“Drum,” said Pet, in his free and easy style, about ten days after that escape, to a highly respected individual, Mr. Welldrum, the butler—“Drum, you have heard perhaps about my being poorly.”
“Ay, that I have, and too much of it,” replied the portly butler, busy in his office with inferior work, which he never should have had to do, if rightly estimated. “What you wants, Master Lancelot, is a little more of this here sort of thing—sleeves up—elbow grease—scrub away at hold ancient plate, and be blowed up if you puts a scratch on it; and the more you sweats, the less thanks you gets.”
“Drum, when you come to be my butler, you shall have all the keys allowed you, and walk about with them on a great gold ring, with a gold chain down to your breeches pocket. You shall dine when you like, and have it cooked on purpose, and order it directly after breakfast; and you shall have the very best hot-water plates; because you hate grease, don't you, Drum?”
“That I do; especial from young chaps as wants to get something out of me.”
“I am always as good as my word; come, now.”
“That you are, Sir; and nothing very grand to say, considering the hepithets you applies to me sometimes. But you han't insulted me for three days now; and that proves to my mind that you can't be quite right.”
“But you would like to see me better. I am sure you would. There is nobody so good to you as I am, Drum; and you are very crusty at times, you know. Your daughter shall be the head cook; and then everything must be to your liking.”
“Master Lancelot, you speaks fair. What can I have the honor of doing for you, Sir, to set you up again in your poor dear 'ealth?”
“Well, you hate physic, don't you, Drum? And you make a strict point of never taking it.”
“I never knew no good to come out of no bottle, without it were a bottle of old crusted port-wine. Ah! you likes that, Master Lancelot.”
“I'll tell you what it is, Drum; I am obliged to be very careful. The reason why I don't get on is from taking my meals too much in-doors. There is no fresh air in these old rooms. I have got a man who says—I could read it to you; but perhaps you don't care to hear poetry, Drum?” The butler made a face, and put the leather to his ears. “Very well, then; I am only just beginning; and it's like claret, you must learn to come to it. But from what he says, and from my own stomach, I intend to go and dine out-of-doors to-day.”
“Lord! Master Lancelot, you must be gone clean daft. How ever could you have hot gravy, Sir? And all the Yordases hates cold meat. Your poor dear grandfather—ah! he was a man.”
“So am I. And I have got half a guinea. Now, Drum, you do just what I tell you; and mind, not a word to any one. It will be the last coin you ever see of mine, either now or in all my life, remember, if you let my mamma ever hear of it. You slip down to the larder and get me a cold grouse, and a cold partridge, and two of the hearth-stone cakes, and a pat of butter, and a pinch of salt, and put them in my army knapsack Aunt Philippa gave me; also a knife and fork and plate; and—let me see—what had I better have to drink?”
“Well, Sir, if I might offer an opinion, a pint bottle of dry port, or your grandfather's Madeira.”
“Young ladies—young gentlemen I mean, of course—never take strong wines in the middle of the day. Bucellas, Drum—Bucellas is the proper thing. And when you have got it all together, turn the old cat into the larder, and get away cleverly by your little door, and put my knapsack in the old oak-tree, the one that was struck by lightning. Now do you understand all about it? It must all be ready in half an hour. And if I make a good dinner out on the moor, why, you might get another half guinea before long.” And with these words away strode Pet.
“Well, well,” the butler began muttering to himself; “what wickedness are you up to next? A lassie in his head, and his dear mammy thought he was sickening over his wisdom-teeth! He is beginning airly, and no mistake. But the gals are a coarse ugly lot about here”—Master Welldrum was not a Yorkshireman—“and the lad hath good taste in the matter of wine; although he is that contrairy, Solomon's self could not be upsides with him. Fall fair, fall foul, I must humor the boy, or out of this place I go, neck and crop.”
Accordingly, Pet found all that he had ordered, and several little things which he had not thought of, especially a corkscrew and a glass; and forgetting half his laziness, he set off briskly, keeping through the trees where no window could espy him, and down a little side glen, all afoot; for it seemed to him safer to forego his pony.
The gill (or “ghyll,” as the poet writes it), from which the lonely family that dwelt there took their name, was not upon the bridle-road from Scargate Hall toward Middleton, nor even within eye or reach of any road at all; but overlooked by kites alone, and tracked with thoroughfare of nothing but the mountain streamlet. The four who lived there—“Bat and Zilpic, Maunder and Insie, of the Gill”—had nothing to do with, and little to say to, any of the scatterling folk about them, across the blue distance of the moor. They ploughed no land, they kept no cattle, they scarcely put spade in the ground, except for about a fortnight in April, when they broke up a strip of alluvial soil new every season, and abutting on the brook; and there sowed or planted their vegetable crop, and left it to the clemency of heaven. Yet twice every year they were ready with their rent when it suited Master Jordas to come for it, since audits at the hall, and tenants' dinners, were not to their liking. The rent was a trifle; but Jordas respected them highly for handing it done up in white paper, without even making him leave the saddle. How many paid less, or paid nothing at all, yet came to the dinners under rent reservation of perhaps one mark, then strictly reserved their rent, but failed not to make the most punctual and liberal marks upon roast beef and plum-pudding!
But while the worthy dogman got his little bit of money, sealed up and so correct that (careful as he was) he never stopped now to count it, even his keen eyes could make nothing of these people, except that they stood upon their dignity. To him they appeared to be of gypsy race; or partly of wild and partly perhaps of Lancastrian origin; for they rather “featured” the Lancashire than the Yorkshire type of countenance, yet without any rustic coarseness, whether of aspect, voice, or manners. The story of their settlement in this glen had flagged out of memory of gossip by reason of their calm obscurity, and all that survived was the belief that they were queer, and the certainty that they would not be meddled with.
