When Jack o' the Smithies met his old commander, as related by himself, at the house of Mr. Mordacks, everything seemed to be going on well for Sir Duncan, and badly for his sisters. The general factor, as he hinted long ago, possessed certain knowledge which the Middleton lawyer fondly supposed to be confined to himself and his fair clients. Sir Duncan refused to believe that the ladies could ever have heard of such a document as that which, if valid, would simply expel them; for, said he, “If they know of it, they are nothing less than thieves to conceal it and continue in possession. Of a lawyer I could fancy it, but never of a lady.”
“My good sir,” answered the sarcastic Mordacks, “a lady's conscience is not the same as a gentleman's, but bears more resemblance to a lawyer's. A lady's honor is of the very highest standard; but the standard depends upon her state of mind; and that, again, depends upon the condition of her feelings. You must not suppose me to admit the faintest shadow of disrespect toward your good sisters; but ladies are ladies, and facts are facts; and the former can always surmount the latter; while a man is comparatively helpless. I know that Mr. Jellicorse, their man of law, is thoroughly acquainted with this interesting deed; his first duty was to apprise them of it; and that, you may be quite sure, he has done.”
“I hope not. I am sure not. A lawyer does not always employ hot haste in an unwelcome duty.”
“True enough, Sir Duncan. But the duty here was welcome. Their knowledge of that deed, and of his possession of it, would make him their master, if he chose to be so. Not that old Jellicorse would think of such a thing. He is a man of high principle like myself, of a lofty conscience, and even sentimental. But lawyers are just like the rest of mankind. Their first consideration is their bread and cheese; though some of them certainly seem ready to accept it even in the toasted form.”
“You may say what you like, Mordacks, my sister Philippa is far too upright, and Eliza too good, for any such thing to be possible. However, that question may abide. I shall not move until I have some one to do it for. I have no great affection for a home which cast me forth, whether it had a right to do so or not. But if we succeed in the more important matter, it will be my duty to recover the estates, for the benefit of another. You are sure of your proofs that it is the boy?”
“As certain as need be. And we will make it surer when you meet me there the week after next. For the reasons I have mentioned, we must wait till then. Your yacht is at Yarmouth. You have followed my advice in approaching by sea, and not by land, and in hiring at Yarmouth for the purpose. But you never should have come to York, Sir Duncan; this is a very great mistake of yours. They are almost sure to hear of it. And even your name given in our best inn! But luckily they never see a newspaper at Scargate.”
“I follow the tactics with which you succeed—all above-board, and no stratagems. Your own letter brought me; but perhaps I am too old to be so impatient. Where shall I meet you, and on what day?”
“This day fortnight, at the Thornwick Inn, I shall hope to be with you at three o'clock, and perhaps bring somebody with me. If I fixed an earlier day, I should only disappoint you. For many things have to be delicately managed; and among them, the running of a certain cargo, without serious consequence. For that we may trust a certain very skillful youth. For the rest you must trust to a clumsier person, your humble land-agent and surveyor—titles inquired into and verified, at a tenth of solicitors' charges.”
“Well,” said Sir Duncan, “you shall verify mine, as soon as you have verified my son, and my title to him. Good-by, Mordacks. I am sure you mean me well, but you seem to be very long about it.”
“Hot climates breed impatience, sir. A true son of Yorkshire is never in a hurry. The general complaint of me is concerning my wild rapidity.”
“You are like the grocer, whose goods, if they have any fault at all, have the opposite one to what the customer finds in them. Well, good-by, Mordacks. You are a trusty friend, and I thank you.”
These words from Sir Duncan Yordas were not merely of commonplace. For he was a man of great self-reliance, quick conclusion, and strong resolve. These had served him well in India, and insured his fortune; while early adversity and bitter losses had tempered the arrogance of his race. After the loss of his wife and child, and the breach with all his relatives, he had led a life of peril and hard labor, varied with few pleasures. When first he learned from Edinburgh that the ship conveying his only child to the care of the mother's relatives was lost, with all on board, he did all in his power to make inquiries. But the illness and death of his wife, to whom he was deeply attached, overwhelmed him. For while with some people “one blow drives out another,” with some the second serves only to drive home, deepen, and aggravate the first. For years he was satisfied to believe both losses irretrievable. And so he might still have gone on believing, except for a queer little accident.
Being called to Calcutta upon government business, he happened to see a pair of English sailors, lazily playing, in a shady place by the side of the road, at hole-penny. One of them seemed to have his pocket cleared out, for just as Sir Duncan was passing, he cried, “Here, Jack, you give me change of one of them, and I'll have at you again, my boy. As good as a guinea with these blessed niggers. Come back to their home, I b'lieve they are, same as I wish I was; rale gold—ask this gen'leman.”
The other swore that they were “naught but brass, and not worth a copper farden”; until the tars, being too tipsy for much fighting, referred the question to Sir Duncan.
