Mary Anerley : a Yorkshire Tale Part 10

"Surely you will wait to hear my thanks, and to know what made me dare to ask you, after all you had done for me already, to begin again for me. But I am such an outcast that I never should have done it."

"I never saw any one look more thoroughly unlike an outcast," Mary said; and then she was angry with herself for speaking, and glancing, and, worst of all, for smiling,

"Ladies who live on land can never understand what we go through," Robin replied, in his softest voice, as rich as the murmur of the summer sea.

"When we expect great honors, we try to look a little tidy, as any one but a common boor would do; and we laugh at ourselves for trying to look well, after all the knocking about we get. Our time is short--we must make the most of it."

"Oh, please not to talk in such a dreadful way," said Mary.

"You remind me of my dear friend Dr. Upround--the very best man in the whole world, I believe. He always says to me, 'Robin, Robin--'"

"What! is Dr. Upandown a friend of yours?" Mary exclaimed, in amazement, and with a stoppage of the foot that was poised for quick departure.

"Dr. Upandown, as many people call him," said the smuggler, with a tone of condemnation, "is the best and dearest friend I have, next to Captain and Mistress c.o.c.kscroft, who may have been heard of at Anerley Manor.

Dr. Upround is our magistrate and clergyman, and he lets people say what they like against me, while he honors me with his friendship. I must not stay long to thank you even, because I am going to the dear old doctor's for supper at seven o'clock and a game of chess."

"Oh dear! oh dear! And he is such a Justice! And yet they shot at you last week! It makes me wonder when I hear such things."

"Young lady, it makes everybody wonder. In my opinion there never could be a more shameful murder than to shoot me; and yet but for you it would surely have been done."

"You must not dwell upon such things," said Mary; "they may have a very bad effect upon your mind. But good-by, Captain Lyth; I forgot that I was robbing Dr. Upround of your society."

"Shall I be so ungrateful as not to see you safe upon your own land after all your trouble? My road to Flamborough lies that way. Surely you will not refuse to hear what made me so anxious about this bauble, which now will be worth ten times as much. I never saw it look so bright before."

"It--it must be the sand has made it shine," the maiden stammered, with a fine bright blush; "it does the same to my shrimping net."

"Ah, shrimping is a very fine pursuit! There is nothing I love better; what pools I could show you, if I only might; pools where you may fill a sack with large prawns in a single tide--pools known to n.o.body but myself. When do you think of going shrimping next?"

"Perhaps next summer I may try again, if Captain Carroway will come with me."

"That is too unkind of you. How very harsh you are to me! I could hardly have believed it after all that you have done. And you really do not care to hear the story of this relic?"

"If I could stop, I should like it very much. But my brother, who came with me, may perhaps be waiting for me." Mary knew that this was not very likely; still, it was just possible, for Willie's ill tempers seldom lasted very long; and she wanted to let the smuggler know that she had not come all alone to meet him.

"I shall not be two minutes," Robin Lyth replied; "I have been forced to learn short talking. May I tell you about this trinket?"

"Yes, if you will only begin at once, and finish by the time we get to that corner."

"That is very short measure for a tale," said Robin, though he liked her all the better for such qualities; "however, I will try; only walk a little slower. n.o.body knows where I was born, any more than they know how or why. Only when I came upon this coast as a very little boy, and without knowing anything about it, they say that I had very wonderful b.u.t.tons of gold upon a linen dress, adorned with gold-lace, which I used to wear on Sundays. Dr. Upround ordered them to keep those b.u.t.tons, and was to have had them in his own care; but before that, all of them were lost save two. My parents, as I call them from their wonderful goodness, kinder than the ones who have turned me on the world (unless themselves went out of it), resolved to have my white coat done up grandly, when I grew too big for it, and to lay it by in lavender; and knowing of a great man in the gold-lace trade, as far away as Scarborough, they sent it by a fishing-smack to him, with people whom they knew thoroughly.

That was the last of it ever known here. The man swore a manifest that he never saw it, and threatened them with libel; and the smack was condemned, and all her hands impressed, because of some trifle she happened to carry; and n.o.body knows any more of it. But two of the b.u.t.tons had fallen off, and good mother had put them by, to give a last finish to the coat herself; and when I grew up, and had to go to sea at night, they were turned into a pair of ear-rings. There, now, Miss Anerley, I have not been long, and you know all about it."