Lancelot Yordas Carnaby was brave, both in the outward and the inward boy, when he struck into the gill from a trackless spread of moor, not far from the source of the beck that had shaped or been shaped by this fissure. He had made up his mind to learn all about the water that filled sweet Insie's pitcher; and although the great poet of nature as yet was only in early utterance, some of his words had already touched Pet as he had never been touched before; but perhaps that fine effect was due to the sapping power of first love.
Yet first love, however it may soften and enlarge a petulant and wayward nature, instead of increasing, cuts short and crisp the patience of the patient. When Lancelot was as near as manners and prudence allowed to that lonesome house, he sat down quietly for a little while in a little niche of scrubby bush whence he could spy the door. For a short time this was very well; also it was well to be furnishing his mind with a form for the beautiful expressions in it, and prepare it for the order of their coming out. And when he was sure that these were well arranged, and could not fail at any crisis, he found a further pastime in considering his boots, then his gaiters and small-clothes (which were of lofty type), and his waistcoat, elegant for anybody's bosom. But after a bit even this began to pall; and when one of his feet went fast asleep, in spite of its beautiful surroundings, he jumped up and stamped, and was not so very far from hot words as he should have been. For his habit was not so much to want a thing as to get it before he wanted it, which is very poor training for the trials of the love-time.
But just as he was beginning to resolve to be wise, and eat his victuals, now or never, and be sorry for any one who came too late—there came somebody by another track, whose step made the heart rise, and the stomach fall. Lancelot's mind began to fail him all at once; and the spirit that was ready with a host of words fluttered away into a quaking depth of silence. Yet Insie tripped along as if the world held no one to cast a pretty shadow from the sun beside her own.
Even the youngest girls are full of little tricks far beyond the oldest boy's comprehension. But the wonder of all wonders is, they have so pure a conscience as never to be thinking of themselves at all, far less of any one who thinks too much of them. “I declare, she has forgotten that she ever saw me!” Lancelot muttered to the bush in which he trembled. “It would serve her right, if I walked straight away.” But he looked again, and could not help looking more than many times again, so piercing (as an ancient poet puts it) is the shaft from the eyes of the female women. And Insie was especially a female girl—which has now ceased to be tautology—so feminine were her walk, and way, and sudden variety of unreasonable charm.
“Dear me! I never thought to see you any more, Sir;” said she, with a bright blush, perhaps at such a story, as Pet jumped out eagerly, with hands stretched forth. “It is the most surprising thing. And we might have done very well with rain-water.”
“Oh, Insie! don't be so cold-hearted. Who can drink rain-water? I have got something very good for you indeed. I have carried it all the way myself; and only a strong man could have done it. Why, you have got stockings on, I declare; but I like you much better without them.”
“Then, Master Lancelot Yordas Carnaby, you had better go home with all your good things.”
“You are totally mistaken about that. I could never get these things into the house again, without being caught out to a certainty. It shows how little girls know of anything.”
“A girl can not be expected,” she answered, looking most innocently at him, “to understand anything sly or cunning. Why should anything of that sort be?”
“Well, if it comes to that,” cried Pet, who (like all unreasonable people) had large rudiments of reasoning, “why should not I come up to your door, and knock, and say, 'I want to see Miss Insie; I am fond of Miss Insie, and have got something good for her'? That is what I shall do next time.”
“If you do, my brother Maunder will beat you dreadfully—so dreadfully that you will never walk home. But don't let us talk of such terrible things. You must never come here, if you think of such things. I would not have you hurt for all the world; for sometimes I think that I like you very much.”
The lovely girl looked at the handsome boy, as if they were at school together, learning something difficult, which must be repeated to the other's eyes, with a nod, or a shake of the head, as may be. A kind, and pure, and soft gaze she gave him, as if she would love his thoughts, if he could explain them. And Pet turned away, because he could not do so.
“I'll tell you what it is,” he said, bravely, while his heart was thrilling with desire to speak well; “we will set to at once, and have a jolly good spread. I told my man to put up something very good, because I was certain that you would be very hungry.”
“Surely you were not so foolish as to speak of me?”
“No, no, no; I know a trick worth two of that. I was not such a fool as to speak of you, of course. But—”
“But I would never condescend to touch one bit. You were ashamed to say a word about me, then, were you?”
“Insie, now, Insie, too bad of you it is. You can have no idea what those butlers and footmen are, if ever you tell them anything. They are worse than the maids; they go down stairs, and they get all the tidbits out of the cook, and sit by the girl they like best, on the strength of having a secret about their master.”
“Well, you are cunning!” cried the maiden, with a sigh. “I thought that your nature was loftier than that. No, I do not know anything of butlers and footmen; and I think that the less I know of you the better.”
“Oh, Insie, darling Insie, if you run away like that—I have got both your hands, and you shall not run away. Do you want to kill me, Insie? They have had the doctor for me.”
“Oh, how very dreadful! that does sound dreadful. I am not at all crying, and you need not look. But what did he say? Please to tell me what he said.”
“He said, 'Salts and senna.' But I got up a high tree. Let us think of nicer things. It is enough to spoil one's dinner. Oh, Insie, what is anything to eat or drink, compared with looking at you, when you are good? If I could only tell you the things that I have felt, all day and all night, since this day fortnight, how sorry you would be for having evil thoughts of me!”
“I have no evil thoughts; I have no thoughts at all. But it puzzles me to think what on earth you have been thinking. There, I will sit down, and listen for a moment.”
“And I may hold one of your hands? I must, or you would never understand me. Why, your hands are much smaller than mine, I declare! And mine are very small; because of thinking about you. Now you need not laugh—it does spoil everything to laugh so. It is more than a fortnight since I laughed at all. You make me feel so miserable. But would you like to know how I felt? Mind, I would rather cut my head off than tell it to any one in the world but you.”