Three hollow beads of gold were what they showed him, and he knew them at once for his little boy's buttons, the workmanship being peculiar to one village of his district, and one family thereof. The sailor would thankfully have taken one rupee apiece for them; but Sir Duncan gave him thirty for the three—their full metallic value—upon his pledging honor to tell all he knew about them, and make affidavit, if required. Then he told all he knew, to the best of his knowledge, and swore to it when sober, accepted a refresher, and made oath to it again, with some lively particulars added. And the facts that he deposed to, and deposited, were these:
Being down upon his luck, about a twelvemonth back, he thought of keeping company with a nice young woman, and settling down until a better time turned up; and happening to get a month's wages from a schooner of ninety-five tons at Scarborough, he strolled about the street a bit, and kept looking down the railings for a servant-girl who might have got her wages in her work-box. Clean he was, and taut, and clever, beating up street in Sunday rig, keeping sharp look-out for a consort, and in three or four tacks he hailed one. As nice a young partner as a lad could want, and his meaning was to buckle to for the winter. But the night before the splicing-day, what happened to him he never could tell after. He was bousing up his jib, as a lad is bound to do, before he takes the breakers. And when he came to, he was twenty leagues from Scarborough, on board of his Majesty's recruiting brig the Harpy. He felt in his pocket for the wedding-ring, and instead of that, there were these three beads.
Sir Duncan was sorry for his sad disaster, and gave him ten more rupees to get over it. And then he discovered that the poor forsaken maiden's name was Sally Watkins. Sally was the daughter of a rich pawnbroker, whose frame of mind was sometimes out of keeping with its true contents. He had very fine feelings, and real warmth of sympathy; but circumstances seemed sometimes to lead them into the wrong channel, and induced him to kick his children out of doors. In the middle of the family he kicked out Sally, almost before her turn was come; and she took a place at 4 pounds a year, to disgrace his memory—as she said—carrying off these buttons, and the jacket, which he had bestowed upon her, in a larger interval.
There was no more to be learned than this from the intercepted bridegroom. He said that he might have no objection to go on with his love again, as soon as the war was over, leastways, if it was made worth his while; but he had come across another girl, at the Cape of Good Hope, and he believed that this time the Lord was in it, for she had been born in a caul, and he had got it. With such a dispensation Sir Duncan Yordas saw no right to interfere, but left the course of true love to itself, after taking down the sailor's name—“Ned Faithful.”
However, he resolved to follow out the clew of beads, though without much hope of any good result. Of the three in his possession he kept one, and one he sent to Edinburgh, and the third to York, having heard of the great sagacity, vigor, and strict integrity of Mr. Mordacks, all of which he sharpened by the promise of a large reward upon discovery. Then he went back to his work, until his time of leave was due, after twenty years of arduous and distinguished service. In troublous times, no private affairs, however urgent, should drive him from his post.
Now, eager as he was when in England once again, he was true to his character and the discipline of life. He had proof that the matter was in very good hands, and long command had taught him the necessity of obedience. Any previous Yordas would have kicked against the pricks, rushed forward, and scattered everything. But Sir Duncan was now of a different fibre. He left York at once, as Mordacks advised, and posted to Yarmouth, before the roads were blocked with snow, and while Jack o' the Smithies was returning to his farm. And from Yarmouth he set sail for Scarborough, in a sturdy little coaster, which he hired by the week. From Scarborough he would run down to Bridlington—not too soon, for fear of setting gossip going, but in time to meet Mordacks at Flamborough, as agreed upon.
That gentleman had other business in hand, which must not be neglected; but he gave to this matter a very large share of his time, and paid five-and-twenty pounds for the trusty roadster, who liked the taste of Flamborough pond, and the salt air on the oats of Widow Tapsy's stable, and now regularly neighed and whisked his tail as soon as he found himself outside Monk Bar. By favor of this horse and of his own sword and pistols, Mordacks spent nearly as much time now at Flamborough as he did in York; but unluckily he had been obliged to leave on the very afternoon before the run was accomplished, and Carroway slain so wickedly; for he hurried home to meet Sir Duncan, and had not heard the bad news when he met him.
That horrible murder was a sad blow to him, not only as a man of considerable kindness and desire to think well of every one—so far as experience allows it—but also because of the sudden apparition of the law rising sternly in front of him. Justice in those days was not as now: her truer name was Nemesis. After such an outrage to the dignity of the realm, an example must be made, without much consideration whether it were the right one. If Robin Lyth were caught, there would be the form of trial, but the principal point would be to hang him. Like the rest of the world, Mr. Mordacks at first believed entirely in his guilt; but unlike the world, he did not desire to have him caught, and brought straightway to the gallows. Instead of seeking him, therefore, he was now compelled to avoid him, when he wanted him most; for it never must be said that a citizen of note had discoursed with such a criminal, and allowed him to escape. On the other hand, here he had to meet Sir Duncan, and tell him that all those grand promises were shattered, that in finding his only son all he had found was a cowardly murderer flying for his life, and far better left at the bottom of the sea. For once in a way, as he dwelt upon all this, the general factor became down-hearted, his vigorous face lost the strong lines of decision, and he even allowed his mouth to open without anything to put into it.
But it was impossible for this to last. Nature had provided Mordacks with an admirably high opinion of himself, enlivened by a sprightly good-will toward the world, whenever it wagged well with him. He had plenty of business of his own, and yet could take an amateur delight in the concerns of everybody; he was always at liberty to give good advice, and never under duty to take it; he had vigor of mind, of memory, of character, and of digestion; and whenever he stole a holiday from self-denial, and launched out after some favorite thing, there was the cash to do it with, and the health to do it pleasantly.
