“Papa, I have brought you a wonderful letter,” cried Miss Janetta Upround, toward supper-time of that same night; “and the most miraculous thing about it is that there is no post to pay. Oh, how stupid I am! I ought to have got at least a shilling out of you for postage.”
“My dear, be sorry for your sins, and not for having failed to add to them. Our little world is brimful of news just now, but nearly all of it bad news. Why, bless me, this is in regular print, and it never has passed through the post at all, which explains the most astounding fact of positively naught to pay. Janetta, every day I congratulate myself upon such a wondrous daughter. But I never could have hoped that even you would bring me a letter gratis.”
“But the worst of it is that I deserve no credit. If I had cheated the postman, there would have been something to be proud of. But this letter came in the most ignominious way—poked under the gate, papa! It is sealed with a foreign coin! Oh, dear, dear, I am all in a tingle to know all about it. I saw it by the moonlight, and it must belong to me.”
“My dear, it says, 'Private, and to his own hands.' Therefore you had better go, and think no more about it. I confide to you many of my business matters: or at any rate you get them out of me: but this being private, you must think no more about it.”
“Darling papa, what a flagrant shame! The man must have done it with no other object than to rob me of every wink of sleep. If I swallow the outrage and retire, will you promise to tell me every word to-morrow? You preached a most exquisite sermon last Sunday about the meanness and futility of small concealments.”
“Be off!” cried the rector; “you are worse than Mr. Mordacks, who lays down the law about frankness perpetually, but never lets me guess what his own purpose is.”
“Oh, now I see where the infection comes from! Papa, I am off, for fear of catching it myself. Don't tell me, whatever you do. I never can sleep upon dark mysteries.”
“Poor dear, you shall not have your rest disturbed,” Dr. Upround said, sweetly, as he closed the door behind her; “you are much too good a girl for other people's plagues to visit you.” Then, as he saddled his pleasant old nose with the tranquil span of spectacles, the smile on his lips and the sigh of his breast arrived at a quiet little compromise. He was proud of his daughter, her quickness and power to get the upper turn of words with him; but he grieved at her not having any deep impressions, even after his very best sermons. But her mother always told him not to be in any hurry, for even she herself had felt no very profound impressions until she married a clergyman; and that argument always made him smile (as invisibly as possible), because he had not detected yet their existence in his better half. Such questions are most delicate, and a husband can only set mute example. A father, on the other hand, is bound to use his pastoral crook upon his children foremost.
“Now for this letter,” said Dr. Upround, holding council with himself; “evidently a good clerk, and perhaps a first-rate scholar. One of the very best Greek scholars of the age does all his manuscript in printing hand, when he wishes it to be legible. And a capital plan it is—without meaning any pun. I can read this like a gazette itself.”
“REVEREND AND WORSHIPFUL SIR,—Your long and highly valued kindness requires at least a word from me, before I leave this country. I have not ventured into your presence, because it might place you in a very grave predicament. Your duty to King and State might compel you with your own hand to arrest me; and against your hand I could not strive. The evidence brought before you left no choice but to issue a warrant against me, though it grieved your kind heart to do that same. Sir, I am purely innocent of the vile crime laid against me. I used no fire-arm that night, neither did any of my men. And it is for their sake, as well as my own, that I now take the liberty of writing this. Failing of me, the authorities may bring my comrades to trial, and convict them. If that were so, it would become my duty as a man to surrender myself, and meet my death in the hope of saving them. But if the case is sifted properly, they must be acquitted; for no fire-arm of any kind was in my boat, except one pair of pistols, in a locker under the after thwart, and they happened to be unloaded. I pray you to verify this, kind sir. My firm belief is that the revenue officer was shot by one of his own men; and his widow has the same opinion. I hear that the wound was in the back of the head. If we had carried fire-arms, not one of us could have shot him so.
“It may have been an accident; I can not say. Even so, the man whose mishap it was is not likely to acknowledge it. And I know that in a court of law truth must be paid for dearly. I venture to commit to your good hands a draft upon a well-known Holland firm, which amounts to 78 pounds British, for the defense of the men who are in custody. I know that you as a magistrate can not come forward as their defender; but I beg you as a friend of justice to place the money for their benefit. Also especially to direct attention to the crew of the revenue boat and their guns.
“And now I fear greatly to encroach upon your kindness, and very long-suffering good-will toward me. But I have brought into sad trouble and distress with her family—who are most obstinate people—and with the opinion of the public, I suppose, a young lady worth more than all the goods I ever ran, or ever could run, if I went on for fifty years. By name she is Mistress Mary Anerley, and by birth the daughter of Captain Anerley, of Anerley Farm, outside our parish. If your reverence could only manage to ride round that way upon coming home from Sessions, once or twice in the fine weather, and to say a kind word or two to my Mary, and a good word, if any can be said of me, to her parents, who are stiff but worthy people, it would be a truly Christian act, and such as you delight in, on this side of the Dane-dike.
“Reverend sir, I must now say farewell. From you I have learned almost everything I know, within the pale of statutes, which repeal one another continually. I have wandered sadly outside that pale, and now I pay the penalty. If I had only paid heed to your advice, and started in business with the capital acquired by free trade, and got it properly protected, I might have been able to support my parents, and even be churchwarden of Flamborough. You always told me that my unlawful enterprise must close in sadness; and your words have proved too true. But I never expected anything like this; and I do not understand it yet. A penetrating mind like yours, with all the advantages of authority, even that is likely to be baffled in such a difficult case as this.
“Reverend sir, my case is hard; for I always have labored to establish peaceful trade; and I must have succeeded again, if honor had guided all my followers. We always relied upon the coast-guard to be too late for any mischief; and so they would have been this time, if their acts had been straightforward. In sorrow and lowness of fortune, I remain, with humble respect and gratitude, your Worship's poor pupil and banished parishioner,
“ROBIN LYTH, of Flamborough.”