"How very lonesome it must be for you," said Mary, with a gentle gaze, which, coming from such lovely eyes, went straight into his heart, "to have no one belonging to you by right, and to seem to belong to n.o.body!

I am sure I can not tell whatever I should do without any father, or mother, or uncle, or even a cousin to be certain of."

"All the ladies seem to think that it is rather hard upon me," Robin answered, with an excellent effort at a sigh; "but I do my very best to get on without them. And one thing that helps me most of all is when kind ladies, who have good hearts, allow me to talk to them as if I had a sister. This makes me forget what I am sometimes."

"You never should try to forget what you are. Everybody in the world speaks well of you. Even that cruel Lieutenant Carroway can not help admiring you. And if you have taken to free trade, what else could you do, when you had no friends, and even your coat was stolen?"

"High-minded people take that view of it, I know. But I do not pretend to any such excuse. I took to free trade for the sake of my friends--to support the old couple who have been so good to me."

"That is better still; it shows such good principle. My uncle Popplewell has studied the subject of what they call 'political economy,' and he says that the country requires free trade, and the only way to get it is to go on so that the government must give way at last. However, I need not instruct you about that; and you must not stop any longer."

"Miss Anerley, I will not encroach upon your kindness. You have said things that I never shall forget. On the Continent I meet very many ladies who tell me good things, and make me better; but not at all as you have done. A minute of talk with you is worth an hour with anybody else. But I fear that you laugh at me all the while, and are only too glad to be rid of me. Good-by. May I kiss your hand? G.o.d bless you!"

Mary had no time to say a single word, or even to express her ideas by a look, before Robin Lyth, with all his bright apparel, was "conspicuous by his absence." As a diving bird disappears from a gun, or a trout from a shadow on his hover, or even a debtor from his creditor, so the great free-trader had vanished into lightsome air, and left emptiness behind him.

The young maid, having been prepared to yield him a few yards more of good advice, if he held out for another corner, now could only say to herself that she never had met such a wonderful man. So active, strong, and astonishingly brave; so thoroughly acquainted with foreign lands, yet superior to their ladies; so able to see all the meaning of good words, and to value them when offered quietly; so sweet in his manner, and voice, and looks; and with all his fame so unpretending, and--much as it frightened her to think it--really seeming to be afraid of her.

CHAPTER XIII

GRUMBLING AND GROWLING

While these successful runs went on, and great authorities smiled at seeing the little authorities set at naught, and men of the revenue smote their b.r.e.a.s.t.s for not being born good smugglers, and the general public was well pleased, and congratulated them cordially upon their accomplishment of naught, one man there was whose n.o.ble spirit chafed and knew no comfort. He strode up and down at Coast-guard Point, and communed with himself, while Robin held sweet converse in the lane.

"Why was I born?" the sad Carroway cried; "why was I thoroughly educated and trained in both services of the king, expected to rise, and beginning to rise, till a vile bit of splinter stopped me, and then sent down to this hole of a place to starve, and be laughed at, and baffled by a boy? Another lucky run, and the revenue bamboozled, and the whole of us sent upon a wild-goose chase! Every gapper-mouth zany grinning at me, and scoundrels swearing that I get my share! And the only time I have had my dinner with my knees crook'd, for at least a fortnight, was at Anerley Farm on Sunday. I am not sure that even they wouldn't turn against me; I am certain that pretty girl would. I've a great mind to throw it up--a great mind to throw it up. It is hardly the work for a gentleman born, and the grandson of a rear-admiral. Tinkers' and tailors' sons get the luck now; and a man of good blood is put on the back shelf, behind the blacking-bottles. A man who has battled for his country--"

"Charles, are you coming to your dinner, once more?"

"No, I am not. There's no dinner worth coming to. You and the children may eat the rat pie. A man who has battled for his country, and bled till all his veins were empty, and it took two men to hold him up, and yet waved his Sword at the head of them--it is the downright contradiction of the world in everything for him to poke about with pots and tubs, like a pig in a brewery, grain-hunting."

"Once more, Charles, there is next to nothing left. The children are eating for their very lives. If you stay out there another minute, you must take the consequence."

"Alas, that I should have so much stomach, and so little to put into it!