Such a man is not long depressed by a sudden misadventure. Dr. Upround's opinion in favor of Robin did not go very far with him; for he looked upon the rector as a man who knew more of divine than of human nature. But that fault could scarcely be found with a woman; or at any rate with a widow encumbered with a large family hanging upon the dry breast of the government. And though Mr. Mordacks did not invade the cottage quite so soon as he should have done, if guided by strict business, he thought himself bound to get over that reluctance, and press her upon a most distressing subject, before he kept appointment with his principal.
The snow, which by this time had blockaded Scargate, impounded Jordas, and compelled Mr. Jellicorse to rest and be thankful for a hot mince-pie, although it had visited this eastern coast as well, was not deep enough there to stop the roads. Keeping head-quarters at the “Hooked Cod” now, and encouraging a butcher to set up again (who had dropped all his money, in his hurry to get on), Geoffrey Mordacks began to make way into the outer crust of Flamborough society. In a council of the boats, upon a Sunday afternoon, every boat being garnished for its rest upon the flat, and every master fisherman buttoned with a flower—the last flowers of the year, and bearing ice-marks in their eyes—a resolution had been passed that the inland man meant well, had naught to do with Revenue, or Frenchmen either, or what was even worse, any outside fishers, such as often-time came sneaking after fishing grounds of Flamborough. Mother Tapsy stood credit for this strange man, and he might be allowed to go where he was minded, and to take all the help he liked to pay for.
Few men could have achieved such a triumph, without having married a Flamborough lass, which must have been the crown of all human ambition, if difficulty crowns it. Even to so great a man it was an added laurel, and strengthened him much in his opinion of himself. In spite of all disasters, he recovered faith in fortune, so many leading Flamborough men began to touch their hats to him! And thus he set forth before a bitter eastern gale, with the head of his seasoned charger bent toward the melancholy cot at Bridlington.
Having granted a new life of slaughter to that continually insolvent butcher, who exhibited the body of a sheep once more, with an eye to the approach of Christmas, this universal factor made it a point of duty to encourage him. In either saddle-bag he bore a seven-pound leg of mutton—a credit to a sheep of that district then—and to show himself no traitor to the staple of the place, he strapped upon his crupper, in some oar-weed and old netting, a twenty-pound cod, who found it hard to breathe his last when beginning to enjoy horse-exercise.
“There is a lot of mouths to fill,” said Mr. Mordacks, with a sigh, while his landlady squeezed a brown loaf of her baking into the nick of his big sword-strap; “and you and I are capable of entering into the condition of the widow and the fatherless.”
“Hoonger is the waa of them, and victuals is the cure for it. Now mind you coom home afore dark,” cried the widow, to whom he had happened to say, very sadly, that he was now a widower. “To my moind, a sight o' more snaw is a-coomin'; and what mah sard or goon foight again it? Captain Moordocks, coom ye home arly. T' hare sha' be doon to a toorn be fi' o'clock. Coom ye home be that o'clock, if ye care for deener.”
“I must have made a tender impression on her heart,” Mr. Mordacks said to himself, as he kissed his hand to the capacious hostess. “Such is my fortune, to be loved by everybody, while aiming at the sternest rectitude. It is sweet, it is dangerously sweet; but what a comfort! How that large-hearted female will baste my hare!”
Cumbered as he was of body, and burdened with some cares of mind, the general factor ploughed his way with his usual resolution. A scowl of dark vapor came over the headlands, and under-ran the solid snow-clouds with a scud, like bonfire smoke. The keen wind following the curves of land, and shaking the fringe of every white-clad bush, piped (like a boy through a comb) wherever stock or stub divided it. It turned all the coat of the horse the wrong way, and frizzed up the hair of Mr. Mordacks, which was as short as a soldier's, and tossed up his heavy riding cape, and got into him all up the small of his back. Being fond of strong language, he indulged in much; but none of it warmed him, and the wind whistled over his shoulders, and whirled the words out of his mouth.
When he came to the dip of the road, where it crosses the Dane's Dike, he pulled up his horse for a minute, in the shelter of shivering fir-trees. “What a cursed bleak country! My fish is frozen stiff, and my legs are as dead as the mutton in the saddle-bags. Geoffrey, you are a fool,” he said. “Charity is very fine, and business even better; but a good coal fire is the best of all. But in for a penny of it, in for a pound. Hark! I hear some fellow-fool equally determined to be frozen. I'll go at once and hail him; perhaps the sight of him will warm me.”
He turned his horse down a little lane upon the left, where snow lay deep, with laden bushes overhanging it, and a rill of water bridged with bearded ice ran dark in the hedge-trough. And here he found a stout lusty man, with shining red cheeks and keen blue eyes, hacking and hewing in a mighty maze of brambles.
“My friend, you seem busy. I admire your vast industry,” Mr. Mordacks exclaimed, as the man looked at him, but ceased not from swinging his long hedge-hook. “Happy is the land that owns such men.”
“The land dothn't own me; I own the land. I shall be pleased to learn what your business is upon it.”
