeding of
course very quietly, that the large court beyond (which used to be
the servants' yard, and the drying-ground, and general lounging-
place) had a timber floor laid down it, with a rope on either side,
a long heavy rope on either side; and these ropes were still
quivering, as if from a heavy strain just loosened. All this I
could see, because the high door with the spikes, that used to part
the Dial-court from this place of common business, was fallen
forward from its upper hinge, and splayed out so that I could put
my fist through.
"By this time I had quite recovered all my self-command, and was as
calm as I am now, or even calmer, because I was under that reaction
which ensues when a sensible man has made a fool of himself. I
perceived, without thinking, that the sound which had so scared me
proceeded from this gangway, or timberway, or staging, or whatever
may be the right word for it; and I made up my mind to stay where I
was, only stooping a little with my body towards the wall, to get
some idea of what might be going forward. And then I heard a sort
of small hubbub of voices, such as foreigners make when they are
ordered to keep quiet, and have to carry on a struggle with their
noisy nature.
"This was enough to settle my decision not to budge an inch, until
I knew what they were up to. I could not see round the corner,
mind--though ladies seem capable of doing that, Maria--and so these
fellows, who seemed to be in two lots, some at the top and some at
the bottom of the plankway, were entirely out of my sight as yet,
though I had a good view of their sliding-plane. But presently the
ropes began to strain and creak, drawn taut--as our fishermen
express it--either from the upper or the lower end, and I saw three
barrels come sliding down--sliding, not rolling (you must
understand), and not as a brewer delivers beer into a cellar.
These passed by me; and after a little while there came again that
strange sepulchral sound, which had made me feel so uneasy.
"Maria, you know that I can hold my own against almost anybody in
the world but you; and although this place is far outside my parish
boundaries, I felt that as the Uncle of the present owner--so far
at least as the lawyers have not snapped him up--and the brother-
in-law of the previous proprietor, I possessed an undeniable legal
right--quo warranto, or whatever it is called--to look into all
proceedings on these premises. Next to Holy Scripture, Horace is
my guide and guardian; and I called to mind a well-known passage,
which may roughly be rendered thus: 'If the crushed world tumble
on him, the ruins shall strike him undismayed.' With this in my
head, I went softly down the side-wall of the Dial-court (for there
was no getting through the place where I had been peeping) to the
bottom, where there used to be an old flint wall, and a hedge of
sweet-briar in front of it. You remember the pretty conceit I
made--quaint and wholesome as one of Herrick's--when you said
something--but I verily believe we were better in those days than
we ever have been since. Now don't interrupt me about that, my
dear.
"Some of these briars still were there, or perhaps some of their
descendants, straggling weakly among the nettles, and mullein, and
other wild stuff, but making all together a pretty good screen,
through which I could get a safe side-view of the bottom of the
timber gangway. So I took off my hat, for some ruffian fellows
like foreign sailors were standing below, throwing out their arms,
and making noises in their throats, because not allowed to scream
as usual. It was plain enough at once to any one who knew the
place, that a large hole had been cut in the solid castle wall, or
rather, a loophole had been enlarged very freely on either side,
and brought down almost to the level of the ground outside. On
either side of this great opening stood three heavy muskets at full
cock, and it made my blood run cold to think how likely some fatal
discharge appeared. If I had been brought up to war, Maria, as all
the young people are bound to be now, I might have been more at
home with such matters, and able to reconnoitre calmly; but I
thought of myself, and of you, and Eliza, and what a shocking thing
it would be for all of us--but a merciful Providence was over me.
"Too late I regretted the desire for knowledge, which had led me
into this predicament, for I durst not rush off from my very sad
position, for my breath would soon fail me, and my lower limbs are
thick from the exercise of hospitality. How I longed for the wings
of a dove, or at any rate for the legs of Lieutenant Blyth
Scudamore! And my dark apprehensions gained double force when a
stone was dislodged by my foot (which may have trembled), and
rolled with a sharp echo down into the ballium, or whatever it
should be called, where these desperadoes stood. In an instant
three of them had their long guns pointed at the very thicket which
sheltered me, and if I had moved or attempted to make off, there
would have been a vacancy in this preferment. But luckily a
rabbit, who had been lying as close as I had, and as much afraid of
me perhaps as I was of those ruffians, set off at full speed from
the hop of the stone, and they saw him, and took him for the cause
of it. This enabled me to draw my breath again, and consider the
best way of making my escape, for I cared to see nothing more,
except my own house-door.
"Happily the chance was not long in coming. At a shout from below--
which seemed to me to be in English, and sounded uncommonly like
'now, then!'--all those fellows turned their backs to me, and began
very carefully to lower, one by one, the barrels that had been let
down the incline. And other things were standing there, besides
barrels: packing-cases, crates, very bulky-looking boxes, and low
massive wheels, such as you often see to artillery. You know what
a vast extent there is of cellars and vaults below your old castle,
most of them nearly as sound as ever, and occupied mainly by empty
bottles, and the refuse of past hospitality. Well, they are going
to fill these with something--French wines, smuggled brandy,
contraband goods of every kind you can think of, so long as high
profit can be made of them. That is how your nephew Caryl means to
redeem his patrimony. No wonder that he has been so dark and
distant! It never would have done to let us get the least
suspicion of it, because of my position in the Church, and in the
Diocese. By this light a thousand things are clear to me, which
exceeded all the powers of the Sphinx till now."
"But how did you get away, my darling Joshua?" Mrs. Twemlow
enquired, as behoved her. "So fearless, so devoted, so alive to
every call of duty--how could you stand there, and let the wretches
shoot at you?"
"By taking good care not to do it," the Rector answered, simply.
"No sooner were all their backs towards me, than I said to myself
that the human race happily is not spiderine. I girt up my loins,
or rather fetched my tails up under my arms very closely, and
glided away, with the silence of the serpent, and the craft of the
enemy of our fallen race. Great care was needful, and I exercised
it; and here you behold me, unshot and unshot-at, and free from all
anxiety, except a pressing urgency for a bowl of your admirable
soup, Maria, and a cut from the saddle I saw hanging in the
cellar."
CHAPTER XXIX
MATERNAL ELOQUENCE
Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof; and more than
sufficient with most of us. Mr. Twemlow and his wife resolved
discreetly, after a fireside council, to have nothing to say to
Carne Castle, or about it, save what might be forced out of them.
They perceived most clearly, and very deeply felt, how exceedingly
wrong it is for anybody to transgress, or even go aside of, the
laws of his country, as by Statute settled. Still, if his ruin had
been chiefly legal; if he had been brought up under different laws,
and in places where they made those things which he desired to deal
in; if it was clear that those things were good, and their benefit
might be extended to persons who otherwise could have no taste of
them; above all, if it were the first and best desire of all who
heard of it to have their own fingers in the pie--then let others
stop it, who by duty and interest were so minded; the Rector was
not in the Commission of the Peace--though he ought to have been
there years ago--and the breach of the law, if it came to that, was
outside of his parish boundary. The voice of the neighbourhood
would be with him, for not turning against his own nephew, even if
it ever should come to be known that he had reason for suspicions.
