CHAPTER XIX
Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea,Silver buckles at his knee,When he comes home he’ll marry me,Pretty Bobby Shafto.Bobby Shafto fat and fair,Blessings on his yellow hair,He’s my lover ever dear,Pretty Bobby Shafto.
Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea,Silver buckles at his knee,When he comes home he’ll marry me,Pretty Bobby Shafto.Bobby Shafto fat and fair,Blessings on his yellow hair,He’s my lover ever dear,Pretty Bobby Shafto.
Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea,Silver buckles at his knee,When he comes home he’ll marry me,Pretty Bobby Shafto.
Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea,
Silver buckles at his knee,
When he comes home he’ll marry me,
Pretty Bobby Shafto.
Bobby Shafto fat and fair,Blessings on his yellow hair,He’s my lover ever dear,Pretty Bobby Shafto.
Bobby Shafto fat and fair,
Blessings on his yellow hair,
He’s my lover ever dear,
Pretty Bobby Shafto.
old song.
N
ONE afternoon you might have seen Clare running downstairs swiftly, her legs twinkling, like the water-wagtail’s as he spins over the lawn.
For news spreads quickly in a household of children, and rumour had it that Mrs. Inchbald was sitting in the drawing-room, and an idea of stories was about. Clare met Bimbo here, and Dolorès there, and a little farther on she gathered Leslie, Beppo, and Collina; finally she swept up Robin and Mousie and Christopher, who followed in her wake, and together they all poured intothe drawing-room helter-skelter, to see if this rumour were true.
Mrs. Inchbald sat by the fire with her knitting, and Miss Ross stood by her side. Her long black dress fell in soft folds, and the firelight touched and was reflected in the loose coils of her dark hair. She looked supremely sad, as in her picture, only the quiet movement of her eyes as she turned towards the children, lent a greater animation to her face.
Soon all the children were gathered round the hearthrug chattering like pies, and loudly choosing various stories.
“I think the Smugglers’ Cave.”
“No, I think Turn-Churn Willie.”
“No, no, about highwaymen.”
“Another witch story, please.”
“No, smugglers, smugglers.”
“And smugglers it shall be,” interposed Mrs. Inchbald, in a voice that allowed no arguing.
And then and there she began the following tale:—
I must ask you, dear children, to wing your imagination and come with me to a tawny-cliffed village on the coast of Kent. When the tide is far out there are miles of sand, and here when thesun sets in November, you may see a beautiful effect of colour. The flaming skies are duplicated in the moistened sands, so that the whole firmament is imaged in the earth around you.
Again, on summer evenings, these sands will reflect the long shafts of amber light, so that the failing day will take new life from them, seeming to recover once again its golden morning beams.
Look at the smaller picture by Bonington, and you will see what I mean. The sands stretch beyond you inimitably, steeped in the rosy and golden colours of the sky.
In the year 1819, the practice of smuggling had reached a point of such craft and effrontery, that only by special methods did the authorities hope to check its course. They realised that in having local spies, in getting help from the village people themselves, lay the best chance of permanently quelling it.
So it happened that as one Daniel Maidment was digging in his garden, situated in the village that I have described, a spruce and very dapper gentleman on horseback reined up beside his gate.
“Good-morning to you. Am I addressing Mr. Daniel Maidment of the village of Stowe-i’-the-Knowe?”
RemingtonON THE SEA-SHORE
RemingtonON THE SEA-SHORE
ON THE SEA-SHORE
“That’s my name, and that’s my village,” answered Daniel, and he stood leaning on his spade.
“I have a little matter of business with you, my man,” continued the stranger in that particular voice in which some people talk to children, or use when they address such as they consider their inferiors.
“You may find it to your advantage to give me your attention for a little while. With your permission, I will walk into your house.”
The rider dismounted, and tying his horse to the gate-post, went up the gravel path to the cottage door.
Daniel followed, and set a chair by the table, at which an old woman sat making lace. Her eyes were blind, as you might see by their wide dimness, and by the extreme serenity of her face. This is a quality that accompanies blindness. All signs of anxiety, of transient expression, are smoothed away, and all fretful activity; the features are set in the beauty of a great repose.
But her hands plied with swiftness the work on a lace pillow, with a pleasant recurrency of sound the wooden bobbins flew round, and about the shining pins.