“Now I call that very kind of you. If you please, I should like to know how you have been feeling.” With these words Insie came quite close up to his side, and looked at him so that he could hardly speak. “You may say it in a whisper, if you like,” she said; “there is nobody coming for at least three hours, and so you may say it in a whisper.”
“Then I will tell you; it was just like this. You know that I began to think how beautiful you were at the very first time I looked at you. But you could not expect me so to love you all at once as I love you now, dear Insie.”
“I can not understand any meaning in such things.” But she took a little distance, quite as if she did.
“Well, I went away without thinking very much, because I had a bad place in my knee—a blue place bigger than the new half crown, where you saw that the pony kicked me. I had him up, and thrashed him, when I got home; but that has got nothing to do with it—only that I made him know who was his master. And then I tried to go on with a lot of things as usual; but somehow I did not care at all. There was a great rat hunt that I had been thinking of more than three weeks, when they got the straddles down, to be ready for the new ricks to come instead. But I could not go near it; and it made them think that the whole of my inside was out of order. And it must have been. I can see by looking back; it must have been so, without my knowing it. I hit several people with my holly on their shins, because they knew more than I did. But that was no good; nor was anything else. I only got more and more out of sorts, and could not stay quiet anywhere; and yet it was no good to me to try to make a noise. All day I went about as if I did not care whether people contradicted me or not, or where I was, or what time I should get back, or whether there would be any dinner. And I tucked up my feet in my nightgown every night; but instead of stopping there, as they always used to do, they were down in cold places immediately; and instead of any sleep, I bit holes by the hundred in the sheets, with thinking. I hated to be spoken to, and I hated everybody; and so I do now, whenever I come to think about them!”
“Including even poor me, I suppose?” Insie had wonderfully pretty eyebrows, and a pretty way of raising them, and letting more light into her bright hazel eyes.
“No, I never seemed to hate you; though I often was put out, because I could never make your face come well. I was thinking of you always, but I could not see you. Now tell me whether you have been like that.”
“Not at all; but I have thought of you once or twice, and wondered what could make you want to come and see me. If I were a boy, perhaps I could understand it.”
“I hate boys; I am a man all over now. I am old enough to have a wife; and I mean to have you. How much do you suppose my waistcoat cost? Well, never mind, because you are not rich. But I have got money enough for both of us to live well, and nobody can keep me out of it. You know what a road is, I suppose—a good road leading to a town? Have you ever seen one? A brown place, with hedges on each side, made hard and smooth for horses to go upon, and wheels that make a rumble. Well, if you will have me, and behave well to me, you shall sit up by yourself in a velvet dress, with a man before you and a man behind, and believe that you are flying.”
“But what would become of my father, and my mother, and my brother Maunder?”
“Oh, they must stop here, of course. We shouldn't want them. But I would give them all their house rent-free, and a fat pig every Christmas. Now you sit there and spread your lap, that I may help you properly. I want to see you eat; you must learn to eat like a lady of the highest quality; for that you are going to be, I can tell you.”
The beautiful maid of the gill smiled sweetly, sitting on the low bank with the grace of simple nature and the playfulness of girlhood. She looked up at Lancelot, the self-appointed man, with a bright glance of curious contemplation; and contemplation (of any other subject than self) is dangerously near contempt. She thought very little of his large, free brag, of his patronizing manner, and fine self-content, reference of everything to his own standard, beauty too feminine, and instead of female gentleness, highly cultivated waywardness. But in spite of all that, she could not help liking, and sometimes admiring him, when he looked away. And now he was very busy with the high feast he had brought.
“To begin with,” he said, when his good things were displayed, “you must remember that nothing is more vulgar than to be hungry. A gentleman may have a tremendous appetite, but a lady never.”
“But why? but why? That does seem foolish. I have read that the ladies are always helped first. That must be because of their appetites.”
“Insie, I tell you things, not the reasons of them. Things are learned by seeing other people, and not by arguing about them.”
“Then you had better eat your dinner first, and let me sit and watch you. And then I can eat mine by imitation; that is to say, if there is any left.”
“You are one of the oddest people I have ever seen. You go round the corner of all that I say, instead of following properly. When we are married, you will always make me laugh. At one time they kept a boy to make me laugh; but I got tired of him. Now I help you first, although I am myself so hungry. I do it from a lofty feeling, which my aunt Philippa calls 'chivalry.' Ladies talk about it when they want to get the best of us. I have given you all the best part, you see; and I only keep the worst of it for myself.”
If Pet had any hope that his self-denial would promptly be denied to him, he made a great mistake; for the damsel of the gill had a healthy moorland appetite, and did justice to all that was put before her; and presently he began, for the first time in his life, to find pleasure in seeing another person pleased. But the wine she would not even taste, in spite of persuasion and example; the water from the brook was all she drank, and she drank as prettily as a pigeon. Whatever she did was done gracefully and well.
“I am very particular,” he said at last; “but you are fit to dine with anybody. How have you managed to learn it all? You take the best of everything, without a word about it, as gently as great ladies do. I thought that you would want me to eat the nicest pieces; but instead of that, you have left me bones and drumsticks.”
He gave such a melancholy look at these that Insie laughed quite merrily. “I wanted to see you practice chivalry,” she said.
“Well, never mind; I shall know another time. Instead of two birds, I shall order four, and other things in proportion. But now I want to know about your father and your mother. They must be respectable people, to judge by you. What is their proper name, and how much have they got to live upon?”
“More than you—a great deal more than you,” she answered, with such a roguish smile that he forgot his grievances, or began to lose them in the mist of beauty.
“More than me! And they live in such a hole, where only the crows come near them?”
“Yes, more than you, Sir. They have their wits to live upon, and industry, and honesty.”