My dear, put a little bit under a basin, if any of them has no appet.i.te.

I wanted just to think a little."

"Charles, they have all got tremendous appet.i.tes. It is the way the wind is. You may think by-and-by, but if you want to eat, you must do it now, or never."

"'Never' never suits me in that matter," the brave lieutenant answered.

"Matilda, put Geraldine to warm the pewter plate for me. Geraldine darling, you can do it with your mouth full."

The commander of the coast-guard turned abruptly from his long indignant stride, and entered the cottage provided for him, and which he had peopled so speedily.

Small as it was, it looked beautifully clean and neat, and everybody used to wonder how Mrs. Carroway kept it so. But in spite of all her troubles and many complaints, she was very proud of this little house, with its healthful position and beautiful outlook over the bay of Bridlington. It stood in a niche of the low soft cliff, where now the sea-parade extends from the northern pier of Bridlington Quay; and when the roadstead between that and the point was filled with a fleet of every kind of craft, or, better still, when they all made sail at once--as happened when a trusty breeze arose--the view was lively, and very pleasant, and full of moving interest. Often one of his Majesty's cutters, Swordfish, Kestrel, or Albatross, would swoop in with all sail set, and hover, while the skipper came ash.o.r.e to see the "Ancient Carroway," as this vigilant officer was called; and sometimes even a sloop of war, armed brigantine, or light corvette, prowling for recruits, or cruising for their training, would run in under the Head, and overhaul every wind-bound ship with a very high hand.

"Ancient Carroway"--as old friends called him, and even young people who had never seen him--was famous upon this coast now for nearly three degrees of lat.i.tude. He had dwelled here long, and in highly good content, hospitably treated by his neighbors, and himself more hospitable than his wife could wish, until two troubles in his life arose, and from year to year grew worse and worse. One of these troubles was the growth of mouths in number and size, that required to be filled; and the other trouble was the rampant growth of smuggling, and the glory of that upstart Robin Lyth. Now let it be lawful to take that subject first.

Fair Robin, though not at all anxious for fame, but modestly willing to decline it, had not been successful--though he worked so much by night--in preserving sweet obscurity. His character was public, and set on high by fortune, to be gazed at from wholly different points of view.

From their narrow and lime-eyed outlook the coast-guard beheld in him the latest incarnation of Old Nick; yet they hated him only in an abstract manner, and as men feel toward that evil one. Magistrates also, and the large protective powers, were arrayed against him, yet happy to abstain from laying hands, when their hands were their own, upon him.

And many of the farmers, who should have been his warmest friends and best customers, were now so attached to their king and country, by bellicose warmth and army contracts, that instead of a guinea for a four-gallon anker, they would offer three crowns, or the exciseman.

And not only conscience, but short cash, after three bad harvests, constrained them.

Yet the staple of public opinion was sound, as it must be where women predominate. The best of women could not see why they should not have anything they wanted for less than it cost the maker. To gaze at a sister woman better dressed at half the money was simply to abjure every lofty principle. And to go to church with a counterfeit on, when the genuine lace was in the next pew on a body of inferior standing, was a downright outrage to the congregation, the rector, and all religion. A cold-blooded creature, with no pin-money, might reconcile it with her principles, if any she had, to stand up like a dowdy and allow a poor man to risk his life by shot and storm and starvation, and then to deny him a word or a look, because of his coming with the genuine thing at a quarter the price fat tradesmen asked, who never stirred out of their shops when it rained, for a thing that was a story and an imposition.

Charity, duty, and common honesty to their good husbands in these bad times compelled them to make the very best of bargains; of which they got really more and more, as those brave mariners themselves bore witness, because of the depression in the free trade now and the glorious victories of England. Were they bound to pay three times the genuine value, and then look a figure, and be laughed at?

And as for Captain Carroway, let him scold, and threaten, and stride about, and be jealous, because his wife dare not buy true things, poor creature--although there were two stories also about that, and the quant.i.ties of things that he got for nothing, whenever he was clever enough to catch them, which scarcely ever happened, thank goodness! Let Captain Carroway attend to his own business; unless he was much belied, he had a wife who would keep him to it. Who was Captain Carroway to come down here, without even being born in Yorkshire, and lay down the law, as if he owned the manor?