“Come, now, Robin,” Dr. Upround said, as soon as he had well considered this epistle, “I have put up with many a checkmate at your hands, but not without the fair delight of a counter-stroke at the enemy. Here you afford me none of that. You are my master in every way; and quietly you make me make your moves, quite as if I were the black in a problem. You leave me to conduct your fellow-smugglers' case, to look after your sweetheart, and to make myself generally useful. By-the-way, that touch about my pleading his cause in my riding-boots, and with a sessional air about me, is worthy of the great Verdoni. Neither is that a bad hit about my Christianity stopping at the Dane-dike. Certes, I shall have to call on that young lady, though from what I have heard of the sturdy farmer, I may both ride and reason long, even after my greatest exploits at the Sessions, without converting him to free trade; and trebly so after that deplorable affair. I wonder whether we shall ever get to the bottom of that mystery. How often have I warned the boy that mischief was quite sure to come! though I never even dreamed that it would be so bad as this.”
Since Dr. Upround first came to Flamborough, nothing (not even the infliction of his nickname) had grieved him so deeply as the sad death of Carroway. From the first he felt certain that his own people were guiltless of any share in it. But his heart misgave him as to distant smugglers, men who came from afar freebooting, bringing over ocean woes to men of settlement, good tithe-payers. For such men (plainly of foreign breed, and very plain specimens of it) had not at all succeeded in eluding observation, in a neighborhood where they could have no honest calling. Flamborough had called to witness Filey, and Filey had attested Bridlington, that a stranger on horseback had appeared among them with a purpose obscurely evil. They were right enough as to the fact, although the purpose was not evil, as little Denmark even now began to own.
“Here I am again!” cried Mr. Mordacks, laying vehement hold of the rector's hand, upon the following morning; “just arrived from York, dear sir, after riding half the night, and going anywhere you please; except perhaps where you would like to send me, if charity and Christian courtesy allowed. My dear sir, have you heard the news? I perceive by your countenance that you have not. Ah, you are generally benighted in these parts. Your caves have got something to do with it. The mind gets accustomed to them.”
“I venture to think, Mr. Mordacks, on the whole,” said the rector, who studied this man gently, “that sometimes you are rapid in your conclusions. Possibly of the two extremes it is the more desirable; especially in these parts, because of its great rarity. Still the mere fact of some caves existing, in or out of my parish, whichever it may be, scarcely seems to prove that all the people of Flamborough live in them. And even if we did, it was the manner of the ancient seers, both in the Classics, and in Holy Writ—”
“Sir, I know all about Elijah and Obadiah, and the rest of them. Profane literature we leave now for clerks in holy orders—we positively have no time for it. Everything begins to move with accelerated pace. This is a new century, and it means to make its mark. It begins very badly; but it will go on all the better. And I hope to have the pleasure, at a very early day, of showing you one of its leading men, a man of large intellect, commanding character, the most magnificent principles—and, in short, lots of money. You must be quite familiar with the name of Sir Duncan Yordas.”
“I fancy that I have heard or seen it somewhere. Oh, something to do with the Hindoos, or the Africans. I never pay much attention to such things.”
“Neither do I, Dr. Upround. Still somebody must, and a lot of money comes of it. Their idols have diamond eyes, which purity of worship compels us to confiscate. And there are many other ways of getting on among them, while wafting and expanding them into a higher sphere of thought. The mere fact of Sir Duncan having feathered his nest—pardon so vulgar an expression, doctor—proves that while giving, we may also receive: for which we have the highest warranty.”
“The laborer is worthy of his hire, Mr. Mordacks. At the same time we should remember also—”
“What St. Paul says per contra. Quite so. That is always my first consideration, when I work for my employers. Ah, Dr. Upround, few men give such pure service as your humble servant. I have twice had the honor of handing you my card. If ever you fall into any difficulty, where zeal, fidelity, and high principle, combined with very low charges—”
“Mr. Mordacks, my opinion of you is too high for even yourself to add to it. But what has this Sir Duncan Yorick—”
“Yordas, my dear sir—Sir Duncan Yordas—the oldest family in Yorkshire. Men of great power, both for good and evil, mainly, perhaps, the latter. It has struck me sometimes that the county takes its name—But etymology is not my forte. What has he to do with us, you ask? Sir, I will answer you most frankly. 'Coram populo' is my business motto. Excuse me, I think I hear that door creak. No, a mere fancy—we are quite 'in camera.' Very well; reverend sir, prepare your mind for a highly astounding disclosure.”
“I have lived too long to be astounded, my good sir. But allow me to put on my spectacles. Now I am prepared for almost anything.”
“Dr. Upround, my duty compels me to enter largely into minds. Your mind is of a lofty order—calm, philosophic, benevolent. You have proved this by your kind reception of me, a stranger, almost an intruder. You have judged from my manners and appearance, which are shaped considerably by the inner man, that my object was good, large, noble. And yet you have not been quite able to refrain, at weak moments perhaps, but still a dozen times a day, from exclaiming in the commune of your heart, 'What the devil does this man want in my parish?'”
“My good sir, I never use bad language; and if I did my duty, I should now inflict—”
“Five shillings for your poor-box. There it is. And it serves me quite right for being too explicit, and forgetting my reverence to the cloth. However, I have coarsely expressed your thoughts. Also you have frequently said to yourself, 'This man prates of openness, but I find him closer than any oyster.' Am I right? Yes, I see that I am, by your bow. Very well, you may suppose what pain it gave me to have the privilege of intercourse with a perfect gentleman and an eloquent divine, and yet feel myself in an ambiguous position. In a few words I will clear myself, being now at liberty to indulge that pleasure. I have been here, as agent for Sir Duncan Yordas, to follow up the long-lost clew to his son, and only child, who for very many years was believed to be out of all human pursuit. My sanguine and penetrating mind scorned rumors, and went in for certainty. I have found Sir Duncan's son, and am able to identify him, beyond all doubt, as a certain young man well known to you, and perhaps too widely known, by the name of Robin Lyth.”
In spite of the length of his experience of the world, in a place of so many adventures, the rector of Flamborough was astonished, and perhaps a little vexed as well. If anything was to be found out, in such a headlong way, about one of his parishioners, and notably such a pet pupil and favorite, the proper thing would have been that he himself should do it. Failing that, he should at least have been consulted, enlisted, or at any rate apprised of what was toward. But instead of that, here he had been hoodwinked (by this marvel of incarnate candor employed in the dark about several little things), and then suddenly enlightened, when the job was done. Gentle and void of self-importance as he was, it misliked him to be treated so.