Pet was not old enough yet in the world to say, “What is the use of all those? All their income is starvation.” He was young enough to think that those who owned them had advantage of him, for he knew that he was very lazy. Moreover, he had heard of such people getting on—through the striking power of exception, so much more brilliant than the rule—when all the blind virtues found luck to lead them. Industry, honesty, and ability always get on in story-books, and nothing is nicer than to hear a pretty story. But in some ways Pet was sharp enough.
“Then they never will want that house rent-free, nor the fat pig, nor any other presents. Oh, Insie, how very much better that will be! I find it so much nicer always to get things than to give them. And people are so good-natured, when they have done it, and can talk of it. Insie, they shall give me something when I marry you, and as often as they like afterward.”
“They will give you something you will not like,” she answered, with a laugh, and a look along the moor, “if you stay here too long chattering with me. Do you know what o'clock it is? I know always, whether the sun is out or in. You need show no gold watch to me.”
“Oh, that comes of living in a draught all day. The out-door people grow too wise. What do you see about ten miles off? It must be ten miles to that hill.”
“That hill is scarcely five miles off, and what I see is not half of that. I brought you up here to be quite safe. Maunder's eyes are better than mine. But he will not see us, for another mile, if you cover your grand waistcoat, because we are in the shadows. Slip down into the gill again, and keep below the edge of it, and go home as fast as possible.”
Lancelot felt inclined to do as he was told, and keep to safe obscurity. The long uncomfortable loneliness of prospect, and dim airy distance of the sinking sun, and deeply silent emptiness of hollows, where great shadows began to crawl—in the waning of the day, and so far away from home—all these united to impress upon the boy a spiritual influence, whose bodily expression would be the appearance of a clean pair of heels. But, to meet this sensible impulse, there arose the stubborn nature of his race, which hated to be told to do anything, and the dignity of his new-born love—such as it was—and the thought of looking small.
“Why should I go?” he said. “I will meet them, and tell them that I am their landlord, and have a right to know all about them. My grandfather never ran away from anybody. And they have got a donkey with them.”
“They will have two, if you stop,” cried Insie, although she admired his spirit. “My father is a very quiet man. But Maunder would take you by the throat and cast you down into the beck.”
“I should like to see him try to do it. I am not so very strong, but I am active as a cat. I have no idea of being threatened.”
“Then will you be coaxed? I do implore you, for my sake, to go, or it will be too late. Never, never, will you see me again, unless you do what I beseech of you.”
“I will not stir one peg, unless you put your arms round my neck and kiss me, and say that you will never have anybody else.”
Insie blushed deeply, and her bright eyes flashed with passion not of loving kind. But it went to her heart that he was brave, and that he loved her truly. She flung her comely arms round his neck, and touched her rosy lips with his; and before he could clasp her she was gone, with no more comfort than these words:
“Now if you are a gentleman, you must go, and never come near this place again.”
Not a moment too soon he plunged into the gill, and hurried up its winding course; but turning back at the corner, saw a sweet smile in the distance, and a wave of the hand, that warmed his heart.
So far so good. But that noble and exalted condition of the youthful mind which is to itself pure wisdom's zenith, but to folk of coarse maturity and tough experience “calf-love,” superior as it is to words and reason, must be left to its own course. The settled resolve of a middle-aged man, with seven large-appetited children, and an eighth approaching the shores of light, while baby-linen too often transmitted betrays a transient texture, and hose has ripened into holes, and breeches verify their name, and a knock at the door knocks at the heart—the fixed resolution of such a man to strike a bold stroke, for the sake of his home, is worthier of attention than the flitting fancy of boy and girl, who pop upon one another, and skip through zigzag vernal ecstasy, like the weathery dalliance of gnats.
Lieutenant Carroway had dealt and done with amorous grace and attitude, soaring rapture, and profundity of sigh, suspense (more agonizing than suspension), despair, prostration, grinding of the teeth, the hollow and spectral laugh of a heart forever broken, and all the other symptoms of an annual bill of vitality; and every new pledge of his affections sped him toward the pledge-shop. But never had he crossed that fatal threshold; the thought of his uniform and dignity prevailed; and he was not so mean as to send a child to do what the father was ashamed of.
So it was scarcely to be expected that even as a man he should sympathize deeply with the tender passion, and far less, as a coast-guardsman, with the wooing of a smuggler. Master Robin Lyth, by this time, was in the contraband condition known to the authorities as love; Carroway had found out this fact; but instead of indulging in generous emotion, he made up his mind to nab him through it. For he reasoned as follows; and granting that reason has any business on such premises, the process does not seem amiss.
A man in love has only got one-eighth part of his wits at home to govern the doings of his arms, legs, and tongue. A large half is occupied with his fancy, in all the wanderings of that creature, dreamy, flimsy, anchoring with gossamer, climbing the sky with steps of fog, cast into abysms (as great writers call it) by imaginary demons, and even at its best in a queer condition, pitiful, yet exceeding proud. A quarter of the mental power is employed in wanting to know what the other people think; an eighth part ought to be dwelling upon the fair distracting object; and only a small eighth can remain to attend to the business of the solid day. But in spite of all this, such lads get on about as well as usual. If Bacchus has a protective power, Venus has no less of it, and possibly is more active, as behooves a female.
And surely it was a cold-blooded scheme, which even the Revenue should have excised from an honest scale of duties, to catch a poor fellow in the meshes of love, because he was too sharp otherwise. This, however, was the large idea ripening in the breast of Carroway.
“To-night I shall have him,” he said to his wife, who was inditing of softer things, her eighth confinement, and the shilling she had laid that it would be a boy this time. “The weather is stormy, yet the fellow makes love between the showers in a barefaced way. That old fool of a tanner knows it, and has no more right feeling than if he were a boy. Aha, my Robin, fine robin as you are, I shall catch you piping with your Jenny Wren tonight!” The lieutenant shared the popular ignorance of simplest natural history.