Farmer Anerley hated chaff, as a good agriculturist should do. Moreover, he was vexed by many little griefs to-day, and had not been out long enough to work them off. He guessed pretty shrewdly that this sworded man was “Moreducks”—as the leading wags of Flamborough were gradually calling him—and the sight of a sword upon his farm (unless of an officer bound to it) was already some disquietude to an English farmer's heart. That was a trifle; for fools would be fools, and might think it a grand thing to go about with tools they were never born to the handling of; but a fellow who was come to take up Robin Lyth's case, and strive to get him out of his abominable crime, had better go back to the rogue's highway, instead of coming down the private road to Anerley.
“Upon my word I do believe,” cried Mordacks, with a sprightly joy, “that I have the pleasure of meeting at last the well-known Captain Anerley! My dear sir, I can not help commending your prudence in guarding the entrance to your manor; but not in this employment of a bill-hook. From all that I hear, it is a Paradise indeed. What a haven in such weather as the present! Now, Captain Anerley, I entreat you to consider whether it is wise to take the thorn so from the rose. If I had so sweet a place, I would plant brambles, briers, blackthorn, furze, crataegus, every kind of spinous growth, inside my gates, and never let anybody lop them. Captain, you are too hospitable.”
Farmer Anerley gazed with wonder at this man, who could talk so fast for the first time of seeing a body. Then feeling as if his hospitality were challenged, and desiring more leisure for reflection, “You better come down the lane, sir,” he said.
“Am I to understand that you invite me to your house, or only to the gate where the dogs come out? Excuse me: I always am a most plain-spoken man.”
“Our dogs never bite nobody but rogues.”
“In that case, Captain Anerley, I may trust their moral estimate. I knew a farmer once who was a thorough thief in hay; a man who farmed his own land, and trimmed his own hedges; a thoroughly respectable and solid agriculturist. But his trusses of hay were always six pounds short, and if ever anybody brought a sample truss to steelyard, he had got a little dog, just seven pounds weight, who slipped into the core of it, being just a good hay-color. He always delivered his hay in the twilight, and when it swung the beam, he used to say, 'Come, now, I must charge you for overweight.' Now, captain, have you got such an honest dog as that?”
“I would have claimed him, that I would, if such a clever dog were weighed to me. But, sir, you have got the better of me. What a man for stories you be, for sure! Come in to our fire-place.” Farmer Anerley was conquered by this tale, which he told fifty times every year he lived thereafter, never failing to finish with, “What rogues they be, up York way!”
Master Mordacks was delighted with this piece of luck on his side. Many times he had been longing to get in at Anerley, not only from the reputation of good cheer there, but also from kind curiosity to see the charming Mary, who was now becoming an important element of business. Since Robin had given him the slip so sadly—a thing it was impossible to guard against—the best chance of hearing what became of him would be to get into the good graces of his sweetheart.
“We have been very sadly for a long time now,” said the farmer, as he knocked at his own porch door with the handle of his bill-hook. “There used to be one as was always welcome here; and a pleasure it was to see him make himself so pleasant, sir. But ever since the Lord took him home from his family, without a good-by, as a man might say, my wife hath taken to bar the doors whiles I am away and out of sight.” Stephen Anerley knocked harder, as he thus explained the need of it; for it grieved him to have his house shut up.
“Very wise of them all to bar out such weather,” said Mordacks, who read the farmer's thoughts like print, “Don't relax your rules, sir, until the weather changes. Ah, that was a very sad thing about the captain. As gallant an officer, and as single-minded, as ever killed a Frenchman in the best days of our navy.”
“Single-minded is the very word to give him, sir. I sought about for it ever since I heard of him coming to an end like that, and doing of his duty in the thick of it. If I could only get a gentleman to tell me, or an officer's wife would be better still, what the manners is when a poor lady gets her husband shot, I'll be blest if I wouldn't go straight and see her, though they make such a distance betwixt us and the regulars.—Oh, then, ye've come at last! No thief, no thief.”
“Father,” cried Mary, bravely opening all the door, of which the ruffian wind made wrong by casting her figure in high relief—and yet a pardonable wrong—“father, you are quite wise to come home, before your dear nose is quite cut off.—Oh, I beg your pardon, sir; I never saw you.”
“My fate in life is to be overlooked,” Mr. Mordacks answered, with a martial stride; “but not always, young lady, with such exquisite revenge. What I look at pays fiftyfold for being overlooked.”
“You are an impudent, conceited man,” thought Mary to herself, with gross injustice; but she only blushed and said, “I beg your pardon, sir.”
“You see, sir,” quoth the farmer, with some severity, tempered, however, with a smile of pride, “my daughter, Mary Anerley.”
“And I take off my hat,” replied audacious Mordacks, among whose faults was no false shame, “not only to salute a lady, sir, but also to have a better look.”
“Well, well,” said the farmer, as Mary ran away; “your city ways are high polite, no doubt, but my little lass is strange to them. And I like her better so, than to answer pert with pertness. Now come you in, and warm your feet a bit. None of us are younger than we used to be.”
This was not Master Anerley's general style of welcoming a guest, but he hated new-fangled Frenchified manners, as he told his good wife, when he boasted by-and-by how finely he had put that old coxcomb down. “You never should have done it,” was all the praise he got. “Mr. Mordacks is a business man, and business men always must relieve their minds.” For no sooner now was the general factor introduced to Mistress Anerley than she perceived clearly that the object of his visit was not to make speeches to young chits of girls, but to seek the advice of a sensible person, who ought to have been consulted a hundred times for once that she even had been allowed to open her mouth fairly. Sitting by the fire, he convinced her that the whole of the mischief had been caused by sheer neglect of her opinion. Everything she said was so exactly to the point that he could not conceive how it should have been so slighted, and she for her part begged him to stay and partake of their simple dinner.