It is hard to see things in their proper light, if only one eye has
a fly in it; but if both are in that sad condition, who shall be
blamed for winking? Not only the pastor, but all his flock, were
in need of wire spectacles now, to keep their vision clear and
their foreheads calm. Thicker than flies around the milk-pail,
rumours came flitting daily; and even the night--that fair time of
thinking--was busy with buzzing multitude.
"Long time have I lived, and a sight have I seed," said Zebedee
Tugwell to his wife, "of things as I couldn't make no head nor tail
of; but nothing to my knowledge ever coom nigh the sort of way our
folk has taken to go on. Parson Twemlow told us, when the war
began again, that the Lord could turn us all into Frenchmen, if we
sinned against Him more than He could bear. I were fool enough to
laugh about it then, not intaking how it could be on this side of
Kingdom Come, where no distinction is of persons. But now, there
it is--a thing the Almighty hath in hand; and who shall say Him
nay, when He layeth His hand to it?"
"I reckon, 'a hath begun with you too, Zeb," Mrs. Tugwell would
answer, undesirably. "To be always going on so about trash
trifles, as a woman hath a right to fly up at, but no man! Surely
Dan hath a right to his politics and his parables, as much as any
lame old chap that sitteth on a bench. He works hard all day, and
he airns his money; and any man hath a right to wag his tongue of
night-time, when his arms and his legs have been wagging all day."
"Depends upon how he wags 'un." The glance of old Tugwell was
stern, as he spoke, and his eyebrows knitted over it. "If for a
yarn, to plaise children or maidens, or a bit of argyment about his
business, or talk about his neighbours, or aught that consarns him--
why, lads must be fools, and I can smoke my pipe and think that at
his age I was like him. But when it comes to talking of his
betters, and the Government, and the right of everybody to command
the ship, and the soup--soup, what was it?"
"Superior position of the working classes, dignity of labour,
undefeasible rights of mankind to the soil as they was born in, and
soshallistick--something."
"So--shall--I--stick equality," Mr. Tugwell amended, triumphantly;
"and so shall I stick him, by the holy poker, afore the end of the
week is out. I've a-been fool enough to leave off ropesending of
him now for a matter of two years, because 'a was good, and
outgrowing of it like, and because you always coom between us. But
mind you, mother, I'll have none of that, next time. Business I
means, and good measure it shall be."
"Zeb Tugwell," said his wife, longing greatly to defy him, but
frightened by the steadfast gaze she met, "you can never mean to
say that you would lay your hand on Dan--a grown man, a'most as big
as yourself, and a good half-head taller! Suppose he was to hit
you back again!"
"If he did, I should just kill him," Zeb answered, calmly. "He
would be but a jellyfish in my two hands. But there, I'll not talk
about it, mother. No need to trouble you with it. 'Tis none of my
seeking--the Lord in heaven knows--but a job as He hath dutified
for me to do. I'll go out, and have my pipe, and dwell on it."
"And I may lay a deal of it on myself," Mrs. Tugwell began to moan,
as soon as he was gone; "for I have cockered Dan up, and there's no
denying it, afore Tim, or Tryphena, or Tabby, or Debby, or even
little Solomon. Because he were the first, and so like his dear
father, afore he got on in the world so. Oh, it all comes of that,
all the troubles comes of that, and of laying up of money, apart
from your wife, and forgetting almost of her Christian name! And
the very same thing of it--money, money, and the getting on with
breeches that requireth no mending, and the looking over Church-
books at gay young ladies--all of it leadeth to the same bad end of
his betters, and the Government, and the Soshallistick Quality.
"Why, with all these mercies," continued Mrs. Tugwell, though not
in a continuous frame of mind, as Daniel came in, with a slow heavy
step, and sat down by the fire in silence, "all these mercies, as
are bought and paid for, from one and sixpence up to three half-
crowns, and gives no more trouble beyond dusting once a week--how
any one can lay his eyes on other people's property, without
consideration of his own, as will be after his poor mother's time,
is to me quite a puzzle and a pin-prick. Not as if they was owing
for, or bought at auction, or so much as beaten down by sixpence,
but all at full price and own judgment, paid for by airnings of
labour and perils of the deep. And as Widow Shanks said, the last
time she was here, by spoiling of the enemies of England, who makes
us pay tremenjious for 'most everything we lives on. And I know
who would understand them crackeries, and dust them when I be gone
to dust, and see her own pretty face in them, whenever they has the
back-varnish."
Dan knew that the future fair owner and duster designed by his
mother was Miss Cheeseman, towards whom he had cherished tender
yearnings in the sensible and wholesome days. And if Polly
Cheeseman had hung herself on high--which she might have done
without a bit of arrogance--perhaps she would still have been to
this young man the star of fate and glory, instead of a dip,
thirty-two to the pound; the like whereof she sold for a farthing.
Distance makes the difference. "He that won't allow heed shall pay
dear in his need;" the good mother grew warm, as the son began to
whistle; "and to my mind, Master Dan, it won't be long afore you
have homer things to think of than politics. 'Politics is fiddle-
sticks' was what men of my age used to say; sensible men with a
house and freehold, and a pig of their own, and experience. And
such a man I might have had, and sensible children by him, children
as never would have whistled at their mother, if it hadn't been for
your poor father, Dan. Misguided he may be, and too much of his
own way, and not well enough in his own mind to take in a woman's--
but for all that he hath a right to be honoured by his children,
and to lead their minds in matters touching of the King, and
Church, and true religion. Why only last night, no, the night
afore last, I met Mrs. Prater, and I said to her--"
"You told me all that, mother; and it must have been a week ago;
for I have heard it every night this week. What is it you desire
that I should do, or say, or think?"
"Holy mercy!" cried Mrs. Tugwell, "what a way to put things, Dan!
All I desire is for your good only, and so leading on to the
comfort of the rest. For the whole place goes wrong, and the cat
sits in the corner, when you go on with politics as your dear
father grunts at. No doubt it may all be very fine and just, and
worth a man giving his life for, if he don't care about it, nor
nobody else--but even if it was to keep the French out, and yourn
goeth nearer to letting them in, what difference of a button would
it make to us, Dan, compared to our sticking together, and feeding
with a knowledge and a yielding to the fancies of each other?"
"I am sure it's no fault of mine," said Daniel, moved from his high
ropes by this last appeal; "to me it never matters twopence what I
have for dinner, and you saw me give Tim all the brown of the baked
potatoes the very last time I had my dinner here. But what comes
above all those little bothers is the necessity for insisting upon
freedom of opinion. I don't pretend to be so old as my father, nor
to know so much as he knows about the world in general. But I have
read a great deal more than he has, of course, because he takes a
long time to get a book with the right end to him; and I have
thought, without knowing it, about what I have read, and I have
heard very clever men (who could have no desire to go wrong, but
quite the other way) carrying on about these high subjects, beyond
me, but full of plain language. And I won't be forced out of a
word of it by fear."