“This is a wonderful piece of news,” he said, as he fixed a calm gaze upon the keen, hard eyes of Mordacks. “You understand your business, sir, and would not make such a statement unless you could verify it. But I hope that you may not find cause to regret that you have treated me with so little confidence.”
“I am not open to that reproach. Dr. Upround, consider my instructions. I was strictly forbidden to disclose my object until certainty should be obtained. That being done, I have hastened to apprise you first of a result which is partly due to your own good offices. Shake hands, my dear sir, and acquit me of rudeness—the last thing of which I am capable.”
The rector was mollified, and gave his hand to the gallant general factor. “Allow me to add my congratulations upon your wonderful success,” he said; “but would that I had known it some few hours sooner! It might have saved you a vast amount of trouble. I might have kept Robin well within your reach. I fear that he is now beyond it.”
“I am grieved to hear you say so. But according to my last instructions, although he is in strict concealment, I can lay hands upon him when the time is ripe.”
“I fear not. He sailed last night for the Continent, which is a vague destination, especially in such times as these. But perhaps that was part of your skillful contrivance?”
“Not so. And for the time it throws me out. I have kept most careful watch on him. But the difficulty was that he might confound my vigilance with that of his enemies; take me for a constable, I mean. And perhaps he has done so, after all. Things have gone luckily for me in the main; but that murder came in most unseasonably. It was the very thing that should have been avoided. Sir Duncan will need all his influence there. Suppose for a moment that young Robin did not do it—”
“Mr. Mordacks, you frighten me. What else could you suppose?”
“Certainly—yes. A parishioner of yours, when not engaged unlawfully upon the high seas. We heartily hope that he did not do it, and we give him the benefit of the doubt; in which I shared largely, until it became so manifest that he was a Yordas. A Yordas has made a point of slaying his man—and sometimes from three to a dozen men—until within the last two generations. In the third generation the law revives, as is hinted, I think, in the Decalogue. In my professional course a large stock of hereditary trail—so to speak—comes before me. Some families always drink, some always steal, some never tell lies because they never know a falsehood, some would sell their souls for a sixpence, and these are the most respectable of any—”
“My dear sir, my dear sir, I beg your pardon for interrupting you; but in my house the rule is to speak well of people, or else to say nothing about them.”
“Then you must resign your commission, doctor; for how can you take depositions? But, as I was saying, I should have some hope of the innocence of young Robin if it should turn out that his father, Sir Duncan, has destroyed a good many of the native race in India. It may reasonably be hoped that he has done so, which would tend very strongly to exonerate his son. But the evidence laid before your Worship and before the coroner was black—black—black.”
“My position forbids me to express opinions. The evidence compelled me to issue the warrant. But knowing your position, I may show you this, in every word of which I have perfect faith.”
With these words Dr. Upround produced the letter which he had received last night, and the general factor took in all the gist of it in less than half a minute.
“Very good! very good!” he said, with a smile of experienced benevolence. “We believe some of it. Our duty is to do so. There are two points of importance in it. One as to the girl he is in love with, and the other his kind liberality to the fellows who will have to bear the brunt of it.”
“You speak sarcastically, and I hope unfairly. To my mind, the most important facts are these—that poor Carroway was shot from behind, and that the smugglers had no fire-arms, except two pistols, both unloaded.”
“Who is to prove that, Dr. Upround? Their mouths are closed; and if they were open, would anybody believe them? We knew long ago that the vigilant and deservedly lamented officer took the deathblow from behind; but of that how simple is the explanation! The most intelligent of his crew, and apparently his best subordinate, whose name is John Cadman, deposes that his lamented chief turned round for one moment to give an order, and during that moment received the shot. His evidence is the more weighty because he does not go too far with it. He does not pretend to say who fired. He knows only that one of the smugglers did. His evidence will hang those six poor fellows, from the laudable desire of the law to include the right one. But I trust that the right one will be far away.”
“I trust not. If even one of them is condemned, even to transportation, Robin Lyth will surrender immediately. You doubt it. You smile at the idea. Your opinion of human nature is low. Mine is not enthusiastic. But I judge others by myself.”
“So do I,” Mr. Mordacks answered, with a smile of curious humor. And the rector could not help smiling too, at this instance of genuine candor. “However, not to go too deeply into that,” his visitor continued, “there really is one point in Robin's letter which demands inquiry. I mean about the guns of the Preventive men. Cadman may be a rogue. Most probably he is. None of the others confirm, although they do not contradict him. Do you know anything about him?”
“Only villainy—in another way. He led away a nice girl of this parish, an industrious mussel-gatherer. And he then had a wife and large family of his own, of which the poor thing knew nothing. Her father nearly killed him; and I was compelled (very much against my will) to inflict a penalty. Cadman is very shy of Flamborough now. By-the-way, have you called upon poor Widow Carroway?”
“I thank you for the hint. She is the very person. It will be a sad intrusion; and I have put it off as long as possible. After what Robin says, it is most important. I hope that Sir Duncan will be here very shortly. He is coming from Yarmouth in his own yacht. Matters are crowding upon me very fast. I will see Mrs. Carroway as soon as it is decent. Good-morning, and best thanks to your Worship.”
The air was sad and heavy thus, with discord, doubt, and death itself gathering and descending, like the clouds of long night, upon Flamborough. But far away, among the mountains and the dreary moorland, the “intake” of the coming winter was a great deal worse to see. For here no blink of the sea came up, no sunlight under the sill of clouds (as happens where wide waters are), but rather a dark rim of brooding on the rough horizon seemed to thicken itself against the light under the sullen march of vapors—the muffled funeral of the year. Dry trees and naked crags stood forth, and the dirge of the wind went to and fro, and there was no comfort out-of-doors.