“Dear madam, it can not be,” he replied; “alas! I must not think of it. My conscience reproaches me for indulging, as I have done, in what is far sweeter than even one of your dinners—a most sensible lady's society. I have a long bitter ride before me, to comfort the fatherless and the widow. My two legs of mutton will be thawed by this time in the genial warmth of your stable. I also am thawed, warmed, feasted I may say, by happy approximation to a mind so bright and congenial. Captain Anerley, madam, has shown true kindness in allowing me the privilege of exclusive speech with you. Little did I hope for such a piece of luck this morning. You have put so many things in a new and brilliant light, that my road becomes clear before me. Justice must be done; and you feel quite sure that Robin Lyth committed this atrocious murder because poor Carroway surprised him so when making clandestine love, at your brother Squire Popplewell's, to a beautiful young lady who shall be nameless. And deeply as you grieve for the loss of such a neighbor, the bravest officer of the British navy, who leaped from a strictly immeasurable height into a French ship, and scattered all her crew, and has since had a baby about three months old, as well as innumerable children, you feel that you have reason to be thankful sometimes that the young man's character has been so clearly shown, before he contrived to make his way into the bosom of respectable families in the neighborhood.”
“I never thought it out quite so clear as that, sir; for I feel so sorry for everybody, and especially those who have brought him up, and those he has made away with.”
“Quite so, my dear madam; such are your fine feelings, springing from the goodness of your nature. Pardon my saying that you could have no other, according to my experience of a most benevolent countenance. Part of my duty, and in such a case as yours, one of the pleasantest parts of it, is to study the expression of a truly benevolent—”
“I am not that old, sir, asking of your pardon, to pretend to be benevolent. All that I lay claim to is to look at things sensible.”
“Certainly, yet with a tincture of high feeling. Now if it should happen that this poor young man were of very high birth, perhaps the highest in the county, and the heir to very large landed property, and a title, and all that sort of nonsense, you would look at him from the very same point of view?”
“That I would, sir, that I would. So long as he was proclaimed for hanging. But naturally bound, of course, to be more sorry for him.”
“Yes, from sense of all the good things he must lose. There seems, however, to be strong ground for believing—as I may tell you, in confidence, Dr. Upround does—that he had no more to do with it than you or I, ma'am. At first I concluded as you have done. I am going to see Mrs. Carroway now. Till then I suspend my judgment.”
“Now that is what nobody should do, Mr. Mordacks. I have tried, but never found good come of it. To change your mind is two words against yourself; and you go wrong both ways, before and after.”
“Undoubtedly you do, ma'am. I never thought of that before. But you must remember that we have not the gift of hitting—I might say of making—the truth with a flash or a dash, as you ladies have. May I be allowed to come again?”
“To tell you the truth, sir, I am heartily sorry that you are going away at all. I could have talked to you all the afternoon; and how seldom I get the chance now, Lord knows. There is that in your conversation which makes one feel quite sure of being understood; not so much in what you say, sir—if you understand my meaning—as in the way you look, quite as if my meaning was not at all too quick for you. My good husband is of a greater mind than I am, being nine-and-forty inches round the chest; but his mind seems somehow to come after mine, the same as the ducks do, going down to our pond.”
“Mistress Anerley, how thankful you should be! What a picture of conjugal felicity! But I thought that the drake always led the way?”
“Never upon our farm, sir. When he doth, it is a proof of his being crossed with wild-ducks. The same as they be round Flamborough.”
“Oh, now I see the truth. How slow I am! It improves their flavor, at the expense of their behavior. But seriously, madam, you are fit to take the lead. What a pleasant visit I have had! I must brace myself up for a very sad one now—a poor lady, with none to walk behind her.”
“Yes, to be sure! It is very fine of me to talk. But if I was left without my husband, I should only care to walk after him. Please to give her my kind love, sir; though I have only seen her once. And if there is anything that we can do—”
“If there is anything that we can do,” said the farmer, coming out of his corn-chamber, “we won't talk about it, but we'll do it, Mr. Moreducks.”
The factor quietly dispersed this rebuke, by waving his hand at his two legs of mutton and the cod, which had thawed in the stable. “I knew that I should be too late,” he said; “her house will be full of such little things as these, so warm is the feeling of the neighborhood. I guessed as much, and arranged with my butcher to take them back in that case; and he said they would eat all the better for the ride. But as for the cod, perhaps you will accept him. I could never take him back to Flamborough.”
“Ride away, sir, ride away,” said the farmer, who had better not have measured swords with Mordacks. “I were thinking of sending a cart over there, so soon as the weather should be opening of the roads up. But the children might be hankerin' after meat, the worse for all the snow-time.”
“It is almost impossible to imagine such a thing. Universally respected, suddenly cut off, enormous family with hereditary hunger, all the neighbors well aware of straitened circumstances, the kindest-hearted county in Great Britain—sorrow and abundance must have cloyed their appetites, as at a wealthy man's funeral. What a fool I must have been not to foresee all that!”