"But for love of your mother you might keep it under, and think it
all inside you, without bringing of it out, in the presence of your
elders. You know what your father is--a man as never yet laid his
tongue to a thing without doing of it--right or wrong, right or
wrong; and this time he hath right, and the law, and the Lord, and
the King himself, to the side of him. And a rope's-end in his
pocket, Dan, as I tried to steal away, but he were too wide-awake.
Such a big hard one you never did see!"
"A rope's end for me, well turned twenty years of age!" cried
Daniel, with a laugh, but not a merry one; "two can play at that
game, mother. I'll not be ropes ended by nobody."
"Then you'll be rope-noosed;" the poor mother fell into the settle,
away from the fire-light, and put both hands over her eyes, to shut
out the spectacle of Dan dangling; "or else your father will be,
for you. Ever since the Romans, Dan, there have been Tugwells, and
respected ten times more than they was. Oh do 'e, do 'e think; and
not bring us all to the grave, and then the gallows! Why I can
mind the time, no more agone than last Sunday, when you used to lie
here in the hollow of my arm, without a stitch of clothes on, and
kind people was tempted to smack you in pleasure, because you did
stick out so prettily. For a better-formed baby there never was
seen, nor a finer-tempered one, when he had his way. And the many
nights I walked the floor with you, Dan, when your first tooth was
coming through, the size of a horse-radish, and your father most
wonderful to put up with my coo to you, when he had not had a night
in bed for nigh three weeks--oh, Dan, do 'e think of things as
consarneth your homer life, and things as is above all reason; and
let they blessed politics go home to them as trades in them."
Mrs. Tugwell's tender recollections had given her a pain in the
part where Dan was nursed, and driven her out of true logical
course; but she came back to it, before Dan had time to finish the
interesting pictures of himself which she had suggested.
"Now can you deny a word of that, Dan? And if not, what is there
more to say? You was smacked as a little babe, by many people
kindly, when ever so much tenderer than you now can claim to be.
And in those days you never could have deserved it yet, not having
framed a word beyond 'Mam,' and 'Da,' and both of those made much
of, because doubtful. There was nothing about the Constitooshun
then, but the colour of the tongue and the condition of the bowels;
and if any fool had asked you what politics was, you would have
sucked your thumb, and offered them to suck it; for generous you
always was, and just came after. And what cry have bigger folk,
grown upright and wicked, to make about being smacked, when they
deserve it, for meddling with matters outside of their business, by
those in authority over them?"
"Well, mother, I daresay you are right, though I don't altogether
see the lines of it. But one thing I will promise you--whatever
father does to me, I will not lift a hand against him. But I must
be off. I am late already."
"Where to, Dan? Where to? I always used to know, even if you was
going courting. Go a-courting, Dan, as much as ever you like, only
don't make no promises. But whatever you do, keep away from that
bad, wicked, Free and Frisky Club, my dear."
"Mother, that's the very place I am just bound to. After all you
have said, I would have stayed away to-night, except for being on
the list, and pledged in honour to twenty-eight questions, all
bearing upon the grand issues of the age."
"I don't know no more than the dead, what that means, Dan. But I
know what your father has got in his pocket for you. And he said
the next time you went there, you should have it."
CHAPTER XXX
PATERNAL DISCIPLINE
"The Fair, Free, and Frisky"--as they called themselves, were not
of a violent order at all, neither treasonable, nor even disloyal.
Their Club, if it deserved the name, had not been of political,
social, or even convivial intention, but had lapsed unawares into
all three uses, and most of all that last mentioned. The harder
the times are, the more confidential (and therefore convivial) do
Englishmen become; and if Free-trade survives with us for another
decade, it will be the death of total abstinence. But now they had
bad times, without Free-trade--that Goddess being still in the
goose-egg--and when two friends met, without a river between them,
they were bound to drink one another's health, and did it, without
the unstable and cold-blooded element. The sense of this duty was
paramount among the "Free and Frisky," and without it their final
cause would have vanished long ago, and therewith their formal one.
None of the old-established folk of the blue blood of Springhaven,
such as the Tugwells, the Shankses, the Praters, the Bowleses, the
Stickfasts, the Blocks, or the Kedgers, would have anything to do
with this Association, which had formed itself among them, like an
anti-corn-law league, for the destruction of their rights and
properties. Its origin had been commercial, and its principles
aggressive, no less an outrage being contemplated than the purchase
of fish at low figures on the beach, and the speedy distribution of
that slippery ware among the nearest villages and towns. But from
time immemorial the trade had been in the hands of a few staunch
factors, who paid a price governed by the seasons and the weather,
and sent the commodity as far as it would go, with soundness, and
the hope of freshness. Springhaven believed that it supplied all
London, and was proud and blest in so believing. With these
barrowmen, hucksters and pedlars of fish, it would have no manifest
dealing; but if the factors who managed the trade chose to sell
their refuse or surplus to them, that was their own business. In
this way perhaps, and by bargains on the sly, these petty dealers
managed to procure enough to carry on their weekly enterprise, and
for a certain good reason took a room and court-yard handy to the
Darling Arms, to discuss other people's business and their own.
The good reason was that they were not allowed to leave the
village, with their barrows or trucks or baskets, until the night
had fallen, on penalty of being pelted with their own wares. Such
was the dignity of this place, and its noble abhorrence of anything
low.
The vision of lofty institutions, which one may not participate,
inspires in the lower human nature more jealousy than admiration.
These higglers may have been very honest fellows, in all but
pecuniary questions, and possibly continued to be so in the bosom
of their own families. But here in Springhaven, by the force of
circumstances they were almost compelled to be radicals: even as
the sweetest cow's milk turns sour, when she can just reach red
clover with her breath, but not her lips. But still they were not
without manners, and reason, and good-will to people who had
patience with them. This enabled them to argue lofty questions,
without black eyes, or kicking, or even tweak of noses; and a very
lofty question was now before them.
To get once into Admiral Darling's employment was to obtain a
vested interest; so kind was his nature and so forgiving,
especially when he had scolded anybody. Mr. Swipes, the head
gardener for so many years, held an estate of freehold in the
garden--although he had no head, and would never be a gardener,
till the hanging gardens of Babylon should be hung on the top of
the tower of Babel--with a vested remainder to his son, and a
contingent one to all descendants. Yet this man, although his
hands were generally in his pockets, had not enough sense of their
linings to feel that continuance, usage, institution, orderly
sequence, heredity, and such like, were the buttons of his coat and
the texture of his breeches, and the warmth of his body inside
them. Therefore he never could hold aloof from the Free and Frisky
gatherings, and accepted the chair upon Bumper-nights, when it was
a sinecure benefice.
This was a Bumper-night, and in the chair sat Mr. Swipes,
discharging gracefully the arduous duties of the office, which
consisted mainly in calling upon members for a speech, a sentiment,
or a song, and in default of mental satisfaction, bodily amendment
by a pint all round. But as soon as Dan Tugwell entered the room,
the Free and Friskies with one accord returned to loftier business.
Mr. Swipes, the gay Liber of the genial hour, retired from the
chair, and his place was taken by a Liberal--though the name was
not yet invented--estranged from his own godfather. This was a
hard man, who made salt herrings, and longed to cure everything
fresh in the world.