“Charles, you never should have told me of it. Where is your feeling for the days gone by? And as for his coming between the showers, what should I have thought of you if you had made a point of bringing your umbrella? My dear, it is wrong. And I beg you, for my sake, not to catch him with his true love, but only with his tubs.”
“Matilda, your mind is weakened by the coming trial of your nerves. I would rather have him with his tubs, of course; they would set us up for several years, and his silks would come in for your churching. But everything can not be as we desire. And he carries large pistols when he is not courting. Do you wish me to be shot, Matilda?”
“Captain Carroway, how little thought you have, to speak to me in that way! And I felt before dinner that I never should get over it. Oh, who would have the smugglers on her mind, at such a time?”
“My dear, I beg your pardon. Pray exert your strength of mind, and cast such thoughts away from you—or perhaps it will be a smuggler. And yet if it were, how much better it would pay!”
“Then I hope it will, Charles; I heartily hope it will be. It would serve you quite right to be snaring your own son, after snaring a poor youth through his sweetheart.”
“Well, well, time will show. Put me up the flat bottle, Tilly, and the knuckle of pork that was left last night. Goodness knows when I shall be back; and I never like to rack my mind upon an empty stomach.”
The revenue officer had far to go, and was wise in providing provender. And the weather being on the fall toward the equinox, and the tides running strong and uncertain, he had made up his mind to fare inland, instead of attempting the watery ways. He felt that he could ride, as every sailor always feels; and he had a fine horse upon hire from his butcher, which the king himself would pay for. The inferior men had been sent ahead on foot, with orders to march along and hold their tongues. And one of these men was John Cadman, the self-same man who had descended the cliff without any footpath. They were all to be ready, with hanger and pistol, in a hole toward Byrsa Cottage.
Lieutenant Carroway enjoyed his ride. There are men to whom excitement is an elevation of the sad and slow mind, which otherwise seems to have nothing to do. And what finer excitement can a good mind have than in balancing the chances of its body tumbling out of the saddle, and evicting its poor self?
The mind of Charles Carroway was wide awake to this, and tenderly anxious about the bad foot in which its owner ended—because of the importance of the stirrups—and all the sanguine vigor of the heart (which seemed to like some thumping) conveyed to the seat of reason little more than a wish to be well out of it. The brave lieutenant holding place, and sticking to it through a sense of duty, and of the difficulty of getting off, remembered to have heard, when quite a little boy, that a man who gazes steadily between his horse's ears can not possibly tumble off the back. The saying in its wisdom is akin to that which describes the potency of salt upon a sparrow's tail.
While Carroway gloomily pounded the road, with reflection a dangerous luxury, things of even deeper interest took their course at the goal of his endeavors. Mary Anerley, still an exile in the house of the tanner, by reason of her mother's strict coast-guard, had long been thinking that more injustice is done in the world than ought to be; and especially in the matter of free trade she had imbibed lax opinions, which may not be abhorrent to a tanner's nature, but were most unbecoming to the daughter of a farmer orthodox upon his own land, and an officer of King's Fencibles. But how did Mary make this change, and upon questions of public policy chop sides, as quickly as a clever journal does? She did it in the way in which all women think, whose thoughts are of any value, by allowing the heart to go to work, being the more active organ, and create large scenery, into which the tempted mind must follow. To anybody whose life has been saved by anybody else, there should arise not only a fine image of the preserver, but a high sense of the service done to the universe, which must have gone into deepest mourning if deprived of No. One. And then, almost of necessity, succeeds the investment of this benefactor to the world at large with all the great qualities needed for an exploit so stupendous. He has done a great deed, he has proved himself to be gallant, generous, magnanimous; shall I, who exist through his grand nobility, listen to his very low enemies? Therefore Robin was an angel now, and his persecutors must be demons.
Captain Lyth had not been slow to enter into his good luck. He knew that Master Popplewell had a cultivated taste for rare old schnapps, while the partner of his life, and labor, and repose, possessed a desire for the finer kinds of lace. Attending to these points, he was always welcome; and the excellent couple encouraged his affection and liberal goodwill toward them. But Mary would accept no presents from him, and behaved for a long time very strangely, and as if she would rather keep out of his way. Yet he managed to keep on running after her, as much as she managed to run away; for he had been down now into the hold of his heart, searching it with a dark lantern, and there he had discovered “Mary,” “Mary,” not only branded on the hullage of all things, but the pith and pack of everything; and without any fraud upon charter-party, the cargo entire was “Mary.”
Who can tell what a young maid feels, when she herself is doubtful? Somehow she has very large ideas, which only come up when she begins to think; and too often, after some very little thing, she exclaims that all is rubbish. The key-note of her heart is high, and a lot of things fall below harmony, and notably (if she is not a stupe), some of her own dear love's expressions before she has made up her soul to love him. This is a hard time for almost any man, who feels his random mind dipped into with a spirit-gauge and a saccharometer. But in spite of all these indications, Robin Lyth stuck to himself, which is the right way to get credit for sticking.
“Johnny, my dear,” said Deborah Popplewell to her valued husband, just about the time when bold Carroway was getting hot and sore upon the Filey Road, yet steadily enlarging all the penance of return, “things ought to be coming to a point, I think. We ought not to let them so be going on forever. Young people like to be married in the spring; the birds are singing, and the price of coal goes down. And they ought to be engaged six months at least. We were married in the spring, my dear, the Tuesday but one that comes next from Easter-day. There was no lilac out, but there ought to have been, because it was not sunny. And we have never repented it, you know.”