“If your mother is deaf as well as blind,” recommenced the stranger, in a tone fitted to reach the deafest ears, “there is no reason at all why we should disturb her, my good fellow; but my business is of a private nature, and it would perhaps be better if we were alone.”
He stood with his hands under his coat-tails, and waved a high and foolish nose over the chimney ornaments as he investigated the spotted spaniels, the china paladins on white and gold chargers, and the pretty shell boxes that ornamented the mantelpiece. But when he turned he found the old woman had softly risen, and passed out.
“If you will kindly state your business with me, sir,” said Daniel, “I shall be pleased to attend.”
The stranger cleared his throat, and began importantly:—
“I am commissioned by the authorities serving under his most gracious Majesty the king, to investigate this district thoroughly with a view to checking the illicit trading that is carried on. Time and again the hand of the law has been held, and its object baffled by the collusion of the villagers with the smuggling trade. It is only possible for us to secure an advantage if we are helped by those on the spot.
“It is an open secret that the landlord of the ‘Mariner’s Rest’ keeps a receiving house; but such is the organised system of signals and alarms that hitherto we have found it impossible to surprise their vigilance. Your character, Mr. Maidment, I find on inquiry is unblemished as regards this matter as yet. I repeat, as yet—I have no desire to go into the past. Your trade as a fisherman enables you to know this coast, and the people who live along it, more thoroughly than any one coming as a stranger upon the scene. Will you work with the law? May we look upon you for such service as will conform to a better governing of the country’s trading? Will you help in abolishing an evil that is growing more and more flagrant and unbridled, every year?”
Daniel understood very well what was wanted of him. He had lived for years on the outskirts of smuggling, fully aware of his neighbours’ activity in the trade. Was he to turn spy upon them? It is true he had no near friends concerned in it, but it was hardly the kind of part he would choose, to watch and tell.
He looked across at this gentleman with a level gaze. How cordially he disliked him. From the flat lock on his forehead, to the very points of hissmart, disagreeable boots. He felt this feeling of dislike grow within him, as if it literally spouted bitter juices up his veins. Then he said—
“What do you want with me? Do you want me to turn spy?”
He moved abruptly to the window, thinking, his hands deep into his pockets as he stood, and his hand rustled against a letter in his pocket that brought him suddenly to a standstill in thought. He drew it out and stood looking at it. Then he went out at the cottage door, and down the path.
The stranger never did a wiser thing than when he remained in the cottage. He stood looking into the fire waiting for Daniel to return, and out in the garden Daniel opened the folded sheet of paper, written closely in a neat hand.
“O, my dear,” ran the words of the letter, “how well I love you, and how often I think of you, God alone knows, for I shall never find the poor words to tell you. Only I pray every night that I may soon see you, and that this long waiting may cease. But it isn’t only right but what our love should be tested, I know that, and God doesn’t send us trials for nothing.
“You know what I spoke to you about last time when we were walking on the Common. Do youremember how the gorse was out, and how I begged you to get free from everything that wasn’t honest—how it isn’t like you to have dealings of that kind? I know it hasn’t come very nigh you yet, Daniel; I know you won’t let it part us. There’s always plenty of things in this life ready to come in between goodness and turn lives crooked, if they can; but we won’t let them hurt our happiness, will we?—not we two. Only the other day I was thinking about you, and I took the Book and let my hands wander among the pages for a sign. And I said, ‘This’ll be for Daniel,’ as I was doing it, and I looked down and read. And the words were: ‘Love the brotherhood, obey God, honour the king,’ and that was a sign, Daniel, and it was for you.”
The wind blew softly through the cottage garden, bending the bushes of chrysanthemums by the wall. It rustled among the nasturtiums, and away out into the field beyond. And the words of the letter kept repeating themselves in Daniel’s brain, “Obey God, honour the king.” And now they were not only written words, but they brought the tone of a voice with them.
He re-entered the cottage and faced the stranger once more.
“I can’t do what you’re asking of me,” he said,“but at least I shan’t work agin you, I’ve made up my mind. You may depend upon me.”
“That’s well; then I’ll say good-morning to you, Mr. Maidment. I will leave you this address if you should have any written communication you may want to send.”
He unhitched his horse’s reins from the gate-post, and mounting, went at a swinging trot down the road.