Dan, being still a very tender youth, and quite unaccustomed to
public speaking, was abashed by these tokens of his own importance,
and heartily wished that he had stopped at home. It never occurred
to his simple mind that his value was not political, but
commercial; not "anthropological," but fishy, the main ambition of
the Free and Frisky Club having long been the capture of his
father. If once Zeb Tugwell could be brought to treat, a golden
era would dawn upon them, and a boundless vision of free-trade,
when a man might be paid for refusing to sell fish, as he now is
for keeping to himself his screws. Dan knew not these things, and
his heart misgave him, and he wished that he had never heard of the
twenty-eight questions set down in his name for solution.
However, his disturbance of mind was needless, concerning those
great issues. All the members, except the chairman, had forgotten
all about them; and the only matter they cared about was to make a
new member of Daniel. A little flourish went on about large things
(which nobody knew, or cared to know), then the table was hammered
with the heel of a pipe, and Dan was made a Free and Frisky. An
honorary member, with nothing to pay, and the honour on their side,
they told him; and every man rose, with his pot in one hand and his
pipe in the other, yet able to stand, and to thump with his heels,
being careful. Then the President made entry in a book, and bowed,
and Dan was requested to sign it. In the fervour of good-will, and
fine feeling, and the pride of popularity, the young man was not
old enough to resist, but set his name down firmly. Then all shook
hands with him, and the meeting was declared to be festive, in
honour of a new and noble member.
It is altogether wrong to say--though many people said it--that
young Dan Tugwell was even a quarter of a sheet in the wind, when
he steered his way home. His head was as solid as that of his
father; which, instead of growing light, increased in specific,
generic, and differential gravity, under circumstances which tend
otherwise, with an age like ours, that insists upon sobriety,
without allowing practice. All Springhaven folk had long practice
in the art of keeping sober, and if ever a man walked with his legs
outside his influence, it was always from defect of proper average
quite lately.
Be that as it may, the young man came home with an enlarged map of
the future in his mind, a brisk and elastic rise in his walk, and
his head much encouraged to go on with liberal and indescribable
feelings. In accordance with these, he expected his mother to be
ready to embrace him at the door, while a saucepan simmered on the
good-night of the wood-ash, with just as much gentle breath of
onion from the cover as a youth may taste dreamily from the lips of
love. But oh, instead of this, he met his father, spread out and
yet solid across the doorway, with very large arms bare and lumpy
in the gleam of a fireplace uncrowned by any pot. Dan's large
ideas vanished, like a blaze without a bottom.
"Rather late, Daniel," said the captain of Springhaven, with a nod
of his great head, made gigantic on the ceiling. "All the rest are
abed, the proper place for honest folk. I suppose you've been
airning money, overtime?"
"Not I," said Dan; "I work hard enough all day. I just looked in
at the Club, and had a little talk of politics."
"The Club, indeed! The stinking barrow-grinders! Did I tell you,
or did I forget to tell you, never to go there no more?"
"You told me fast enough, father; no doubt about that. But I am
not aboard your boat, when I happen on dry land, and I am old
enough now to have opinions of my own."
"Oh, that's it, is it? And to upset all the State, the King, the
House of Lords, and the Parliamentary House, and all as is
descended from the Romans? Well, and what did their Wusships say
to you? Did they anoint you king of slooshings?"
"Father, they did this--and you have a right to know it;" Dan spoke
with a grave debative tone, though his voice became doubtful, as he
saw that his father was quietly seeking for something; "almost
before I knew what was coming, they had made me a member, and I
signed the book. They have no desire to upset the kingdom; I heard
no talk of that kind; only that every man should have his own
opinions, and be free to show what can be said for them. And you
know, father, that the world goes on by reason, and justice, and
good-will, and fair play--"
"No, it don't," cried the captain, who had found what he wanted;
"if it had to wait for they, it would never go on at all. It goes
on by government, and management, and discipline, and the stopping
of younkers from their blessed foolery, and by the ten commandments,
and the proverbs of King Solomon. You to teach your father how the
world goes on! Off with your coat, and I'll teach you."
"Father," said Dan, with his milder nature trembling at the stern
resolution in his father's eyes, as the hearth-fire flashing up
showed their stronger flash, "you will never do such a thing, at my
age and size?"
"Won't I?" answered Zebedee, cracking in the air the three knotted
tails of the stout hempen twist. "As for your age, why, it ought
to know better; and as for your size, why, the more room for this!"
It never came into Daniel's head that he should either resist or
run away. But into his heart came the deadly sense of disgrace at
being flogged, even by his own father, at full age to have a wife
and even children of his own.
"Father," he said, as he pulled off his coat and red striped shirt,
and showed his broad white back, "if you do this thing, you will
never set eyes on my face again--so help me God!"
"Don't care if I don't," the captain shouted. "You was never son
of mine, to be a runagate, and traitor. How old be you, Master
Free and Frisky, to larn me how the world goes on?"
"As if you didn't know, father! The fifteenth of last March I was
twenty years of age."
"Then one for each year of your life, my lad, and another to make a
man of thee. This little tickler hath three tails; seven threes is
twenty-one--comes just right."
When his father had done with him, Dan went softly up the dark
staircase of old ship timber, and entering his own little room,
struck a light. He saw that his bed was turned down for him, by
the loving hand of his mother, and that his favourite brother
Solomon, the youngest of the Tugwell race, was sleeping sweetly in
the opposite cot. Then he caught a side view of his own poor back
in the little black-framed looking-glass, and was quite amazed; for
he had not felt much pain, neither flinched, nor winced, nor
spoken. In a moment self-pity did more than pain, indignation,
outrage, or shame could do; it brought large tears into his
softened eyes, and a long sob into his swelling throat.
He had borne himself like a man when flogged; but now he behaved in
the manner of a boy. "He shall never hear the last of this job,"
he muttered, "as long as mother has a tongue in her head." To this
end he filled a wet sponge with the red proofs of his scourging,
laid it where it must be seen, and beside it a leaf torn from his
wage-book, on which he had written with a trembling hand: "He says
that I am no son of his, and this looks like it. Signed, Daniel
Tugwell, or whatever my name ought to be."
Then he washed and dressed with neat's-foot oil all of his wounds
that he could reach, and tied a band of linen over them, and, in
spite of increasing smarts and pangs, dressed himself carefully in
his Sunday clothes. From time to time he listened for his father's
step, inasmuch as there was no bolt to his door, and to burn a
light so late was against all law. But nobody came to disturb him;
his mother at the end of the passage slept heavily, and his two
child-sisters in the room close by, Tabby and Debby, were in the
land of dreams, as far gone as little Solly was. Having turned out
his tools from their flat flag basket, or at least all but three or
four favourites, he filled it with other clothes likely to be
needed, and buckled it over his hatchet-head. Then the beating of
his heart was like a flail inside a barn, as he stole along
silently for one terrible good-bye.