“Never as long as I live shall I forget that day,” said Popplewell; “they sent me home a suit of clothes as were made for kidney-bean sticks. I did want to look nice at church, and crack, crack, crack they went, and out came all the lining. Debby, I had good legs in those days, and could crunch down bark like brewers' grains.”
“And so you could now, my dear, every bit as well. Scarcely any of the young men have your legs. How thankful we ought to be for them—and teeth! But everything seems to be different now, and nobody has any dignity of mind. We sowed broad beans, like a pigeon's foot-tread, out and in, all the way to church.”
“The folk can never do such things now; we must not expect it of such times, my dear. Five-and-forty years ago was ninety times better than these days, Debby, except that you and I was steadfast, and mean to be so to the end, God willing. Lord! what are the lasses that He makes now?”
“Johnny, they try to look their best; and we must not be hard upon them. Our Mary looks well enow, when she hath a color, though my eyes might 'a been a brighter blue if I never hadn't took to spectacles. Johnny, I am sure a'most that she is in her love-time. She crieth at night, which is nobody's business; the strings of her night-cap run out of their starch; and there looks like a channel on the pillow, though the sharp young hussy turns it upside down. I shall be upsides with her, if you won't.”
“Certainly it shall be left to you; you are the one to do it best. You push her on, and I will stir him up. I will smuggle some schnapps into his tea to-night, to make him look up bolder; as mild as any milk it is. When I was taken with your cheeks, Debby, and your bit of money, I was never that long in telling you.”
“That's true enow, Johnny; you was sarcy. But I'm thinking of the trouble we may get into over at Anerley about it.”
“I'll carry that, lass. My back's as broad as Stephen's. What more can they want for her than a fine young fellow, a credit to his business and the country? Lord! how I hate them rough coast-riders! it wouldn't be good for them to come here.”
“Then they are here, I tell you, and much they care. You seem to me to have shut your eyes since ever you left off tanning. How many times have I told you, John, that a sneaking fellow hath got in with Sue? I saw him with my own eyes last night skulking past the wicket-gate; and the girl's addle-pate is completely turned. You think her such a wonder, that you won't hearken. But I know the women best, I do.”
“Out of this house she goes, neck and crop, if what you say is true, Deb. Don't say it again, that's a kind, good soul; it spoils my pipe to think of it.”
Toward sundown Robin Lyth appeared, according to invitation. Dandy as he generally was, he looked unusually smart this time, with snow-white ducks and a velvet waistcoat, pumps like a dressing-glass, lace to his shirt, and a blue coat with gold buttons. His keen eyes glanced about for Mary, and sparkled as soon as she came down; and when he took her hand she blushed, and was half afraid to look at him; for she felt in her heart that he meant to say something, if he could find occasion; but her heart did not tell her what answer she would make, because of her father's grief and wrath; so she tried to hope that nothing would be said, and she kept very near her good aunt's apron-string. Such tactics, however, were doomed to defeat. The host and hostess of Byrsa Cottage were very proud of the tea they gave to any distinguished visitor. Tea was a luxury, being very dear, and although large quantities were smuggled, the quality was not, like that of other goods so imported, equal or superior to the fair legitimate staple. And Robin, who never was shy of his profession, confessed that he could not supply a cup so good.
“You shall come and have another out-of-doors, my friend,” said his entertainer, graciously. “Mary, take the captain's cup to the bower; the rain has cleared off, and the evening will be fine. I will smoke my pipe, and we will talk adventures. Things have happened to me that would make you stare, if I could bring myself to tell them. Ah yes, I have lived in stirring times. Fifty years ago men and women knew their minds; and a dog could eat his dinner without a damask napkin.”
Master Popplewell, who was of a good round form, and tucked his heels over one another as he walked (which indicates a pleasant self-esteem), now lit his long pipe and marched ahead, carefully gazing to the front and far away; so that the young folk might have free boot and free hand behind him. That they should have flutters of loving-kindness, and crafty little breaths of whispering, and extraordinary gifts of just looking at each other in time not to be looked at again, as well as a strange sort of in and out of feeling, as if they were patterned with the same zigzag—as the famous Herefordshire graft is made—and above all the rest, that they should desire to have no one in the world to look at them, was to be expected by a clever old codger, a tanner who had realized a competence, and eaten many “tanner's pies.” The which is a good thing; and so much the better because it costs nothing save the crust and the coal. But instead of any pretty little goings on such as this worthy man made room for, to tell the stupid truth, this lad and lass came down the long walk as far apart and as independent of one another as two stakes of an espalier. There had not been a word gone amiss between them, nor even a thought the wrong way of the grain; but the pressure of fear and of prickly expectation was upon them both, and kept them mute. The lad was afraid that he would get “nay,” and the lass was afraid that she could not give it.
The bower was quite at the end of the garden, through and beyond the pot-herb part, and upon a little bank which overhung a little lane. Here in this corner a good woman had contrived what women nearly always understand the best, a little nook of pleasure and of perfume, after the rank ranks of the kitchen-stuff. Not that these are to be disdained; far otherwise; they indeed are the real business; and herein lies true test of skill. But still the flowers may declare that they do smell better. And not only were there flowers here, and little shrubs planted sprucely, but also good grass, which is always softness, and soothes the impatient eyes of men. And on this grass there stood, or hung, or flowered, or did whatever it was meant to do, a beautiful weeping-ash, the only one anywhere in that neighborhood.
“I can't look at skies, and that—have seen too many of them. You young folk, go and chirp under the tree. What I want is a little rum and water.”
With these words the tanner went into his bower, where he kept a good store of materials in moss; and the plaited ivy of the narrow entrance shook with his voice, and steps, and the decision of his thoughts. For he wanted to see things come to a point, and his only way to do it was to get quite out of sight. Such fools the young people of the age were now!