Soon the first snow of the winter came, the first abiding earnest snow, for several skits had come before, and ribbed with white the mountain breasts. But nobody took much heed of that, except to lean over the plough, while it might be sped, or to want more breakfast. Well resigned was everybody to the stoppage of work by winter. It was only what must be every year, and a gracious provision of Providence. If a man earned very little money, that was against him in one way, but encouraged him in another. It brought home to his mind the surety that others would be kind to him; not with any sense of gift, but a large good-will of sharing.
But the first snow that visits the day, and does not melt in its own cold tears, is a sterner sign for every one. The hardened wrinkle, and the herring-bone of white that runs among the brown fern fronds, the crisp defiant dazzle on the walks, and the crust that glitters on the patient branch, and the crest curling under the heel of a gate, and the ridge piled up against the tool-house door—these, and the shivering wind that spreads them, tell of a bitter time in store.
The ladies of Scargate Hall looked out upon such a December afternoon. The massive walls of their house defied all sudden change of temperature, and nothing less than a week of rigor pierced the comfort of their rooms. The polished oak beams overhead glanced back the merry fire-glow, the painted walls shone with rosy tints, and warm lights flitting along them, and the thick-piled carpet yielded back a velvety sense of luxury. It was nice to see how bleak the crags were, and the sad trees laboring beneath the wind and snow.
“If it were not for thinking of the poor cold people, for whom one feels so deeply,” said the gentle Mrs. Carnaby, with a sweet soft sigh, “one would rather enjoy this dreary prospect. I hope there will be a deep snow to-night. There is every sign of it upon the scaurs. And then, Philippa, only think—no post, no plague of news, no prospect of even that odious Jellicorse! Once more we shall have our meals in quiet.”
Mrs. Carnaby loved a good dinner right well, a dinner unplagued by hospitable cares; when a woodcock was her own to dwell on, and pretty little teeth might pick a pretty little bone at ease.
“Eliza, you are always such a creature of the moment,” Mistress Yordas answered, indulgently; “you do love the good things of the world too much. How would you like to be out there, in a naked little cottage where the wind howls through, and the ewer is frozen every morning? And where, if you ever get anything to eat—”
“Philippa, I implore you not to be so dreadful. One never can utter the most commonplace reflection—and you know that I said I was sorry for the people.”
“My object is good, as you ought to know. My object is to habituate your mind—”
“Philippa, I beg you once more to confine your exertions, in that way, to your own more lofty mind. Again I refuse to have my mind, or whatever it is that does duty for it, habituated to anything. A gracious Providence knows that I should die outright, after all my blameless life, if reduced to those horrible straits you always picture. And I have too much faith in a gracious Providence to conceive for one moment that it would treat me so. I decline the subject. Why should we make such troubles? There is clear soup for dinner, and some lovely sweet-breads. Cook has got a new receipt for bread sauce, and Jordas says that he never did shoot such a woodcock.”
“Eliza, I trust that you may enjoy them all; your appetite is delicate, and you require nourishment. Why, what do I see over yonder in the snow? A slim figure moving at a very great pace, and avoiding the open places! Are my eyes growing old, or is it Lancelot?”
“Pet out in such weather, Philippa! Such a thing is simply impossible. Or at any rate I should hope so. You know that Jordas was obliged to put a set of curtains from end to end even of the bowling-alley, which is so beautifully sheltered; and even then poor Pet was sneezing. And you should have heard what he said to me, when I was afraid of the sheets taking fire from his warming-pan one night. Pet is unaccountable sometimes, I know. But the very last thing imaginable of him is that he should put his pretty feet into the snow.”
“You know him best, Eliza; and it is very puzzling to distinguish things in snow. But if it was not Pet, why, it must have been a squirrel.”
“The squirrels are gone to sleep for the winter, Philippa. I dare say it was only Jordas. Don't you think that it must have been Jordas?”
“I am quite certain that it was not Jordas. But I will not pretend to say that it was not a squirrel. He may forego his habitudes more easily than Lancelot.”
“How horribly dry you are sometimes, Philippa. There seems to be no softness in your nature. You are fit to do battle with fifty lawyers; and I pity Mr. Jellicorse, with his best clothes on.”
“You could commit no greater error. We pay the price of his black silk stockings three times over, every time we see him. The true objects of pity are—you, I, and the estates.”
“Well, let us drop it for a while. If you begin upon that nauseous subject, not a particle of food will pass my lips; and I did look forward to a little nourishment.”
“Dinner, my ladies!” cried the well-appointed Welldrum, throwing open the door as only such a man can do, while cleverly accomplishing the necessary bow, which he clinched on such occasions with a fine smack of his lips.
“Go and tell Mr. Lancelot, if you please, that we are waiting for him.” A great point was made, but not always effected, of having Master Pet, in very gorgeous attire, to lead his aunt into the dining-room. It was fondly believed that this impressed him with the elegance and nice humanities required by his lofty position and high walk in life. Pet hated this performance, and generally spoiled it by making a face over his shoulder at old Welldrum, while he strode along in real or mock awe of Aunt Philippa.
“If you please, my ladies,” said the butler now, choosing Mrs. Carnaby for his eyes to rest on, “Mr. Lancelot beg to be excoosed of dinner. His head is that bad that he have gone for open air.”
“Snow-headache is much in our family; Eliza, you remember how our dear father used to feel it.” With these words Mistress Yordas led her sister to the dining-room; and they took good care to say nothing more about it before the officious Welldrum.
Pet meanwhile was beginning to repent of his cold and lonely venture. For a mile or two the warmth of his mind and the glow of exercise sustained him; and he kept on admiring his own courage till his feet began to tingle. “Insie will be bound to kiss me now; and she never will be able to laugh at me again,” he said to himself some fifty times. “I am like the great poet who describes the snow; and I have got some cherry-brandy.” He trudged on very bravely; but his poor dear toes at every step grew colder. Out upon the moor, where he was now, no shelter of any kind encouraged him; no mantlet of bank, or ridge, or brush-wood, set up a furry shiver betwixt him and the tatterdemalion wind. Not even a naked rock stood up to comfort a man by looking colder than himself.