This was to his darling pet of all pets, Debby, who worshipped this
brother a great deal more than she worshipped her heavenly Father;
because, as she said to her mother, when rebuked--"I can see Dan,
mother, but I can't see Him. Can I sit in His lap, mother, and
look into His face, and be told pretty stories, and eat apples all
the time?" Tabby was of different grain, and her deity was Tim;
for she was of the Tomboy kind, and had no imagination. But Debby
was enough to make a sound and seasoned heart to ache, as she lay
in her little bed, with the flush of sleep deepening the delicate
tint of her cheeks, shedding bright innocence fresh from heaven on
the tranquil droop of eyelid and the smiling curve of lip. Her
hair lay fluttered, as if by play with the angels that protected
her; and if she could not see her heavenly Father, it was not
because she was out of His sight.
A better tear than was ever shed by self-pity, or any other
selfishness, ran down the cheek she had kissed so often, and fell
upon her coaxing, nestling neck. Then Dan, with his candle behind
the curtain, set a long light kiss upon the forehead of his
darling, and with a heart so full, and yet so empty, took one more
gaze at her, and then was gone. With the basket in his hand, he
dropped softly from his window upon the pile of seaweed at the back
of the house--collected to make the walls wholesome--and then,
caring little what his course might be, was led perhaps by the
force of habit down the foot-path towards the beach. So late at
night, it was not likely that any one would disturb him there, and
no one in the cottage which he had left would miss him before the
morning. The end of October now was near, the nights were long,
and he need not hurry. He might even lie down in his favourite
boat, the best of her size in Springhaven, the one he had built
among the rabbits. There he could say good-bye to all that he had
known and loved so long, and be off before dawn, to some place
where he might earn his crust and think his thoughts.
CHAPTER XXXI
SORE TEMPTATION
When a man's spirit and heart are low, and the world seems turned
against him, he had better stop both ears than hearken to the sound
of the sad sea waves at night. Even if he can see their movement,
with the moon behind them, drawing paths of rippled light, and
boats (with white sails pluming shadow, or thin oars that dive for
gems), and perhaps a merry crew with music, coming home not all
sea-sick--well, even so, in the summer sparkle, the long low fall
of the waves is sad. But how much more on a winter night, when the
moon is away below the sea, and weary waters roll unseen from a
vast profundity of gloom, fall unreckoned, and are no more than a
wistful moan, as man is!
The tide was at quarter-ebb, and a dismal haze lay thick on shore
and sea. It was not enough to be called a fog, or even a mist, but
quite enough to deaden the gray light, always flowing along the
boundary of sky and sea. But over the wet sand and the white frill
of the gently gurgling waves more of faint light, or rather
perhaps, less of heavy night, prevailed. But Dan had keen eyes,
and was well accustomed to the tricks of darkness; and he came to
take his leave forever of the fishing squadron, with a certainty of
knowing all the five, as if by daylight--for now there were only
five again.
As the tide withdrew, the fishing-smacks (which had scarcely earned
their name of late) were compelled to make the best of the world
until the tide came back again. To judge by creakings, strainings,
groanings, and even grindings of timber millstones [if there yet
lives in Ireland the good-will for a loan to us], all these little
craft were making dreadful hardship of the abandonment which man
and nature inflicted on them every thirteenth hour. But all things
do make more noise at night, when they get the chance (perhaps in
order to assert their own prerogative), and they seem to know that
noise goes further, and assumes a higher character, when men have
left off making it.
The poor young fisherman's back was getting very sore by this time,
and he began to look about for the white side-streak which he had
painted along the water-line of that new boat, to distract the
meddlesome gaze of rivals from the peculiar curve below, which even
Admiral Darling had not noticed, when he passed her on the beach;
but Nelson would have spied it out in half a second, and known all
about it in the other half. Dan knew that he should find a very
fair berth there, with a roll or two of stuff to lay his back on,
and a piece of tarpauling to draw over his legs. In the faint
light that hovered from the breaking of the wavelets he soon found
his boat, and saw a tall man standing by her.
"Daniel," said the tall man, without moving, "my sight is very bad
at night, but unless it is worse than usual, you are my admired
friend Daniel. A young man in a thousand--one who dares to think."
"Yes, Squire Carne," the admired friend replied, with a touch of
hat protesting against any claim to friendship: "Dan Tugwell, at
your service. And I have thought too much, and been paid out for
it."
"You see me in a melancholy attitude, and among melancholy
surroundings." Caryl Carne offered his hand as he spoke, and Dan
took it with great reverence. "The truth is, that anger at a gross
injustice, which has just come to my knowledge, drove me from my
books and sad family papers, in the room beneath the roof of our
good Widow Shanks. And I needs must come down here, to think
beside the sea, which seems to be the only free thing in England.
But I little expected to see you."
"And I little expected to be here, Squire Carne. But if not making
too bold to ask--was it anybody that was beaten?"
"Beaten is not the right word for it, Dan; cruelly flogged and
lashed, a dear young friend of mine has been, as fine a young
fellow as ever lived--and now he has not got a sound place on his
back. And why? Because he was poor, and dared to lift his eyes to
a rich young lady."
"But he was not flogged by his own father?" asked Dan, deeply
interested in this romance, and rubbing his back, as the pain
increased with sympathy.
"Not quite so bad as that," replied the other; "such a thing would
be impossible, even in England. No; his father took his part, as
any father in the world would do; even if the great man, the young
lady's father, should happen to be his own landlord."
A very black suspicion crossed the mind of Dan, for Carne possessed
the art of suggesting vile suspicions: might Admiral Darling have
discovered something, and requested Dan's father to correct him?
It was certain that the Admiral, so kind of heart, would never have
desired such severity; but he might have told Captain Tugwell, with
whom he had a talk almost every time they met, that his eldest son
wanted a little discipline; and the Club might have served as a
pretext for this, when the true crime must not be declared, by
reason of its enormity. Dan closed his teeth, and English air grew
bitter in his mouth, as this belief ran through him.
"Good-night, my young friend; I am beginning to recover," Carne
continued, briskly, for he knew that a nail snaps in good oak, when
the hammer falls too heavily. "What is a little bit of outrage,
after all? When I have been in England a few years more, I shall
laugh at myself for having loved fair play and self-respect, in
this innocent young freshness. We must wag as the world does; and
you know the proverb, What makes the world wag, but the weight of
the bag?"
"But if you were more in earnest, sir--or at least--I mean, if you
were not bound here by property and business, and an ancient
family, and things you could not get away from, and if you wanted
only to be allowed fair play, and treated as a man by other men,
and be able to keep your own money when you earned it, or at least
to buy your own victuals with it--what would you try to do, or what
part of the country would you think best to go to?"
"Dan, you must belong to a very clever family. It is useless to
shake your head--you must; or you never could put such questions,
so impossible to answer. In all this blessed island, there is no
spot yet discovered, where such absurd visions can be realized.
Nay, nay, my romantic friend; be content with more than the average
blessings of this land. You are not starved, you are not
imprisoned, you are not even beaten; and if you are not allowed to
think, what harm of that? If you thought all day, you would never
dare to act upon your thoughts, and so you are better without them.
Tush! an Englishman was never born for freedom. Good-night."
"But, sir, Squire Carne," cried Dan, pursuing him, "there is one
thing which you do not seem to know. I am driven away from this
place to-night; and it would have been so kind of you to advise me
where to go to."