While his thoughts were such, or scarcely any better, his partner in life came down the walk, with a heap of little things which she thought needful for the preservation of the tanner, and she waddled a little and turned her toes out, for she as well was roundish.
“Ah, you ought to have Sue. Where is Sue?” said Master Popplewell. “Now come you in out of the way of the wind, Debby; you know how your back-sinew ached with the darning before last wash.”
Mrs. Popplewell grumbled, but obeyed; for she saw that her lord had his reasons. So Mary and Robin were left outside, quite as if they were nothing to any but themselves. Mary was aware of all this manoeuvring, and it brought a little frown upon her pretty forehead, as if she were cast before the feet of Robin Lyth; but her gentleness prevailed, because they meant her well. Under the weeping-ash there was a little seat, and the beauty of it was that it would not hold two people. She sat down upon it, and became absorbed in the clouds that were busy with the sunset.
These were very beautiful, as they so often are in the broken weather of the autumn; but sailors would rather see fair sky, and Robin's fair heaven was in Mary's eyes. At these he gazed with a natural desire to learn what the symptoms of the weather were; but it seemed as if little could be made out there, because everything seemed so lofty: perhaps Mary had forgotten his existence.
Could any lad of wax put up with this, least of all a daring mariner? He resolved to run the cargo of his heart right in, at the risk of all breakers and drawn cutlasses; and to make a good beginning he came up and took her hand. The tanner in the bower gave approval with a cough, like Cupid with a sneeze; then he turned it to a snore.
“Mary, why do you carry on like this?” the smuggler inquired, in a very gentle voice. “I have done nothing to offend you, have I? That would be the last thing I would ever do.”
“Captain Lyth, you are always very good; you never should think such things of me. I am just looking at a particular cloud. And who ever said that you might call me 'Mary'?”
“Perhaps the particular cloud said so; but you must have been the cloud yourself, for you told me only yesterday.”
“Then I will never say another word about it; but people should not take advantage.”
“Who are people? How you talk! quite as if I were somebody you never saw before. I should like you just to look round now, and let me see why you are so different from yourself.”
Mary Anerley looked round; for she always did what people liked, without good reason otherwise; and if her mind was full of clouds, her eyes had little sign of them.
“You look as lovely as you always do,” said the smuggler, growing bolder as she looked at something else. “You know long ago what my opinion of you is, and yet you seem to take no notice. Now I must be off, as you know, to-night; not for any reason of my own, as I told you yesterday, but to carry out a contract. I may not see you for many months again; and you may fall in love with a Preventive man.”
“I never fall in love with anybody. Why should I go from one extreme to the other? Captain Carroway has seven children, as well as a very active wife.”
“I am not afraid of Carroway, in love or in war. He is an honest fellow, with no more brains than this ash-tree over us. I mean the dashing captains who come in with their cutters, and would carry you off as soon as look.”
“Captain Lyth, you are not at all considering what you say: those officers do not want me—they want you.”
“Then they shall get neither; they may trust me for that. But, Mary, do tell me how your heart is; you know well how mine has been for ever such a time. I tell you downright that I have thought of girls before—”
“Oh, I was not at all aware of that; surely you had better go on with thinking of them.”
“You have not heard me out. I have only thought of them; nothing more than thinking, in a foolish sort of way. But of you I do not think; I seem to feel you all through me.”
“What sort of a sensation do I seem to be? A foolish one, I suppose, like all those many others.”
“No, not at all. A very wise one; a regular knowledge that I can not live without you; a certainty that I could only mope about a little—”
“And not run any more cargoes on the coast?”
“Not a single tub, nor a quarter bale of silk; except, of course, what is under contract now; and, if you should tell me that you can not care about me—”
“Hush! I am almost sure that I hear footsteps. Listen, just a moment.”
“No, I will not listen to any one in the world but you. I beg you not to try to put me off. Think of the winter, and the long time coming; say if you will think of me. I must allow that I am not, like you, of a respectable old family. The Lord alone knows where I came from, or where I may go to. My business is a random and up-and-down one, but no one can call it disreputable; and if you went against it, I would throw it up. There are plenty of trades that I can turn my hand to; and I will turn it to anything you please, if you will only put yours inside it. Mary, only let me have your hand; and you need not say anything unless you like.”
“But I always do like to say something, when things are brought before me so. I have to consider my father, and my mother, and others belonging to me. It is not as if I were all alone, and could do exactly as I pleased. My father bears an ill-will toward free trade; and my mother has made bad bargains, when she felt sure of very good ones.”
“I know that there are rogues about,” Robin answered, with a judicial frown; “but foul play never should hurt fair play; and we haul them through the water when we catch them. Your father is terribly particular, I know, and that is the worst thing there can be; but I do not care a groat for all objections, Mary, unless the objection begins with you. I am sure by your eyes, and your pretty lips and forehead, that you are not the one to change. If once any lucky fellow wins your heart, he will have it—unless he is a fool—forever. I can do most things, but not that, or you never would be thinking about the other people. What would anybody be to me in comparison with you, if I only had the chance? I would kick them all to Jericho. Can you see it in that way? can you get hot every time you think of me?”
“Really,” said Mary, looking very gently at him, because of his serious excitement, “you are very good, and very brave, and have done wonders for me; but why should I get hot?”
“No, I suppose it is not to be expected. When I am in great peril I grow hot, and tingle, and am alive all over. Men of a loftier courage grow cold; it depends upon the constitution; but I enjoy it more than they do, and I can see things ten times quicker. Oh, how I wish I was Nelson! how he must enjoy himself!”
“But if you have love of continual danger, and eagerness to be always at it,” said Mary, with wide Yorkshire sense, much as she admired this heroic type, “the proper thing for you to do is to lead a single life. You might be enjoying all the danger very much; but what would your wife at home be doing? Only to knit, and sigh, and lie awake.”