But in truth there was no severe cold yet; no depth of snow, no intensity of frost, no splintery needles of sparkling drift; but only the beginning of the wintry time, such as makes a strong man pick his feet up, and a healthy boy start an imaginary slide. The wind, however, was shrewd and searching, and Lancelot was accustomed to a warming-pan. Inside his waistcoat he wore a hare-skin, and his heart began to give rapid thumps against it. He knew that he was going into bodily peril worse than any frost or snow.
For a long month he had not even seen his Insie, and his hot young heart had never before been treated so contemptuously. He had been allowed to show himself in the gill at his regular interval, a fortnight ago. But no one had ventured forth to meet him, or even wave signal of welcome or farewell. But that he could endure, because he had been warned not to hope for much that Friday; now, however, it was not his meaning to put up with any more such nonsense. That he, who had been told by the servants continually that all the land for miles and miles around was his, should be shut out like a beggar, and compelled to play bo-peep, by people who lived in a hole in the ground, was a little more than in the whole entire course of his life he could ever have imagined. His mind was now made up to let them know who he was and what he was; and unless they were very quick in coming to their senses, Jordas should have orders to turn them out, and take Insie altogether away from them.
But in spite of all brave thoughts and words, Master Pet began to spy about very warily, ere ever he descended from the moor into the gill. He seemed to have it borne in upon his mind that territorial rights—however large and goodly—may lead only to a taste of earth, when earth alone is witness to the treatment of her claimant. Therefore it behooved him to look sharp; and possessing the family gift of keen sight, he began to spy about, almost as shrewdly as if he had been educated in free trade. But first he had wit enough to step below the break, and get behind a gorse bush, lest haply he should illustrate only the passive voice of seeing.
In the deep cut of the glen there was very little snow, only a few veins and patches here and there, threading and seaming the steep, as if a white-footed hare had been coursing about. Little stubby brier shoots, and clumps of russet bracken, and dead heather, ruffling like a brown dog's back, broke the dull surface of withered herbage, thistle stumps, teasels, rugged banks, and naked brush. Down in the bottom the noisy brook was scurrying over its pebbles brightly, or plunging into gloom of its own production; and away at the bend of the valley was seen the cot of poor Lancelot's longing.
The situation was worth a sigh, and came half way to share one; Pet sighed heavily, and deeply felt how wrong it was of any one to treat him so. What could be easier for him than to go, as Insie had said to him at least a score of times, and mind his own business, and shake off the dust—or the mud—of his feet at such strangers? But, alas! he had tried it, and could shake nothing, except his sad and sapient head. How deplorably was he altered from the Pet that used to be! Where were now his lofty joys, the pleasure he found in wholesome mischief and wholesale destruction, the high delight of frightening all the world about his safety?
“There are people here, I do believe,” he said to himself, most touchingly, “who would be quite happy to chop off my head!”
As if to give edge to so murderous a thought, and wings to the feet of the thinker, a man both tall and broad came striding down the cottage garden. He was swinging a heavy axe as if it were a mere dress cane, and now and then dealing clean slash of a branch, with an air which made Pet shiver worse than any wind. The poor lad saw that in the grasp of such a man he could offer less resistance than a nut within the crackers, and even his champion, the sturdy Jordas, might struggle without much avail. He gathered in his legs, and tucked his head well under the gorse to watch him.
“Surely he is too big to run very fast,” thought the boy, with his valor evaporated; “it must be that horrible Maunder. What a blessing that I stopped up here just in time! He is going up the gill to cleave some wood. Shall I cut away at once, or lie flat upon my stomach? He would be sure to see me if I tried to run away; and much he would care for his landlord!”
In such a choice of evils, poor Lancelot resolved to lie still, unless the monster should turn his steps that way. And presently he had the heart-felt pleasure of seeing the formidable stranger take the track that followed the windings of the brook. But instead of going well away, and rounding the next corner, the big man stopped at the very spot where Insie used to fill her pitcher, pulled off his coat and hung it on a bush, and began with mighty strokes to fell a dead alder-tree that stood there. As his great arms swung, and his back rose and fell, and the sway of his legs seemed to shake the bank, and the ring of his axe filled the glen with echoes, wrath and terror were fighting a hot battle in the heart of Lancelot.
His sense of a land-owner's rights and titles had always been most imperious, and though the Scargate estates were his as yet only in remainder, he was even more jealous about them than if he held them already in possession. What right had this man to cut down trees, to fell and appropriate timber? Even in the garden which he rented he could not rightfully touch a stick or stock. But to come out here, a good furlong from his renting, and begin hacking and hewing, quite as if the land were his—it seemed almost too brazen-faced for belief! It must be stopped at once—such outrageous trespass stopped, and punished sternly. He would stride down the hill with a summary veto—but, alas, if he did, he might get cut down too!
Not only this disagreeable reflection, but also his tender regard for Insie, prevented him from challenging this process of the axe; but his feelings began to goad him toward something worthy of a Yordas—for a Yordas he always accounted himself, and not by any means a Carnaby. And to this end all the powers of his home conspired.
“That fellow is terribly big and strong,” he said to himself, with much warmth of spirit; “but his axe is getting dull; and to chop down that tree of mine will take him at least half an hour. Dead wood is harder to cut than live. And when he has done that, he must work till dark to lop the branches, and so on. I need not be afraid of anybody but this fellow. Now is my time, then, while he is away. Even if the old folk are at home, they will listen to my reasons. The next time he comes to hack my tree on this side, I shall slip out, and go down to the cottage. I have no fear of any one that pays any heed to reason.”
This sudden admirer and lover of reason cleverly carried out his bold discretion. For now the savage woodman, intent upon that levelling which is the highest glory of pugnacious minds, came round the tree, glaring at it (as if it were the murderer, and he the victim), redoubling his tremendous thwacks at every sign of tremor, flinging his head back with a spiteful joy, poising his shoulders on the swing, and then with all his weight descending into the trenchant blow. When his back was fairly turned on Lancelot, and his whole mind and body thus absorbed upon his prey, the lad rose quickly from his lair, and slipped over the crest of the gill to the moorland. In a moment he was out of sight to that demon of the axe, and gliding, with his head bent low, along a little hollow of the heathery ground, which cut off a bend of the ravine, and again struck its brink a good furlong down the gill. Here Pet stopped running, and lay down, and peered over the brink, for this part was quite new to him, and resolved as he was to make a bold stroke of it, he naturally wished to see how the land lay, and what the fortress of the enemy was like, ere ever he ventured into it.