"Driven away!" exclaimed Carne, with amazement. "The pride of the
village driven out of it! You may be driving yourself away,
Tugwell, through some scrape, or love affair; but when that blows
over you will soon come back. What would Springhaven do without
you? And your dear good father would never let you go."
"I am not the pride, but the shame, of the village." Dan forgot
all his home-pride at last. "And my dear good father is the man
who has done it. He has leathered me worse than the gentleman you
spoke of, and without half so much to be said against him. For
nothing but going to the Club to-night, where I am sure we drank
King George's health, my father has lashed me so, that I am ashamed
to tell it. And I am sure that I never meant to tell it, until
your kindness, in a way of speaking, almost drove it out of me."
"Daniel Tugwell," Carne answered, with solemnity, "this is beyond
belief, even in England. You must have fallen asleep, Dan, in the
middle of large thoughts, and dreamed this great impossibility."
"My back knows whether it has been a dream, sir. I never heard of
dreams as left one-and-twenty lines behind them. But whether it be
one, or whether it be twenty, makes no odds of value. The disgrace
it is that drives me out."
"Is there no way of healing this sad breach?" Carne asked, in a
tone of deep compassion; "if your father could be brought to beg
your pardon, or even to say that he was sorry--"
"He, sir! If such a thing was put before him, his answer would be
just to do it again, if I were fool enough to go near him. You are
too mild of nature, sir, to understand what father is."
"It is indeed horrible, too horrible to think of"--the voice of
this kind gentleman betrayed that he was shuddering. "If a
Frenchman did such a thing, he would be torn to pieces. But no
French father would ever dream of such atrocity. He would rather
flog himself within an inch of his own life."
"Are they so much better, then, and kinder, than us Englishmen?"
In spite of all his pain and grief, Dan could not help smiling at
the thought of his father ropesending himself. "So superior to us,
sir, in every way?"
"In almost every way, I am sorry to confess. I fear, indeed, in
every way, except bodily strength, and obstinate, ignorant
endurance, miscalled 'courage,' and those rough qualities--whatever
they may be--which seem needful for the making of a seaman. But in
good manners, justice, the sense of what is due from one man to
another, in dignity, equality, temperance, benevolence, largeness
of feeling, and quickness of mind, and above all in love of
freedom, they are very, very sadly far beyond us. And indeed I
have been led to think from some of your finer perceptions, Dan,
that you must have a share of French blood in your veins."
"Me, sir!" cried Dan, jumping back, in a style which showed the
distance between faith and argument; "no, sir, thank God there was
never none of that; but all English, with some of the Romans, who
was pretty near equal to us, from what I hear. I suppose, Squire
Carne, you thought that low of me because I made a fuss about being
larruped, the same as a Frenchman I pulled out of the water did
about my doing of it, as if I could have helped it. No Englishman
would have said much about that; but they seem to make more fuss
than we do. And I dare say it was French-like of me, to go on
about my hiding."
"Daniel," answered Caryl Carne, in alarm at this British sentiment;
"as a man of self-respect, you have only one course left, if your
father refuses to apologise. You must cast off his tyranny; you
must prove yourself a man; you must begin life upon your own
account. No more of this drudgery, and slavery for others, who
allow you no rights in return. But a nobler employment among free
people, with a chance of asserting your courage and manhood, and a
certainty that no man will think you his bondslave because you were
born upon his land, or in his house. My father behaved to me--
well, it does not matter. He might have repented of it, if he had
lived longer; and I feel ashamed to speak of it, after such a case
as yours. But behold, how greatly it has been for my advantage!
Without that, I might now have been a true and simple Englishman!"
Carne (who had taken most kindly to the fortune which made him an
untrue Englishman) clapped his breast with both hands; not proudly,
as a Frenchman does, nor yet with that abashment and contempt of
demonstration which make a true Briton very clumsy in such
doings; while Daniel Tugwell, being very solid, and by no means
"emotional"--as people call it nowadays--was looking at him, to the
utmost of his power (which would have been greater by daylight),
with gratitude, and wonder, and consideration, and some hesitation
about his foreign sentiments.
"Well, sir," said Dan, with the usual impulse of the British
workman, "is there any sort of work as you could find for me, to
earn my own living, and be able to think afterwards?"
"There is work of a noble kind, such as any man of high nature may
be proud to share in, to which it is possible that I might get an
entrance for you, if there should be a vacancy; work of high
character, such as admits of no higgling and haggling, and
splitting of halfpence, but an independent feeling, and a sense of
advancing the liberty of mankind, without risking a penny, but
putting many guineas into one's own pocket, and so becoming fitted
for a loftier line of life."
"Is it smuggling, sir?" Daniel asked, with sore misgivings, for he
had been brought up to be very shy of that. "Many folk consider
that quite honest; but father calls it roguery--though I never
shall hear any more of his opinions now."
"Sigh not, friend Daniel; sigh not so heavily at your own
emancipation." Carne never could resist the chance of a little bit
of sarcasm, though it often injured his own plots. "Smuggling is a
very fine pursuit, no doubt, but petty in comparison with large
affairs like ours. No, Dan Tugwell, I am not a smuggler, but a
high politician, and a polisher of mankind. How soon do you think
of leaving this outrageous hole?"
Despite the stupid outrage upon himself, Dan was too loyal and
generous of nature to be pleased with this description of his
native place. But Carne, too quick of temper for a really fine
intriguer, cut short his expostulations.
"Call it what you please," he said; "only make your mind up
quickly. If you wish to remain here, do so: a man of no spirit is
useless to me. But if you resolve to push your fortunes among
brave and lofty comrades, stirring scenes, and brisk adventures,
meet me at six to-morrow evening, at the place where you chopped
down my rails. All you want will be provided, and your course of
promotion begins at once. But remember, all must be honour bright.
No shilly-shallying, no lukewarmness, no indifference to a noble
cause. Faint heart never won fair lady."
The waning moon had risen, and now shone upon Carne's face,
lighting up all its gloomy beauty, and strange power of sadness.
Dan seemed to lose his clear keen sight beneath the dark influence
of the other's gaze; and his will, though not a weak one, dropped
before a larger and stronger. "He knows all about me and Miss
Dolly," said the poor young fisherman to himself; "I thought so
before, and I am certain of it now. And, for some reason beyond my
knowledge, he wishes to encourage it. Oh, perhaps because the
Carnes have always been against the Darlings! I never thought of
that before."
This was a bitter reflection to him, and might have inclined him
the right way, if time had allowed him to work it out. But no such
time was afforded; and in the confusion and gratitude of the
moment, he answered, "Sir, I shall be always at your service, and
do my very best in every way to please you." Caryl Carne smiled;
and the church clock of Springhaven solemnly struck midnight.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE TRIALS OF FAITH
He following day, the 27th of October, was a dark one in the
calendar of a fair and good young lady. Two years would then have
passed since Faith Darling, at the age of twenty, had received sad
tidings, which would make the rest of her life flow on in shadow.