Mary made a bad hit here. This picture was not at all deterrent; so daring are young men, and so selfish.
“Nothing of that sort should ever come to pass,” cried Robin, with the gaze of the head of a household, “supposing only that my wife was you. I would be home regularly every night before the kitchen clock struck eight. I would always come home with an appetite, and kiss you, and do both my feet upon the scraper. I would ask how the baby was, and carry him about, and go 'one, two, three,' as the nurses do, I would quite leave the government to put on taxes, and pay them—if I could—without a word of grumble. I would keep every rope about the house in order, as only a sailor knows how to do, and fettle my own mending, and carry out my orders, and never meddle with the kitchen, at least unless my opinion was sought for concerning any little thing that might happen to be meant for me.”
“Well,” exclaimed Mary, “you quite take my breath away. I had no idea that you were so clever. In return for all these wonders, what should poor I have to do?”
“Poor I would only have to say just once, 'Robin, I will have you, and begin to try to love you.'”
“I am afraid that it has been done long ago; and the thing that I ought to do is to try and help it.”
What happened upon this it would be needless to report, and not only needless, but a vast deal worse—shabby, interloping, meddlesome and mean, undignified, unmanly, and disreputably low; for even the tanner and his wife (who must have had right to come forward, if anybody had) felt that their right was a shadow, and kept back as if they were a hundred miles away, and took one another by the hand and nodded, as much as to say: “You remember how we did it; better than that, my dear. Here is your good health.”
This being so, and the time so sacred to the higher emotions, even the boldest intruder should endeavor to check his ardor for intrusion. Without any inkling of Preventive Force, Robin and Mary, having once done away with all that stood between them, found it very difficult to be too near together; because of all the many things that each had for to say. They seemed to get into an unwise condition of longing to know matters that surely could not matter. When did each of them first feel sure of being meant only for the other nobler one? At first sight, of course, and with a perfect gift of seeing how much loftier each was than the other; and what an extraordinary fact it was that in everything imaginable they were quite alike, except in the palpable certainty possessed by each of the betterness of the other. What an age it seemed since first they met, positively without thinking, and in the very middle of a skirmish, yet with a remarkable drawing out of perceptions one anotherward! Did Mary feel this, when she acted so cleverly, and led away those vile pursuers? and did Robin, when his breath came back, discover why his heart was glowing in the rabbit-hole? Questions of such depth can not be fathomed in a moment; and even to attempt to do any justice to them, heads must be very long laid together. Not only so, but also it is of prime necessity to make sure that every whisper goes into the proper ear, and abides there only, and every subtlety of glance, and every nicety of touch, gets warm with exclusive reciprocity. It is not too much to say that in so sad a gladness the faculties of self-preservation are weak, when they ought to be most active; therefore it should surprise nobody (except those who are so far above all surprise) to become aware that every word they said, and everything (even doubly sacred) that they did, was well entered into, and thoroughly enjoyed, by a liberal audience of family-minded men, who had been through pretty scenes like this, and quietly enjoyed dry memory.
Cadman, Ellis, and Dick Hackerbody were in comfortable places of retirement, just under the combing of the hedge; all waiting for a whistle, yet at leisure to enjoy the whisper, the murmur, or even the sigh, of a genuine piece of “sweet-hearting.” Unjust as it may be, and hard, and truly narrow, there does exist in the human mind, or at least in the masculine half of it, a strong conviction that a man in love is a man in a scrape, in a hole, in a pitfall, in a pitiful condition, untrue for the moment to the brotherhood of man, and cast down among the inferior vessels. And instead of being sorry for him, those who are all right look down, and glory over him, with very ancient gibes. So these three men, instead of being touched at heart by soft confessions, laid hard hands to wrinkled noses.
“Mary, I vow to you, as I stand here,” said Robin, for the fiftieth time, leading her nearer to the treacherous hedge, as he pressed her trembling hand, and gazed with deep ecstasy into her truthful eyes, “I will live only to deserve you, darling. I will give up everything and everybody in the world, and start afresh. I will pay king's duty upon every single tub; and set up in the tea and spirit line, with his Majesty's arms upon the lintel. I will take a large contract for the royal navy, who never get anything genuine, and not one of them ever knows good from bad—”
“That's a dirty lie, Sir. In the king's name I arrest you.”
Lieutenant Carroway leaped before them, flourishing a long sword, and dancing with excitement, in this the supreme moment of his life. At the same instant three men came bursting through the hedge, drew hangers, and waited for orders. Robin Lyth, in the midst of his love, was so amazed, that he stood like a boy under orders to be caned.
“Surrender, Sir! Down with your arms; you are my prisoner. Strike to his Majesty. Hands to your side! or I run you through like Jack Robinson! Keep back, men. He belongs to me.”
But Carroway counted his chicks too soon; or at any rate he overlooked a little chick. For while he was making fine passes (having learned the rudiments of swordsmanship beyond other British officers), and just as he was executing a splendid flourish, upon his bony breast lay Mary. She flung her arms round him, so that move he could not without grievously tearing her; and she managed, in a very wicked way, to throw the whole weight of two bodies on his wounded heel. A flash of pain shot up to his very sword; and down he went, with Mary to protect him, or at any rate to cover him. His three men, like true Britons, stood in position, and waited for their officer to get up and give orders.
These three men showed such perfect discipline that Robin was invited to knock them down, as if they had simply been three skittles in a row; he recovered his presence of mind and did it; and looking back at Mary, received signal to be off. Perceiving that his brave love would take no harm—for the tanner was come forth blustering loudly, and Mrs. Popplewell with shrieks and screams enough to prevent the whole Preventive Service—the free-trader kissed his hand to Mary, and was lost through the bushes, and away into the dark.