That little moorland glen, whose only murmur was of wavelets, and principal traffic of birds and rabbits, even at this time of year looked pretty, with the winter light winding down its shelter and soft quietude. Ferny pitches and grassy bends set off the harsh outline of rock and shale, while a white mist (quivering like a clew above the rivulet) was melting into the faint blue haze diffused among the foldings and recesses of the land. On the hither side, nearly at the bottom of the slope, a bright green spot among the brown and yellow roughness, looking by comparison most smooth and rich, showed where the little cottage grew its vegetables, and even indulged in a small attempt at fruit. Behind this, the humble retirement of the cot was shielded from the wind by a breastwork of bold rock, fringed with ground-ivy, hanging broom, and silver stars of the carline. So simple and low was the building, and so matched with the colors around it, that but for the smoke curling up from a pipe of red pottery-ware, a stranger might almost have overlooked it. The walls were made from the rocks close by, the roof of fir slabs thatched with ling; there was no upper story, and (except the door and windows) all the materials seemed native and at home. Lancelot had heard, by putting a crafty question in safe places, that the people of the gill here had built their own dwelling, a good many years ago; and it looked as if they could have done it easily.
Now, if he intended to spy out the land, and the house as well, before the giant of the axe returned, there was no time to lose in beginning. He had a good deal of sagacity in tricks, and some practice in little arts of robbery. For before he attained to this exalted state of mind one of his favorite pastimes had been a course of stealthy raids upon the pears in Scargate garden. He might have had as many as he liked for asking; but what flavor would they have thus possessed? Moreover, he bore a noble spite against the gardener, whose special pride was in that pear wall; and Pet more than once had the joy of beholding him thrash his own innocent son for the dark disappearance of Beurre and Bergamot. Making good use of this experience, he stole his way down the steep glen-side, behind the low fence of the garden, until he reached the bottom, and the brush-wood by the stream. Here he stopped to observe again, and breathe, and get his spirit up. The glassy water looked as cold as death; and if he got cramp in his feet, how could he run? And yet he could see no other way but wading, of approaching the cottage unperceived.
Now fortune (whose privilege it is to cast mortals into the holes that most misfit them) sometimes, when she has got them there, takes pity, and contemptuously lifts them. Pet was in a hole of hardship, such as his dear mamma never could have dreamed of, and such as his nurture and constitution made trebly disastrous for him. He had taken a chill from his ambush, and fright, and the cold wind over the snow of the moor; and now the long wading of that icy water might have ended upon the shores of Acheron. However, he was just about to start upon that passage—for the spirit of his race was up—when a dull grating sound, as of footsteps crunching grit, came to his prettily concave ears.
At this sound Lancelot Carnaby stopped from his rash venture into the water, and drew himself back into an ivied bush, which served as the finial of the little garden hedge. Peeping through this, he could see that the walk from the cottage to the hedge was newly sprinkled with gray wood ash, perhaps to prevent the rain from lodging and the snow from lying there. Heavy steps of two old men (as Pet in the insolence of young days called them) fell upon the dull soft crust, and ground it, heel and toe—heel first, as stiff joints have it—with the bruising snip a hungry cow makes, grazing wiry grasses. “One of them must be Insie's dad,” said Pet to himself, as he crouched more closely behind the hedge; “which of them, I wonder? Well, the tall one, I suppose, to go by the height of that Maunder. And the other has only one arm; and a man with one arm could never have built their house. They are coming to sit on that bench; I shall hear every word they say, and learn some of their secrets that I never could get out of Insie one bit of. But I wonder who that other fellow is?”
That other fellow, in spite of his lease, would promptly have laid his surviving hand to the ear of Master Lancelot, or any other eavesdropper; for a sturdy and resolute man was he, being no less than our ancient friend and old soldier, Jack of the Smithies. And now was verified that homely proverb that listeners never hear good of themselves.
“Sit down, my friend,” said the elder of the twain, a man of rough dress and hard hands, but good, straightforward aspect, and that careless humor which generally comes from a life of adventures, and a long acquaintance with the world's caprice. “I have brought you here that we may be undisturbed. Little pitchers have long ears. My daughter is as true as steel; but this matter is not for her at present. You are sure, then, that Sir Duncan is come home at last? And he wished that I should know it?”
“Yes, sir, he wished that you should know it. So soon as I told him that you was here, and leading what one may call this queer life, he slapped his thigh like this here—for he hath a downright way of everything—and he said, 'Now, Smithies, so soon as you get home, go and tell him that I am coming. I can trust him as I trust myself; and glad I am for one old friend in the parts I am such a stranger to. Years and years I have longed to know what was become of my old friend Bert.' Tears was in his eyes, your honor: Sir Duncan hath seen such a mighty lot of men, that his heart cometh up to the few he hath found deserving of the name, sir.”
“You said that you saw him at York, I think?”
“Yes, sir, at the business house of his agent, one Master Geoffrey Mordacks. He come there quite unexpected, I believe, to see about something else he hath in hand, and I got a message to go there at once. I save his life once in India, sir, from one of they cursed Sours, which made him take heed of me, and me of him. And then it come out where I come from, and why; and the both of us spoke the broad Yorkshire together, like as I dea naa care to do to home. After that he got on wonderful, as you know; and I stuck to him through the whole of it, from luck as well as liking, till, if I had gone out to see to his breeches, I could not very well have knowed more of him. And I tell you, sir, not to regard him for a Yordas. He hath a mind far above them lot; though I was born under them, to say so!”
“And you think that he will come and recover his rights, in spite of his father's will against him. I know nothing of the ladies of the Hall; but it seems a hard thing to turn them out, after being there so long.”
“Who was turned out first, they or him? Five-and-twenty years of tent, open sky, jungle, and who knows what, for him—but eider-down, and fireside, and fat of land for them! No, no, sir; whatever shall happen there, will be God's own justice.”