So at least she thought, forgetful (or rather perhaps unconscious,
for she had not yet learned the facts of life) that time and the
tide of years submerge the loftiest youthful sorrow. To a warm and
stedfast heart like hers, and a nature strong but self-controlled,
no casual change, or light diversion, or sudden interest in other
matters, could take the place of the motive lost. Therefore, being
of a deep true faith, and staunch in the belief of a great God,
good to all who seek His goodness, she never went away from what
she meant, that faith and hope should feed each other.
This saved her from being a trouble to any one, or damping
anybody's cheerfulness, or diminishing the gaiety around her. She
took a lively interest in the affairs of other people, which a
"blighted being" declines to do; and their pleasures ministered to
her own good cheer without, or at any rate beyond, her knowledge.
Therefore she was liked by everybody, and beloved by all who had
any heart for a brave and pitiful story. Thus a sweet flower, half
closed by the storm, continues to breathe forth its sweetness.
However, there were times when even Faith was lost in sad
remembrance, and her bright young spirit became depressed by the
hope deferred that maketh sick the heart. As time grew longer,
hope grew less; and even the cheerful Admiral, well versed in
perils of the deep, and acquainted with many a wandering story, had
made up his mind that Erle Twemlow was dead, and would never more
be heard of. The rector also, the young man's father, could hold
out no longer against that conclusion; and even the mother,
disdaining the mention, yet understood the meaning, of despair.
And so among those to whom the subject was the most interesting in
the world, it was now the strict rule to avoid it with the lips,
though the eyes were often filled with it.
Faith Darling at first scorned this hard law. "It does seem so
unkind," she used to say, "that even his name should be interdicted,
as if he had disgraced himself. If he is dead, he has died with
honour. None who ever saw him can doubt that. But he is not dead.
He will come back to us, perhaps next week, perhaps to-morrow,
perhaps even while we are afraid to speak of him. If it is for my
sake that you behave thus, I am not quite so weak as to require it."
The peculiar circumstances of the case had not only baffled
enquiry, but from the very beginning precluded it. The man with
the keenest eyes, sharpest nose, biggest ears, and longest head, of
all the many sneaks who now conduct what they call "special
enquiries," could have done nothing with a case like this, because
there was no beginning it. Even now, in fair peace, and with large
knowledge added, the matter would not have been easy; but in war
universal, and blank ignorance, there was nothing to be done but to
sit down and think. And the story invited a good deal of thinking,
because of its disappointing turn.
During the negotiations for peace in 1801, and before any articles
were signed, orders were sent to the Cape of Good Hope for the
return of a regiment of the line, which had not been more than
three months there. But the Cape was likely to be restored to
Holland, and two empty transports returning from India were to call
under convoy, and bring home these troops. One of the officers was
Captain Erle Twemlow, then about twenty-five years of age, and
under probation, by the Admiral's decree, for the hand of the
maiden whose heart had been his from a time to itself immemorial.
After tiresome days of impatience, the transports arrived under
conduct of a frigate; and after another week, the soldiers embarked
with fine readiness for their native land.
But before they had cleared the Bay, they met a brig-of-war direct
from Portsmouth, carrying despatches for the officer in command of
the troops, as well as for the captain of the frigate. Some
barbarous tribes on the coast of Guinea, the part that is called
the Ivory Coast, had plundered and burnt a British trading station
within a few miles of Cape Palmas, and had killed and devoured the
traders. These natives must be punished, and a stern example made,
and a negro monarch of the name of Hunko Jum must have his palace
burned, if he possessed one; while his rival, the king of the
Crumbo tribe, whose name was Bandeliah, who had striven to protect
the traders, must be rewarded, and have a treaty made with him, if
he could be brought to understand it. Both sailors and soldiers
were ready enough to undertake this little spree, as they called
it, expecting to have a pleasant run ashore, a fine bit of sport
with the negroes, and perhaps a few noserings of gold to take home
to their wives and sweethearts.
But, alas! the reality was not so fine. The negroes who had done
all the mischief made off, carrying most of their houses with them;
and the palace of Hunko Jum, if he possessed one, was always a
little way further on. The Colonel was a stubborn man, and so was
the sea-captain--good Tories both, and not desirous to skulk out of
scrapes, and leave better men to pick up their clumsy breakages.
Blue and red vied with one another to scour the country, and punish
the natives--if only they could catch them--and to vindicate, with
much strong language, the dignity of Great Britain, and to make an
eternal example.
But white bones are what the white man makes, under that slimy
sunshine and putrefying moon. Weary, slack-jointed, low-hearted as
they were, the deadly coast-fever fell upon them, and they
shivered, and burned, and groaned, and raved, and leaped into
holes, or rolled into camp fires. The Colonel died early, and the
Naval Captain followed him; none stood upon the order of their
going; but man followed man, as in a funeral, to the grave, until
there was no grave to go to. The hand of the Lord was stretched
out against them; and never would one have come back to England,
out of more than five hundred who landed, except for the manhood
and vigour of a seaman, Captain Southcombe, of the transport
Gwalior.
This brave and sensible man had been left with his ship lying off
to be signalled for, in case of mishap, while his consort and the
frigate were despatched in advance to a creek, about twenty leagues
westward, where the land-force triumphant was to join them.
Captain Southcombe, with every hand he could muster, traced the
unfortunate party inland, and found them led many leagues in the
wrong direction, lost among quagmires breathing death, worn out
with vermin, venom, and despair, and hemmed in by savages lurking
for the night, to rush in upon and make an end of them. What need
of many words? This man, and his comrades, did more than any other
men on the face of this earth could have done without British blood
in them. They buried the many who had died without hope of the
decent concealment which our life has had, and therefore our death
longs for; they took on their shoulders, or on cane wattles, the
many who had made up their minds to die, and were in much doubt
about having done it, and they roused up and worked up by the
scruff of their loose places the few who could get along on their
own legs. And so, with great spirit, and still greater patience,
they managed to save quite as many as deserved it.
Because, when they came within signal of the Gwalior, Captain
Southcombe, marching slowly with his long limp burdens, found ready
on the sand the little barrel, about as big as a kilderkin, of true
and unsullied Stockholm pitch, which he had taken, as his brother
took Madeira, for ripeness and for betterance, by right of change
of climate. With a little of this given choicely and carefully at
the back of every sick man's tongue, and a little more spread
across the hollow of his stomach, he found them so enabled in the
afternoon that they were glad to sit up in the bottom of a boat,
and resign themselves to an All-wise Providence.
Many survived, and blessed Captain Southcombe, not at first
cordially--for the man yet remains to be discovered who is grateful
to his doctor--but gradually more and more, and with that healthy
action of the human bosom which is called expectoration, whenever
grateful memories were rekindled by the smell of tar. But this is
a trifle; many useful lives were saved, and the Nation should have
thanked Captain Southcombe, but did not.