“Better see than foresee,” replied the farmer, who was crusty from remembering that he had done nothing. “Neighbors likes to wait for neighbors to go in; same as two cows staring at a new-mown meadow.”
Cliffs snow-mantled, and storm-ploughed sands, and dark gray billows frilled with white, rolling and roaring to the shrill east wind, made the bay of Bridlington a very different sight from the smooth fair scene of August. Scarcely could the staggering colliers, anchored under Flamborough Head (which they gladly would have rounded if they could), hold their own against wind and sea, although the outer spit of sand tempered as yet the full violence of waves.
But if everything looked cold and dreary, rough, and hard, and bare of beauty, the cottage of the late lieutenant, standing on the shallow bluff, beaten by the wind, and blinded of its windows from within, of all things looked the most forlorn, most desolate, and freezing. The windward side was piled with snow, on the crest of which foam pellets lay, looking yellow by comparison, and melting small holes with their brine. At the door no foot-mark broke the drift; and against the vaporous sky no warmer vapor tufted the chimney-pots.
“I am pretty nearly frozen again,” said Mordacks; “but that place sends another shiver down my back. All the poor little devils must be icicles at least.”
After peeping through a blind, he turned pale betwixt his blueness, and galloped to the public-house abutting on the quay. Here he marched into the parlor, and stamped about, till a merry-looking landlord came to him. “Have a glass of hot, sir; how blue your nose is!” the genial master said to him. The reply of the factor can not be written down in these days of noble language. Enough that it was a terse malediction of the landlord, the glass of hot, and even his own nose. Boniface was no Yorkshireman, else would he have given as much as he got, at least in lingual currency. As it was, he considered it no affair of his if a guest expressed his nationality. “You must have better orders than that to give, I hope, sir.”
“Yes, sir, I have. And you have got the better of me; which has happened to me three times this day already, because of the freezing of my wits, young man. Now you go in to your best locker, and bring me your very best bottle of Cognac—none of your government stuff, you know, but a sample of your finest bit of smuggling. Why did I swear at a glass of hot? Why, because you are all such a set of scoundrels. I want a glass of hot as much as man ever did. But how can I drink it, when women and children are dying—perhaps dead, for all I know—for want of warmth and victuals? Your next-door neighbors almost, and a woman, whose husband has just been murdered! And here you are swizzling, and rattling your coppers. Good God, sir! The Almighty from heaven would send orders to have His own commandment broken.”
Mr. Mordacks was excited, and the landlord saw no cause for it. “What makes you carry on like this?” he said; “it was only last night we was talking in the tap-room of getting a subscription up, downright liberal. I said I was good for a crown, and take it out of the tick they owes me. And when you come to think of these hard times—”
“Take that, and then tell me if you find them softer.” Suiting the action to the word, the universal factor did something omitted on his card in the list of his comprehensive functions. As the fat host turned away, to rub his hands, with a phosphoric feeling of his future generosity, a set of highly energetic toes, prefixed with the toughest York leather, and tingling for exercise, made him their example. The landlord flew up among his own pots and glasses, his head struck the ceiling, which declined too long a taste of him, and anon a silvery ring announced his return to his own timbers.
“Accept that neighborly subscription, my dear friend, and acknowledge its promptitude,” said Mr. Mordacks; “and now be quick about your orders, peradventure a second flight might be less agreeable. Now don't show any airs; you have been well treated, and should be thankful for the facilities you have to offer. I know a poor man without any legs at all, who would be only too glad if he could do what you have done.”
“Then his taste must be a queer one,” the landlord replied, as he illustrated sadly the discovery reserved for a riper age—that human fingers have attained their present flexibility, form, and skill by habit of assuaging, for some millions of ages, the woes of the human body.
“Now don't waste my time like that,” cried Mordacks; and seeing him draw near again, his host became right active. “Benevolence must be inculcated,” continued the factor, following strictly in pursuit. “I have done you a world of good, my dear friend; and reflection will compel you to heap every blessing on me.”
“I don't know about that,” replied the landlord. It is certain, however, that this exhibition of philanthropic vigor had a fine effect. In five minutes all the resources of the house were at the disposal of this rapid agent, who gave his orders right and left, clapped down a bag of cash, and took it up again, and said, “Now just you mind my horse, twice as well as you mind your fellow-creatures. Take a leg of mutton out, and set it roasting. Have your biggest bed hot for a lot of frozen children. By the Lord, if you don't look alive, I'll have you up for murder.” As he spoke, a stout fish-woman came in from the quay; and he beckoned to her, and took her with him.
“You can't come in,” said a little weak voice, when Mr. Mordacks, having knocked in vain, began to prise open the cottage door. “Mother is so poorly; and you mustn't think of coming in. Oh, whatever shall I do, if you won't stop when I tell you?”
“Where are all the rest of you? Oh, in the kitchen, are they? You poor little atomy, how many of you are dead?”
“None of us dead, sir; without it is the baby;” here Geraldine burst into a wailing storm of tears. “I gave them every bit,” she sobbed—“every bit, sir, but the rush-lights; and them they wouldn't eat, sir, or I never would have touched them. But mother is gone off her head, and baby wouldn't eat it.”
“You are a little heroine,” said Mordacks, looking at her—the pinched face, and the hollow eyes, and the tottering blue legs of her. “You are greater than a queen. No queen forgets herself in that way.”