“Of His justice who shall judge?” said Insie's father, quietly. “But is there not a young man grown, who passes for the heir with every one?”
“Ay, that there is; and the best game of all will be neck and crop for that young scamp. A bully, a coward, a puling milksop, is all the character he beareth. He giveth himself born airs, as if every inch of the Riding belonged to him. He hath all the viciousness of Yordas, without the pluck to face it out. A little beast that hath the venom, without the courage, of a toad. Ah, how I should like to see—”
Jack of the Smithies not only saw, but felt. The Yordas blood was up in Pet. He leaped through the hedge and struck this man with a sharp quick fist in either eye. Smithies fell backward behind the bench, his heels danced in the air, and the stump of his arm got wedged in the stubs of a bush, while Lancelot glared at him with mad eyes.
“What next?” said his companion, rising calmly, and steadfastly gazing at Lancelot.
“The next thing is to kill him; and it shall be done,” the furious youth replied, while he swung the gentleman's big stick, which he had seized, and danced round his foe with the speed of a wild-cat. “Don't meddle, or it will be worse for you. You heard what he said of me. Get out of the way.”
“Indeed, my young friend, I shall do nothing of the sort.” But the old man was not at all sure that he could do much; such was the fury and agility of the youth, who jumped three yards for every step of his, while the poor old soldier could not move. The boy skipped round the protecting figure, whose grasp he eluded easily, and swinging the staff with both arms, aimed a great blow at the head of his enemy. Suddenly the other interposed the bench, upon which the stick fell, and broke short; and before the assailant could recover from the jerk, he was a prisoner in two powerful old arms.
“You are so wild that we must make you fast,” his captor said, with a benignant smile; and struggle as he might, the boy was very soon secured. His antagonist drew forth a red bandana handkerchief, and fastened his bleeding hands behind his back. “There, now, lad,” he said, “you can do no mischief. Recover your temper, sir, and tell us who you are, as soon as you are sane enough to know.”
Pet, having spent his just indignation, began to perceive that he had made a bad investment. His desire had been to maintain in this particular spot strict privacy from all except Insie, to whom in the largeness of love he had declared himself. Yet here he stood, promulged and published, strikingly and flagrantly pronounced! At first he was like to sulk in the style of a hawk who has failed of his swoop; but seeing his enemy arising slowly with grunts, and action nodose and angular—rather than flexibly graceful—contempt became the uppermost feature of his mind.
“My name,” he said, “if you are not afraid of it, that you tie me in this cowardly low manner, is—Lancelot Yordas Carnaby.”
“My boy, it is a long name for any one to carry. No wonder that you look weak beneath it. And where do you live, young gentleman?”
Amazement sat upon the face of Pet—a genuine astonishment, entirely pure from wrath. It was wholly beyond his imagination that any one, after hearing his name, should have to ask him where he lived. He thought that the question must be put in low mockery, and to answer was far beneath his dignity.
By this time the veteran Jack of the Smithies had got out of his trap, and was standing stiffly, passing his hand across his sadly smitten eyes, and talking to himself about them.
“Two black eyes, at my time of life, as sure as I'm a Christian! Howsomever, young chap, I likes you better. Never dreamed there was such good stuff in you. Master Bert, cast him loose, if so please you. Let me shake hands with 'un, and bear no malice. Bad words deserve hard blows, and I ask his pardon for driving him into it. I called 'un a milksop, and he hath proved me a liar. He may be a bad 'un, but with good stuff in 'un. Lord bless me, I never would have believed the lad could hit so smartly!”
Pet was well pleased with this tribute to his prowess; but as for shaking hands with a tenant, and a “common man”—as every one not of gentle birth was then called—such an act was quite below him, or above him, according as we take his own opinion, or the truth. And possibly he rose in Smithies' mind by drawing back from bodily overture.
Mr. Bert looked on with all the bliss of an ancient interpreter. He could follow out the level of the vein of each, as no one may do except a gentleman, perhaps, who has turned himself deliberately into a “common man.” Bert had done his utmost toward this end; but the process is difficult when voluntary.
“I think it is time,” he now said, firmly, to the unshackled and triumphant Pet, “for Lancelot Yordas Carnaby to explain what has brought him into such humble quarters, and induced him to turn eavesdropper; which was not considered (at least in my young days) altogether the part of a gentleman.”
The youth had not seen quite enough of the world to be pat with a fertile lie as yet; especially under such searching eyes. However, he did as much as could be well expected.
“I was just looking over my property,” he said, “and I thought I heard somebody cutting down my timber. I came to see who it was, and I heard people talking, and before I could ask them about it, I heard myself abused disgracefully; and that was more than I could stand.”
“We must take it for granted that a brave young gentleman of your position would tell no falsehood. You assure us, on your honor, that you heard no more?”
“Well, I heard voices, sir. But nothing to understand, or make head or tail of.” There was some truth in this; for young Lancelot had not the least idea who “Sir Duncan” was. His mother and aunt had kept him wholly in the dark as to any lost uncle in India. “I should like to know what it was,” he added, “if it has anything to do with me.”
This was a very clever hit of his; and it made the old gentleman believe him altogether.
“All in good time, my young friend,” he answered, even with a smile of some pity for the youth. “But you are scarcely old enough for business questions, although so keen about your timber. Now after abusing you so disgracefully, as I admit that my friend here has done, and after roping your pugnacious hands, as I myself was obliged to do, we never can launch you upon the moor, in such weather as this, without some food. You are not very strong, and you have overdone yourself. Let us go to the house, and have something.”
Jack of the Smithies showed alacrity at this, as nearly all old soldiers must; but Pet was much oppressed with care, and the intellect in his breast diverged into sore distraction of anxious thought. Whether should he draw the keen sword of assurance, put aside the others, and see Insie, or whether should he start with best foot foremost, scurry up the hill, and avoid the axe of Maunder? Pallas counselled this course, and Aphrodite that; and the latter prevailed, as she always used to do, until she produced the present dry-cut generation.