After these sad incidents, when sorrow for old friends was tempered
by the friendly warmth afforded by their shoes, a muster was held
by the Major in command, and there was only one officer who could
neither assert himself alive, nor be certified as dead. That one
was Erle Twemlow, and the regiment would rather have lost any other
two officers. Urgent as it was, for the safety of the rest, to fly
with every feather from this pestilential coast, sails were handed,
boats despatched, and dealings tried with Hunko Jum, who had
reappeared with promptitude, the moment he was not wanted. From
this noble monarch, and his chiefs, and all his nation, it was hard
to get any clear intelligence, because their own was absorbed in
absorbing. They had found upon the sands a cask of Admiralty rum,
as well as a stout residue of unadulterated pitch. Noses, and
tongues, and historical romance--for a cask had been washed ashore
five generations since, and set up for a god, when the last drop
was licked--induced this brave nation to begin upon the rum; and
fashion (as powerful with them as with us) compelled them to drink
the tar likewise, because they had seen the white men doing it.
This would have made it hard to understand them, even if they had
been English scholars, which their ignorance of rum proved them not
to be; and our sailors very nearly went their way, after sadly
ascertaining nothing, except that the cask was empty.
But luckily, just as they were pushing off, a very large, black
head appeared from behind a vegetable-ivory tree, less than a
quarter of a mile away, and they knew that this belonged to
Bandeliah, the revered king of the Crumbos, who had evidently
smelled rum far inland. With him they were enabled to hold
discourse, partly by signs, and partly by means of an old and
highly polished negro, who had been the rat-catcher at the factory
now consumed; and the conclusion, or perhaps the confusion, arrived
at from signs, grunts, grins, nods, waggings of fingers and
twistings of toes, translated grandiloquently into broken English,
was not far from being to the following effect:
To wit, that two great kings reigned inland, either of them able to
eat up Hunko Jum and Bandeliah at a mouthful, but both of them too
proud to set foot upon land that was flat, or in water that was
salt. They ruled over two great nations called the Houlas, and the
Quackwas, going out of sight among great rivers and lands with
clear water standing over them. And if the white men could not
understand this, it was because they drank salt-water.
Moreover, they said that of these two kings, the king of the Houlas
was a woman, the most beautiful ever seen in all the world, and
able to jump over any man's head. But the king of the Quackwas was
a man, and although he had more than two thousand wives, and was
taller by a joint of a bamboo than Bandeliah--whose stature was at
least six feet four--yet nothing would be of any use to him, unless
he could come to an agreement with Mabonga, the queen of the
Houlas, to split a durra straw with him. But Mabonga was coy, and
understanding men, as well as jumping over them, would grant them
no other favour than the acceptance of their presents. However,
the other great king was determined to have her for his wife, if he
abolished all the rest, and for this reason he had caught and kept
the lost Englishman as a medicine-man; and it was not likely that
he would kill him, until he failed or succeeded.
To further enquiries Bandeliah answered that to rescue the prisoner
was impossible. If it had been his own newest wife, he would not
push out a toe for her. The great king Golo lived up in high
places that overlooked the ground, as he would these white men, and
his armies went like wind and spread like fire. None of his
warriors ate white man's flesh; they were afraid it would make them
cowardly.
A brave heart is generally tender in the middle, to make up for
being so firm outside, even as the Durian fruit is. Captain
Southcombe had walked the poop-deck of the Gwalior many a time, in
the cool of the night, with Erle Twemlow for his companion, and had
taken a very warm liking to him. So that when the survivors of the
regiment were landed at Portsmouth, this brave sailor travelled at
his own cost to Springhaven, and told the Rector the whole sad
story, making it clear to him beyond all doubt, that nothing
whatever could be done to rescue the poor young man from those
savages, or even to ascertain his fate. For the Quackwas were an
inland tribe, inhabiting vast regions wholly unknown to any
European, and believed to extend to some mighty rivers, and lakes
resembling inland seas.
Therefore Mr. Twemlow, in a deep quiet voice, asked Captain
Southcombe one question only--whether he might keep any hope of
ever having, by the mercy of the Lord, his only son restored to
him. And the sailor said--yes; the mistake would be ever to
abandon such a hope, for at the moment he least expected it, his
son might stand before him. He pretended to no experience of the
western coast of Africa, and niggers he knew were a very queer lot,
acting according to their own lights, which differed according to
their natures. But he was free to say, that in such a condition he
never would think of despairing, though it might become very hard
not to do so, as time went on without bringing any news. He
himself had been in sad peril more than once, and once it appeared
quite hopeless; but he thought of his wife and his children at
home, and the Lord had been pleased to deliver him.
The parson was rebuked by this brave man's faith, who made no
pretence whatever to piety; and when they said Goodbye, their eyes
were bright with the goodwill and pity of the human race, who know
trouble not inflicted as yet upon monkeys. Mr. Twemlow's heart
fell when the sailor was gone, quite as if he had lost his own
mainstay; but he braced himself up to the heavy duty of imparting
sad news to his wife and daughter, and worst of all to Faith
Darling. But the latter surprised him by the way in which she bore
it; for while she made no pretence to hide her tears, she was
speaking as if they were needless. And the strangest thing of all,
in Mr. Twemlow's opinion, was her curious persistence about Queen
Mabonga. Could any black woman--and she supposed she must be that--
be considered by white people to be beautiful? Had Captain
Southcombe ever even seen her; and if not, how could he be in such
raptures about her attractions? She did not like to say a word,
because he had been so kind and so faithful to those poor soldiers,
whom it was his duty to bring home safe; but if it had not been for
that, she might have thought that with so many children and a wife
at Limehouse, he should not have allowed his mind to dwell so
fondly on the personal appearance of a negress!
The Rector was astonished at this injustice, and began to revise
his opinion about Faith as the fairest and sweetest girl in all the
world; but Mrs. Twemlow smiled, when she had left off crying, and
said that she liked the dear child all the better for concluding
that Ponga--or whatever her name was--must of necessity and at the
first glance fall desperately in love with her own Erle. Then the
Rector cried, "Oh, to be sure, that explained it! But he never
could have thought of that, without his wife's assistance."
Two years now, two years of quiet patience, of busy cheerfulness
now and then, and of kindness to others always, had made of Faith
Darling a lady to be loved for a hundred years, and for ever. The
sense of her sorrow was never far from her, yet never brought near
to any other by herself; and her smile was as warm, and her eyes as
bright, as if there had never been a shadow on her youth. To be
greeted by her, and to receive her hand, and one sweet glance of
her large goodwill, was enough to make an old man feel that he must
have been good at some time, and a young man hope that he should be
so by-and-by; though the tendency was generally contented with the
hope.
CHAPTER XXXIII
FAREWELL, DANIEL
Thoughtful for others as she always was, this lovely and loveable
young woman went alone, on the morning of the day that was so
sorrowful for her, to bear a little share of an elder lady's
sorrow, and comfort her with hopes, or at any rate with kindness.
They had shed tears together when the bad news arrived, and again
when a twelvemonth had weakened feeble hope; and now that another
year had well-nigh killed it in old hearts too conversant with the
cruelties of the world, a little talk, a tender look, a gentle
repetition of things that had been said at least a hundred times
before, might enter by some subtle passage to the cells of comfort.
Who knows how the welted vine leaf, when we give it shade and
moisture, crisps its curves again, and breathes new bloom upon its
veinage? And who can tell how the flagging heart, beneath the cool< |