“Please, sir, no; I ate almost a box of rush-lights, and they were only done last night. Oh, if baby would have took to them!”
“Hot bread and milk in this bottle; pour it out; feed her first, Molly,” Mr. Mordacks ordered. “The world can't spare such girls as this. Oh, you won't eat first! Very well; then the others shall not have a morsel till your mouth is full. And they seem to want it bad enough. Where is the dead baby?”
In the kitchen, where now they stood, not a spark of fire was lingering, but some wood-ash still retained a feeble memory of warmth; and three little children (blest with small advance from babyhood) were huddling around, with hands, and faces, and sharp grimy knees poking in for lukewarm corners; while two rather senior young Carroways were lying fast asleep, with a jack-towel over them. But Tommy was not there; that gallant Tommy, who had ridden all the way to Filey after dark, and brought his poor father to the fatal place.
Mordacks, with his short, bitter-sweet smile, considered all these little ones. They were not beautiful, nor even pretty; one of them was too literally a chip of the old block, for he had reproduced his dear father's scar; and every one of them wanted a “wash and brush up,” as well as a warming and sound victualling. Corruptio optimi pessima. These children had always been so highly scrubbed, that the great molecular author of existence, dirt, resumed parental sway, with tenfold power of attachment and protection, the moment soap and flannel ceased their wicked usurpation.
“Please, sir, I couldn't keep them clean, I couldn't,” cried Geraldine, choking, both with bread and milk, and tears. “I had Tommy to feed through the coal-cellar door; and all the bits of victuals in the house to hunt up; and it did get so dark, and it was so cold. I am frightened to think of what mother will say for my burning up all of her brushes, and the baskets. But please, sir, little Cissy was a-freezing at the nose.”
The three little children at the grate were peeping back over the pits in their shoulders, half frightened at the tall, strange man, and half ready to toddle to him for protection; while the two on the floor sat up and stared, and opened their mouths for their sister's bread and milk. Then Jerry flew to them, and squatted on the stones, and very nearly choked them with her spoon and basin.
“Molly, take two in your apron, and be off,” said the factor to the stout fish-woman—who was simply full of staring, and of crying out “Oh lor!”—“pop them into the hot bed at once; they want warmth first, and victuals by-and-by. Our wonderful little maid wants food most. I will come after you with the other three. But I must see my little queen fill her own stomach first.”
“But, please, sir, won't you let our Tommy out first?” cried Jerry, as the strong woman lapped up the two youngest in her woolsey apron and ran off with them. “He has been so good, and he was too proud to cry so soon as ever he found out that mother couldn't hear him. And I gave him the most to eat of anybody else, because of him being the biggest, sir. It was all as black as ink, going under the door; but Tommy never minded.”
“Wonderful merit! While you were eating tallow! Show me the coal-cellar, and out he comes. But why don't you speak of your poor mother, child?”
The child, who had been so brave, and clever, self-denying, laborious, and noble, avoided his eyes, and began to lick her spoon, as if she had had enough, starving though she was. She glanced up at the ceiling, and then suddenly withdrew her eyes, and the blue lids trembled over them. Mordacks saw that it was childhood's dread of death. “Show me where little Tommy is,” he said; “we must not be too hard upon you, my dear. But what made your mother lock you up, and carry on so?”
“I don't know at all, sir,” said Geraldine.
“Now don't tell a story,” answered Mr. Mordacks. “You were not meant for lies; and you know all about it. I shall just go away if you tell stories.”
“Then all I know is this,” cried Jerry, running up to him, and desperately clutching at his riding coat; “the very night dear father was put into the pit-hole—oh, hoo, oh, hoo, oh, hoo!”
“Now we can't stop for that,” said the general factor, as he took her up and kissed her, and the tears, which had vainly tried to stop, ran out of young eyes upon well-seasoned cheeks; “you have been a wonder; I am like a father to you. You must tell me quickly, or else how can I cure it? We will let Tommy out then, and try to save your mother.”
“Mother was sitting in the window, sir,” said the child, trying strongly to command herself, “and I was to one side of her, and Tommy to the other, and none of us was saying anything. And then there came a bad, wicked face against the window, and the man said, 'What was it you said to-day, ma'am?' And mother stood up—she was quite right then—and she opened the window, and she looked right at him, and she said, 'I spoke the truth, John Cadman. Between you and your God it rests.' And the man said, 'You shut your black mouth up, or you and your brats shall all go the same way. Mind one thing—you've had your warning.' Then mother fell away, for she was just worn out; and she lay upon the floor, and she kept on moaning, 'There is no God! there is no God!' after all she have taught us to say our prayers to. And there was nothing for baby to draw ever since.”
For once in his life Mr. Mordacks held his tongue; and his face, which was generally fiercer than his mind, was now far behind it in ferocity. He thought within himself, “Well, I am come to something, to have let such things be going on in a matter which pertains to my office—pigeon-hole 100! This comes of false delicacy, my stumbling-block perpetually! No more of that. Now for action.”
Geraldine looked up at him, and said, “Oh, please, sir.” And then she ran off, to show the way toward little Tommy.