Lancelot bowed to the gentleman of the gill, and followed him along the track of grit, which set his little pearly teeth on edge; while Jack of the Smithies led, and formed, the rear-guard. “This is coming now to something very queer,” thought Pet; “after all, it might have been better for me to take my chance with the hatchet man.”
Brown dusk was ripely settling down among the mossy apple-trees, and the leafless alders of the brook, and the russet and yellow memories of late autumn lingering in the glen, while the peaky little freaks of snow, and the cold sighs of the wind, suggested fireside and comfort. Mr. Bert threw open his cottage door, and bowing as to a welcome guest, invited Pet to enter. No passage, no cold entrance hall, demanded scrapes of ceremony; but here was the parlor, and the feeding-place, and the warm dance of the fire-glow. Logs that meant to have a merry time, and spread a cheerful noise abroad, ere ever they turned to embers, were snorting forth the pointed flames, and spitting soft protests of sap. And before them stood, with eyes more bright than any flash of fire-light, intent upon rich simmering scents, a lovely form, a grace of dainties—oh, a goddess certainly!
“Master Carnaby,” said the host, “allow me, sir, the honor to present my daughter to you, Insie darling, this is Mr. Lancelot Yordas Carnaby. Make him a pretty courtesy.”
Insie turned round with a rosy blush, brighter than the brightest fire-wood, and tried to look at Pet as if she had never even dreamed of such a being. Pet drew hard upon his heart, and stood bewildered, tranced, and dazzled. He had never seen Insie in-doors before, which makes a great difference in a girl; and the vision was too bright for him.
For here, at her own hearth, she looked so gentle, sweet, and lovely. No longer wild and shy, or gayly mischievous and watchful, but calm-eyed, firm-lipped, gravely courteous; intent upon her father's face, and banishing not into shadow so much as absolute nullity any one who dreamed that he ever filled a pitcher for her, or fed her with grouse and partridge, and committed the incredible atrocity of kissing her.
Lancelot ceased to believe it possible that he ever could have done such a thing as that, while he saw how she never would see him at all, or talk in the voice that he had been accustomed to, or even toss her head in the style he had admired, when she tried to pretend to make light of him. If she would only make light of him now, he would be well contented, and say to himself that she did it on purpose, for fear of the opposite extreme. But the worst of it was that she had quite forgotten, beyond blink of inquiry or gleam of hope, that ever in her life she had set eyes on a youth of such perfect insignificance before.
“My friend, you ought to be hungry,” said Bert of the Gill, as he was proud to call himself; “after your exploit you should be fed. Your vanquished foe will sit next to you. Insie, you are harassed in mind by the countenance of our old friend Master John Smithies. He has met with a little mishap—never mind—the rising generation is quick of temper. A soldier respects his victor; it is a beautiful arrangement of Providence; otherwise wars would never cease. Now give our two guests a good dish of the best, piping hot, and of good meaty fibre. We will have our own supper by-and-by, when Maunder comes home, and your mother is ready. Gentlemen, fall to; you have far to go, and the moors are bad after night-fall.”
Lancelot, proudly as he stood upon his rank, saw fit to make no objection. Not only did his inner man cry, “Feed, even though a common man feed with thee,” but his mind was under the influence of a stronger one, which scorned such stuff. Moreover, Insie, for the first time, gave him a glance, demure but imperative, which meant, “Obey my father, sir.”
He obeyed, and was rewarded; for the beautiful girl came round him so, to hand whatever he wanted, and seemed to feel so sweetly for him in his strange position, that he scarcely knew what he was eating, only that it savored of rich rare love, and came from the loveliest creature in the world. In stern fact, it came from the head of a sheep; but neither jaws nor teeth were seen. Upon one occasion he was almost sure that a curl of Insie's lovely hair fell upon the back of his stooping neck; he could scarcely keep himself from jumping up; and he whispered, very softly, when the old man was away, “Oh, if you would only do that again!” But his darling made manifest that this was a mistake, and applied herself sedulously to the one-armed Jack.
Jack of the Smithies was a trencherman of the very first order, and being well wedded (with a promise already of young soldiers to come), it behooved him to fill all his holes away from home, and spare his own cupboard for the sake of Mistress Smithies. He perceived the duty, and performed it, according to the discipline of the British army.
But Insie was fretting in the conscience of her heart to get the young Lancelot fed and dismissed before the return of her great wild brother. Not that he would hurt their guest, though unwelcome; or even show any sort of rudeness to him; but more than ever now, since she heard of Pet's furious onslaught upon the old soldier—which made her begin to respect him a little—she longed to prevent any meeting between this gallant and the rough Maunder. And that anxiety led her to look at Pet with a melancholy kindness. Then Jack of the Smithies cut things short.
“Off's the word,” he said, “if ever I expects to see home afore daylight. All of these moors is known to me, and many's the time I have tracked them all in sleep, when the round world was betwixt us. But without any moon it is hard to do 'em waking; and the loss of my arm sends me crooked in the dark. And as for young folk, they be all abroad to once. With your leave, Master Bert, I'll be off immediate, after getting all I wants, as the manner of the world is. My good missus will be wondering what is come of me.”
“You have spoken well,” his host replied; “and I think we shall have a heavy fall to-night. But this young gentleman must not go home alone. He is not robust, and the way is long and rough. I have seen him shivering several times. I will fetch my staff, and march with him.”
“No, sir, I will not have such a thing done,” the veteran answered, sturdily. “If the young gentleman is a gentleman, he will not be afraid for me to take him home, in spite of what he hath done to me. Speak up, young man, are you frightened of me?”
“Not if you are not afraid of me,” said Pet, who had now forgotten all about that Maunder, and only longed to stay where he was, and set up a delicious little series of glances. For the room, and the light, and the tenor of the place, began more and more to suit such uses. And most and best of all, his Insie was very thankful to him for his good behavior; and he scarcely could believe that she wanted him to go. To go, however, was his destiny; and when he had made a highly laudable and far-away salute, it happened—in the shift of people, and of light, and clothing, which goes on so much in the winter-time—that a little hand came into his, and rose to his lips, with ground of action, not for assault and battery, but simply for assumpsit.