The coal-cellar flew open before the foot of Mordacks; but no Tommy appeared, till his sister ran in. The poor little fellow was quite dazzled with the light; and the grime on his cheeks made the inrush of fresh air come like wasps to him. “Now, Tommy, you be good,” said Geraldine; “trouble enough has been made about you.”
The boy put out his under lip, and blinked with great amazement. After such a quantity of darkness and starvation, to be told to be good was a little too bad. His sense of right and wrong became fluid with confusion; he saw no sign of anything to eat; and the loud howl of an injured heart began to issue from the coaly rampart of neglected teeth.
“Quite right, my boy,” Mr. Mordacks said. “You have had a bad time, and are entitled to lament. Wipe your nose on your sleeve, and have at it again.”
“Dirty, dirty things I hear. Who is come into my house like this? My house and my baby belong to me. Go away all of you. How can I bear this noise?”
Mrs. Carroway stood in the passage behind them, looking only fit to die. One of her husband's watch-coats hung around her, falling nearly to her feet; and the long clothes of her dead baby, which she carried, hung over it, shaking like a white dog's tail. She was standing with her bare feet well apart, and that swing of hip and heel alternate which mothers for a thousand generations have supposed to lull their babies into sweet sleep.
For once in his life the general factor had not the least idea of the proper thing to do. Not only did he not find it, but he did not even seek for it, standing aside rather out of the way, and trying to look like a calm spectator. But this availed him to no account whatever. He was the only man there, and the woman naturally fixed upon him.
“You are the man,” she said, in a quiet and reasonable voice, and coming up to Mordacks with the manner of a lady; “you are the gentleman, I mean, who promised to bring back my husband. Where is he? Have you fulfilled your promise?”
“My dear madam, my dear madam, consider your children, and how cold you are. Allow me to conduct you to a warmer place. You scarcely seem to enter into the situation.”
“Oh yes, I do, sir; thoroughly, thoroughly. My husband is in his grave; my children are going after him; and the best place for them. But they shall not be murdered. I will lock them up, so that they never shall be murdered.”
“My dear lady, I agree with you entirely. You do the very wisest thing in these bad times. But you know me well. I have had the honor of making your acquaintance in a pleasant manner. I feel for your children, quite as if I was—I mean, ma'am, a very fine old gentleman's affection. Geraldine, come and kiss me, my darling. Tommy, you may have the other side; never mind the coal, my boy; there is a coal-wharf quite close to my windows at home.”
These children, who had been hiding behind Mr. Mordacks and Molly (who was now come back), immediately did as he ordered them; or rather Jerry led the way, and made Tommy come as well, by a signal which he never durst gainsay. But while they saluted the general factor (who sat down upon a box to accommodate them), from the corners of their eyes they kept a timid, trembling, melancholy watch upon their own mother.
Poor Mrs. Carroway was capable of wondering. Her power of judgment was not so far lost as it is in a dream—where we wonder at nothing, but cast off skeptic misery—and for the moment she seemed to be brought home from the distance of roving delusion, by looking at two of her children kissing a man who was hunting in his pocket for his card.
“Circumstances, madam,” said Mr. Mordacks, “have deprived me of the pleasure of producing my address. It should be in two of my pockets; but it seems to have strangely escaped from both of them. However, I will write it down, if required. Geraldine dear, where is your school slate? Go and look for it, and take Tommy with you.”
This surprised Mrs. Carroway, and began to make her think. These were her children—she was nearly sure of that—her own poor children, who were threatened from all sides with the likelihood of being done away with. Yet here was a man who made much of them, and kissed them; and they kissed him without asking her permission!
“I scarcely know what it is about,” she said; “and my husband is not here to help me.”
“You have hit the very point, ma'am. You must take it on yourself. How wonderfully clever the ladies always are! Your family is waiting for a government supply; everybody knows that everybody in the world may starve before government thinks of supplying supply. I do not belong to the government—although if I had my deserts I should have done so—but fully understanding them, I step in to anticipate their action. I see that the children of a very noble officer, and his admirable wife, have been neglected, through the rigor of the weather and condition of the roads. I am a very large factor in the neighborhood, who make a good thing out of all such cases. I step in; circumstances favor me; I discover a good stroke of business; my very high character, though much obscured by diffidence, secures me universal confidence. The little dears take to me, and I to them. They feel themselves safe under my protection from their most villainous enemies. They are pleased to kiss a man of strength and spirit, who represents the government.”
Mrs. Carroway scarcely understood a jot of this. Such a rush of words made her weak brain go round, and she looked about vainly for her children, who had gladly escaped upon the chance afforded. But she came to the conclusion she was meant to come to—that this gentleman before her was the government.
“I will do whatever I am told,” she said, looking miserably round, as if for anything to care about; “only I must count my children first, or the government might say there was not the proper number.”
“Of all points that is the very one that I would urge,” Mordacks answered, without dismay. “Molly, conduct this good lady to her room. Light a good fire, as the Commissioners have ordered; warm the soup sent from the arsenal last night, but be sure that you put no pepper in it. The lady will go with you, and follow our directions. She sees the importance of having all her faculties perfectly clear when we make our schedule, as we shall do in a few hours' time, of all the children; every one, with the date of their birth, and their Christian names, which nobody knows so well as their own dear mother. Ah, how very sweet it is to have so many of them; and to know the pride, the pleasure, the delight, which the nation feels in providing for the welfare of every little darling!”